(Translator's preface: This is the 23rd and final chapter of a 2020 research study of contemporary Chinese workplaces. I've only previously put up one of the chapters (here: servethepeople: Day in the Life of a Chinese Telemarketing Company (mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com)) and hope that one day the entire work can be posted somewhere. The image is the front cover of Life Weekly, a mainstream Chinese publication which, whilst recognising the existence of the problem of "small town nerds", tries to convince them that there are solutions to their problems. Its caption reads: "Small town nerds: how to stand on your own two feet".)
Chapter 23: Small-town nerds[1]
and Maoist thought: my intellectual journey
Editor's note: This article is very well written. Firstly,
it is good in that it is highly representative and typical; secondly, it is
good in that it is logically clear and draws out a narrative of how the
children of the proletariat wake up from the delusion of education to change
their class; finally, it is good in that the author bravely points out that the
way out for the small-town question-makers lies in returning to the
proletariat.
The author of this article is a "small-town nerd",
that is to say, he comes from a poor background, relies on his own efforts to
get into a prestigious school, but after entering society, he finds that the
prestigious school does not change his fate. He is struggling in the cracks of
the class, but society does not stop beating him because of his struggle. It is
against this backdrop that the author comes across the writings of Chairman
Mao. Reading Chairman Mao's writings gave the author new tools to observe and
analyse society. The author finally realised the nature of the current higher
education, "essentially the bourgeoisie, in order to ease the class
contradictions, has deliberately taken out a little resource to distribute to
the highly educated people, creating a belief system for the proletariat to
obtain a high income by acquiring a high degree ...... Under the poison of
highly educated beliefs, the proletariat at large has pinned its hopes on its
next generation, given up its rights and interests, and its sense of struggle
has been constantly weakened. And the highly educated next generation they have
so painstakingly nurtured, the few who have tasted the sweetness of capital and
are rapidly turning around to oppress the proletariat, while the others who are
struggling for the scraps they have sought but not received, are the small-town
nerds."
What is even more rare is that the author not only
recognizes the nature of higher education, but also recognizes that the
proletariat is the real friend of the small-town nerd: "The real friend of
the small-town problem nerd is the proletariat that has painstakingly nurtured
itself, just like the frog that has climbed to the mouth of the well, its
friend is always the others of its kind who are still struggling at the bottom
of the well. Chairman Mao said that the intellectuals are the hair and the
proletariat is the skin; if the skin does not exist, how can the hair be
attached? The real enemy of the small-town nerd is the bourgeoisie, the people
who forge highly educated beliefs. We should not be grateful for this access;
on the contrary, this access was forged by the bourgeoisie with the blood and
tears of our fathers and should be acutely aware that those who built it are
the real enemies."
The author concludes by talking about the confusion of small-town
nerds and Marxism, parts of which I don't agree with. For example, the author
says, "As the number of students from humble backgrounds who can get into
prestigious schools gradually becomes smaller due to the Matthew effect on
educational resources, the number of small-town nerds will also decrease, and
the group of people who can quickly understand Marxism will shrink. But in the
long run, when access is completely closed, more people are bound to take up
the arms of Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought (they just won't understand it
relatively quickly)." In fact, it is possible that the bourgeoisie will
expand its intake in order to ease the pressure of employment, and although the
friends being expanded are not the so-called prestigious schools of 985/211[2],
the numbers are huge and groups like the small-town nerds will only grow. In
addition, it is not only some of the small-town nerds who have gone to the
working people, but also some of the children of urban middle class families
who are bravely moving forward in the pursuit of truth, which is something that
needs to be seen.
Our friends are all over the world, and our songs are
spreading in all directions. As social tensions become more pronounced, there
will only be more and more of such people.
I. The confusion of a small-town nerd
I am a small-town nerd from a working-class family, and I
was once as confused as most people in this group. It was only after coming
into contact with Mao Zedong Thought that I realised that the plight of
small-town nerds was mainly the result of a failure to recognise their own
class, and that only by relying on the proletariat could they have a real
future.
I was born in 1996 in a rural village on the south-east coast
that has since developed into a small town. My parents, both post-65, were
poorly educated and worked at the lowest level of manual labour. My father was
a construction worker whose smell of masonry and concrete accompanied me as I
grew up, and the long hours of heavy physical labour left him with injuries and
illnesses. My mother was an electronics factory worker, working an assembly
line job with two days off a month and more than 11 hours a day (sometimes more
than 11 hours, and only the excess was considered overtime), and with a
piece-rate wage that left her with little rest. Under such working and living
conditions, they spared no effort to belittle their own work, apart from hoping
that I would study hard and get into a good university, so that I would never
be like them.
Under the influence of this philosophy, I worked tirelessly
for my university entrance exams and finally got into a 985 university. However,
there was no one to tell me what to do after I went to a good university. I had
nothing but problems for the previous ten years and there were people in my new
environment who were better at it than me, plus I was bored with the science
major I was in and even less motivated to study.
A consequence of my high-pressure state before the entrance
exams, was that I began to indulge myself. I found that I had lost even my previous
nerd-like skills when I graduated. I had failed two exams, had no glamorous
resume, and watched many people who were not as good at swotting as I had been
in the past go on to graduate school. Perhaps out of jealousy, I began to doubt
my past pursuits and began to think seriously about what the aura of high
education really meant. When I hit the biggest low point in my academic career,
I thought of revolutionaries who had also hit low points in their lives in the
past, and I wanted to understand that period of history and how Chairman Mao
had come out of his low point in life. Therefore, I bought a set of Mao's
Selected Works and was instantly fascinated by it.
II. Mao Zedong's thought has caused a change in my mind
In fact, every Chinese is no stranger to the life and
thought of Chairman Mao, but the impression is mostly that of textbooks with
their running biographies and grand political declarations, like a mathematical
problem for which the answer is given directly and the middle process is
omitted, which is somewhat offensive. Chairman Mao explains in detail, in plain
language, how he refined his ideas step by step during the revolutionary
struggle. Both of my examinations ended in failure, but they did allow me to
take to heart famous historical events of the modern era, and I was quickly
surprised by Chairman Mao's conviction as I knew exactly the revolutionary
situation that corresponded to the writing of each essay in Mao's selection.
Chairman Mao's most outstanding characteristic was not his wisdom or literary
skills, but his consistent belief in the power of the people, regardless of
whether the objective situation of the revolution was at a low ebb, and his
confidence in the people was never at a low ebb. I was strongly attracted by
Chairman Mao's ideas, which drove me to learn more about his deeds and Marxist
ideas, and to start thinking about my own life and the current state of society.
In July this year, I joined a manufacturing central
enterprise, along with several other undergraduates and postgraduates who
graduated from 985 and 211. Shortly after joining the company, the leaders (who
have a PhD) organised a welcoming wine party and forced the newcomers to drink baijiu[3]
and to play the game (that is, to have a drink with each person at the
table), and I could barely cope with it. After the drinks had been consumed,
the leaders started to gather around the only female employee in the room and
started to "educate" us newcomers that the company would focus on
training us, that we should adapt to the workplace as soon as possible, and
that we should learn to say appropriate things to liven up the atmosphere at
the drinking party. Perhaps in the past I would have taken these
"teachings" as true and aspired to be a leader, but after learning
about Mao Zedong's thought, I realised that in the past I was only after the
high income and social status represented by a high degree, whereas Chairman
Mao was a minister of the Guomindang at the age of 33, but gave up his high
position for the sake of the people at the bottom. I have since changed my past
pursuits and become a committed Marxist.
With the explosion of small-town nerds, I also learnt online
that many people come from similar backgrounds to me and have the same
troubles. After reading Mao I knew that there must be a deeper reason for this
social phenomenon and I began to try to analyse the plight of the small-town nerd
in terms of Mao's thought.
III. Looking at the small-town nerd in the light of Mao's
thought
It seems to me that the 5 volumes of Mao's Selected Works
are about two issues throughout, one is how to distinguish between friends and
enemies; the other is how to unite friends to defeat enemies. These two issues
are not isolated but interlinked; as events develop, old enemies are destroyed
and then new ones are created, and these new enemies may also be former friends
who need to be distinguished again. These two issues cover the whole course of
history from individual to national development. I used to think that by going
to a prestigious school I would be able to make more friends with the upper
echelons of society, thinking that all prestigious students were like-minded friends.
But when I realised the gap between myself and the rest of my classmates, I was
thrown into doubt. For the small-town nerds, getting into a top school is like
frogs that have climbed so hard towards the top of the well that most need to
stop and rest and marvel at the size of the world, and hardly know where to go
next right away; whereas those with social resources are like a bird resting at
the well, having seen the world beyond and knowing exactly where they are going
to fly. The biggest delusion of the small-town nerds and the people around them
is that frogs that have reached the same height as birds can naturally fly. I
thought it was easy for students from famous schools to understand each other,
so I shared my experience of studying Mao Zedong Thought with my new colleagues
from the same famous school. As a result, they were dismissive, and one of them
even said that I had been brainwashed. I really couldn’t imagine a CCP member
who graduated from 985 graduate school, who would denounce Mao Zedong Thought
as brainwashing. At that time, I realized that frogs and birds can never be the
same.
So according to Mao Zedong's thought, who are the friends
and who are the real enemies of the small-town nerds? In the past, high
education represented high quality and the assumption of more social
responsibilities, but nowadays high education is linked to high income. In
essence, the bourgeoisie, in order to ease class conflicts, has deliberately
taken out a little resource to distribute to the highly educated people,
creating a belief system for the proletariat that acquiring high education will
lead to high income, which I call the highly educated belief. Under the poison
of highly educated beliefs, the proletariat at large have pinned their hopes on
their next generation, given up their rights and interests, and their sense of
struggle has been constantly weakened. The highly educated next generation they
have painstakingly nurtured, a few of whom have tasted the sweetness of
capital, are quick to turn around and oppress the proletariat, while others are
struggling for the scraps of food that they have not yet received, and these
are the small-town nerds. But they generally despise the manual workers and
few, if any, turn back to the proletariat that nurtured them.
Unlike Hinduism, which emphasises the reincarnation of
nothingness, highly educated beliefs still have a very small chance of success,
but those who do succeed invariably betray the proletariat. Under the influence
of highly educated beliefs, more and more parents are sending their children
into this only avenue, and with the downturn in the world economic situation
making the bourgeoisie reluctant to put up the resources they had originally
parted with, the avenue is narrowing, a phenomenon some call “involution”.
It follows that the real friend of the small-town nerd is
the proletariat that has painstakingly nurtured itself, just like the frog that
climbs to the mouth of the well, its friend is always the rest of its kind that
is still struggling at the bottom. Chairman Mao said that the intellectuals are
the hair and the proletariat is the skin; if the skin does not exist, how can
the hair be attached? The real enemy of the small-town nerd is the bourgeoisie,
the people who forge highly educated beliefs. We should not be grateful for
this access; on the contrary, this access was forged by the bourgeoisie with
the blood and tears of our fathers and we should be acutely aware that the
people who built it are the real enemies.
In my opinion, small-town nerds are people who can
understand and accept Maoist thought. Firstly, we have a certain stock of
knowledge and the ability to learn, we know the history of the revolution and
can understand and digest the theoretical knowledge of Marxism; secondly, the
increased difficulty of acquiring wealth and status for small-town nerds has
forced us to re-examine the highly educated beliefs built by the bourgeoisie;
finally, small-town nerds are able to understand the condition of the working
class, their families of origin are either proletarian or other underclass
groups, who are naturally on the side of the proletariat.
We have a strong desire to change the situation of our
fathers and mothers, and we should and must extend our sympathy for our parents
to the working class and working people as a whole if we are to have any hope.
Opposing highly educated beliefs does not mean that one
should give up high qualifications, but that one should not pursue them for
material gain. On the contrary, the proletarian ranks need highly educated and
qualified people, and they need someone to study in-depth knowledge of Marxist
theory. The old generation of revolutionary leaders basically had a solid
theoretical background. Small-town nerds should actively study and spread
Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought in the present day. However, there are still
many small-town nerds who dismiss these theories as "brainwashing".
For this reason, Marxist-related courses in universities are largely to blame.
The content of textbooks nowadays is always geared towards examinations, and
the questions in examinations are simply about what Chairman Mao did and what
ideas he put forward at what time. Apart from being boring and dogmatic, such
content is also filled with a heroic view of history. Although there are
phrases such as "Chairman Mao relied on the people to achieve
victory", there is no explanation of the role played by the people, and
the constant repetition of such phrases only reflects the role of Mao Zedong
alone. The heroic view of history can stifle human initiative, erase the
contribution of the people in history, and make people think that revolution is
only the business of one or two leaders. Throughout his life, Chairman Mao
devoted himself to mobilising the power of the people and raising their
consciousness. The language of Mao's Selected Works is so approachable also
because Chairman Mao tried so hard to pass on his ideas to his readers, and he
wanted everyone to carry on his cause: "The spring wind blows amid profuse
willow wands, Six hundred million in this land all equal Yao and Shun"[4].
IV. The present difficulties of small-town nerds and
other Marxists
One is the influence of negative paternal thinking. Under
the influence of highly educated beliefs, parents devalue the manual labour
they perform, while having a weak sense of rights and struggle, and this
thinking more or less affects the next generation. For me, the mud-covered
workers were my parents, the group I knew and was closest to, while the
well-dressed capitalists in the city skyscrapers did not interest me even if
they earned more. And there are many small-town do-gooders who are influenced
by their parents and their highly educated beliefs to look down on manual
labourers and to be willingly exploited by capitalists.
Secondly, because of the Matthew effect on educational
resources, the number of students from humble backgrounds who can get into top
schools will gradually become fewer, and the number of small-town nerds will
also decrease, and the group of people who can understand Marxism quickly will
shrink. But in the long run, when access is completely closed, more people are
bound to take up the arms of Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought (they just won't
understand it as quickly, relatively speaking).
Thirdly, society as a whole has a mindset that emphasises
science over literature. Science and engineering education strengthened
people's understanding of the natural sciences and promoted scientific and
technological progress. But it has neglected thinking about social issues and
the cultivation of the humanities. Except for a few highly qualified
scientists, the vast majority of people trained in science and engineering will
become a screw in the service of capital operations, a product of the
alienation of labour, thus neglecting to think about social humanity. I was
also disgusted with my undergraduate major because I understood that the
prospect of the major was to spend day after day in a lab, and felt that life
was meaningless, when for some people this kind of work is the only opportunity
for upward mobility. This is one of the reasons why I went from small-town nerd
to Marxist.
[1] "Small
town nerds", is a new item of online vocabulary, and refers to "young
students who were born in small towns, study hard, and are good at taking
exams, but lack a certain vision and resources." “Small town nerds” originated from a group of
more than 50,000 members on Douban.com. The group stated in its introduction
that the main function of the group is to "share failure stories" for
"failed students" in "985" and "211"
universities. They are part of the same generation whose dissatisfaction with
social competitiveness has led to the phenomenon of “lying low”.
[2] See Note 1, chapter 4.13
[3] Baijiu is a colourless spirit usually distilled from
sorghum, but may have other grains as well. It can range from 35-60% alcohol by
volume and is usually consumed in quite small glasses at banquets and meals.
Probably the most famous baijiu by brand name is Maotai.
[4] Lines from Chairman Mao’s poem Farewell
to the God of Plague written on July 1, 1958. Yao and Shun were legendary
monarchs in ancient China, believed to be saints and wise leaders of the
people.
