The structural oppression we have to face

Since writing "Despair as the Bottom ", it has caused a lot of controversy and moral questioning. Frankly, I was amazed at the sense of fragmentation that emerged from the discussion, but also deeply understand the rationale - this is the class-divisional society we all live in, due to our different life experiences, economic bases difference, and had to face the structural tear.

Individual tragedies are never unique, my fourth brother-in-law's family is, and so are thousands of migrant workers. The painful records behind these are not for society to make them victims and losers; Behind all these tragedies, the forms may be different, but how can we dare to speak out about individual solutions without being aware of the structural dilemma? To individualize the problem is precisely the cultural hegemony built by the systematic perpetrators to disguise structural evil.

I'm not trying to find a loser excuse for the fourth brother-in-law's family. He and my sister are only two years older than me, and have never read a book for a year or two, but they have already taken over the entire family, including his own family of origin. In the struggle against life, he is not and has never been a loser, but this aggressive socio-economic structure has made him a "loser" in the eyes of the public - unable to make money, unable to provide a good education for children, and a lot of debt , but do you think it's really only his personal reasons?

Many people in my family are illiterate, except my dad and me. My dad secretly went to high school while farming cattle, but he was unable to take the college entrance examination because of the Cultural Revolution, so he can rely on him. He has been a farmer all his life since he was in his teens; and I was indeed the only one in the village to go to the state for many years. The scholars of the top ten key universities have become people who have gone out of the village in a real sense, while the rest of the family are either farming in the countryside or working in the city. This may be a great change of fate for me, but for many years I have been puzzled, why the vast majority of my elementary and junior high school classmates can't go to college like me, but are wandering in the city to work? I have my own explanation: I've never been the lucky one, not the doomed "winner" - I've never been smart or sociable growing up. It's okay to change to other people, but a very slim chance falls on me, while other companions have embarked on a completely different fate.

And behind this, it is too painful to wake up later - the so-called "talent" is definitely not individual, I am just a fish slipping through the net in a poor system. Imagine, with such backward educational resources and extremely limited opportunities, who is likely to compete with the abundant urban resources, and who can change their own destiny, and even that of their family? We will blame people for not working hard enough to endure hardships, but the reality is often that many people cannot even meet the threshold of enduring hardships. Five years ago, when I volunteered for a short time in a rural primary school in Guizhou, I never dared to tell the students the phrase "knowledge changes destiny" - because I knew too well that knowledge could not change their destiny at all! Without sufficient input, support and redistribution of social resources, their destiny will always be an endless cycle. The second, third, and fourth generation of migrant workers...is it their own will? Did their parents force them to work part-time? These questions are too light and easy to ask, because as the bottom, there is never a choice in life. Those who choose are those who make the rules.

Why do I feel hesitant and ashamed when working hard is basically the only option? When I was a child, many households in the village would rent additional places to order watermelons, radishes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, etc., and then during the harvest season, intermediate buyers would come to the village to buy them. Although we have no bargaining power, at least the agricultural products are purchased. With the opportunity to enter the market, the home can be self-sufficient. now what? On the one hand, the development of industrialization requires a large amount of cheap labor input, and the false wealth imaginary constructed has "pulled" people to urban factories and construction sites in batches, and the skills of making a living in rural areas are gradually being eliminated by modern production; on the other hand, Intensive and standard agricultural production completely broke the production mode of small farmers. Agricultural products could only be sold at low prices, so as to release more labor force, and then they were forced to go to the cities to make a living, and entered the capitalist production system of exploitation and suppression. never go back. How is the life of the workers? Since the implementation of labor rights-related laws for more than 20 years, how confident can we say that migrant workers can enjoy legal rights protection? If it was good, there would not be an endless cycle of second, third, and fourth generations of migrant workers.

Capital logic has always been like this. Doing a good job will let you fall in and gradually transform the soil you are in. We all live in a constructed world, just like Truman's world, only more cruel, because even if you know the terrible fate in it very clearly, you must continue to play the game. choose. The so-called despair does not come from lack of money, but because we feel that we are gradually being deprived of our own initiative and unable to move an inch.

However, we still have to face the real dilemma, what should we do? Under the rules of neoliberalism, where there is no way out for the bottom and no social security, where can they pin their hopes? Friends in the city may be able to confidently say that pensions, medical expenses and insurance (I don’t think they are perfect), and even the so-called poverty alleviation mechanism; but in rural areas, these social security nets have never been used. It has never really been effective. At the age of 70, you still have to go to the ground and go out to fish. The part that you pay when you get sick is still sky-high, and the children are the only support. It is true that we can be very politically correct to accuse such a reproductive choice, but can we also be politically correct to reflect on the lack of a social security system behind it? Why is it that when cheap labor is needed, policies can encourage multiple births, but never take responsibility for the reproduction of laborers?

Reproduction has never been autonomous, or rather, consciously autonomous. Women have become reproductive machines, not just the evil of the patriarchal system. Patriarchy is also a complicity of capitalism. What is missing is the responsibility of the state. The capitalist production system requires labor to be put into production, but never bears the cost of reproduction—child rearing, the social education system, and the old-age medical system—which is a price that workers themselves need to pay. If there is not enough national welfare support system, people themselves become a tool commodity that is constantly being extracted. You can say that rural children have become tools of capital and the price of backward education, but in the end they have become the perfect cheap labor of the capital system, just for survival—the survival of their parents and the survival of their parents. Who is missing? Who is it that deprives people of their autonomy?

How many migrant workers today have not paid the five insurances and one housing fund because their units violated the law or paid less than 15 years, but they reach the retirement age but cannot go back to their hometowns to receive normal pensions, while the farmer pensions only range from 70-150 per month. What to rely on? Obviously, the state will not, and the capital will not. Our so-called "reproductive autonomy", "life autonomy", and even "housing autonomy" are not expectations and imaginations constructed under such a mechanism? This kind of "ideal autonomy" is extremely terrifying, and every one of us who lives in the city is also deeply touched.

The fourth brother-in-law wasn't really blaming me, and I didn't feel wronged either. 500,000 can't change fate, it's just an illusory word, and the beautiful imagination constructed by most situations is often a dream of Chen Ke. I know that this is the reality of the fate of every individual in this era: it is not so much the structural expectation of the family for me or my brother-in-law, but rather the structural oppression of capitalism on us and the conspiracy of the state; only these The dilemma of publicity has been successfully internalized (“consent”) as our individual original sin, becoming a loser of the jungle. This is the scariest place.

The brother-in-law's confession is powerful, pointing to desperation, but also exposing naked and bloody oppression - despair rooted in neoliberalism, and the family, gender, and shaping of success that capitalism exploits And the "hegemony" of hope, and even the failed social safety net behind the entire system. It is not a single problem, nor a cold-blooded analysis, but the bloody real pain of life in every individual.

Even in the end, I can only reluctantly suggest that he should come out (in fact, he has gone out to work for a long time) and enter the rules of the game of capital, but who can say that the laborers will not resist?