Rui Ping | Are you still looking forward to Pinduoduo's humanity?

Capitalists can be inhumane, naked and inhumane.

In the past few days, the sudden death of a 22-year-old female employee who bought vegetables in Duoduo caused an uproar. Pinduoduo's various responses to the workers who dumped the pot have added fuel to the fire and are full of loopholes. Netizens and even know the official account. debunked. However, no matter whether the bloodthirsty message was not the official position of Duoduo, whether the message of the deceased's father was bought or even threatened by Pinduoduo, whether Pinduoduo's subsequent apology statement was blamed on a certain temporary worker or contractor - even if all of the above are No, we all have to see through a simple fact: it is a young man who worked so hard in a company that he died of overwork. That's all.

Pinduoduo's terrible corporate culture

That's all, how cool it sounds. But for capitalists, the lives of migrant workers are so insignificant.

Even if Pinduoduo used the words "our heart is like a knife twisted", "we love you" and "miss you deeply" in the statement, the so-called "love" is just the tears of a crocodile, because of Pinduoduo's terrible corporate culture It has long been known in the streets, and such a tragedy is almost inevitable: In August this year, the toilet incident on Pinduoduo triggered a heated discussion on the Internet about "paid shit". , in other work systems will only be more unbearable. Many Pinduoduo employees broke the news on Maimai that the company’s work intensity is astonishing, and they even need to work continuously for 30 hours. And it is precisely the department where the deceased is located, which is the most intensive of the many departments. According to reports, there are no weekly holidays at Duoduo Shopping. Some people work for 60 consecutive days, and many people say that they work more than 12 hours a day. What 996, super big and small weeks, it is a piece of cake in front of Duoduo grocery shopping.

All of this can be seen from the speech of Pinduoduo Chairman Huang Zheng on the "hard-core struggle model" in October last year: the platform requires employees to work hard for the expansion of the platform, and use a kind of hard work and brotherhood. The language forced employees to internalize the ideology of the company's hard work: working overtime is a buddy, not taking a vacation is a brother, and those who work with their eyes open and sleep with their eyes closed are the old irons who work hard. "Brother" and "Old Tie" are intimate and hypocritical names to cover up the fundamental exploitative relationship that violated labor laws and that the capitalists eventually took away the fruits of their hard work. Not to mention the silenced female voices of these male-centered "bro overtime" culture, and this time it was the 22-year-old girl who couldn't even be a "bro" to be sacrificed.

The inevitable outcome of platform expansion

Just like the employees of Pinduoduo complaining that sooner or later there will be the first employee who is desperate to die, I am afraid that Zhang Fei is not the first, and will never be the last one, because the capital only for the pursuit of profit will exist one day, for this reason People who fight to the death don't stop there. A casual search can already see that in recent years, there have been many cases of platform workers losing their lives due to work and sudden death from overwork in all parts of the country.

The majority has been concerned about the development of platform capitalism for a long time. We believe that a community group buying platform such as Duoduomaicai has extremely limited profits per order or per single item. In the face of fierce competition from similar platforms, a certain platform is the only way to achieve The way to make a profit is to complete the expansion in a very short period of time and achieve a monopoly. Only a monopoly can be profitable. Therefore, not only Pinduoduo, but also community group buying platforms such as Didi, Meituan, and Suning have to invest a lot of money first, burn money regardless of cost, and seize the market with the fastest speed. Moreover, the fierce competition between them will lead to the extreme squeeze of employees on various platforms, crazy overtime to compete for market share, and a large number of temporary workers and outsourced workers who are not guaranteed in a short period of time.

Or in the early stage of platform expansion, there are a lot of discounts and subsidies in front of consumers, so that you can buy it; on the platform workers are a large number of temporary workers without job security, ground pushers, and code farmers who work long-term overtime— - If a platform wants to make money, it must quickly achieve a monopoly. Since a low consumption threshold can help increase its market share, the platform must try its best to reduce labor costs if it wants to control costs. This is the structural motivation of the platform and the structure of the platform workers. Sexual Dilemma.

The platform may not mind providing material incentives in the early stage of development. Some employees of Pinduoduo broke the news that the company did not require high academic qualifications when recruiting people at the university, and the salary was relatively ideal. In fact, it was first to lure in fresh labor, and then frantically squeeze it. It’s not the old iron who can’t stand it. It can fire you at any time, or after the initial stage of rapid expansion, it has become redundant labor and is waiting to be laid off. It is impossible for capital and labor to have an equal exchange relationship. Someone who broke the news pointed out that Pinduoduo forced employees to go to Duoduo to buy vegetables. If capitalists want to fight, they always need human shields to support the number of people, right? Therefore, we see that the platform emphasizes "struggle" and "struggle" to fool their employees. The premise of seizing the market is to seize the psychology of employees. In this context, what is really chilling in this tragedy is the "guard the frontier for Duo Duo" written by the deceased in his internal account. What makes a young man "hold" a company that actually dominates her most of the day?

The way out is still connected

How platform labor organizes to resist platform capital is not a new problem. Many times, we have heard how capital divides employees through institutional design such as division of labor, project system, or ideological indoctrination, making it difficult to organize and unite. However, resistance and change have always existed. The previous 996icu established a blacklist. Although the actual labor conditions have not been changed, 996 has become a starting point for a large number of workers in the Internet industry to complain. The next step is to actually organize.

Yesterday (January 5), Google employees successfully organized a union, although Google has previously used various means such as firing and hiring anti-union information companies to prevent employees from forming a union. This proves that even if the authority of capital is great, it is still possible for employees to gather their own strength. The central idea of the union is that Google was built by the labor of employees, not by bosses, not by capital. The new union prefers to stand with Google's informal employees -- according to their founding statement, the union will open its doors to all employees of Google's parent company Alphabet, including those who lack legal labor relations and are therefore not eligible for collective bargaining. Temporary workers, contractors and independent contractors. This broke through the organizing principle of traditional technology trade unions based on the legal identity and rights of workers, and was also quite enlightening for the subsequent platform labor protests.

Going back to Pinduoduo's popular message, the people at the bottom of course have a third choice besides "stable poverty" and "exchanging their lives for money": we will not choose "poor to death" or "work to death", but Fight for dignified labor, dignified income through resistance. In this era of digital capitalism ruling the globe, the union of workers around the world will still shape our future.