Left-wing youth of this era

The school I teach has a class on Russian history from 1900-1941, all in English. In the process of teaching, I became interested in Trotsky, so I read his works such as "The History of the Russian Revolution", "Revolution Betrayed", "On Lenin" and "Stalin Commentary". Later I read Deutscher's The Prophet Trilogy. Coincidentally, during this period Han Gan and Li Erguo began to call themselves "Trotskyists". After Zhang Shuchi introduced us, we jokingly changed the name of the group chat to "Trotskyist Liberalism".

I started focusing on "organizational" issues in 2015 because I felt it was one of the reasons the previous generation of liberals failed. Liberalism emphasizes the free development of individuality, while "organization" suppresses individuality. Therefore, among liberals, whether they are scholars, journalists, writers, human rights lawyers, public welfare practitioners, and social activists, they are basically independent, or Only belong to some "institutions" that do not have solidarity. However, there are also reasons for the general environment: the Chinese government is very vigilant about any "organization" outside the system, so on the one hand, those NGOs with a little "organization" are basically used by the authorities in various ways. This pretext has been eliminated; on the other hand, in order to operate within the framework permitted by the government, the liberals of the previous generation deliberately did not think too much about "organizational" issues.

"Organization" is also important because I don't quite believe this regime can last for decades. Once it collapses, in the absence of benign organizations, it is impossible for China to establish a liberal democracy in a short period of time. What will be experienced in the middle and what will be established, we can only prepare for the worst. These considerations are more or less similar to what Liu Zhongjing wrote, but I don't believe what he said, the organizational strength comes from a small community with a "feudal" nature, and such a hierarchical and patriarchal society is definitely not liberal. to pursue. Just at that time, I re-read Huntington's "Political Order in a Changing Society", which highly praised the organizational skills of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, so I once again raised the question of "what to do".

In the middle, I had discussions with teachers Lin Meng and Zhang Ning. They felt that the evaluation of the Chinese revolution within the liberals was a bit too negative, ignoring its role in enhancing China's national strength and international status, and promoting equality in all aspects of Chinese society (although they created it again). new inequalities). I think their statement is justified. If the period from 1949 to 1978 is completely rejected, it will not only be difficult for most Chinese people to accept emotionally, but also from the perspective of historical philosophy, this narrative is also difficult to justify (later Shi Zhan did make it out). Such a set of "liberal philosophy of history about China", but its liberal meaning has been weakened). During this process, Mr. Lin Meng occasionally reposted the comments of a Trotskyite named "Autumn Fire" on some public events.

Because of writing articles on unmarriedism, I met some unmarried feminists, and then I met another Trotskyite named Ruoyu. I know that he has a public account called "Thorn Bird", and he has also done research among the food delivery workers to help them fight for social security. At that time, I started to hold the "Camus Lecture", which also coincided with the centenary of the Russian Revolution. I invited Ruoyu to give a lecture on the Russian Revolution. He generously agreed, but on one condition, that his lectures could not be charged. Because he was worried that some young students who wanted to come to his lectures would not have enough money. I think this requirement is very consistent with the purpose of Trotskyism, so I completely opened up the lectures. On that day, many left-wing comrades of Ruo Yu came, including Qiu Huo. Before I came into contact with Zhang Yunfan, there were only two activist leftists I knew, both of them Trotskyists.

After the article in solidarity with Zhang Yunfan came out, the response was greater than I thought. After a while, Zhang Yunfan was raising funds for the Eight Youth, and I also donated 500 yuan. When he thanked me, he said a few more words to me, saying that they had been thinking about my motives after reading my article. I condoled on their condition and knew that they were basically safe. We also had a few brief philosophical conversations, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t get much different from what I understood in “Spiritual Civil War”: he did intend to send a signal to liberals.

After the #Metoo movement took off in China, these left-wing youths I knew above were actively involved, which made me very excited. Feminist Voices and Young Feminist Activists have long had sexual harassment comments and actions, and in this movement, they were the first to be attacked from the opposite side. For example, the WeChat public account "Coldplay Lab" believes that there are foreign forces behind Feminist Voice and Datu. The evidence is that Feminist Voice is funded by the Ford Foundation, and Datu and Hong Lida have taken a photo together and won the "Top 100 Thinkers in the World" (actually it should be "One Hundred Women"). "Feminist Voice" was finally banned, and Big Rabbit sued "Coldplay Lab" tit-for-tat. In this incident, Zhang Yunfan and Gu Jiayue had very positive solidarity with Datu. Later, Wang Ao exposed Xu Gang in the art circle, and he struck while the iron was hot, leading to the Shenyang Gaoyan case 20 years ago. A student from Peking University called for the disclosure of the information about the processing 20 years ago, and was interviewed by the school. Among those who went to support him, a student named Yue Xin was targeted and was later placed under house arrest. After she was "free", she wrote that Gu Jiayue, one of the eight youths, had a profound influence on her reflection on her "privileged status". These "left-wing youths" not only actively took part in events such as workers' rights strikes, but also actively supported other vulnerable groups seeking justice.

In June and July, I went to Wuhan, Beijing, Shanghai, and Nanjing one after another, and I had contact with left-wing youth in these places. There are two editors of "Jinglei" (a Trotskyist publication) in Wuhan, there are a large number of Mao Zuo youths in Beijing, and there are also some left-wing associations in Shanghai and Nanjing. They took the initiative to contact me online, wanting to meet me, or directly invite me to give lectures. They were very interested in the "anti-nationalist coalition" I mentioned in the two articles, and also wanted to know what the difference was between so-called "left-wing liberalism" and liberalism as they understood it. Such exchanges are of great significance in promoting mutual understanding between different factions, so every time I finish talking with them, I will ask if I would write down your ideas, would you mind. They expressed that they didn’t mind, and some even wanted me to write more, which was also a form of propaganda for them, because the left-wing media resources (including new media) were too scarce compared with the liberals.

Trotskyites are a minority in China's left wing compared to Mao Zuo. A Trotskyist friend once joked to me that there may only be dozens of Trotskyites in the country, and even these dozens of people will be divided into several factions. Even so, Trotskyists can be seen in almost all public events in pursuit of justice this year. Some individual Trotskyists are so active that even some bystanders have the illusion that there are Trotskyists everywhere. The Trotskyists I met in Wuhan are usually very low-key, and they mainly spend their time running Thunder magazine. There are very few resident authors of "Thunder", and most of them are translated articles about the situation of left-wing movements abroad. They hoped that Trotsky's doctrine would take root in China through a long-running approach, and because of the small number of people, they did not hold much hope for actual political action for the time being.

I had some theoretical and intuitive understanding of Trotskyites and Maoists before. I think the biggest difference is that Maoists are statist and leaders worship (whether they are Mao Left or Mao Right), while Trotskyites are It's not easy. However, from the perspective of specific actors, the situation is not so simple. Qiuhuo has criticized the Maoists a lot, but the two most prominent ones are freedom of speech and the subjectivity of workers. He believes that Maoists generally lack tolerance for dissent, both outside and within the faction. This kind of criticism is in line with Trotsky's theoretical spirit in the middle and late period, but what I admire is that Qiuhuo's insistence on freedom of speech permeates almost every occasion he appears. For example, he criticized another Trotskyite, saying that he behaved arbitrarily and treated dissent "more like a Maoist than a Trotskyist"; in various left-wing groups, he has also been calling for tolerance of all kinds of speech, not to be too much Obsessed with faction.

In addition, Qiuhuo's emphasis on "workers' subjectivity" sometimes offends some left-wing friends. The so-called "worker's subjectivity" refers to everything that socialist party members, labor activists, left-wing youth, and progressive students do in the labor movement. To play an important role, in short, not to make the mistakes of what Trotsky called "arbitraryism". The recent propaganda of Shen Mengyu by the "Time Pioneer" website (a Mao Zuo website), in Qiuhuo's view, is a kind of "arbitraryism", which portrays Shen Mengyu as a hero of the labor movement, and overemphasizes that this graduate with a master's degree from CUHK The leadership role of left-wing youth in it. What annoys the Maoists most in Qiuhuo's criticism is that he believes that the Maoists, even if they sometimes show support for "freedom of speech" and "workers' subjectivity," are based on "pragmatism" (or "united front"). ”), not from the heart. However, it is worth mentioning that not all Trotskyists agree with Qiuhuo's criticism of Maoists, and although they all agree with "freedom of speech" and "workers' subjectivity", some Trotskyists believe that under special circumstances There can be special handling.

The two Trotskyists in Wuhan enriched my understanding from different aspects. The angle they speak is more based on Trotsky's theory and the theory of later Trotskyists, rather than specific differences between Trotskyists and Maoists. They told me that the biggest difference between the Trotskyist "proletarian democracy" and Rosa Luxemburg's "proletarian democracy" is that the Trotskyists still recognize the role of the "vanguard party", and sometimes the working class does not To generate socialist consciousness, the "vanguard party" is needed to guide them. But the difference from the Stalinists and Maoists is that the "vanguard party" that the Trotskyites refer to is not predetermined, and no political party can claim in advance that it is the "vanguard party of the working class". The "vanguard party" is not even the victor of the armed struggle, but the victor in the democratic election of the proletariat. It is perfectly possible for many parties representing the workers to participate in the election together. The political party is the "vanguard party".

It needs to be added that this understanding of the "vanguard party" does not represent the views of all Trotskyites (again reflecting the diversity of Trotskyist positions), and some Trotskyists believe that this understanding of the "vanguard party" is in the Logically, it doesn't make sense: the same political party, which was not a "vanguard party" before the election, suddenly became a "vanguard party" after winning the election? Some Trotskyites abroad now deliberately play down the term "vanguard party", which may be based on the contradiction between the two concepts of "vanguard party" and "proletarian democracy".

On the way back, one of the Trotskyite youths told me that the liberals and Mao Zuoli had disputes over "reform" and "revolution", but we Trotskyists did not. From this point of view, we are not really so "Split". Possibly out of sympathy for the man Trotsky, I always felt that it was not so difficult for Trotskyists and left liberals to communicate. "Freedom of speech" and "freedom of association," which Trotskyists and left-wing liberals recognize. Although the "liberal democracy" mentioned by left-wing liberals looks different from "proletarian democracy", left-wing liberals admit that "political freedom" requires a certain economic basis, a kind of political freedom that recognizes equal political freedom. system, it is best to give each citizen a certain income security. Left-wing liberalism does not speak of "workers' subjectivity", but instead emphasizes the "autonomy" of each individual. Above all, Rawls (as the source of contemporary left-wing liberalism) argues that the exact equivalent of his two principles of justice is "property-owning democracy" or "free socialism". )”, not even “welfare capitalism”. All these show that there is a great compatibility between left-wing liberalism and Trotskyist theories. And in practice, the Trotskyists' adherence to the principle of "freedom of speech" may be stronger than some liberals.

All of the above were mentioned in the lecture on June 10th on the Torrent website (also a Mao Zuo website). I don't know if it's because I'm a liberal, they don't expect that much from me, and when I said the above point of view of left-wing liberalism, the host from Torrent was quite sure, saying "We still have each other. great consensus". What surprised me most was that, except for one young man who said, "Whether Mao Zuo is statist or anti-statist depends on the overall interests of the proletariat at that time," other Mao Zuo youths said that they were all "anti-statists." ". I originally understood Mao Zuo to be the group of people from a land of nowhere. Although they scolded Deng and reform and opening up, they were basically positive about the Chinese Communist Party itself. "Traitors" and "traitors" are the catchphrases used by these "Mao Zuo" to insult others. On issues concerning the interests of the country and the nation, they firmly stand on the side of the country, regardless of whether these interests are directly related to the interests of the proletariat . Although I don't think the Eight Youths are the same, I don't quite believe that Mao Zuo has turned around collectively. Later, a Trotskyist friend in Nanjing told me that it was not that Mao Zuo had turned collectively, but that the new generation of Mao Zuo was indeed different from the old Mao Zuo. The new generation has been completely disillusioned with the CCP, and has a clear identification with the interests of other vulnerable groups other than workers, which is why the Mao Zuo youth will declare themselves "anti-statists" and actively participate in the #Metoo movement.

I met Zhang Yunfan once in Wuhan, and later in Beijing, he invited me to his house for dinner. After dinner, we were drinking tea, he sat on the sofa and opened the chat box very naturally. This meeting convinced me that he was really a Mao Zuo, not a liberal disguised as Mao Zuo. He seemed to have a premonition that I would have different views on some issues, so he mentioned in advance the differences between Mao's leftists and Trotskyists on historical issues: there is almost no consensus between the two sides on the historical evaluation of Stalin and Mao. Noisy, but there is a lot of consensus on specific practical issues. In my lecture on Waiheke.com, the organizer invited Nan Shui as a guest commentator. Nan Shui talked about Stalin and criticized the revisionist and capitalist historians for slandering Stalin. He was violently counterattacked by a Trotskyist youth at the scene. .

The history of the Soviet Union that Zhang Yunfan (and Gu Jiayue, who also sat aside and said a word or two from time to time) to me was of course very different from what I taught my students. For example, he said that although the "Stalin system" (that is, industrialization and collectivization) is named after Stalin, it was not Stalin's original intention. He was kidnapped by the bureaucracy. The designers and promoters of the "Stalin system" are all these bureaucracy. The so-called "big purge" was not Stalin's idea either. Yezhov, not Stalin, was in charge. Later, Stalin finally replaced Yezhov with Beria, and the purge eased. Khrushchev, who issued the "Secret Report", was originally an active participant and a vested interest in the purge. He later killed Beria and put all responsibility for the purge to Stalin. Big win.

Similarly, Zhang Yunfan and Gu Jiayue's explanations of Mao and the Cultural Revolution must be very different from my liberals. There are some of them that I can't agree with at all. For example, they think that some mistakes in the Cultural Revolution, such as violent criticism, bloodline theory, house raiding, and the destruction of the four olds, etc., must be counted on the heads of the bureaucratic group and the royalist Red Guards. And Mao, the Gang of Four and the rebel Red Guards are all good. They also gave an example, saying that during the Cultural Revolution someone wrote "I am a hero and a hero, I am a reactionary bastard." Jiang Qing read it and changed the second half of the sentence to "I am a reactionary and a rebel," which means that he does not agree with the origin theory of blood. . I can't agree with them on these factual things, but judging from the fact that they put those mistakes on the bureaucracy and the royalist Red Guards, they at least don't agree with violence, bloodline theory, and home raiding.

Others, although I don't fully agree with them, are understandable. For example, they said that Mao’s motivation for launching the Cultural Revolution was to oppose the bureaucracy, and that the royalist Red Guards used the Cultural Revolution to abuse people on a large scale (they named Chen Xiaolu, thinking that he was the most shameless of them all. After the reform, he "apologised" for the Cultural Revolution on behalf of the old Red Guards, and won a lot of cheers, taking advantage of everything.) During the Cultural Revolution, it was not high-level intellectuals who died the most, but rebels. I have read these in some leftist discourses on the Cultural Revolution a long time ago, and they have certain factual basis, so I don't feel the need to refute them in a hurry.

There are other things they said, which I have rarely heard and feel fresh. For example, they felt that the "big democracy" in the Cultural Revolution had a deeper meaning as a change in the relations of production. I first saw this statement in Wang Hui's "Politics of Depoliticization", and they seem to follow this line of thinking, that is, the Cultural Revolution broke the social division of labor in production and could eliminate hierarchy and bureaucracy at its root. doctrine. When he was in Wuhan, Zhang Yunfan told us that what they recognized in production was the "Anshan Iron and Steel Constitution", the so-called "two references, one change and three combinations". They also recommended to me a copy of Charles Bertrand's "The Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organization in China," which depicts the changes in production relations during the Cultural Revolution from various fields, including the following words: "The ideological revolution— The gradual adoption of proletarian ideology by the masses is one of the necessary conditions for the transformation of production relations. This is because the development of socialism requires the socialized appropriation of production methods, and the accumulation of resources and productive forces requires a process, a substantial accumulation process. In order for this accumulation process of socialized appropriation to fully develop, the immediate producers must be effectively united in actions and ideas, goals and means. This association cannot be imposed from the outside, it requires practical, conceptual and perceptual Unity - This political and ideological unity requires the subordination of individual and special interests to collective interests. As long as this is not the case, the social appropriation of modes of production and products remains incomplete, i.e. only partial and formal It is a generalization of the idea of the Cultural Revolution.

I didn't know much about the history of "Mao Zuo" before. From the moment I became politically aware, Mao Zuo was already on the stage. Zhang Yunfan told me that the first batch of "Mao Zuo" were actually those rebels who came out of prison. In the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of Mao Zuo were released from prison. Some of them felt heartbroken after seeing the loss of state-owned assets, laid-off workers, the re-emergence of the bourgeoisie, and the division between the rich and the poor, so they started spontaneous activities. Zhang Yunfan and Gu Jiayue affectionately referred to these rebels as "Old Zao", and they became "Mao Zuo", which is inseparable from the influence of these rebels on them. Gu Jiayue said that she also believed in liberalism before, and felt that the Cultural Revolution was a "ten-year catastrophe" caused by Mao's struggle for power, but when she first went to college, she came into contact with some "old craftsmen", which made her whole concept. subverted. Gu Jiayue's experience, I can understand very well, when a country's historical writings are strictly censored, the oral history of those who have experienced it is of course more credible than the cold words on the books. From her point of view, even if the works written by liberals about the Cultural Revolution can be published, they probably meet the needs of some kind of political propaganda. This need is to use the horror of the Cultural Revolution to reshape the legitimacy of the reform.

Personally, I actually have some sympathy for the rebels. On the one hand, as Zhang Yunfan said, many of the rebel factions were originally from "the rich and the right," and their motivations for participating in the Cultural Revolution were indeed different from those of the royalist Red Guards. On the other hand, the liquidation of the rebels during the Cultural Revolution was also huge and extremely tragic. The rebels could not be regarded as the beneficiaries of the Cultural Revolution. These Mr. Qian Liqun detailed in the book "Mao Zedong Era and Post-Mao Zedong Era" description of. Yang Xiaokai believes that contemporary political opposition in China can be traced back to the rebels, which is not without merit.

There are indeed many misunderstandings among the liberal party of contemporary Mao Zuo. I myself once thought that Mao Zuo was equal to a land of nowhere, but in fact, there are not only Mao Zuo, but also other leftists in the land of nowhere. Some Mao leftists also had great opinions on the land of nothingness. The Mao leftists that the liberals hated the most, Zhang Hongliang, Kong Qingdong, and Sima Nan, were regarded by many Mao leftists as speculators. When Bo Xilai engaged in "singing red and fighting black", Wuyouzhi pinned his hopes on him, but there are some sober people in Mao Zuo who never felt that Bo Xilai was different from other authorities. Zhang Yunfan was one of them. He remembered that when Bo Xilai was in Dalian, he once suppressed the workers' protest movement. Bo's political show could not change his fundamental view of Bo. Some liberals believe that there is some kind of collusion between Mao Zuo and the CCP, and they use each other to suppress liberals. This claim may underestimate the conflict between the two. In fact, Mao Zuo participated in quite a few substantive protests, such as the anti-demolition and factory protection movements in various places, and they were very combative and were not afraid of going to jail. There may be far more Mao Zuo jailed because of the protests than liberals. These are all blocked in the mainstream narrative of liberals, because liberals control most of the media resources outside the system (including foreign media attention), so the liberals in prison get a lot of reports and sympathy, but the prisoners Mao Zuo, but few people know.

In the past two years, someone made an ideological spectrum of various provinces in China. Among them, the top five "right" are Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Beijing, and Jiangsu, and the top five "left" are Xinjiang, Guizhou, Guangxi, Ningxia and Henan. I think this division is rather rough: in some places the "left" is the official "left", such as Xinjiang, while the "left" in some places is the private "left" (mainly Mao Zuo), such as Henan. Taking Luoyang as an example, there is a Mao Zedong stronghold every few hundred meters here. Various activities to promote Mao Zedong Thought are often organized. From time to time, there are conflicts with the officials. Countless people have been arrested. . I asked Zhang Yunfan, why Mao Zuo has such a large number of people, but he does not get the corresponding attention? He laughed and said, how is it possible, Mao Zuo is both anti-capitalist and anti-system, is the most dangerous group, liberals don't like it, the authorities are even more troublesome, how can we expose it? I laughed and said that this can be overcome in the future.

During the talks with these left-wing youths, both the Trotskyists and the two groups of Maoists expressed their identification with the "anti-nationalist coalition", but it must be said that the difficulties of this coalition were foreseeable. The rift between the liberals and Mao Zuo did not arise overnight, and it cannot be achieved overnight to build mutual trust between the two sides. In this #Metoo movement, Mr. Liu Yu compared the person's exposure to sexual assault and harassment on the Internet to a "big-character poster", which was fiercely criticized. Among progressives, it is still a spiritual taboo. Trotskyists and Maoists also have many stereotypes about liberals. When they talked to me, they felt very fresh when I talked about the interpretation of the two principles of justice, because the liberalism they understood was that of Zhang Wuchang or Ren Zhiqiang. One of the editors of "Thunder" asked me, who are the left-wing liberals in China besides you? I said, very many, those who were scolded "white left" on Zhihu are.

In the eyes of many liberals, Mao Zuo is the most dangerous enemy, even more dangerous than the authorities. They are numerous, organized, and capable of fighting. They cannot tolerate dissent within the organization. Outside the organization, once they win, they may wipe out allies one by one. There is no historical basis for these claims. But in reality, this kind of worry is superfluous for the time being: the young people born in the 1990s and 2000s are basically in a "quasi-liberal" environment (or to borrow Mr. Ci Jiwei's term, "primitive liberal democratic society" ), they have a natural identification and pursuit of some of the most basic freedoms, and they also have a higher recognition of "individuality" than the previous generation, which not only allows us to launch "potential youth liberals and This conclusion can also be used to explain why the new generation of Mao Zuo is different from the old Mao Zuo. Within the Maoist Left, as long as there are not some people to carry out "rectification", such "quasi-liberal" tendencies should not be so easily eliminated. In addition, it is impossible for Mao Zuo to carry out such a "rectification", because they are far from monolithic inside, each faction is independent of each other, and there is no one similar to Mao Zedong for the time being.

Some people say that Mao Zedong Thought is originally statism, and Mao Zuo's claim that he is "anti-statism" is just an expedient measure and cannot be believed at all. This statement ignores the spiritual origin and spiritual characteristics of the new generation of Mao Zuo. Although the rebels had violent behaviors and internal struggles during the Cultural Revolution, the rebels never really took power, and their spiritual descendants had not yet acquired "nationalism." During the dialogue, Zhang Yunfan also smiled and called China's expansion of power overseas as "Zhongte Emperor", that is, "imperialism with Chinese characteristics". It cannot be ruled out that after they have gained power, they will be no different from the bureaucracy they hate, but this logical possibility cannot constitute a reason for us to accuse them of "nationalism" in advance.

In my opinion, what is worrying about Mao Zuo is that the new generation of Mao Zuo and the old generation of Mao Zuo (the "no-home-style "protection patriotism") still maintain the Inextricably linked, so there is also the possibility of being united by the latter. In that case, the new Mao Zuo would not mind temporarily letting go of the "anti-statist" attitude. In other words, "anti-statism" is not the fundamental principle of Mao Zuo, but worship of Mao and anti-bureaucracy. On this point, there may be no essential difference between the old and the new Mao Zuo.

Another difficulty comes from within liberals. After #Metoo spread to the public circle, especially after Mr. Liu Yu's article came out, the internal division of the liberals was extremely serious. Some more conservative liberals prefer that this movement be based on the premise of the presumption of innocence, pay attention to procedural justice, and aim at the implementation of the rule of law, which is neither realistic nor desirable for some more radical liberals (such as me). To say it is unrealistic is not only because this country itself is not a country ruled by law, but also because the movement is decentralized, and the real subjects are those who have been sexually assaulted and harassed, not the intellectuals who usually have the right to speak. Molecules have no ability to decide what form this movement takes. Undesirable because it would simplify the purpose of #Metoo and lose its true meaning of empowering women and shaking up the patriarchy. From the perspective of the more conservative liberals, I don't necessarily fail to understand them: they think that the result of violent revolution is either the elimination of the revolutionaries, or the replacement of the original rulers by revolutionaries, but in the end they also become Just like them, the so-called "dragon-slaying boy turned into a dragon" is also.

I've written many articles critiquing this line of thinking, and I don't want to repeat it here. In my view, while the more conservative liberals have been unable to offer China's political opponents an instructive vision, they are not (at least temporarily) enemies of the latter. Among the more conservative liberals, there are many who share a hatred of statism and hope to somehow get rid of an unfettered power government, as it was and still is. Some of them have also made practical actions to try to change the country, paid a heavy price for their former ideals, and have no regrets so far. In terms of "conservative", liberals inside and outside the system are no more conservative than leftists in the system: leftists in the system (such as some academic leftists), in the official view, they are in line with their own ideological orientation, From the perspective of the protesters outside the system, they are also studying Marxism, so they can please both sides. There is far more than one Wu Guanjun among the leftists in the system.

Leaving aside the more conservative liberals, there can be a greater degree of consensus among progressive liberals (left-wing liberals) and feminists, Trotskyists, and part of the staunchly anti-statist Mao left. In addition to what I have said in my two essays on left-wing youth, democracy, anti-statism, anti-patriarchy, this consensus can be supplemented from some recent discussions: we recognize that true "equality", and It is not just formal equality of rights, but the "power structure" of the society; not only political status generates power, capital and knowledge, even gender and race, will generate power; a well-ordered society should consider the power structure. On the premise that all members have true personal freedom, equal opportunity and democratic participation; if such a society has inequalities, it should also allow such inequalities to exist in ways that benefit the most vulnerable (in every way).

For the more conservative liberals who grew up under the influence of Locke, Burke, and Hayek, it is difficult to accept such a principle as a consensus, but I would like to remind them again that if they admit that oppression exists, then understand the oppressed people. Need, support the struggle of the oppressed, isn't it logical? Unless they say they just want a chance to emigrate, or to live a day in a regime like this, or to count on some unexpected event, isn't the current struggle led by more active groups? The only way out?

It should be noted that this is only one aspect I have observed. It does not rule out that what I have seen is all an illusion. It is also possible that the difficulty of combining is far beyond my expectations. I just hope that all those who recognize the above consensus can put aside the debates related to factional labels such as "liberals" and "leftists", focus wholeheartedly on the real struggle at the moment, and further refine the theory and consensus in the practice of struggle.

Perhaps this is the only way out for us other than gambling in the country.