Hello everyone, on February 16, 2020, the 78th issue of bedtime news. In the past few weeks, the most closely related news overseas and in China is that the film "American Factory" won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. There have been many realistic films about China in the past, and American Factory is the one that has received the most attention overseas. Let me first review the plot of Jingjing: In terms of content, this documentary also has three main lines. The first main line is the entry of Chinese capital into the United States. The 2008 economic crisis hit the American auto industry, and General Motors closed Dayton. The city's factory had a huge impact on this small city. In 2013, Chinese capitalists came to the United States, took over factories, recruited workers again, and produced auto glass. American workers who had lost their jobs were re-hired, but their wages were only half of what they had been, and labor intensity had increased.
You can supervise this part of the content. What do you think? I have seen very similar cases in China, and it is something around me, with very good old state-owned enterprises that went bankrupt and closed in the early 2000s, and workers were generally laid off. After a few years, the market situation improved, and capitalists came in to take over factories. reorganizing production and recruiting the original workers. Although the relative treatment is not as good as in the past, the workers are still very active in applying for jobs. The only difference between this story and the movie is that the small city in the United States was replaced by a small town in China. When the company went bankrupt, it lost a lot of money, but the process of relatively reducing wages actually has a certain historical inevitability. When I analyzed the teachings of American slaves on the 21st of September last year, I made an estimate and said that there are now 300 million people in the United States, and about 1/10 of them have advanced technology and weapons, and the efficiency of acquiring wealth is obviously less than In Chinese, the labor efficiency of the other 200 million people is not much different from that of the Chinese population, but the wages are several times higher. Once China and the United States have launched free trade, the industry will be transferred to China, which is almost inevitable. American workers must accept lower wages if they want jobs back after the industry has moved out of the United States.
The background of this movie is that the United States has vast land, a large population, and cheap energy, so the Chinese boss will move the factory to the United States to make glass. If there is no such advantage, the American department will be united as in the past, and half of the wages will not be able to be kept. For example, Tesla This kind of enterprise that consumes less energy will come to China to start. Similar things happened in China after middle school education was popularized throughout China in the 1970s. Ordinary rural young people also have knowledge, basic discipline, and are willing to work in the field. Relying on the succession system to recruit workers, these young people can only go to coastal private or foreign-funded factories. The wages are lower than those of state-owned enterprise employees but significantly higher than the income from farming.
In the 1990s, these coastal factories gradually produced products of similar quality to state-owned enterprises, which hit the hereditary state-owned enterprises and eventually led to large layoffs. When the employees of state-owned enterprises returned to private enterprises to apply for jobs, their wages would inevitably be comparable to those of migrant workers. From the perspective of these hereditary SOE workers, this process is an economic failure of the proletariat. Jingjing: The second main line of the film is the struggle for labor unions. After American workers stabilized their lives, they recalled the good old days and gradually became dissatisfied with their pay and working environment. Encouraged by foreign labor union organizations, they demanded to organize labor unions. Collective bargaining The attitude of Chinese capitalists is very clear. If they oppose the establishment of trade unions, they would rather close factories and let these workers think about the fate of unemployment. The last worker votes were almost 2: The ratio of 1 rejected the proposal to set up a union. How do you comment on this part? This part of the story takes place in the United States, but it is actually the story of the whole world, and of course, the story of the Chinese. If workers want to raise wages, the best way is to strike, but if they just refuse to work, it can only be regarded as an automatic resignation. The boss is not a big threat, and it is a complete strike that must be prevented from taking over the job. Therefore, the first thing workers do when they fight is to set up a picket team to deal with new workers or other workers who have not joined the union, and use violence to prohibit them from working, even if they need to make money.
Chinese workers used to do the same thing. Until the 1970s, the domestic auxiliary police still used the name of the workers' pickets, but the pickets couldn't control workers from other places, let alone stop the competition from foreign factories. Therefore, in the long run, if high-wage areas cannot maintain their technological advantages, workers' pickets cannot stop wages from falling. If the proletariat only cares about what kinds of small groups exist and only strives for economic zones and does not engage in political struggles, it will inevitably fail in the end. This is what Lenin was against: the organizational failure of the proletariat. Jingjing: The third main theme of the film is the cultural conflict between Chinese and American workers. In order to improve efficiency, Chinese capitalists sent employees from their hometown to the United States as instructors. After a few months, some American employees were also sent to China to study Chinese military affairs. Both Chinese and American workers felt unsuitable for each other’s culture, and they discovered the shortcomings of each other’s culture after the novelty passed. The Chinese felt that the Americans were free and unfocused, and the Americans also saw the Chinese enterprises. In the so-called hypocrisy of collective culture, how do you understand this part of the plot?
If you only look at the first half, it seems to be talking about cultural differences. It seems that cultural differences are used to explain why Chinese people can come to the United States to open factories, but after looking at it, you can see that criticism is two-sided, and Americans also see through China. The way capitalists play, such as when the Chinese boss asks everyone to sing on a warm and embarrassing occasion, seeing the magnificent corporate memorial, in fact, the labor protection is not good. The workers work in the glass factory, but there are no special protective gloves or protective gloves. Private bosses pay to play up; the family atmosphere is warm; they say that everyone is a family. In fact, the working hours are long and a large number of left-behind children are created. There are also labor unions in Chinese factories, but the chairman of the labor union is a relative of the boss. If it is an American, then on the one hand, individual liberalism does not consider reality. On the other hand, on the Chinese side, there is hypocritical collectivism. Such a culture occupies the mainstream and is a failure of the culture of the proletariat.
Jingjing: The end of the movie has little to do with the three main lines. Not long after the factory started to make money, Chinese capitalists began to consider the final solution, and the introduction of the unmanned assembly line ended in this accident. Du Gong, what do you think?
They will not ask to organize trade unions to run because only the electricity bill is broken, and only repairmen are needed, and a large number of workers will be completely eliminated and permanently unemployed. All failures are not as terrible as the last threat. This is a historic elimination, not a tragic story in stages. Jingjing: Supervisor, would you recommend it to Chinese audiences to watch it? Of course, I recommend it because this is the real history and the reality that can best educate people. Chairman Mao encourages young people to see the world through wind and rain. This is what our generation wants to see. Everyone who joined the Young Pioneers in elementary school should listen to them all.
After the team song, we are the successors of communism. Everyone’s identity is basically the proletariat now. If you don’t forget your original intention, you must watch this movie and this movie carefully. Three main lines plus an ending can be said to have been talked about. The four tragedies, optimistically speaking, can also be said to have summed up four lessons, and the four are definitely different from the road to socialism. The first main line is that the Chinese robbed Americans of jobs, proving that the proletariat cannot be content with the status quo. Progress and comfort cannot coexist. After the collapse of the feudal system of agricultural society, everyone has the possibility of changing their fate. The principle of progress should not stop others from making progress. If you give up changing yourself because you live a happy life, such a proletariat will be rotten. The proletariat can only be used as fertilizer for others. True socialism will inevitably require citizens to study and study. With the upgrading of the industry, some people will complain that others are struggling and putting pressure on themselves as they do now. The second main line is that the capitalists can easily disintegrate the proletarian alliance and destroy the class struggle of the guild's name-defining small groups without a future. If I temporarily raise a little salary as the highest goal, the capitalists have 100 ways to destroy the workers' union. Even if the union expands a little, if the goal is only to make their own wages higher, just to be more stable, then it is passive defense and cannot win the capitalists. As mentioned in the movie, the establishment of a union is both a need for local workers and an opportunity for the UAW. In order to strive for economic interests, the big guild itself can also be regarded as an economic organization, making money by collecting membership fees and providing services for organizing strikes.
The trade union also has its own senior managers and employees, and the senior managers also have their own interests. Before and after the shooting at the American factory, the American Auto Union was exposed to many executive corruption cases, and a large amount of cash was found in the chairman of the board of directors and filled the garage. Even if we ignore these corruption cases, we still have to face the question of whether the ordinary employees of the union have the right to strike and demand the strike bonus of the entire union. Li says this is the same logic as the strike of ordinary workers. If the union is large enough, this nesting doll game can have many layers. A union driven only by economic interests cannot be truly united. The third main line, American-style liberalism and false Chinese corporate collectivism, are both ridiculed to show that a culture without an economic foundation will inevitably degenerate. The foundation of American-style liberalism was the homesteaders and small businesses 100 years ago, and the homesteaders and small businesses today are No matter how hard you try, you can't fight for the atmosphere, so liberalism has no foundation and can only be used to maintain an illusory sense of superiority.
Chinese capitalists engage in a collectivist culture. At first glance, this is quite lively, but with a little bit of brains, I know that this is a play made by the capitalists themselves. Only with the socialist economic model can there be a prosperous collectivist culture. In the end, unmanned machinery replaces simple labor. This is about the basic principles of Marxism. It does not mean that social groups with advanced productive forces will definitely be crushed by history. Our political textbooks in the past did say that the proletariat represents the future, but only if they master advanced productive forces. At today’s level of productivity, it is inevitable that workers who only use their muscles to do simple and repetitive work will be eliminated in the future. If you are not cruel to yourself, there is no future. Even the capitalists who are driven away have no future. Therefore, it is very important to trouble the world if you are not satisfied with yourself, but the key to everything is how to create a new world. From a historical perspective, even from the short-term history of more than ten years, a union that only cares about sympathy is meaningless, and a union that only cares about short-term wages is even more meaningless. The union must be better than the capitalists at spurring the progress of the proletariat in order to leave traces in future history. From start to finish, Jingjing: Supervisor, you didn't mention the protagonist of the film, Cao Dewang. It's a movie about class struggle. Isn't it strange that you don't analyze capitalists? In this movie, Cao Dewang suppressed the trade union, went back to burn incense, worshipped the Bodhisattva, and reflected on his own behavior. This is indeed a small joke, but even if he goes home and spends his time like Wang Sicong, I don't think it is worth mentioning. capitalist His personal preferences don't change, and his proximity status doesn't change his primary decision-making style. The film deliberately ignores Cao Dewang's identity as a family member of a senior official, which weakens the nationalist topic he usually likes.
I don't think it's a big problem, because if Cao Dewang doesn't pursue confrontation with trade unions, the highest efficiency, and the factory Moving between China and the United States, if you don’t engage in unmanned production lines, competitors will be eliminated and someone else will do these things. I do not believe in the goodwill of capitalists, nor do I Because capitalists are inherently bad people, they are only spokespersons for capital, so they ignore Cao Dewang's personal characteristics and don't even understand him as a person with a personality. If you don't like the system it represents, you should prove it is efficient. A higher new system, and then based on the new system to take care of the development of human beings, to find personal moral highlights or even shortcomings in capitalists, is very naive. As an audience, I like this documentary very much, and I hope you will take the opportunity of the Oscars "Double Exposure" to see the acceptance speech at the Oscars ceremony, which sums up the film very well. But Chairman Mao summed up a more classic sentence from Marx's writings, that the proletariat can liberate itself only by liberating all mankind. This is a better comment on American factories.
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