How to Bring About a Genuine Labor Organization?

(December 1920)

If workers want to raise their own status and free themselves from the shackles of employers, there is no other way apart from struggling with all their might. For employers in general do not embrace humanitarianism; how could they be willing to care whether the workers live or die? Take the single item of wages, for example. A few years ago, each worker earned two jiao a day; now it is only three jiao a day, an increase of less than one half. Yet the rise in the cost of living—how could it be only one half? Employers are unwilling to follow the saying “when the water rises, the boat rises too” and resolutely increase the workers’ wages, leaving them to endure hunger and cold, gradually reaching a state where they can hardly survive, and still they cannot obtain the slightest pity from the employers. Therefore, apart from struggling against the employers with all their might, the workers have no second way. Alas! Pitiful workers! Your own problems must be solved by yourselves. If you want to improve your lives, you can only rise up and solve them yourselves! Hoping that employers will show compassion and improve the methods of treatment is a kind of charitable act, which we would be ashamed to endure, and moreover it is an impossibility. Hoping for others to agitate so as to achieve the goal of labor liberation is also ineffective. I dare to assert one thing: if workers do not want to improve their own lives, so be it; but if they want to improve their own lives, they can only “build a sturdy stronghold and fight a battle to the death”—rise up and struggle themselves!

But if workers want to struggle against employers, they should first have a solid organization; only then can they avoid defeat. Without a solid organization to serve as backing, rashly declaring war on the employers will invariably end in defeat. The laborers in various places in China have repeatedly erupted in strikes, and the results have mostly been defeat. This is precisely because there is no solid labor organization. Therefore, in the current Chinese labor movement, the most crucial step is to quickly organize a solid labor organization. How to organize a solid labor organization? This is a long story, but to put it succinctly: first, every single laborer must have a thorough awakening. What is the level of awakening among China’s laboring class? Speaking of it makes one very pessimistic and disappointed, because the majority of workers are recruited from the countryside and have not received a school education, so they have not a bit of knowledge. Their minds are filled with many base notions. Even when people shout themselves hoarse singing loudly of “labor liberation,” they still do not understand what “labor liberation” is all about, or whether they themselves can be counted as laborers. Some even fear that the gentlemen loudly singing “labor liberation” are extremists, and that if we listen to their words, we will be seduced by the extremists, and fear that we might be implicated in the future! These words are not my own fabrications. If you all carefully examine the psychology of the laborers, you will believe that such a situation truly exists. Since the minds of the laborers are so simple and their knowledge so shallow and limited, yet we hope they will have a thorough awakening—is this not “climbing a tree to seek for fish”? Since the workers do not yet have a thorough awakening, is not our hope that they organize a solid and genuine labor organization just daydreaming?

But although the laborers do not yet have a thorough awakening now, we ultimately hope to find a way to bring about a day when they do have a thorough awakening. We cannot, just because the laborers now lack a thorough awakening, cast aside the labor problem and stop discussing it. Laborers are the pillars of society; if the labor problem is not resolved, how can society be peaceful? But how exactly do we bring the laborers to have a thorough awakening? This problem must be resolved through the issue of workers’ education. For the reason workers lack a thorough awakening is precisely because they have not received education and lack abundant knowledge. Now, if they are all given the opportunity to receive an education and thereby gain abundant knowledge, it will naturally not be difficult for them to have a thorough awakening! At present, workers’ voluntary schools have been established in most places. I have also visited several of them. Among them, those that are worthy of the name, that truly can enhance the workers’ knowledge, supply the workers’ needs, and plan for the improvement of the workers’ livelihoods, are admittedly not few; but those that are not worthy of the name, merely hanging up a signboard of “Workers’ Voluntary School” to win others’ praise while bringing no real benefit to the workers, are also very many. I hope that gentlemen enthusiastic about labor education, in places where no workers’ voluntary school has yet been established, will quickly gather like-minded comrades and open workers’ voluntary schools to attract workers to come and study. In places where workers’ voluntary schools already exist, they should strive to improve and expand them, so that no worker suffers the regret of being left out. If it is truly so, the level of the workers’ knowledge will not be difficult to raise day by day. Then, the workers will naturally be able to use reason to judge matters: what constitutes the tyranny of the employer, and what are the rights due to the workers. There need be no worry about lacking a thorough awakening! Therefore, I believe that the issue of workers’ education is the prerequisite issue for all labor problems. Once the workers all have a thorough awakening, they will naturally, because of shared interests and concerns, unite together, organize a genuine labor organization, and moreover understand that without doing so, there will ultimately be no hope of improving their own lives. Thus, the labor organization they form will become increasingly solid. □□ Whether the above words are correct or not, I earnestly hope for everyone’s criticism!