Alibaba Group founder and billionaire Jack Ma has defended the grueling overtime work culture at many of China’s tech companies, calling it a “huge blessing” for young workers.
China's richest man: overtime work culture a 'huge blessing'
Juan Parker
Jordan Gomez
Color me surprised. The party paper is correct. If porky can extract absolute surplus value from longer work hours there is less incentive to use technology to improve productivity.
Jayden Kelly
imagine thinking china is socialist
Nicholas Robinson
The CPC argues China is only in a "primary stage of socialism," the capitalist sector fulfills the function of strengthening the existing dominant socialist sector by rapidly developing the productive forces.
Hunter Powell
Explain exactly how working 72 hours a week sorting packages of consumer goods is developing the productive forces
Zachary Foster
I'd maybe buy that if he was talking about a government owned steel mill or some shit but this is Alibaba
Samuel Cooper
where the dengoids at?
Blake Morris
By building fuckloads of ghost cities?
Hudson Powell
Here dawg, lemme post some Ismail
In "Principles of Communism," Engels answers the question "Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke?" with: "No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity."
Lenin pointed out numerous times (again there's a whole book of his writings on the subject: archive.org
Tyler White
Are we supposed to be surprised? We aren't arguing that the Capitalist sector in China is somehow more ethical than they are in america, we argue that this capitalist sector is subordinate to chinese socialist sector and needed in order to advance towards an advanced socialist society
Nolan Cook
This isn't temporary retreat, this is 40 years of backsliding. They have gone from majority workers control to most of the GDP growth being in the private sector, most of the new jobs being in the private sector, massive privatization of state enterprises, etc. Even if we accept that the state sector equals socialist sector, and state investment equals planned economy, they have done the exact opposite of that Engels quote. Instead of partially expropriating one step at a time, the CPC had established total dominance under Mao, and has been gradually dialing it back as the means of production have increased in quantity. And in that book, in the chapter about lefts, he talks about how the left wing critics are too eager to collectivize the means of production before they are sufficient. He is not complaining that they are too eager to confiscate He also points out that the petty bourgeois is a larger enemy than state capitalism, and in China, there are milions of small businesses. He literally brags about "today, only a blind man could fail to see that we have nationalized, confiscated, beaten down and put down more than we have had time to count." The exact opposite has happened in China over the last few decades.
Chase Martin
Comments like this one make me remember pic related. I still don't know if it's bait or not.
Grayson Peterson
Do they at the absolute least get overtime pay for the extra 32 hours a week they work? Is there limit to this schedule since he said "when you are young" meaning, nobody works this schedule after 30,35, or 40?
Daniel Gutierrez
...
Chase Myers
They're basically a NEP-style social democracy, but I think it's worth noting that the government is now much more critical of this sort of thing.
Isaac Sanders
Yes because you're supposed to be a millionaire by that age.
Aiden Baker
A lot of those consumer goods are also capital, though. Not everything on Alibaba is consuemrist junk. Quite a bit of what they sell are labor-saving devices for homes and businesses, which can free up labor power for other productive things.
Nathaniel Ortiz
They don't produce it though, they are just merchants
Luke Hughes
Distribution is part of production. There is no use value in producing widgets if they can't be taken from the factory and sent somewhere useful.
Thomas Garcia
The PRC is not only capitalist, but imperialist, an enemy of the people in China and the rest of the world
anti-imperialism.org
Isaac Wood
...
Levi King
So then where's the industrial safety equipment? You can watch videos of industrial accidents in china and there's a shocking lack of the most basic safety equipment like railing in a lot of places. If the socialist sector is the one in control, why don't they force capitalist businesses to adopt basic worker safety measures? It's not like it's expensive stuff to install safety railing, in terms of industrial processes it's a few drops in a bucket in cost, but you'd think a socialist government would attempt to make, you know, the literal workers' workplaces even a consideration?
Jackson Foster
Isaiah Diaz
there wasn't a new billionaire every week in the USSR during the 20s
Levi Adams
The NEP didn’t last 40 years.
Julian Adams
Naxalites predate the Peruvian insurgency by over a decade dumbass
Jonathan Young
Tech workers deserve to be worked to death to be honest.
Dominic Morales
Choose one, comrades. The glory of work is no shame. Anti-worker thought is a sign of bourgeois laziness and decadence
Chase Baker
WTF I'm a Dengist now?
Joseph Thompson
Ma's clearly talking about coders.
Eli Smith
...
Joshua Baker
Warlord China was far worse than Russian Empire.By 1940 USSR already was industrialised second largest economy in the world with 100 % literacy rate.
Mason Rivera
1/2
society as a collective effectively is an immortal demi-god, some of the billionaire types are trying to compete with that, hence why they often fall for the self-delusion of claiming the creative output of the collective as their own creative output, a side effect is the believe that self destructive workaholism is the source of this creative output. The alternative to this believe would be to accept their own limitations with regards of being utterly out-classed by large collectives in terms of creative output.
When it comes to Jack Ma you can recognize that he put enormous personal effort into organizing the economic organization and given the scale and capabilities of this organization you can also recognize his skill. But the material reality is that tech companies should advocate a relax work schedule of 4h to max 6h a day, because the hole point of technology literately is getting stuff done with less effort and less time. On top of that brains have to idle to be able to come up with innovations. Also when it comes to capitalists if you deny them access to surplus, they are forced to advance the means of productions for profit, by increasing the productivity of the labour.
The structural reason why socialist support China is because a political organisation outranks the capitalist organizations. Sometimes "Dengism or market socialism" is compared with the Soviet NEP and the difference here is that the Soviets had vast resources, the ability to be self-sufficient in food production and could benefit from technological transfers during the capitalist recession that preceded WW2, where they basically could buy industrial machinery for bargain prices. Chinese material conditions are vastly different they lack resources and only barely could be food self-sufficient, and they cannot buy cheap industrial machinery from desperate capitalists. They have a large population whose surplus they can exchange for industrial machinery. The factor that works in favour for China is that although workers are heavily exploited they do saw enormous increase in living standards which does reduce the detrimental social effects, seen in stagnating living sandards in the west. If you compare the Deng area with the Stalin Era, then you have to point out that the Stalin era was economically more socialist because no Billionaires etc. However the market liberalisation in China did not cause a increase in mortality like it did Russia in the 90s or what it is beginning to happen in western countries now, where some groups in society are beginning to have decreasing life expectancies.
If you want to criticize Deng's reform and open up policies then your first objective should be to ask why did they abolish so many of the mao era collectivist societal structures even those that were not in conflict with the market reforms. Or why did they adopt western decadent consumerism and bourgeois lifestyleism, at least in the more affluent areas. Other questions are why did their Marxist education produce so many "radlibs". When it comes to economics opening up the markets enabled the transfer of means of production, but one has to ask why weren't they more selective towards strategically relevant industries. You could anthropomorphize China as a worker going to work in the global market and to trade their labour power for means of production, and then ask why they needed means of production for useless plastic garbage. If you want to complain about the revisionism then you also have to look at how Mao handled the cultural revolution and relations with the Soviets.
Jackson Taylor
2/2
If you want to see Deng as a deceptive capitalist roader, then you have to do better than just pointing out how the economic relations have developed under his policies, because his theories more or less predicted the current state of affairs. You have to look at China and see that historically they did not have a capitalist revolution, and strictly speaking the Deng theory of having a "sand-boxed" capitalist mode of production is closer to what Marx said about communism happening inthe most advanced capitalist economy. If the so called "4th industrial revolution digital platform capitalism" thing turns out as a real material force, one might point out that the Chinese government and the CPC has at least as much control over this area than Mao-era CPC had over factory production. So the claim of losing state control over industry might not be accurate.
If you want to see China as gestating socialism that will be ready in x-amount of years, then you argue that th cpc can overcome Marx's law of motion and reverse revisionism. Some theory in that direction that made the rounds was that Chinese development will globally raise the living standards of the working class, equalizing the wages and hence removing the ability of capitalists to find cheap labour offshore, restoring the bargaining power of western proles and reducing the political strangle hold of western bourgeoisie. One might be tempted to see automation as force for making the proletariat superfluous, permanently negating the bargaining power of labour, but the same holds for capitalists , whose purpose is extracting surplus from labour. keep in mind that robots with similar abilities as people will require the a similar internal mental processes. If you give robots enough creativity to match humans they will also be able to revolt. So the actual problem the "labour bargaining power restauration theory" has, is capitalism using wars to destroy capital to restore profitability. While full-blown WW3 is unlikely because of nuclear weapons, there still is the neo-liberal permanent destabilization "trickel war". To condense this, we have a plausible claim that the material conditions for socialism are bing created however there also is the problem that capitalism might destroy those conditions on the way out. The "wargeoisie" in America seems to have a harder time overthrowing governments as can be seen in Syria and Venezuela, but still it's not like they lost the ability to wreck those economies.
Alexander Adams
well, if we look at the statistics, we see that Chinas workplace saftey is improving year for year, now succeeding australia
trotskyistplatform.com
Lucas Lewis
To be fair though Australia has a big mining industry.
Michael Harris
working 12 hours is not fatal but you are wasting all of your life in vain for some rich faggot.
his inspirational speeches remind me of a certain quote reminds me of a certain quote…
Luke Reed
at this point Ismail reminds me of a typical debate with autistic Christians who are well-versed in the Bible and who can justify pretty much anything by quoting some passage from it
can be any other religion really, I'm not trying to offend Christians
Leo Sullivan
To be fair, this answer from Ismail was not regarding China. Here's the question and Ismail's answer.
Justin Johnson
I know this is perhaps late, but I have translated (in google translate. don't think highly of me) what the state's newspaper had to say
Advocating struggle does not mean forcing 996
People's Daily Author: People's Daily commentary posted complaints on 2019-04-14 11:57:36
Reading number: 7.57 million +
Controversial about 996, not that you don't want to struggle or work.
Our company not only depends on the sweat of employees, but also inspires employees; not only must employees work harder, but also stimulate employees to work more efficiently; not only by the incentives for overtime pay, but also for family members. Companionship, physical health, and fullness of meaning have also become rewards for work.
Cameron Walker
During this time, 996 became a hot topic, and the heads of companies such as Alibaba and Jingdong successively expressed their views on 996. The so-called 996 refers to the work from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, working 6 days a week, representing the overtime culture prevailing in Chinese Internet companies. How to look at work and rest, struggle and overtime culture, employee rights and corporate governance, led to extensive discussions in the whole society.
Before conducting a rational analysis, it is necessary to clarify a misunderstanding at the level of values, that is, to dispute 996, not to struggle or to work. Today, from the individual who dreams of changing his destiny, to the enterprises that are carrying forward in the context of economic downward pressure, and to the nation that is undergoing a renaissance sprint, they still need the spirit of struggle and hard work. No one does not understand the principle of "doing nothing". But advocating struggle and advocating labor does not mean forcing overtime. Hard work is a struggle, and skill is also a struggle; extending work hours is a struggle, and efficiency is also a struggle. Therefore, employees who object to 996 cannot be labeled with the moral label of “mixing the day” and “not fighting”, but should face up to their true demands.
Faced with the downward pressure on the economy, many companies are facing the test of survival. The anxiety of enterprises can be understood, but the way to alleviate anxiety is not to let employees work as much as possible. Enforcement of 996 not only fails to solve the problem of “trust-agent” in enterprise management, but also contributes to the ills of “grinding foreign workers”. From the perspective of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, the ultimate spirit of struggle is valuable, but considering the different positions of ordinary employees, the mandatory indoctrination of 996's overtime culture not only reflects the arrogance of business managers, but also does not actually ,unfair. In fact, this involves the core issue of business management: how can we maximize the motivation of employees? Using overtime as an incentive is definitely the easiest way to do it, but it is obviously not the most effective method. The discussion triggered by 996 is an opportunity to reflect on the corporate culture and management mechanism of the Internet.
Studies in economics and management have shown that labor supply is not always proportional to pay and income, because when pay and income are raised to a certain level, people are more willing to enjoy leisure time under high income. As China’s per capita GDP gradually approaches 10,000 US dollars, people have higher demands for “good life”. They are no longer working hard to make money in the food and clothing period, but need to have more value outside the work and find Interest, accompanying family, looking for meaning. As China gradually shifts from high-speed growth to high-quality development, as the Internet industry gradually enters the second half, which pays more attention to product quality, corporate governance also needs to establish results-oriented, efficiency-oriented, and more civilized, efficient and humanized time arrangements. In fact, a more flexible working mechanism can motivate employees to work harder than the mandatory 996, which can also enable enterprises to better tap the potential of human resources.
Ryder Gonzalez
Therefore, the way to correctly open the 996 topic is not to fight hard, but how to fight hard. Our country is still in the "development" stage, and still needs to struggle and struggle, but we also need to recognize that people's "good life" has a broader connotation, and thus better improve corporate governance and design incentives. . We are not choosing to choose between work and other valuable things, but to make employees work better on a balanced basis. Our company not only depends on the sweat of employees, but also inspires employees; not only must employees work harder, but also stimulate employees to work more efficiently; not only rely on the incentives for overtime pay, but also the family, The health of the body and the fullness of meaning have also become rewards for work. Only those companies that can balance and balance can adapt to the changes of the times and achieve sustainable competitiveness.
Some people call China's economic miracle "hardworking revolution". It is the hard work and struggle of the Chinese people that turned the impossible into a possibility and pushed China to complete the industrialization process that the developed countries have gone through for hundreds of years. . Struggle and hard work will continue to be the key words of our fast-moving society. The discussion of 996 reveals us that the vitality of China in the future will come from the joyful work of labor, so that all sources of innovation and creation will flow in full.
Author: Li Zheng
Source: People's Daily Commentary WeChat