Years of Poems and Spirits

A really wonderful book. As enlightening as E.P. Thompson’s classic.

I remember Kent G asked us during class – what is “class consciousness”? It was then I suddenly realized, oh, it is not something that is always there!

Perry’s book really helped me to complete the intellectual journey started with this question. In my mind at least, there is no longer such a structural being called “class consciousness”. It is more organic, something grows out of a complex makeup of social soil.

Note, this is a second try. It failed last time when I tried to write a comprehensive review. It just didn’t work out. This book took me several month to finish on the 3rd try (ever since recommended by DS a year ago), it is not like while I was in school when I had to finish a couple of books a week. The memory faded by the time I started writing review but thoughts and inductions abound. It is really hard to write something concise that way.

I also thought about book reviews like those in the New Yorker. But they are more like literature reviews, each comes with broad references and, more importantly, a clear narrative of how a certain subject evolved. I am nowhere near being able to discuss Labor Study (or even Labor History in China) in that way. So I gave up writing last time.

I am grateful for this book because it helped me to recalibrate my view on Marxism. Its Historical Materialism still wield a heavy influence on my world view but at the same time I know it is just another theory among many. The difficulty is to escape my own myopia and put what brought me here in a proper lineup. I have been trying to do so for years. Finally, with help from this book, I found some kind of closure.

In the book, Perry developed two themes: First, different workers protest differently. Second, they become different as a result of their social relationship with each other. In general, Perry argues, the more skilled workers are more likely to engage in class struggle. The less skilled are more likely to be thugs (aka Lumpenproletariat in Marxist lexicon). In Shanghai’s example, it is the printing press mechanics, the managers in Postal service and so on, are the CCP-affiliated activists. The tobacco rollers and textile workers, on the other hand, are easy recruits of the GMD-controlled Green Gang members.

However, her second point is more subtle. Paraphrasing Charles Tilly’s words, “A worker’s skill is a type of social relationship”, Perry used the first half of the book to develop a narrative on how a worker’s native place can determine his political awareness. It makes total sense in the Chinese context where I grew up – people from Jiangnan are generally considered smarter, are quicker learners. They tend to get better jobs, which heightened their self-consciousness and political demand. All of this development was further nurtured by a strong native-place bondage, apprenticeship training and the existence of Habermas-ian public space.

There it is: class consciousness is not a uniformed, structural being. It is not the same in every culture, at different times, or even within the same “working class”. It is very much a product of socio-cultural environment–as much as that of the material-production relationship that Karl Marx thought was the defining character. In other words, class consciousness, like religion, it is not something everyone is born with, but rather a gift one may or may not receive somewhere in one’s life. No wonder Perry uses terms like “rise above” to describe the formation of class-consciousness. Here you go, Migdal, this is you exegesis.

Just finished reading Li Yiyun’s Vagrants.  It is a thick book but not that difficult to read. I don’t know what to think, actually.

In the novel, the best developed characters are two ugly ducklings that nobody wanted (Bashi and Nini). Their romance is as distorted as the age the story is set in. Some other characters, like that of Teacher Gu, is somewhat less well developed I think. He jumped from learned-helplessness to a cynic overnight then died a sentimentalist, all with little narrative development.  The other “righteous” characters, like Wu Kai and Jialin–the liberal independent thinkers–are weak and rootless. Feels like they belong to posters.

Maybe this is in sync with the society Li is trying to tell the world about: wicked, strange and dysfunctional.  So much so that there is little room for anything positive to grow organically. However, that is not quite the China I know. More importantly, that is not the humanity in China I know.

In terms of her writing style–as many have pointed out, she is very good at capturing details and human emotions. I have not read enough novels to compare her with others. But I will be surprised if that is not the first thing people say about her.

最近读的几本中文书笔记备录：

1. 《刚鉴易知录》（唐史）：初唐无聊，中唐故事多，晚唐最有意思：极富戏剧性，像武侠小说，爱不释手。问题：为什么潘镇“割据”而不“独立”？什么使中国难以分裂？

2. 《剑桥中国隋唐史》（崔瑞德，费正清，三联）：关于陈寅恪的评价，“陇西-山东”框架，私铸货币和通货膨胀，中央管理货币的尝试

3. 薄一波的《若干重大历史事件的回顾》（人民出版社）：毛泽东的霸道，刚愎自用和小气：十五天从反右到反左。刘少奇的“走狗式”（李斯，范蠡）的下场：桃源经验，“三分天灾，七分人祸”，党内民主制度不健全，西楼会议，七千人大会？ 另：关于毛对知识分子的怀疑和憎恨，见李锐的文章：毛泽东与反右派斗争 大多从毛的原话，原著中解读引证。

4. 《政治儒学》（蒋庆）： 踩在学术和博客的边缘，文章罗嗦冗长 。读上去感觉好像一个面壁的愚儒在振振有词地证明皇帝的新衣确实存在。唯一可取的是第三章，儒学与民主政治，二者平等而不兼容。不可用西学的概念来解构儒学。联想：中国的“政治”和西学的“政治”是一个概念吗？