While police dispute the story, Chinese netizens express sympathy for “800 Brother” over how workers are treated.
A Chinese factory employee set fire to a textile plant in China’s southwestern Sichuan province in his frustration over unpaid wages of just 800 yuan (or US$111), according to videos posted on social media and eyewitness accounts shared with Radio Free Asia.
Radio Free Asia (RFA) was a news agency operated from 1951 to 1955 by the Central Intelligence Agency, through the Committee for Free Asia, to broadcast anti-Communist propaganda.
Meanwhile most Americans who are forced to work full time with no paid vacation or healthcare instead go off and say, "I don't pay attention to politics, it's depressing. I'm just gonna work on myself," as they accept never being able to afford their dream vacation, their own home, or that new truck they desperately need.
Idk. On one hand I really appreciate the energy but on the other hand this is kind of fucked up for everyone else that works there, and I assume there were people inside when he did this. Like what are all his coworkers going to do for work now that the factory is burned down? I know that's part of why capitalism sucks but it's not like they can do anything about it as individuals.
CCP shuts down alternative unions and prevents any left wing demonstrations, it's ironic, you don't have to fall into a party line when you're not a party member yet they're being hunted down as if they just broke the rules of centralised democracy democratic centralism
"Centralised democracy" I think would make sense when contrasting parliamentarian vs. direct democracy. None of the ML parties ever implemented democratic centralism but bureaucratic centralism (ie. party leaders decide, base follows). It was never intended to be an organisation principle for a whole country, just a party, OTOH it's a neat way to dress up autocracy as democracy so of course it's been done plenty of times.
Lenin described the SPD as democratically centralist and well, yes, maybe back then. The structures are still in place but the whole party is paralysed when it comes to making decisions so in the end the Seeheimer rule, i.e. the neoliberal wing. It's a rather perverse situation: An actually still lefty base, or at least union people, following a neoliberal vanguard with red paintjob.
it’s ironic, you don’t have to fall into a party line when you’re not a party member yet they’re being hunted down as if they just broke the rules of centralised democracy
It's because you just broke the rules of dictatorship ;P
Surely they'd prefer workers to go through official channels so the owner of the factory can be prosecuted, not act alone and go on adventurist rampages. They're not anarchists lol
Police, however, said the claim that “800 yuan in wages were owed” was false, and that the company was in the process of approving payment of 5,370 yuan in wages. It blamed the factory fire on the arsonist’s suicidal thoughts, and said police would deal strictly with those spreading rumors.
So the "official channels" would just tell him unpaid wages don't exist
We (the west) often look at the chinese with some amount of arrogance about them being "peasants".
Truth is, Winnie Pooh has to take some care, because they will fuck things up if their situation gets worse instead of better.
Nothing wrong with being a peasant, in this context: History is full of peasant revolts. People in the European middle ages were perfectly aware of how the system was stacked against them. Arguably, more than they're now.
Just $11? Just? If you need that money, then it's a lot of money to you. But capitalists always use double speak. They could have said that the company was trying to stiff him over a mere $111, which would have been 0.000001% of the company's operating costs.