While some keep on propagating the end of class struggle, ostensibly having bowed to the global domination of capitalist common sense, we only need to look towards China to see that its gravediggers have not ceased to exist. Ironically the same country that boasts of having emancipated its workers in the course of the largest Socialist Revolution in history now participates in the maintenance of the capitalist dominion by boosting its power in the international financial system and co-bankrolling an otherwise bankrupt America. At the same time, China has integrated into the world supply chain by offering cheap export prices on the basis of a cheap labour economy, which has effectively given the nation the dubious status of being the “workshop of the world”. However, as the flow of low-paid migrants into Chinese factories has slowed down, over-exploited workers have been increasingly protesting against the rising inequality and precarious conditions they are experiencing; protests which have been met by state-led repression and criminalization of labour organisation. It is this rise of resistance and the subsequent crackdown that has been captured by Wen Hai in his documentary We The Workers.

Chinese dialogue with English subtitles