中国现代长篇工人运动小说的杰作——重评《子夜》对工人运动的书写

The Unique Masterpiece of Chinese Modern Novels about Workers Movement——Reevaluating Midnight's Description of Workers Movement

《子夜》对工人运动的描写,揭示了厂方、黄色工会、黑帮之间的利益纠葛以及他们在镇压工人运动方面的合作与内讧,反映了1930年代中国工人政治的复杂形态;中国共产党在领导工人运动方面发挥了重要作用,但《子夜》的这部分内容似乎偏离了左翼文学的基本方向,遭受了很多批评和非议,直到今天仍被认为是小说的败笔。然而事实并非如此,茅盾的政治立场是坚定的,在描写工人运动的时候他有自己独特的追求和鲜明的创作个性。作品展现出来的政治偏差主要根源于作品的结构、茅盾的武汉记忆以及他对1927年大革命失败以后中共内部出现的左倾盲动主义及“立三路线”的批判与反思。过去人们普遍强调的是对“立三路线”的批判,其实《子夜》将民族资本家和买办资本家之间的斗争作为主线,是对瞿秋白左倾盲动主义的直接回应,而瞿秋白对《子夜》创作的干预,使这一倾向暧昧不明,致使长期以来没有引起研究者的注意。

The description of the workers movement in the novel Midnight reveals the interest disputes among factory owners, yellow unions and gangsters, as well as their cooperation and infighting in suppressing the workers movement, which reflects the complex situation of Chinese worker politics in the 1930s. The Communist Party of China played a crucial role in leading the workers movement, but this part of Midnight seems to have deviated from the basic direction of left-wing literature, it received a lot of criticisms and reproaches, even been considered as a failure of the novel till today, but the facts suggest otherwise. Mao Dun political stand is firm, at the same time, he has his own unique pursuit and distinct creative personality when he describes the workers movement. The political deviation shown in Midnight mainly stems from the structure of this work, Mao Dun's memory of Wuhan, and his critique and reflection on the left-leaning adventurism and “the Li Li-san Line” that emerged in The Communist Party after the defeat of the great revolution in 1927. In the past, researchers generally emphasize the criticism of “the Li Li-san Line”, actually, Midnight takes the struggle between the national capitalists and the comprador capitalists as the main line, which is a direct response to Qu Qiubai's left-leaning adventurism. However, Qu Qiubai's intervention in the creation of Midnight makes this tendency ambiguous, which result in researchers neglect of this issue for a long time.