Social Relationships: The Differences Between Comrades, Kindred Spirits, Dearest Friends, and Friends

Choices matter more than effort, and one of the most important choices is whom you surround yourself with.

Whether you respect each other is the first screening criterion. It will screen out many people, perhaps even everyone.

Previous articles: “Screening Social Connections,” “Being Valued vs. Being Respected,” and “Does He Recognize Your Worth: Accelerating vs. Diminishing Recognition”

I. Friends

First, mutual respect; second, mutual benefit. If there is a clear imbalance, with one person draining the other’s energy, it is a toxic relationship.

II. Kindred Spirits and Close Friends Are Different, and Can Become One Another

What do kindred spirits recognize in each other? Truth, goodness, beauty, talent, virtue, ideals, aspirations, and ambitions. Recognition, affection, and respect.

Being close friends without being kindred spirits often happens when both people are still young and lack understanding, forming an intimate relationship simply through deep feelings. As both grow further, they may become kindred spirits or part ways.

Take Peng, Huang, and others: as young company and platoon commanders, they established a “Society for Helping the Poor” in frontline company units of the Hunan Army, seeking to take from the rich to help the poor and save the country and the world. This was an early stage of close friendship. Later, as they matured into communists and Marxist-Leninists, they became comrades.

Being kindred spirits without being close friends is an early stage. Some remain strangers even after their hair turns white; others feel like old friends at their first meeting. Kindred spirits who feel like old friends at first sight gradually become close friends. Or they part ways.

III. Comrades

Sharing aspirations and convictions, walking the great path together: shared and steadfast ideals, beliefs, principles, and a guiding path.

With the exemplary case of Marx and Engels before us, little further explanation is needed.

For Marx, for example, Engels, Wilhelm Wolff, and Bebel were his comrades; Heine was his kindred spirit and close friend (though Engels did not admire Heine quite so much); and people such as Liebknecht and Hess were friends and fellow travelers.

Wilhelm Wolff: a core member of the Communist League and one of the editors of the *Neue Rheinische Zeitung*. The dedication to the first volume of *Capital* reads: “To my unforgettable friend, Wilhelm Wolff, the brave, faithful, noble champion of the proletariat.” Bebel: a lathe operator, a leader of the German workers, one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and a member of the German parliament, imprisoned several times by Bismarck’s government.

Other relationships:

Partners, business partners, fellow travelers, relatives, neighbors, and so on.

Previous article: “Sartre, Lu Xun, Trotsky, and Fellow Travelers”

IV. Some Examples

Commander Peng was a man of noble character and an unparalleled servant of the nation. For many years, he maintained a pure comradeship with Commander Zhu, and they often played chess together.

I have read Lenin’s complete works, most of Trotsky’s books, and many books about Lenin and Trotsky. I could not identify anyone who was truly Lenin’s kindred spirit and close friend. Lenin, whom I consider the most individually capable person in human history, really did stand at a height few could reach, especially in a backward, feudal country such as Russia. Sun Yat-sen and Lu Xun were similarly rather lonely. Only Trotsky, whose theoretical and practical abilities, faith, and convictions were likewise of a very high order, could be called his comrade and friend. Unfortunately, Lenin and Trotsky had many theoretical conflicts in the early period and some policy disputes later on. Their ways of thinking and acting also differed somewhat; Lenin was the fully realized version of Trotsky.

For this reason, I feel that Lenin invested a great deal of friendship in Marx and Engels. His study of their writings and lives was extraordinarily deep. Beyond theory, there was also a desire for friendship with those who had come before him. Lenin’s elder brother was executed for his revolutionary activities. Through his long years of solitary growth, struggle, and exile, the writings and stories of Marx and Engels gave him tremendous nourishment, energy, and encouragement. He was their best student and their friend across generations.

M’s friend, kindred spirit, close friend, and comrade was Cai. Sadly, Cai died for the cause early on. During the Soviet base-area period, large numbers of true idealists like Cai, possessing both talent and virtue, died for the cause, leaving only a few seeds to take root and sprout in the mountains. So M was never just one person, but a whole group of people. This is historical materialism, not individual heroism. The conditions in which M lived were extremely harsh and complex, and they interacted with his complex personality. In another, less brutal time and place, Chen, Cai, and Mao could have exchanged more ideas and learned more from one another, giving all three better opportunities to grow and gain experience. Yet it was precisely the brutality of the times that brought forth people such as Chen, Cai, Mao, and Peng. This, too, is historical materialism.

V. From This, We Can Also See That Only the True Left Has True Friends and Comrades

First, clear and steadfast principles, ideals, and beliefs; second, transcending economic interests and the narrow personal ego; third, the elevation and fuller development of one’s character.

Among the capitalist, powerful, petty-bourgeois, micro-bourgeois, and other such classes, alienation of people and relationships is severe, and friends are rare. Most relationships are based on interests, drinking and dining, or being fellow travelers or business partners. In the premodern society of county towns and rural areas, interpersonal relationships are complex, entangled, and close-knit, mostly relationships shaped by premodern conditions or maintained out of necessity.

Marriage and romantic love can also be examined for their elements of “comradeship, kindred spirits, close friendship, and friendship.” Many marriages among the petty and micro bourgeoisie, arranged through matchmaking within their class, involve only fellow travelers, business partners, or partners who evolve into “relatives.”

Among proletarians and workers at the bottom of society, there is an unpretentious sense of truth, goodness, and beauty, unpretentious class feeling, mutual aid within the class, and human kindness. This is also an expression of the proletariat’s advanced character. The solidarity and friendliness that food delivery riders and couriers show one another provide everyday evidence of this.