Tiananmen and the Question of Democracy, Part 2

We discuss the material factors that led to democracy in the factory as a movement and implication and causes of the collapse of the movement itself.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Pod cast. Yeah, that that counts as an intro on Look, yes,
we've we've we've now started the podcast. The podcast that
we are starting is it could happen here, and I
it's me because for loong, I'm I'm doing I'm doing
the host thing, and I have a bunch of other

(00:25):
people with me who do a lot of things. I
have Garrison, yes, I have Sharen, yes, and I have Sophie,
our lovely boss. Sophie Lictor bed all praise on high
your words, not mine, weird. I did not enjoy that

(00:48):
at all my takeover. So so Sophie unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately
lacks to shear ruthlessness to crush the workers movement. Well
we will see. Yeahs to be determined, and I don't

(01:14):
buy it, So Sophie, Sophie is very sad. I'm sorry, Sophie.
Um So, when when we last left off Lennon, Lennon
has like in theory, crushed the last sort of remaining
factions of like the workers but who want democracy the factories.
But unfortunately for the Leninist like literally no many how

(01:34):
no matter how many workers they kill, and they are
going to kill enormous numbers of workers. The demand for democracy,
and the factory like just refuses to die for over
a hundred years. The development of the sort of mass
factory system and logistical infrastructure that you need to support it,
maybe most importantly coal mines and railroads that I use
to transport stuff generate this incredibly militant working class that

(01:55):
sees you know, democratic control over the workplaces like the
fundamental aspect of its liberation. Um. Ideologically, this is you know,
this is this is manifested in like a series of
interlocking beliefs about like the nature of the working class
and like what class society is, um, all of which
are sort of necessary components of this. Like it becomes

(02:17):
this like incredibly like this like instinctive formation of workers
council at the moment like an uprising happens. And this
is something that that's very interesting about about the twentieth century.
Is it, Like yeah, like what when whenever there's like
a crisis, someone someone like like about everyone in the
factory is like, okay, we're we we've taken control of
the factory now like we we were forming a council,
were forming a giant assembly, and like we don't do

(02:39):
this anymore, and we're gonna come back to like why
we don't do this anymore? But like this hasn't happened,
Like the last time it happened was like in Argentine
and two dozen't one and I don't even know if
Garrison Garrison might have been alive for that. Thanks, But
like it's well, I will say. The other time it
does happens when after after a recording session, when our

(03:02):
boss Sophie leaves, meet me and Chris will stay on
the line to talk, usually about Star Wars, and that
in a way kind of is a worker's counsel just
for the factory of podcasting. Yeah, talk about Star Wars
in front of me. I feel so bad for Sophie.
Next next, next time, puppy face, that's okay. Featuring your

(03:29):
petite bush wat tactics won't work on me. Oh god, Well,
all the people on the Separddit who think that we
hate Sophie are going to just have a feel day
with this episode. Conspiracy is my favorite recurring conspiracy theory bit.
That's a real conspiracy o man o, man wow, I've

(03:51):
a lot of catching up on to you. You do
not because it's not true run away. So meanwhile, meanwhile,
so it in the period when people actually like did
this seriously, you know, there's a lot of sort of
ideological things that come together to make it so that

(04:11):
when people like you know, like when when bread prices
increased too much, this is what people do. Um. And
a lot of this has to do with the physical
experience of what being a worker is in like you know,
the n centuries, like you have these like these these
these these incredibly rapid like technological expansions, and you know,

(04:34):
the people who are who are doing this stuff like
see themselves as the creative of the new world, right like,
and this is like literally this is happening, Like, these
are the people who are literally like they are building
the cities, right like all of the sort of the
infrastructure of the modern world is physically being created by them.
And this creates this you know, like if you're the
person who is like who has transformed like this fishing

(04:56):
village into this giant industrial city, right um, you know
you you you see yourselves as the creator like literally
physically the creator of this new world is being developed.
And then the second belief that that it produces that
drives this movement is that the people who produced this
world should be its inheritors and so and this this,
this sort of this is what drives the workers movement

(05:17):
in this period, which is that like, okay, so if
if you if you are literally physically creating the new world,
and you think that because you have created it, it
should be yours. Uh, the next that the thing that
you do, because it's not yours, right, like you don't
like yeah, you know, like the people who build cities
are not the people who owned the cities. And you

(05:39):
know if you see this, yeah, like yeah, okay, like
in the city is actually owned by like three real
estate speculators and like a bunch of cops and more
applicable examples like the people who build the cup podcast
is not own the podcast. Yeah no, we don't own
the podcast. Like we we are exactly applicable result that
you know that can of that. You know, everyone understands
that example. Yeah we I actually don't think that people

(06:02):
understand that we don't own the podcast. It's actually unclear
to me. I I people people have weird things about
how podcasting works. But yeah, we don't own the podcast.
We just create it and we do all the work.
And then Sophie sits in her leather chair looking down
at all the leather chair. Think, I think at all

(06:25):
my podcast creations I have created, and then all of
us past so bad? How could you think I could
sit here on an five degree day in a leather
chair to Sophie, at least get your facts right, my
word a chair? Continue, Chris. Okay. So for for for

(06:50):
the people who are like actually watching their boss, like
sitting around smoking a giant cigar in a factory while
they pound like hammers, or like work at a hospital
and get a watch like just started a massive cigar
and a comically large to prop. But because for the record,

(07:15):
whenever I do hang out with my other boss, Robert,
he often does sit in some chair smoking a cigar,
and I do think it is in fact leather. Okay,
So we're describing Robert before me, the slave away in
my laptop writing scripts and yeah, just work in the
podcast minds. Yeah, it's it's it is. It is really

(07:36):
hard out there, yea, and continue. So okay, So, like
the belief that you produced the world and that if
you produce you should own it. It's like this this
is not unique to the part of the workers movement
that like you know, thinks that also you should like
have a democracy and the factory and like you should
have the autonomy to decide how you do your work
and what needs to be done. Uh. That those beliefs

(07:58):
like broadly comprise the ally of like the entire workers movement,
and and by you know, by by the twenty century,
the workers movement is really really broad, right, I mean
it stretches from sort of like really mild social democratic
trade unionists to like the intellectual heads of these like
Leninist vanguard parties. But what what makes the democratic wing
unique is that their concern is the fundamental alienation of

(08:20):
factory life. And and this this is i mean, originally
like it is very much factory life, but like this
this gets expanded out as this goes on into sort
of the like the fundamental alienation of labor itself, which
is just this condition of being reduced to an object
by bosses who use you as a tool to do something.
And you know, and this this is a concern for

(08:41):
everyone in some sense, but but for the Lenins and
social democrats, alienation is just like a product of ownership
or distribution. Right. So you know, if if that's what
you believe the way you defeat alienation is through the
working class of productive capacity, not in it, not in
sort of like any kind of like in a human
like humanity of creativity. Like all I to do is like, well, okay,
you flip a switch, right, and the factory is now

(09:04):
owned by the state instead of being owned by like
JP Morgan or something like, Now your alienation is gone.
That's how it works. Yeah, Or and and your social democracy.
It's like, well, okay, so you you you you flip
a switch and taxes get higher, and now you have
a union, but you're still working for gold You're still
working for the Goldman Sachs. But you know, but for

(09:27):
for for for for the wing of the workers movements
that you know actually cares about democracy. This doesn't solve anything, right, like,
as long as the fundamental relation of being the like
of being an object rights. As long as like you,
fundamentally the worker are are not are not a human
being who has agency and control and autonomy over their life.

(09:49):
As long as you're just an object that you know,
like you're you're like you you you're a living human
tool that the one man ruler of the factory can
like you know, can can wield round to do whatever
they want as as long as that persists. Changes in ownership,
structure and need like health benefits missed the entire point,
and this kind of the degradation that comes from just

(10:09):
being a tool can only be solved by returning agency
and autonomy to the working class. And that means like
actually giving the class control over the production process. And
you know, in in in six in Spain, workers are
like funk this and decided to take the entire thing
into their own hands. And they do this by just
seizing their workplaces and mass and this becomes known as

(10:30):
a Spanish revolution um and it is one of the
most extensive sort of experiments. And like workers democratic self
managements or like whatever whatever you want to call people
making their own decisions in the workplace like that has
ever happened, like especially in the modern era. Like everything
from like public utilities to like bakeries to hospitals to
shoe factories like falls under the direct control of these

(10:51):
like democratic unions. And once their bosses have been like
you know, chased from the premises and like flee and
terror uh, these workers set about like transforming the entirety
of Spanish society along democratic lines, like they pulled their
resources together collectively and that they allocate them democratically for
the benefit of society as a whole. And for a
brief moment this works. They have this incredible, like this

(11:12):
triumphant experiment democratic self managements, and output increases dramatically and
social services are expanded, and like in in In in
the span of two years in the middle of a
civil war, like the workers of Spain are able to
create a universal health care system that expands kara into
like like rural areas of Spain where like you couldn't
get it before. But you know, the problem is once

(11:34):
again is that this is happening to the civil war
and and a lot like you know, using sort of
like nominally anti fascism like as as they're sort of
like you know, they're using the threat of the need
to post fascism as as a sort of front like
a French for what they're actually doing. You get this
alliance of liberals, liberal socialists and Stalinists who just like

(11:55):
brutally stamp out any attempt that you democratic self management,
and like you have like Soviet car duration like n KVD,
like Soviet secret police, guys like literally leading armies into
into these cities and like like like killing the workers
and then physically like taking control of these factories that
people had sees and giving them back to the bosses,
which is you know, this is this is great. This

(12:16):
is a great communist stuff. And yeah, the you know,
and this this this ends exactly how you would expect
it to end with. Oh yeah, like this this the
Stalinists get everything they want. They murder all of the
people who want like a factory council, and then they
all get killed by Franco. But you know, undeterred by
sort of the casualty tolls of these like massacres by

(12:38):
people who want bosses. Uh, this just keeps happening, and
you know, by the time you get to like all
this stuff is back like there there's there's factory councils
again in Hungary, you get them in Italy and France
and the Zichoslovakia eight there's like like they're they're, they're,
they're there's councils being like there, there's there's communes being
formed in like Vietnam. There's like they're there. We've talked

(12:59):
about the Court on Asonu in in Chile on the
show before, Like, these things are happening everywhere, and I
think Hungary in particular is a really interesting one because
so there's a revolution in Hungary against sort of the
Soviets in the X that's it gets a lot of
the same liberal mythologizing that you get with Tenemen, but

(13:21):
like kind of more egregious here. So I don't know,
I think, like I got taught this revolution in schools
is like one of the few ones that we actually get,
and they taught it as this like this is like
the Hungarian revolution was just like kind of nationalists, like
liberal democratic revolution for people who wanted like democracy and
freedom and like free markets. And then like you know,

(13:43):
if you go read about what the people were at
but people actually doing the revolution we're saying, you get
quotes like this, This is a direct quote from a
member of one of the Hungarian workers councils the time
when the boss is decided, our fate is over, and
it's like, ha, these these got these guys do not
seem like I don't know, these guys don't steam like

(14:04):
liberal democrats that something weird is happening here. That's something
that's actually happening is it like Hungarian workers like sea
control of their factories and like the workplaces, and they
formed workers councils the overs of the government and then
the Russian slaught of them all. But you know, like
this is not a liberal democratic revolution at all, that
this is a revolt against the tatorship in the workplace.
And there's an identical revolts break out across both the

(14:24):
capitalist world and the communist world, and in the newly
de colonized society start seeing them too, and you know,
and to the sort of like dismay of both the
communists and the capitalists who are both like, oh my god,
why is and we keep forming workers councils like this
solution to alienation, Like it's not like an ideological thing, right,

(14:44):
Like it's it's not that there's like a group of
people who are like secretly infiltrating these countries and being like, okay,
you needful workers councils. This this is this stuff is
happening in places where there's just like none of that.
So like what one of one of the sort of
like movements that does stuff like this is is the
revolution in Algeria? Um, you know, and they're like they're

(15:05):
there they were like Algeria like does have a pretty
high level of political education, but the political education they're
getting is from like it's it's from the National Liberation Front,
which is like asofar As, it's any one thing. It's
like it's a nationalist vanguardist movements, which is you know
that they're the people who like fight the French colonizers
and beat them. And their ideology like asofar As, you
can describe one idea allogion. Like the thing that they

(15:26):
want is like the state having this decisive role in
national development. But you know, immediately it's taking power off.
And Bambella, who's Algeria's first president, like discovers that, you know,
he he's not actually going to be the one like
making the decision about what the country's economic cruature is
going to be because he takes power and a whole
bunch of like French people who live in Algeria of flee,

(15:49):
and basically what happens immediately after is that all of
like all of these this property that had been originally
like held by by by French sort of colonists, like
it gets immediately seized by the Algerian working class and
you know, they build their own workers councils, and you know,
BenBella is like, Okay, I guess I guess we have

(16:10):
like workers councils now, like I guess I guess we
have sort of like autonomous democratic production and BenBella is
like kind of trying to undermine them. But he doesn't
really get a chance too, because once again there's a
military coup and BenBella, like he I think he escapes,
it doesn't die. But like the fact that the councils

(16:32):
all sort of get dismantled again. But like the number
of times this has happened is getting just like completely
out of hand, and it's like yeah, okay, the it's
like yeah, okay, so every time this happens, they murder everyone.
But like, you know, the revolutions keep happening, and they
keep happening, and they keep happening, and you know, even
even as late as like the late seventies, like it's

(16:53):
not clear that that that like it's it's not clear
that the people who want one man role the factory
are gonna win. Like there's this moment in Italy nineteen
seventy seven where it's like this this like giant student
Student and Worker Coalition almost takes power. Um, Like in
Spain even after like fifty years of of like Franco
and like the fascist octatorship, like the c n T,

(17:15):
which is the anarchist union that had done the revolution
like reappears in the seventies again even though everyone thought
it was gone, and like, you know, this is a
real this is a real source of strife for especially
the sort of capitalist managerial elite. Who are you know
they this stuff keeps happening. It's like okay, like it

(17:37):
is an unacceptable risk that one of the one day,
one of these groups is going to win. And so
they start looking for a way to like dismantle this
sort of like systemic things that like create that that
caused people to do this. But you know, but they're
but they're trying to do it in a way that
doesn't involve them giving up their power. Um. So yeah,

(17:58):
it's Vicky Austen. While it's out this sort of like
this like instinctive embrace of like democracy and the factory,
like as a political program, it's only possible as long
as factories, as long as like the factory functions is
the point of encounter. Her. I think It was her
term for which she calls it a darker Gora, which
is like, so Gore is like like the sort of
like the Greek marketplace in the center of a town.
Everyone goes there and you like talk about things, right,

(18:22):
and the factory serves as this kind of like it's
this sort of like dark version of it where like,
on the one hand, you know, it facilitates these interactions
that allow people to sort of like identify with each
other and like you know, create collective meaning by like
interacting with each other. But on the other hand, it
exists to exploit you, and it's like terrible and you're
just getting you know, you're getting physically and socially destroyed

(18:44):
like every moment you're in it. But you know it's
it's still is a place where you can like assemble
an identity as like like you and a bunch of
people around you can go like, hey, like we are workers, right,
like we are the working class, and this this is
like a shared political identity that you have that allows
you to do things. And so the thrust of sort
of the attack against this takes the form of this

(19:05):
attack on like the shop floor as like a site
of like formation of identities that that can allow you
to mobilize stuff. And so this takes like a number
of forms. Um most famously, there's there's it's the industrialization
and this sort of like spatial relocation of factories. So
like like part of what's going on, right is that
you have a you have a bunch of people who

(19:25):
work in a factory, and then they live like around
like right around the factories. Right, they work in a
coal mine, and the eyyone lives in a town around
the coal mine. And this means that everyone sees each
other constantly, and they're like constantly like running into each
other and like physically talking to each other. And you know,
this is a really good way to create radical politics.
So what happens is you these factories get sent out

(19:48):
to the suburbs, and this allows you to create places
where you know, workers are isolated from each other, and
you know, and the other thing you can do is
you turn workers into homeowners and you sort of like
buy them all off for this combination of like cheap
credit and this promise that like their houses will not
be a financial asset. And so as the sort of
eighties rolls on, the sort of the the like the

(20:10):
herald of democratization of finance replaces democrazation. The factory is
sort of the capitalist class. Like the other thing they
do that's like really insidious is they they tied like
the remaining union pensions into the stock market. And this
is stuff like you see today with like four O
one case, and it means that like if you want
to like have a retirement, you are like physically literally

(20:31):
invested in the stock market, which ties you know, which
ties everyone sort of like into the system. And corporations
start to turn workplaces into these like enormous propaganda apparatus.
Is you get like like Walmart in particular, has these
like like these vast ideological like programming things that they
run that are designed to sort of like get you
to identify with like the corporation itself and not with

(20:53):
like the other people you're you know, like the other
people you're within the class as a whole, and you know,
and like the other thing that they're able to do
is the fact that capital is mobile and workers like
aren't allows you know, combines with like logistics advances, and
it means that like if workers ever start getting an
upper hands somewhere, capitalists can just leave. And the process
that you see is that as this sort of the

(21:13):
total number of people working in in the like in
industrial work keeps decreasing, right as a cential of the population,
it keeps decreasing. And as this happens, capitalists are just like, okay, scirt,
we're gon, we're gonna, We're gonna pick up our tools
and leave. And this spits out like enormous populations who
are just like kicked out of pratitional workforce entirely. And
these developments, this is what actually like eventually destroys the

(21:36):
classical workers t mouvement is the abilability to leave in
the sort of destruction of the factory is like a
site of stuff. But in order for this to work,
the one thing they need is a place to move
to write. They need somewhere with this large exploitable labor
supply that has been like crushed enough that it won't
revolt against them. And the capitalist class finds that in

(21:58):
our products and services, and we're we're we're back. We're
we're back, and we're we're back to China. And Okay,
so I've been talking about the way this sort of

(22:19):
like this this whole system like this whole factory system
mass production stuff like develops. But China is weird because
this is the one place where the factory system works
like really differently than everywhere else. Um. There's a lot
of reasons for this, one of which is it like
so Chinese like stayed on firms. It's like almost impossible
for them to fire someone because I mean there's a

(22:41):
lot of reasons for this, and one of them is
that like people's entire sort of social sphere is built
around their work unit. And like their work unit is
like it's it's the company you work for, and there's
this whole sort of like legal apparatus built around it,
and it's like you know, and like this like unit
gives you everything from like your retirement, like it like
feeds you. Like there's often like entertainment stuff like tied
into it, like you healthcare, you get like childcare from it.

(23:02):
And the CP also gets rid of the peace rate system,
which is just like this is this thing that like
I mean, it's so there's a lot of capitalist places
to work with this word's like okay, so the peace
rate system is you pay people for like every unit
of something they produce, So like you get paid by
like I don't know, like how many like how many
pounds of like cherities you can pick. And so the

(23:23):
USSR brings this back because the USSR and the US
are really not that different. But China is like, nah,
this like sucks. This is capitalism, and you know, okay,
like I'm gonna say, the fact Chinese factory system is great,
but like because they don't have the peace rate system
is because they can't fire people. You get this very

(23:43):
you get this weird thing where it's like the people
who run the factories like don't have very good ways
to force people to work, and because of this, they
like they sort of like have to allow this degree
of participation in the worker process, like in the labor
process that like you don't really see most of the
places and the everything they have that I luckily Garrison

(24:05):
and I also have this is we have the ability
to criticize our bosses. Although we we have more of
this these guys. But one day, go ahead, one one okay,
we we we've got it. We we don't we don't
have our big character poster yet, but like one day
Garrison and I are going to show up to the
office with like giant big character posters with your faces

(24:28):
on it. They like have specifically Roberts are gonna have
a list of crimes on it. My favorite part of
like big labor protests when they make those giant like puppets.
If we just make a giant's tick puppet version of
Robert and Sophie that we just prayed around the office,
that's long as mind's bigger than Robert's, that's fine, we

(24:48):
can do that, great right, full support. So we were
got to do this in China. It's it's weird, like
you have the ability to do this, but like it's
like run to the party, and so if someone gets
unpopular enough, like the party will like start a campaign
about how bad like that one boss is, and then

(25:11):
you can show up to like the meeting and go like, hey,
I hate my boss. This guy sucks. But then it's
replacing with like another boss. Right, So it's not like
it's not actually a democratic system really, but the way
that it works ensures that like the people who are
managers are like pretty popular at least to some extents,
like are popular and people don't like really hate them.

(25:34):
And this means that you know, because there's all of
this stuff that makes the Chinese factor is different from
like the other systems, and also because of like structural
stuff in Maoism that I mean, I could talk about that,
but I don't like talking about Maoism. But basically the
product of this is that, like you have in China

(25:55):
during this period a lot of demands for democracy, but
they're really they're not they're not tied to the workplace
at all. They're they're they're mostly like political demands for
like democracy in the party or stuff like that. And
that means, like you know, at least in the cities,
this system like kind of works okayish until the Cultural Revolution,

(26:15):
where everything falls apart. And this means that it is
at long last time for me to do the Cultural
revolution rant, which is something I have been planning for.
Like yeah, I'm very I'm very excited about this. I've
been waiting for an excuse and I finally have one. Okay,
So the cultural revolution rant is that everyone gets the
Cultural revolution completely wrong, Like everyone every like it's like

(26:40):
it's it's one of the rare events where like it's
misinterpreted in like exactly the same way by both people
who support it and the people who oppose it um
and Okay. The first thing to understand about this, right is, like, okay,
so the the initial the very very beginning of the
culture revolution, like it's basically a in sort of like

(27:00):
teenagers kind of like it's like middle schoolers essentially, and
they're attacking these they're attacking like other kids at their school.
And these kids are kids who have what's called a
black blood background, like black blood, which means that like
they're they're the children of people who were from like

(27:21):
quote unquote bad class backgrounds. And this is really weird
for a number of reasons. One because you have you
have a sort of like a pseudo class system based
on like who your parents were, right, you have people
who have red blood who had like good class backgrounds,
like your parents are workers, or your parents worked with
the party or something. And then you have people who
are from like bad class backgrounds quote unquote, who like

(27:42):
are persecuted and like, okay, like I don't really care
that much if you're like persecuting like a Shanghai oligarch
who like collaborated with the French and Japanese imperialists or whatever.
But like a this extends to like the children of
these people and a lot of the children these people
weren't even alive when their parents were like you know,
like doing stuff that was bad. And the other thing
is that like the term bad class background this is

(28:05):
really loose. Like I I know people whose families were
declared like declared like black class backgrounds, who have black
blood and like you know, they're they weren't allowed to
hold in the government position. And the reason that this
happened to them was that her dad had made bird
feeders before the revolution and they considered that like petite bourgeois.
And it's like this is like this is like like
what like what what are you doing? Like you you

(28:26):
you reproduced like you've turned class into like a pseudo
race thing that's like her like you like inherit from
your parents, even though like their parents don't own property anymore.
Because it's it's really bizarre and and and what's what's
happening here is the kids from the red class backgrounds
are are are you know, they're they're the kids of
the new of the new Chinese elite, and they're just

(28:47):
like picking on attacking the kids who are like now
this this sort of like like my minority class and
so what it amounts to at the beginning of this
is a bunch of privileged, rich kids who are like
attacking a bunch of kids are being persecuted for stuff.
It's like not their fault at all. And you know,
part and the other, the other part of this, like
this is the part of the people. I think. Yeah,

(29:08):
it's like Mao is trying to like play power games
inside the party blah blah blah blah blah. But you know,
things get more and more chaotic, and you get you
get circutting his attacks on like CCP bureaucrats and cadres
and stuff, because Mao is trying to like Mao was
trying to solidify his place in the party and he's
like blah blah blah. There's other stuff that's happening. Um
but then it gets really interesting. Um. So, so the

(29:28):
starts in at six, right, and at the very beginning
of sixty seven, there's something there's something called the January Storm,
which is where a bunch of rebel workers just seize
control of Shanghai and like they run the party out,
they run the other they run I think they run
the army out too, And you know, and now like
they they control the city of Shanghai. And this is

(29:49):
like an oh funk moment from Mao because you know,
now he has to deal with this city that has
been taking over by its own working class. And I
found this this incredible line from Joe and Lai who's
having meeting with Mao and they're trying to figure out
what to do about the fact that like this, this, this,
like that Shanghai has been seized by by these workers
and I'm just gonna read this. When asked whether the

(30:12):
new leadership should be elected from the bottom up, Joe
and ly replied bluntly that quote anarchism is bound to
develop if we immediately implement direct elections of the Paris
Commune type. And I think this is like this is
this really incredible, like like the thing you can find right,
because it's like, okay, well, there's two things that can

(30:33):
happen here. One is either like, okay, you you you
you give these people democracy and the ability to vote, right,
and Joe and Lyon Matt look at this and you're like,
that would be anarchist if we can't do that. And
the second thing is you don't do that, and you
oppressed them and they take the second line, and you know, okay,
like it takes them a bit to get this ramped up, right,

(30:55):
It takes them a bit to get the sort of
kind of revolution thing they're doing to like stop all
of this rebel stuff that they've started to to get
it takes some about a year. But but by ninety eight,
the students and the workers who had like you know,
done done this sort of uprising stuff so are getting slaughtered.
Like's just master killed on an unimaginable scale. Uh. And

(31:18):
this is this is where everyone gets the Culture Revolution
completely wrong, because everyone the entire memory of the Culture
Revolution is from basically the first two years of it, right,
which is like all the stuff about like like you know,
like professors being marched out onto the street and dunce
caps and like students like humiliating the professors and like
like party officials being like marched around with like placards
on them, and like people like that's something like the

(31:40):
chaos of the revolution. Like that's that's stuff everyone remembers.
That's the first two years of this. There's still like
I mean, you can are like there's there's there's the
short the short the quote unquote short culture revolution, which
is like the high point of the activity goes from
nineteen nineteen nineteen sixty nine, and then there's like a
longer one that goes to like the death of maud
If and how you want to count it. But almost

(32:03):
all of the actual violence in this period happens in
this in in in the third phase, which is the
so the first phase of the Didicial uprising, and then
the rebel groups start fighting each other. But then phase
three is when the state like cracks down on like
start starts like starts trying to crush this like rebel
student factions. And I'm going to read from Walder who

(32:25):
did ah, so is this guy n in Walder who
who went to he did a bunch of work in
the Chinese archives, which he like went and like found
the death tolls. And I'm gonna read like he like
he goes he'll s a bunch of archives. He goes
to a bunch of state archives, and he like like
tracks down the death certificates and tracks down like who
died where? And this this is what he wrote about it.

(32:45):
More than three four of all documented deaths and local
animals are due to the actions of authorities in the
in this third phase and then more than of those
persecuted for alleged political crimes. So what are he's saying
here is that seventy five percent of all of the
deaths the entire Culture Revolution weren't done by like the

(33:06):
revolution parts. They were done by the state murdering the
workers faction, the rebel factions. And not only that, nine
of of the actual political persecution was done by the
states and not by the rebels. And when when when
when you actually look at what this means, Like this
means everything everything anyone ever talks about the Culture Revolution
is completely wrong. It wasn't like the thing had happened

(33:28):
to the Culture Revolution. Wasn't that sort of student radicalism
got out of control and they started killing everyone that
preaces all this violence. The thing that actually happens is
that there's a student like uprising, right, But what happens
is that the sort of conservative and state factions just
slaughter them. And I Walt Walter estimates that the total
number of people dead, it's somewhere between one point one

(33:49):
and one point six million people, and again, like seventy
five percent, and I think it's actually slightly higher than that,
like percent of the people who were killed in this
are killed by the state, and you know this, this
has an enormous effect on I mean just everything that
happens in Chinese and Chinese society from then on, because,
on the one hand, the popular memory of the Cultural

(34:12):
Revolution persists as this thing that was like, this is
what happens if you like if people outside the party
and like students in radicals like start like making trouble.
Is that you get all these people dead. But then
you know, you have the people inside the state who
like know how many people they had to kill in
order to hold onto power, right, they kill they kill
probably more people than like the you know, there's there's

(34:32):
there's there's a very famous massacre of like communists or
like suspected communist Indonesia that doesn't get called a genocide
because it was technically on political lines, but like it
was one of the worst Eni coommunist massacres in history,
and they killed more people from that during this period,
and that like that level of violence and the fact
that the people running the state understand what they had

(34:53):
to do, it means you get you get an elite
that's incredibly paranoid about like anything that like smells like
organizing happen outside the party. And the other thing happens
is that like the most radical students and workers of
this period just get that they're all dead right. They
killed they killed like they they killed like a million
people the you know, for for for for for every

(35:16):
one person who got killed, there's about nineteen people who
were like persecuted in a lot of way. And that's
like a lot of people are tortured. A lot of
these people are like sent to prisons. They're like like
really horrible stuff happens to people. And this process keeps
going like through through the seven Like there there's a
huge spike in like state killings nineteen seventy, and by

(35:37):
by the end of the seventies, like anything that's sort
of like could have cohered into into like a movement
that like wants democraty in the workplace, for example, it's
just gone. Because all of all of the radicals, like
and anyone, anyone who wanted anyone who wanted democraty in factory,
any the people who were like even sort of like
just like sort of rebellious, like these people have all

(35:57):
been killed. And the consequence of this is that throughout
the through the eighties, you get the politics that's driven
by this like sort of like intellectual liberal like liberal
democratic politics that ignores completely ignores work class entirely. And
you know, and these these people start to take power,
and you get danjel Paying. Well, I think I think

(36:20):
it's it's like right before it takes power. But danjel
Ping wise up implementing the one child policy, which is
this like incredibly draconian and really successful attempts just like
re established the states like patriarchal control over the household
and strips like hundreds of millions of women from like
like of of of autonomy over their own bodies, and
you know, and and and and and it really looks

(36:42):
like through through the through through through like the late
seventies and the eighties, it looks like like the Chinese
ruling classes succeeded, right like they finally destroyed that they
finally destroyed like any opposition to them. But then you know,
things get very weird, which is that itemen happens and

(37:03):
you know by by by night nine, like the whole
like like as as a rule, like in general everywhere
the sort of classical workers neve meant that was like
at demanding democracy the factory. Like they're basically done, and
so they're they're unable to sort of do their own
revolutions now. The only thing they can do is sort
of like latch onto other stuff. But the problem that
the party has is that so they've had a lot

(37:26):
of measures in place to try to make sure that
you never got these kind of movements in China, and
they kind of worked. But when it went through the nighties,
like China starts implementing a market economy, right, they start,
they started they started like cutting this the welfare state.
They start like destroying the sort of like limited control
that works has had in the factories, and they kind
of like unknowingly reproduced the conditions that have been producing

(37:48):
these revolutions in every other country. And you know, as
this massive inflation wave hits, they turned China into this
powdern keg and this you know, and this combined with
so like the liberal democratic students moving gets you this
really interesting and weird ideology that these workers happen. I'm

(38:10):
going to read it from from an interview with with
with one of the workers who was a gentleman. Why
do a lot of workers agree with democracy and freedom
in the workshops, does what the workers say count or
what leader says? We later talked about it. In the
factory the dictatorship. Sorry, in the factory, the director is

(38:30):
a dictator. What one man says goes. If you view
the state through the factory, it's about the same one
man rule. Our objective is not very high. We just
want workers to have their own independent organizations in work units.
It's personal rule. For example, if I want to change jobs,
the bus company foreman won't let me go. I ought
to go home at five at five pm, but he

(38:52):
tells me to work overtime for two hours. And if
I don't cut my bonus, this is a personal rule.
A factory should have a system. If a worker wants
to change jobs, they ought to have a system of
rules to decide how to do it. Also, these rules
should be decided upon by everyone and then afterwards anyone
who violates it will be punished according to the rules.
This is rule by law. Now, we don't have this
kind of legal system. And okay, that's a really like

(39:18):
I don't know, I think it's a really interesting sort
of like fusion of a whole bunch of stuff. Right,
because on the one hand, like the sort of like
ruling discourse that's happening that the things that students are
talking about is like that we need the democracy, read
the rule of law. And but you know, the workers
in these factories are looking at are looking at like
the situation they're facing, and they're like, ha, we don't

(39:40):
have a democracy like here either, right, And so you
get this, you get what's a really conservative framing of
the sort of a very sort of very classical like
critique of woman ruling the factory that has been happening
for like, you know, like a hundred years. But what's
just thinking about this is that like any actual attempt
to like do this right get gets you to workers control,

(40:02):
like democratic workers control in the factory. And as Walder
who wald Walder also wrote another like he's a guy
who went and interviewed a bunch of the people who
have been of workers who have been involved with this,
and as as they point out like this unlike really

(40:24):
like any other time in Chinese history, like the the
people who are part of like the Beijing Autonomous Workers
Autonomous Federation are you know, they don't they don't have
an intellectual class like this. These are these are just
a bunch of workers and they have very little connection
like they don't they they have very little like political
connections right like beforehand, like to to the laberal circles

(40:45):
are just sort of hearing what they're reading and this
is this means like what you have here is like
it's not like an intellectra like this is. This is
just a bunch of workers and for you know, for
for for like one final time, their instinct when when
the revolution sort of like starts, is the demand democracy
in the factory. And this demand, like above all others,
is completely politically unacceptable. And you know, and when when

(41:08):
the army markers on Beijing, it's it's these workers that
they wipe out, and they wipe them out so thoroughly
that the fact that this is what these people were
fighting for is it's it's scrubbed. For the record of
the DCP, it's scrubbed like the protomocracy move it doesn't
remember it, even though their entire thing is memory. And yeah,

(41:29):
and this this ensures that the meeting of these actual events,
what the people were fighting for, what they were trying
to do, has been almost completely lost. And I think
at this point we can finally ask what what what
actually was tianeman Um And in some sense in the
in the Chinese context itself, it's a transition between two

(41:51):
different Chinese working classes. These protests are sort of like
this is the last like political sort of like mobilization
of like the of the old Chinese working class, which
is in these people who had been in the cities,
who had been like they had been the beneficiaries of
this old sort of like socialist period welfare state, and
these people in in the streech around Chaneam and they

(42:14):
mount the last attack of the of the classical workers stutments.
And when they lose, this entire class like this, this
this entire urban working class that had been around since
like the twenties, that have been sort of the driver
of Chinese radical politics, that had been like that have
been have been fighting and striking for like seventy eighty years.

(42:37):
They they're they're gone. They're completely destroyed. And over the
course of the economical structure in the nineties there they
ceased to exist as a class, and they're replaced by
a new Chinese working class, which is drawn from sort
of these rural and sort of semi urban under classes
of the old social system who are like draggings, who
are dragging the cities from from their villages, from their towns,

(43:00):
and who now fill actually, well, I don't I don't
know what the numbers are today because it's weird because
of COVID, But like there were two and seventy seven
billion of these people of this enormous market worker like
force who formed the backbone of like the entire Chinese
working class. And these people who they have rural house

(43:22):
and registrations, and this means that they don't get any
of the benefits, like the sort of like welfare benefits
that you would get from living in a city. And
this means that they're you know, the they they constitute
like an entirely new class of of workers. And instead
of you know, like whatever sort of privileges had had
been like carved out by the old working class, this

(43:45):
one gets nothing. And the other thing that they get
is this entire raft to sort of capitalist ideology that's
based into like every aspect of their workplace culture. This
this is massive attempt in China to get people to
buy homes and you know, the like when where the
old working class could at least like positive the factory
is like a place where you could have democracy, where
like life could be improved by like different controlled factories.

(44:08):
Like this new working class like the thing that they
want the most is to leave the factory and become
a business owner. And you know, like this this probably
sounds familiar to like us, right, Like this is this
is the old joke about like about the about the
American working class, which is that everyone sees themselves as
temporarily temporarily embarrassed millionaires and like yeah, you know, in
modern China, it's like, yeah, okay, it's like people consider

(44:29):
themselves to be like temporarily embarrassed small business owners. And
this stuff. This, this this ideological self conception of like
I'm going to work in the factory, that I'm gonna
become a small business owner is completely inimical to the
formation of like the classical or reservement. And there hasn't
been that kind of formation in China sense. And this

(44:52):
this is not really unique thing, right that the death
of that workers movement has seen a sort of like
complete and total collapse of the demand for like democrat
self management like everywhere across the entire world. And you know,
incredibly stubborn lee, like the working class like refuses to
sort of cohare itself in the factory. And so in

(45:13):
this sense, China is really just relate to the game.
They they they got slightly earlier, they got, they got
slightly later to the point that we're at now. You
said there was gonna be a happier ending. They had.

(45:35):
The happy ending was last episode. This episode is this
episode ending is really depressing. Well, I mean, okay, they're they're, they're, they're,
they're Okay, there's a slightly less depressing note kind of Okay.
The thing that's less depressing here is that for my
entire literally my entire lifetime has been the US lurching
from one economic leaps so another, and the world, the world,
like the international economic system. Like I think I was

(45:58):
born in like the middle of like the dot com collapse,
and then I got eight and then like there's been
a bunch of economic collapses in the last like three years,
and you know, the whole system has like learned from
crisis to crisis to crisis. And that means that there's

(46:19):
been an incredible, just like a rapidly increasing number of
revolutions everywhere. Even though the sort of like darker gore
of the factory, like as ceased to be this thing
that like creates the working like the identity of the
working class. And this means that you know, okay, so
in order to have some kind of mass movement, you
need some kind of collective identity to to mobilize around.

(46:40):
And you know, if if you can't make this in
the factory, the place where it's going to be made
instead is the street. And this means in the last
you know, like twenty yes years, like with with without
the sort of positive identity in the workplace to to
to to hear itself around, workers are really only a
sort of mobilize on a mass basis, like indirect opposition

(47:04):
to a threat that can that can that can confront
like everyone at the same time. And this is the
only thing that can do this is really the state.
And you know, the state has the ability to to
increase the price that basic commodities and slash wellfare benefits,
and that becomes the only available enemy. And so yeah,
if if you look at what revolutions have been in
the last twenty years, it's a constant fight against the police,
because fighting in the police is the only thing that

(47:25):
can that can allow you to create a new social identity,
like a sort of sort of collective identification, and you know,
and so this means it collected like modern revolts, like
everything we've seen over the last like four years. The
form that it takes is mass street movements and you know,
continuous confrontation with the police. And you get to literally
see this with with occupy, right. Occupied was originally like

(47:48):
the like the slogan occupy was about the Argentina in
factory occupations in two one. But then you know that stops,
like that's the end, like just one like that that
that's that's the end of the whole cycle. There's there's
no more factory occupations actually stitude. You get one in
Bosnia has A Govia, which is funny because it's like
they occupy a bunch of factories, but like they don't

(48:09):
know what to do with them, and so you get
just like a regular like occupy like in like into
the sort of like square occupation you'd get in like
New York or whatever, where everyone's sort of like sitting
in a circle talking about stuff, but it's happening in
a factory. But but they're not like trying to run production.
They're not trying to do any of that stuff. They're
just sort of like they're in the factory. Isn't is

(48:29):
no longer this sort of like space of like creation
and possibility that could be turned into something new. It's
just like a place where you go that's like indistinguishable
from like a square. And you know, the last ten
years it's like people people. Originally it was like it
doesn't let right, so everyone's everyone's occupying squares. But you know,
by by Bouz fourteen, people have figured out that you can't,

(48:50):
like it's it's almost impossible to hold a square if
the police attempt to run you out. And so this
gets your place with running street flights with the police.
But this, you know, this places everyone who's trying to
do this in this incredibly dangerous bind because you know,
the like the old workers councils were able to bring
down states, like largely they got crushed by outside militaries,

(49:12):
but they are able to bring down states because you know,
there is an enormous amount of power in being able
to control production. But the problem is that like you know,
if you're in a square, right, like you don't have
the ability to do that and with without the sort
of without the factory occupations alongside them. There have been
a lot of general strikes in the last four years.
There's want of peruse one in France, there's someone in

(49:32):
Hong Kong and Soudan, and every single one of them
has been crushed. But you know, but but this is
a real problem, right because the current labor conditions aren't
going to produce another way of factory occupations, and so
the way forward for anyone who, like you know, wants
to have a democracy in the workplace is completely unclear.
And I think, I think that's the actual legacy of

(49:55):
Tiana Man. The workers who are assembled outside Tianamen Square
had already left their factories, and you know, for for
for all that they spoke the language of the old
workers movements, right, they spoke a democracy in the factory
and one man rule. They stood and fought and died
like we do in the streets. There's this bridge between
sort of the classical workers movements and us, and you know,

(50:19):
they face the same revolutionary crisis that we face. The
crisis of Popular and Palestine, Columbia, on Iran and Myanmar,
or Hong Kong, of this, this crisis of victory that's
just beyond the horizon, can't be grasped. You know, I
don't think the people at Cenomen have any answers to
give us, Like, I don't think they do. I think
they ran, They ran headlong into the crisis that we
ran into, and they all died. Yeah. I think expecting

(50:41):
answers from the dead is demanding too much of those
who before and after us died fighting for liberation. And
all we can really do now is find our own
way when, with the names of the dead in our lips,
build the world they died fighting for. It could Happen

(51:03):
Here as a production of cool Zone Media and more
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