WEBVTT - Tiananmen Remastered, Part 2 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:07.440 Call Zone Media. Welcome toek it happened here. I'm your host, 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:11.680 Miya Wong. When we last left the story of Tieneman one, 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:17.120 Vladimir Ilios Lenin had, in theory, crushed the last remnants 0:00:17.480 --> 0:00:20.680 of the faction of the worker's movement that actually wanted 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:25.520 democracy to extend into the factories. Unfortunately for the Leninists, 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:28.880 no matter how many workers they killed, the demand for 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:33.880 democracy in the factory simply refused to die for over 0:00:33.920 --> 0:00:38.000 one hundred years. The development of the mass factory system 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:43.240 and the logistical infrastructure necessary to support it, perhaps most importantly, 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.800 coal mines and the railroads used to transport that coal, 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.640 generated an especially militant working class that saw democratic control 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:56.960 over the workplace as a fundamental aspect of its liberation. Ideologically, 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.360 as the Journal and Notes pointed out, this man infested 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.000 in a series of interlocking beliefs about the nature of 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.480 the working class and class society, all of which were 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.200 necessary for the instinctive formation of workers councils to manifest 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:15.520 themselves in moments of revolutionary crisis. In the midst of 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:19.679 the rapid technological expansions of the Second and Third Industrial revolutions, 0:01:20.360 --> 0:01:23.039 workers came to see themselves as the creators of the 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:26.520 new world. This produced the second belief that drove the 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.600 classical workers movement. The producers of this new world should 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.360 also be its inheritors. Thus, the goal of the worker's 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.600 movement was to take control of production in itself and 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:41.679 manage it for the common benefit of workers themselves. These 0:01:41.720 --> 0:01:45.039 two beliefs in and of themselves were not unique to 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.760 the democratic wing of the workers movement. They broadly comprised 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:52.560 the ideology of the movement as a whole, and by 0:01:52.560 --> 0:01:56.640 this point the workers movement was extremely broad, stretching from 0:01:56.720 --> 0:02:00.000 social democratic trade unionists the intellectual heads of the laf 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:04.760 Leninist vanguard parties. What made the democratic wing unique was 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:08.840 its concern with the fundamental alienation of factory life, with 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.840 the condition of being reduced to an object by bosses 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:16.359 who simply used workers as human tools. For the Leninists 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:20.840 and social Democrats, alienation was simply a product of ownership 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:25.000 or distribution. The liberation of the working class would be 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:29.160 found in its productive capacity, not in its innate humanity 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:33.200 and creativity. Before the democratic wing of the Workers movement, 0:02:33.800 --> 0:02:37.680 this solved nothing as long as the fundamental reduction from 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.639 human to object that characterized one man rule in the 0:02:40.680 --> 0:02:44.880 factory persisted. Changes in owners of structure and health benefits 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.880 missed the entire point that degradation could only be solved 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.440 by returning agency and autonomy to the working class, by 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.320 giving it the class itself control over the production process 0:02:58.160 --> 0:03:02.840 that for so long had controlled them. In nineteen thirty six, 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:06.079 Spanish workers decided to take matters into their own hands 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:11.119 and seized control over their workplace's end mass. The Spanish Revolution, 0:03:11.400 --> 0:03:14.280 as it later became known, would become the largest and 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:18.360 most extensive experiment in democratic worker self management before or since. 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.760 Everything from public utilities to bakeries, to hospitals to shoe 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:27.119 factories fell under the control of the direct democratic unions, 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.480 and once their former bosses had been chased from the premises, 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.400 the workers set about transforming the entirety of Spanish society 0:03:36.000 --> 0:03:40.880 along democratic lines, pulling their resources collectively and allocating them 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:45.880 democratically for the benefits of everyone. For a brief moment, 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:50.280 the triumphant experiments in democratic self management delivered on its promises. 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.840 Output increased dramatically, social services were expanded, and the workers 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:58.720 of Spain, by their own self organization developed a universal 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.360 health care system that radically expanded service into rural areas 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:06.960 where KERR was previously inaccessible. But the revolution had begun 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.880 amidst the Violet Civil War in Spain and under the 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.640 guise of an anti fascist alliance, Liberal socialist and stoutist 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:18.320 forces brutally stamped out any attempt at democratic self management 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.920 and returned the factories to their owners before losing the 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.600 war to the fascist armies of Francisco Franco. Undeterred by 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:31.479 the mounting casualty tolls of pro managerial massacres, revolutionary workers 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.279 formed workers' councils and mass factory assemblies once again in 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:38.440 Hungary in nineteen fifty six, and then again in Italy, 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:43.560 France and Czechoslovakia in nineteen sixty eight. Hungary in particular 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.080 is an interesting revolution because over the years it has 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.400 been subjected to so much of the same liberal mythologization 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:55.320 you get with gienemen, but this time even worse. The 0:04:55.400 --> 0:05:00.040 Hungarian Revolution is remembered as a liberal democratic revolution. We 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.440 talked to the actual people who did the revolution. They 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.080 were saying things like, and this is a direct quote 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:09.040 from a member of a Hungarian workers council quote, the 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:14.640 time when the boss decided our fate is over. In reality, 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:20.400 far from simply instituting liberal democratic democracy, Hungarian workers seized 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:24.320 control of their factories and workplaces, forward workers' councils, and 0:05:24.440 --> 0:05:28.240 overthrew the governments before Russian tanks slaughtered them. This was 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.320 not a liberal democratic revolution at all. Almost identical revolts 0:05:32.320 --> 0:05:34.960 broke out across the capitalist world as well, in Italy, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:39.520 in France and Chile, communes broke out and colonized Vietnam. 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:44.120 They spread everywhere, and to the dismay of capitalists and 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:48.400 communists alike. The development and implementation of the democratic solution 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.839 to alienation these revolts provided was largely instinctual, and it 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.760 often emerged in places without established workers' movements and their 0:05:57.800 --> 0:06:01.920 political education effects. Typical of such movements was the course 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:06.279 of the revolution in Algeria. The political education Algerian workers 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:10.479 had received was from the nationalist vanguardist National Liberation Front 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.440 f l EN, which had prosecuted the war against the 0:06:13.480 --> 0:06:18.200 French colonizers. The afalen's ideology emphasized the decisive role of 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:22.880 the state in national development. Upon taking power, however, Ahmed 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.760 ben Bella, Algeria's first president, discovered the question of the 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.320 economic structure of Algeria had already been answered for him. 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:33.680 Production would be managed by democratic workers councils built on 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.680 the properties seized by Algerian workers after the mass exodus 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.719 of French settlers who fled the country following independents left 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.080 much of their property uninhabited. Then Bella's administration took a 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:48.640 page out of Lenin's book and publicly supported the councils 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.120 while privately undermining them, But the whole dispute was made 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:55.800 irrelevance by a military coup two years later that dismantled 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.040 the councils completely and reimposed one man role in the factory. 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:02.960 Even by the late seventies, it was by no means 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:06.200 clear that one man rule in the factory would triumph 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.800 as a political system. Workers and students almost took Italy 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:13.720 in nineteen seventy seven, and the CNT, the anarchist union 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:16.840 that had led so much of the Spanish Revolution, reappeared 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:20.760 after the death of Franco. For a brief fleeting moment 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.920 in the late nineteen seventies, it really looked like they 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.960 were going to do it. The persistence of these revolts 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:32.120 in the face of pure military repression caused capitalist managery 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.400 elites to look for ways to dismantle the systemic structures 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.560 that produced the democratic revolts without giving up their power. 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:42.360 As author and friend of the show, Viciostre Wilde points out, 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:46.720 the instinctive embrace of democracy in the factory was only 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.760 possible so long as the factory remained a point of encounter, 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.320 a kind of dark agra that at once both exploited 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:58.480 workers and facilitated the interactions that allowed them to identify 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:01.920 with each other as a class and find and produce 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:06.720 collective meaning. Thus, the fundamental thrust of the attack against 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:10.160 democratic self management would take the form of an attack 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:12.480 on the shop floor as a site of collective identity 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.240 formation and as a space that could be seen in 0:08:16.360 --> 0:08:21.080 any way as liberatory. This assault took a number of forms, 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:26.200 most famously deindustrialization itself, as well as a spatial relocation 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:29.560 of factories from urban centers into the suburbs, where workers 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.720 could be isolated from each other and turned to homeowners 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.160 bought off with the combination of cheap credit and the 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.840 promise that the new homes would also function as assets. 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.959 The quote unquote democratization of finance replaced the democratization of 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:47.400 the factory as the capitalist class funneled union pensiants into 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:51.320 the stock market, thus tying remained of organized labour to 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:55.040 the fates of capitalism itself. Corporations began to turn the 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:59.439 workplace into an immense propaganda apparatus, replete with mass ideological 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:03.520 programming designed to promote identification with the corporation itself and 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:06.679 not the working class as a whole. Worst of all, 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.200 the mobility of capital and the immobility of workers combined 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.160 with the new logistics networks and technological advances in containerized 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.600 shipping to create a world where if workers ever began 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:21.480 to get the upper hand, capitalists could simply move elsewhere. 0:09:22.360 --> 0:09:25.160 As the total size of the industrial working class contracted, 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:29.840 capitalists increasingly took that option and left spitting vast populations 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.880 out of the traditional workforce entirely. These developments would eventually 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:36.719 destroy the classical workers movement, but in order for the 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.560 anti democratic counter revolution to succeed, it needed somewhere to 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:45.760 move their production to, somewhere with a large, exploitable labor supply. 0:09:46.679 --> 0:10:00.360 The capitalist class found that answer in China in the 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.120 wake of the CCP's victory in the Chinese Civil War 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:06.920 in nineteen forty nine. The Chinese factory system was extremely 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.720 different from the system that existed anywhere else in the world. 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:14.920 Chinese state owned firms virtually lacked the ability to fire workers. 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.000 People's entire social sphere was built around their work units, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:22.280 which provided everything from their healthcare to their retirement, to 0:10:22.360 --> 0:10:27.240 their food to often their entertainment. The CCP also eliminated 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.840 the piece rate system, a system in which people were 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:33.040 paid per unit they produced, which is, for example, how 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.199 the USSR worked. This meant that in order to get 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.240 people to work, bosses had very little leverage. They were 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.760 thus forced to allow a degree of participation in the 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:46.400 labor process and the ability to criticize bosses, because otherwise 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:49.160 it was virtually impossible to get anyone to do anything. 0:10:50.120 --> 0:10:53.080 Chinese bosses solved this problem through a combination of mass 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:57.440 ideological work and a parentalistic, semi democratic system for determining 0:10:57.480 --> 0:10:59.640 the heads of work. Teams that were out raked by 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.959 the party ensured that managers would at least be somewhat 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.120 popular till the process was strictly managed. Workers had the 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.640 ability to criticize the cadra to govern them and combine 0:11:10.640 --> 0:11:13.600 the work unit's system of folding home and social life 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.680 into the factory system. The product of this system was 0:11:16.679 --> 0:11:19.520 that because there was already a greater degree of workers 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:23.360 participation in Chinese factories than workers elsewhere, and because of 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:26.680 some of the structural elements of Maoism, demands for democracy 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:30.160 became delinked from the workplace, and it meant that the system, 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.800 at least in the cities worked sort of okay until 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:37.760 the Cultural Revolution. This means that it is time for 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:42.160 me to do the culture revolution. Rant everyone gets the 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:45.920 Cultural Revolution completely wrong. The initial targets of the Cultural 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:49.840 Revolution were kids with quote unquote black blood, the children 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:53.800 of people who had quote bad class backgrounds. These people 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:58.520 were heavily persecuted, and you can make arguments about what 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:02.000 you do with you know, a Shanghai oligarch collaborates with 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:07.400 the Japanese imperialists, But this extends to the children of 0:12:07.520 --> 0:12:11.200 people from quote unquote bad class backgrounds, and that term 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:14.959 is extremely loose. I know people whose families were declared 0:12:15.040 --> 0:12:18.080 of black class background, who had quote unquote black blood 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.640 and weren't allowed to hold government positions because her family 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.559 had made bird feeders before the revolution. It was as 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:28.720 a system absolutely nonsense. So what the early phases of 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:32.840 the Cultural Revolution amounted to was a bunch of privileged 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.079 kids from red class backgrounds in a new system attacking 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:38.680 a bunch of kids who were being persecuted for stuff 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:41.000 that was literally not their fault at all. They had 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.080 no way to control who their parents were now. The 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:47.120 initial stages of the Cultural Revolution were largely driven by 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.280 Mao attempting to play power games inside the party, But 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.640 as things became more and more chaotic and the attacks 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:57.480 on CCP, bear Gratz and Caudra escalated, it spiraled nearly 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.199 out of Mao's control entirely and produced what's called January Storm, 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.400 where rebel workers seized control of Shanghai and drove out 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:08.319 the CCP. And this caused what I would describe as 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:12.880 a oh fuck moment for Mao, because now, despite all 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:17.200 his rhetoric about bombarding the headquarters, he had to actually 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.920 deal with a worker controlled city. And I found this 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.920 incredible line from Joe and Lai in a meeting with 0:13:24.040 --> 0:13:26.600 Mao where they were attempting to figure out what to 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:31.160 do with, you know, this New Revolutionary Shanghai quote when 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:33.440 asked whether the New leadership should be elected from the 0:13:33.440 --> 0:13:37.280 bottom up. Joe and Lai bluntly replied that quote, anarchism 0:13:37.320 --> 0:13:40.120 is bound to develop if we immediately implement direct election 0:13:40.200 --> 0:13:44.400 of the Paris commune style. And this was obviously a 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.960 problem for Mao because there was no way for the 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.800 party to maintain its long term control if you know, 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.640 you actually implemented the direct elections in the style of 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:59.720 the Paris commun and so instead we saw a full 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:04.400 on revolution. By about nineteen sixty eight, rebel workers and 0:14:04.440 --> 0:14:08.240 students were getting slaughtered everywhere. The initial uprisings, the stuff 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.599 that everyone remembers with the dunce caps and the placards, 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:14.959 was staggeringly by far the least violent part of the 0:14:15.000 --> 0:14:19.480 Culture Revolution. Here's from Walder, an academic who spent a 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.520 significant amount of time studying the actual death records city 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.520 by city and province by province in the Chinese archives. Quote, 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.040 more than three fourths of all documented deaths in local 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:32.480 annals are due to the actions of authorities in this 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.560 third phase, in more than ninety percent of those persecuted 0:14:36.560 --> 0:14:41.320 for alleged political crimes. This third phase nineteen sixty eight onward, 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.960 is where most of the people in the cultural revolution 0:14:44.040 --> 0:14:48.360 gets killed, and this is the opposite of the way 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:51.560 that the culture revolution is understood. Most of the killing 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.640 wasn't the product of student radicalism gone out of control. 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.360 It was the state slaughtering its way to the various 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.200 rebel factions that did most of the killing and the 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:05.520 political persecution. And this has enormous effects on subsequent Chinese history. 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.400 It creates a ruling class that's incredibly paranoid about anything 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.640 that even smells like organizing happening outside the party, and 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.440 the most radical students and workers were simply butchered by 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.160 the state, and by the late nineteen seventies, radical politics 0:15:19.200 --> 0:15:22.120 in China that could have produced anything even remotely like 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:25.600 democratic control of the workplace had collapsed almost entirely in 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:29.480 the face of state repression. In their wake, politics moved 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.560 towards more intellectual driven liberal democratic politics that broadly ignored 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.960 the working class entirely, as dangzhelping unleashed the horrific one 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:42.160 Child policy, an in draconian and ultimately successful attempts to 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.400 re establish the state's patriarchal control over the household and 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.040 strip hundreds of millions of women of even the limited 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:51.520 autonomy they had clawed out of the Cultural Revolution, but 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.960 the beginning of marketization, the gradual dismantling of the socialist 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.080 welfare state, and a wave of inflation produced a series 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:01.080 of economic changes that turned Chinese stas society into a 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:15.280 powder keg. By nineteen eighty nine, the classical workers movement 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:18.600 globally was on its last legs. Unable to spark its 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.640 own uprisings, it latched onto a series of other social 0:16:21.680 --> 0:16:26.000 and political movements, most notably pro democracy movement in China. 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.280 But democratic self management and its critique of one man 0:16:29.360 --> 0:16:31.960 rule in the factory was utterly alien to the pro 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:36.080 democracy movement, which meant that its developments by the workers 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.640 of Chiannemen was a spontaneous product of the application of 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:43.520 the principles of democracy to their own situation. This led 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:46.840 to formulations that would have been unfamiliar to previous incarnations 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.160 of the workers' movement. One worker interviewed by Walder said 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:52.960 this about democracy in the factory. Why do a lot 0:16:52.960 --> 0:16:56.160 of workers agree with democracy and freedom in the workshop? 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.440 Does what the workers say count or what the leader says? 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:03.000 We later talked about it. In the factory the director 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.680 is a dictator. What one man says goes. If you 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:09.080 view the state through the factory, it's about the same 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:13.560 one man rule. Our objective was not very high. We 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:17.119 just wanted workers to have their own independent organization in 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.920 work units. It's personal rule. For example, if I want 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:23.600 to change jobs, the bus company foreman won't let me go. 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:25.920 I ought to go home at five, but he tells 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:28.280 me to work overtime for two hours, and if I don't, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.960 he'll cut my bonuses. This is a personal rule. A 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:34.439 factory should have a system. If a worker wants to 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:36.480 change jobs, they ought to have a system of rules 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.160 and decided how to do it. Also, these rules should 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:42.040 be decided upon by everyone and then afterwards anyone who 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:45.000 violenced and we punished according to the rules. This is 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:47.480 rule by law. Now we don't have this kind of 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:52.760 legal system now. This is obviously an extremely conservative framing 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.440 of the classical critique of one man rule in the factory, 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:58.920 couched in the dominant political rhetoric of the rule of law. 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.520 Attempt to actually implement this system, that which workers controlled 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:05.679 the factories they work in, how long they work, and 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.040 what the bonus rate was democratically to an independent organization 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:13.080 could only end in democratic, self managed workplaces. As Walder 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.800 and jang If pointed out, the workers at the Beijing 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:20.280 Workers Autonomous Federation were uniformly uneducated. It had little or 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.200 no connection to any of the various liberal intellectual circles. 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.159 This was as pure workers movement as any in Chinese history, 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.720 and for one final time, the instinct of that working 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.800 class was to demand democracy in the factory. This demand, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:39.680 above all others, was politically unacceptable. When the army marched 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:42.960 on Beijing, it was the Chinese working class they wiped out. 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.240 Even the memory of the demand for democracy in the 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:48.520 factory would be scrubbed for the records that the CCP 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:52.119 and the pro democracy movements alike, thus ensuring the meaning 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:57.840 of the events would be lost. What then was Tianeman. 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:01.280 In some sense, it was a transition point between two 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.960 different Chinese working classes. The protests were the high water 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:09.639 mark of the political mobilization of the old industrial working class, who, 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:13.280 in the streets surrounding Tienemen, mounted the final attack of 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:16.760 the classical workers movement. Their defeat ended the old working 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:20.000 class as a political force, and they were annihilated altogether 0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:23.879 in the economic restructure of the nineteen nineties, which crushed 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.760 the last vestides of workers' autonomy in the factory and 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.240 destroyed what remained of the Chinese welfare state. They were 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:33.879 replaced by a new working class drawn from the rural 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.360 and semi urban under classes of the old socialist system, 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:39.800 who were dragged into the cities to fill the ranks 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.600 of the two hundred and seventy seven million migrant workers 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:47.280 that today comprised the background of China's working class. This 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:51.640 new working class, with rural household registration in no way 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:54.680 into the remaining state owned factories, would have none of 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:57.960 the benefits of the previous one. It would instead face 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:02.240 a full wrapt capitalist ideology she baked into every aspect 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:05.879 of workplace culture, and a massive attempt to encourage home ownership. 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:08.919 While the previous working class could at least posit a 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:12.800 democratic form of the factory to which life could be improved, 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:15.720 this new working class's greatest desire was to leave the 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:19.679 factory entirely and become a business owner. In this sense, 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:23.600 it considers itself to be a temporarily embarrassed batip bourgeoisie. 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:27.840 Such ideological selfconceptions are inimical to the formation of the 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.439 classical workers movement, and indeed the new Chinese working class 0:20:31.440 --> 0:20:34.200 has largely failed to find the collective identity in the workplace. 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:38.880 The situation is not unique. The death of the classical 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:42.280 workers movement has seen the collapse of their demands of 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.520 democratic self management everywhere in the face of a working 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:51.199 class it refuses to cohere itself in the factory. China 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.720 was just late to the game. The fact remains, however, 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.320 that the global economics system has lurned from crisis to 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:03.159 crisis the better part of my lifetime, setting off in 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.560 its wake an increasing number of revolutions, even as the 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:09.760 darker gore of the factory ceased to function as a 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:14.320 place to form identities for this new working class. If 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:16.760 a collective identity couldnot be forged in the factory, it 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.520 would be foraged in the street instead. Lacking a positive 0:21:20.520 --> 0:21:24.199 identity to cohere itself around, workers were only able to 0:21:24.200 --> 0:21:27.520 mobilize on a mass basis in direct opposition to a 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.960 force that threatens it. On a cross sectoral basis, The state, 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:35.040 with its ability to increase the price of basic commodities 0:21:35.040 --> 0:21:38.840 and slash welfare benefits, became the only available enemy, and 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:41.479 the constant fights against the police became the sole basis 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:45.879 for new collective identity formation. Contemporary revolts have thus taken 0:21:45.920 --> 0:21:49.639 the form of mass street movements and almost continuous confrontations 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:54.000 with the states. Factory occupations were replaced with square occupations, 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.760 and as the squares were revealed to be indefensible, they 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:01.399 too were replaced by running fights with the police. But 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:05.439 this placed the new revolutionaries in a dangerous bind without 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.280 the leverage against the state the classical workers movement's control 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.760 over the workplace, provided they lacked the ability to bring 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:15.360 down a government firmly committed to fighting it out. Even 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.359 the attempts over the last five or six years to 0:22:18.359 --> 0:22:21.560 carry out general strikes in Peru, in France, Hong Kong, 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.440 and Sudan were, as Melo Testa predicted in the early twenties, 0:22:25.880 --> 0:22:30.280 easily defeated without the accompanying factory occupations. But with current 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:34.240 labor conditions exceedingly unlikely to produce another wave of factory occupations, 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.399 the way forward for any political movement that seeks to 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:43.000 reintroduce democracy into the economic sphere is unclear. Perhaps that 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.640 is the greatest legacy of Tianemen. The workers who assembled 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:50.320 outside Tianeman Square had already abandoned their factories. For all 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.000 that they spoke the language of the old workers movement, 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:57.239 they stood and fought and died like we do in 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.040 the streets. They were the bridge between the world, the 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.200 world of the workers movements, and the world we live 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:06.040 in today, and thus face the same revolutionary crisis we 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:10.960 face today, the crisis of Papua and Palestine, of Columbia 0:23:10.960 --> 0:23:14.480 and Iran, of me and Maar in Hong Kong, of 0:23:14.600 --> 0:23:19.560 victory just beyond the horizon that nevertheless cannot yet be grasped. 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:23.720 The workers of Tieneman I, suspect have no answers to 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:26.600 give us now, but expecting answers from the dead is 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:30.440 demanding too much of those past and present who died 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.280 fighting for liberation. All we can do now is find 0:23:34.320 --> 0:23:37.040 our own way, and, with the names of the dead 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.560 on our lips, build the world they died fighting for. 0:23:45.840 --> 0:23:48.320 It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:51.560 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:55.240 Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 0:23:55.280 --> 0:23:59.040 Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts can now 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:01.280 find sources for It to Happen here listed directly in 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:03.520 episode descriptions, Thanks for listening,