Speaker 1: Welcome to pick it up and here a podcast about
Speaker 1: something that did happen that sucked enormously. Um. I'm Christopher
Speaker 1: Wall I'm the host. Also with me is Garrison and Sophie. Hello.
Speaker 1: We just in the morning, just really starting off positive there.
Speaker 1: It's look, it's it's this episode in the next episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess this episode kind of ends in
Speaker 1: a high note. But that's great to hear. I'm so happy.
Speaker 1: I totally believe you. It kind of does, all right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sharene is also here. Hello, Hi, Sorry my fault, keep going,
Speaker 1: no worries. So this is this is the thirty third
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Caamon Square massacre. UM. Tomorrow's episode. I
Speaker 1: think we'll actually be going out on I guess the
Speaker 1: day that it started kind of starts like the it
Speaker 1: of like June three. Um, and okay, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: you choose, Like I don't know, like received like cultural
Speaker 1: memory of Channaman is because I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I got a kind of weird one, like being from
Speaker 1: a Chinese family, but as a white Canadian, I have
Speaker 1: zero amount of my knowledge about the tam Tannaman Square massacre.
Speaker 1: Not really about Tanneman. Uh, it's just Yeah, that is
Speaker 1: something I never never have really learned about. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know that it happened in That's that's the American lesson
Speaker 1: we got on the history of that massacre, that it
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen really mediocre. Yeah, Okay, Well today and
Speaker 1: tomorrow we're gonna we're gonna go, well, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: I think less about what happens there specifically and more
Speaker 1: about the sort of broader history that's in. But I
Speaker 1: guess let's start out so in sometimes there's there's really
Speaker 1: three tenements. Um, there's there's the student protests that's inside
Speaker 1: Tanement Square itself. There's this part of Beijing like around
Speaker 1: the squares, like a bunch of blocks are taken over
Speaker 1: by workers. And then there's a bunch of protests in
Speaker 1: other cities. And unfortunately, we're not gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: the Protestant the other cities because like basically nothing is
Speaker 1: known about them other than that like they happened, but
Speaker 1: the people who would know aren't talking so for some
Speaker 1: somewhat obvious reasons. Um, yeah, and the students themselves, I
Speaker 1: think like the normal version of tianement is like these
Speaker 1: there's the students and they're like protomocracy protesters, right, but
Speaker 1: they're way weirder than that. There's there's like this weird
Speaker 1: ideological grab bag thing going on. Um, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: basically what they're piste off about is that this thing
Speaker 1: is called the reform and opening, like isn't going fast
Speaker 1: enough and we should talk about what that sort of
Speaker 1: is so perform and opening is. It's this period in
Speaker 1: China and sort of the eighties and songs of the nineties. Um.
Speaker 1: And on the one hand, you have these sort of
Speaker 1: steps to like ease restrictions on speech and like rehability
Speaker 1: to intellectuals and like allow for broader public discourse. But
Speaker 1: the other half of it is that like they're they're
Speaker 1: being they're basically they're bringing markets back in China, right,
Speaker 1: And this this is a ship show in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. If you want to hear about like the
Speaker 1: CCP reinventing debt p and age in about five years, Um,
Speaker 1: go listen to my Baschard's episode and the poison Milk scandal.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a trip. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have you know, so you have kind of like
Speaker 1: opening up, right, you have just more discourse. You're they're
Speaker 1: not pursue intellectuals again, sort of that there, they're they're
Speaker 1: they're persecuting the intellectuals that they had persecuted. Um. But
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you get this absolutely draconian sort
Speaker 1: of like a set of crackdowns in the social sphere.
Speaker 1: You have the one child policy, you have this like
Speaker 1: really powerful tightening of one man rule in the factory,
Speaker 1: and you have the sort of the destruction of these
Speaker 1: for what we'll get into this more later, but like
Speaker 1: the the sort of limited decision making capacity that workers
Speaker 1: have had in the factories, um, just this sort of dismantled.
Speaker 1: And so you see these sort of gaps beginning to
Speaker 1: form here, right Like, on the one hand, you have
Speaker 1: these students who want market reforms to go faster, and
Speaker 1: they want more freedom of speech, They like kind of
Speaker 1: want democracy, but like mostly what they want is to
Speaker 1: be in charge of the party so they can crush
Speaker 1: the sort of like bureaucracy they see as holding market
Speaker 1: reforms back. And it's worth noting that like a lot
Speaker 1: of these students are involved in what becomes known as
Speaker 1: neo authoritarianism, which is the sort of ideology that holds
Speaker 1: that like the strong central party should take full control
Speaker 1: of society and destroying the factions in the bureaucracy and
Speaker 1: so you know, and that that's how you can lead
Speaker 1: to element and this stuff like that stuff like ne
Speaker 1: authoritarianism survives the protests and goes on to become like
Speaker 1: a pretty major faction in the CCP itself, and then
Speaker 1: I us in two thousand's and you know, this is
Speaker 1: this is where things just get weird, right, Um, the
Speaker 1: student movement itself is very hierarchical, and it gets to
Speaker 1: the point where like but by by by the end
Speaker 1: of the student movement, there these the student leaders are
Speaker 1: like kidnapping each other over like who has control of
Speaker 1: the microphones, and like the stages in the square it is.
Speaker 1: It is extremely bizarre. And you know, and in terms
Speaker 1: of like the protests actually like if the what their
Speaker 1: torches are trying to do is you're trying to influence
Speaker 1: this factional fight inside the CCP over like the speed
Speaker 1: at which reformers are going to go, and this it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It's like stunningly ineffectual. The guy they're trying
Speaker 1: to defend like winds up getting outed and put in
Speaker 1: her house to rest of the rest of his life
Speaker 1: if so. Okay, so those are the student protesters. But
Speaker 1: the part and that that the student protesters are the
Speaker 1: part of this that like everyone knows, partly because some
Speaker 1: of those people escaped to Hong Kong and you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're very influential sort of shaping the memory there.
Speaker 1: But there's also the workers that I mentioned earlier, and
Speaker 1: the students basically hate the workers, um for for for
Speaker 1: most of the time this protest is going on, and
Speaker 1: this is the this is months, right, they literally will
Speaker 1: they will not let any of the workers go into
Speaker 1: the into tenement square like that they have. They have
Speaker 1: this whole system and like in order to get into
Speaker 1: like increasing like like closer to the center of the square,
Speaker 1: you have to be a student, and then you need
Speaker 1: to get to the center of the squere you have
Speaker 1: to be like a member of the leadership. It's very weird,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like one of the things that
Speaker 1: workers are trying to do is they want to carry
Speaker 1: out a general strike, and the students are like, no,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, do not do a general strike because largely
Speaker 1: because okay, so if these people start doing a general strike,
Speaker 1: like that's not something that's not under our control. And
Speaker 1: you know, okay, So this raises the question like if
Speaker 1: the relate between the students who are at tenement and
Speaker 1: the workers at chenemen are this bad, like why are
Speaker 1: the workers even there? Um? And And there's a few
Speaker 1: answers to this question that the sort of the simplest
Speaker 1: and most immediate one is that like the workers are
Speaker 1: initially they come out because they're pissed. They see how
Speaker 1: badly like the cops in sort of like the party
Speaker 1: is is treating the students in the square, so they
Speaker 1: get mad. But but but there's there's other stuff going
Speaker 1: on to the late eighties is the ladies in China
Speaker 1: is sort of a mess economically that there's rampant inflation
Speaker 1: and the sort of rapid increase in prices is a
Speaker 1: threat to you know, the sort of like cheap supply grain,
Speaker 1: which is like the sort of main subsidy that if
Speaker 1: you're an urban worker that you get. And meanwhile, you know,
Speaker 1: you have marketization happening, so at the same time that
Speaker 1: every the prices are increasing for everyone and they can't
Speaker 1: get access the stuff that they need. You have just
Speaker 1: like CCP princelings like racing down the street and imputed
Speaker 1: sports cars and like these are like the only these
Speaker 1: are the only cars, right like people people I don't know,
Speaker 1: like like people are starting to get bicycles and mass
Speaker 1: sort of in this period. But then you know, I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, here's here's this like party boss guy
Speaker 1: who was a sports car. They're like spending years salaries
Speaker 1: like gambling at race tracks, and people just get piste off.
Speaker 1: So they they start organizing. And I'm going to read
Speaker 1: from a section of a piece by Rhans Jong about
Speaker 1: what what they were doing. Um during the struggle to
Speaker 1: obstruct the military, workers started to realize the power of
Speaker 1: their spontaneous organization and action. This was self liberation on
Speaker 1: an unprecedented level. A huge wave of self organization and
Speaker 1: suit the Beijing Works Autonomous Federations. Membership grew exponentially in
Speaker 1: other workers organizations both within and across workplaces mushrooms. The
Speaker 1: development of organizations led to a radicalization of action. Workers
Speaker 1: started organizing self armed quasi militias such as picket cores
Speaker 1: and Dared or Die brigades to monitor and broadcast the
Speaker 1: military's whereabouts. These quasi militias were also responsible for maintaining
Speaker 1: public order, so as not to provide any pretext for
Speaker 1: military intervention. In a sense, Beijing became a city was
Speaker 1: self managed by workers. It was reminiscent of petrograds self
Speaker 1: farm workers organized in the Soviets in the months between
Speaker 1: Russia's February and October revolutions. At the same time, Beijing
Speaker 1: workers built many more barricades and fortifications and on the
Speaker 1: street in many factories that organized strikes and slowdowns. A
Speaker 1: possible general strike was put on the table as well.
Speaker 1: Many workers started to build connections between factories prepare for
Speaker 1: a general strike. And yeah, like this is the part
Speaker 1: of it that like people don't talk about because it
Speaker 1: wasn't in the square. And I mean the other part,
Speaker 1: the other faction, like the fact that that's going on
Speaker 1: here is that like so the press Corps is like
Speaker 1: sitting in the square, and this is why Kianna ministers
Speaker 1: this sort is like this is massive spectacle, right because
Speaker 1: all of this, everything that's happening here inside the square
Speaker 1: was happening like in front of the entire Western Press
Speaker 1: Court and like people are like, you know, like people
Speaker 1: are just like pointing cameras at their window, right, and
Speaker 1: you know, but on the other hand, the people out
Speaker 1: side of the square, the workers outside of the square
Speaker 1: are the workers are getting more organized, and this is
Speaker 1: like this is absolutely unacceptable to the party, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: on on on the night of June three, the army
Speaker 1: just starts killing them. Um. They there have been a
Speaker 1: couple of attempts earlier to clear to to to clear
Speaker 1: the sort of fortifications, and it hadn't really worked. But
Speaker 1: this time, like they they're they're able to bring in
Speaker 1: builtering units that aren't from Beijing or like aren't from
Speaker 1: around the area, and they kill an enormous number of people.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, and and I think it's I think it's
Speaker 1: important to note that, like both in terms of the
Speaker 1: killings that happened immediately and the political persecution after that,
Speaker 1: it's it's mostly the workers bearing this. Especially in the
Speaker 1: initial massacre. Most of the killing happens as the armies
Speaker 1: like fighting its way into the square. And you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they kill people in the square too, but
Speaker 1: you know, and eventually they into the square, and this
Speaker 1: is where you get like tank man and like the
Speaker 1: sort of the famous accounts of the massacre. But like,
Speaker 1: but that blade is basically over right, because one of
Speaker 1: the other things has happened is that over the course
Speaker 1: of this protest, a lot of the students have left
Speaker 1: because they sort of they sort of gave up after
Speaker 1: the like factional conflict like stopped. But so so most
Speaker 1: of the people like who are there are are are
Speaker 1: on the outs, are like other workers on the outside
Speaker 1: of this trying to defend it. And when those people
Speaker 1: get killed and the art the army gets to build
Speaker 1: the square, it's it's the whole thing is already over.
Speaker 1: And you know, these protests get crushed and you know,
Speaker 1: but before the last bullet has been fired, everyone everyone
Speaker 1: left standing is trying to create their own narratives. But
Speaker 1: what just happened? Um, The most common one is that
Speaker 1: Chinaman is this like clash between democracy and authoritarianism, and like, okay,
Speaker 1: to some extent, that's not wrong, although I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned that there are a lot of neo
Speaker 1: authoritarian students there, but like, you know, okay, this is
Speaker 1: this is kind of a fair interpretation of what's going on.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of other protomocracy movements in this period,
Speaker 1: like the region, most famously there's tagwan So Korea. UM.
Speaker 1: But the actual question of what's happening here is is
Speaker 1: really a question of what kind of democracy there's You
Speaker 1: know that that these people are fighting for the students
Speaker 1: at Tianaments, you know, to the extent that their democratic
Speaker 1: principles are sincere and not a cover for a sort
Speaker 1: of like deeply authoritarian version of liberalism that's you know,
Speaker 1: demanded by like in the sort of new class of
Speaker 1: intellectual servercy market reforms. To the extent that they like,
Speaker 1: they actually believe in this right, they believe in a
Speaker 1: very narrow conception of political democracy. And you know this
Speaker 1: this democracy is sort of political democracy operates as the
Speaker 1: level of the state. Right, It's based on free citizens
Speaker 1: who are equal before the law, participating in elections. The
Speaker 1: chief representatives, you like, past laws and you know, oversee
Speaker 1: and manages state bureaucracy. But you know, this model of
Speaker 1: political democracy, which is this is the one that we
Speaker 1: live under, right, It really gets the workplace to a
Speaker 1: separate economic sphere into which democracy doesn't extend. The capitalist
Speaker 1: firm or its state owned equivalent remains the absolute dictatorship
Speaker 1: of capitalists and advantagial flunkeys, and even even the sort
Speaker 1: of progressive wings of the pro democracy movement in like
Speaker 1: Taiwan and South Korea, like maintain this private, this private didctatorships.
Speaker 1: You know, if if, if, if you're a work in
Speaker 1: one of these states, right, you get rights, you get
Speaker 1: you know, you get the ability to form unions, you
Speaker 1: get access to the welfare state, you get these sort
Speaker 1: of limited protections from the worst like physical and psychological
Speaker 1: abuses that your bosses can inflict. But no, no matter
Speaker 1: how progressive, the pro democracy movements actually are the legitimate
Speaker 1: Jesus sorry, the legitimacy of the dictatorship of the bosses,
Speaker 1: which was not up for dispute, you know, to to
Speaker 1: to to these sort of protmocracy movements, right, like democracy
Speaker 1: means a democra state and not a democratic workplace. And
Speaker 1: this is this is the huge divide between what's happening
Speaker 1: at Tianeman and what's happening like everywhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: The workers that Tianeman are the only people left in
Speaker 1: this entire sort of like run of protomocracy movements that disagree.
Speaker 1: They are standing against not only that, like every they're
Speaker 1: standing not only against their own governments, against a lot
Speaker 1: of the students who are who are also like at
Speaker 1: these protests. They are standing against literally the entire type
Speaker 1: of history itself, bye bye bye, you know, by applying
Speaker 1: the principles of protomocracy movements like their own concerns, right,
Speaker 1: which is skyrocketing inflation, mounting debts like rampant corruption to
Speaker 1: government officials like spy, rocketing and spiraling inequality and petty
Speaker 1: bureaucratic oppression. Beijing's working class had reinvented a old and
Speaker 1: now like largely forgotten tradition of democracy and the factory
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna I'm calling it democratic your self management
Speaker 1: because there's no good name for it, and they're all
Speaker 1: kind of clunky. Fair, I mean, this is based on
Speaker 1: who these people were at the time. That makes sense
Speaker 1: that all of their names for things were pretty clunky. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is that they don't name like like this.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the things about Okay. One
Speaker 1: of the real problems with studying chairman, right, is it like, okay,
Speaker 1: so we have really good accounts from the students, right,
Speaker 1: because some of the students flee and they're able to
Speaker 1: make it out. We have like jack shit basically from
Speaker 1: the workers. We have. But what we do have is
Speaker 1: we have some of the We have some of the
Speaker 1: documents they produced, and we have a lot of interviews
Speaker 1: that we're done with with people there, and they I
Speaker 1: don't know that they have very very idiosyncratic ways of
Speaker 1: expressing what they believe, and so you know, you'll get
Speaker 1: things where like Okay, they're like, okay, wake, we we
Speaker 1: believe in the rule of law, right, and then the
Speaker 1: next sentence will be like we we we have calculated
Speaker 1: the exact amount of surplus value that has been distracted
Speaker 1: from us according to marks. And it's like what, because Yeah,
Speaker 1: the thing that they're doing is like that they're they're
Speaker 1: they're synchronizing this new they're synchronizing sort of like a
Speaker 1: political tendency that's trying to address the sort of duel
Speaker 1: to kaderships are dealing with, right like, because they're they're
Speaker 1: dealing at the same time with like this political dictatorshi
Speaker 1: at the party has and also the fact that their
Speaker 1: bosses now like completely control everything that they do. And
Speaker 1: because of this, they you know, they they wind up
Speaker 1: being like the last or I guess technically second to
Speaker 1: last because Argentina happens, although that that's sort of convoluted
Speaker 1: method itself, but they're they're in the twentieth century, like
Speaker 1: they are the last people who are fighting for democracy
Speaker 1: in the factory. And this, like to a large extent,
Speaker 1: is what schandem is actually about. It's it's the culmination
Speaker 1: of a century and a half long war between the
Speaker 1: democratic wing of the classical workers jument and like every
Speaker 1: single other ideology that exists, and these guys over that
Speaker 1: century and a half long span, they're going to fight Communists,
Speaker 1: are going to fight capitalists, are going to fight liberals
Speaker 1: and fascists and monarchies and republics and social democracies and theocracies,
Speaker 1: and at Tieneman, they're gonna lose one more time. And
Speaker 1: that defeat, the fact that they lose here, and the
Speaker 1: fact that these people get slaughtered, the fact that like
Speaker 1: their crushed so effectively that no one even remembers what
Speaker 1: they were, don't even remembers they exist or like much
Speaker 1: less like what they were fighting for. This defeat is
Speaker 1: the origin of the modern world. That one man ruling
Speaker 1: the factory, like the the individual, single boss who has
Speaker 1: total control and power over you is in in its
Speaker 1: sort of thousand forms, is the author of the hell
Speaker 1: that is the twenty one century and when we come
Speaker 1: back from this commercial break, we are going to look
Speaker 1: at the international part of the struggle that Tianneman is
Speaker 1: sort of like the conclusion of. So here's some ads
Speaker 1: maybe the job working at their distribution center, heying gig,
Speaker 1: and we're back to look at y You two also
Speaker 1: must live in the the the absolutely one man dictatorship
Speaker 1: in the factory. So it's it's not not not not
Speaker 1: not not as much one man. It's the one algorithm
Speaker 1: you have to you have to listen to what your
Speaker 1: iPad tells you when you're walking through the Amazon distribution center.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, they have. It is funny because it's
Speaker 1: like that they they've somehow made a worse version of
Speaker 1: it. It It was like, okay, yeah, it's like it's it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, okay, now now now you were ruled by
Speaker 1: a computer whose whose job it is to make one
Speaker 1: person an extremely large amount of money. It's even for
Speaker 1: further like depersonalized and further disjointed from actually being a human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's I don't know that there's there's there's some
Speaker 1: metaphor here which if I wasn't like sick out of
Speaker 1: my mind out how like power depersonalizes, the dehumanizes you
Speaker 1: until the point where you're replaced with the machine that
Speaker 1: you can make here, but I I don't know one
Speaker 1: in one in every two days, the rumor randomly starts
Speaker 1: binding on me. So yeah, I can't. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: The lesson here, The lesson here is is that when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about factories and how bosses suck and how
Speaker 1: it's not great to work at a factory, just have
Speaker 1: a boss that tells you what to do. The lesson
Speaker 1: is that it can always get worse because it could
Speaker 1: always be a computer. Yeah, anyway, continue, So okay, So
Speaker 1: to get a sense of like what this fight is
Speaker 1: and like how how we got to Tiana, men, we
Speaker 1: need to go back to the Revolutions of which is
Speaker 1: at first glance not like not an incredibly obvious place
Speaker 1: to start. Um. Okay, if if you want like a
Speaker 1: really detailed, like blow for blow account of the Revolutions
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight, go listen to the Revolutions podcast.
Speaker 1: It it's good. I am not gonna do it here
Speaker 1: because oh my god, there's so much stuff. But the
Speaker 1: very short version is that so in h forty eight
Speaker 1: across Europe. There's a bunch of revolutions that are collectively
Speaker 1: known while sometimes known as like the Springtime of the
Speaker 1: People's and this is this is the first revoluence. This
Speaker 1: is the first wave of revolutions where socialists are like
Speaker 1: a real thing. Um like Frederick Angles like that angles
Speaker 1: like the marks and angles. Angles is like on a
Speaker 1: barricade with a rifle fighting in Prussia. There's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna sadly, I can't get into Augustva willage here,
Speaker 1: but like go go, go, go google Augustva Village is
Speaker 1: He's wild. There's a huge revolution in France where they
Speaker 1: like that they finally deposed the king and you know this,
Speaker 1: there's this question here and as these revolutions look like
Speaker 1: they're winning, there's this question of how far democracy is
Speaker 1: going to go and what it's going to mean. Um,
Speaker 1: and you have a large thing. You have this. This
Speaker 1: is in a lot of ways very similar to what
Speaker 1: you're dealing with with in in China. In the nine
Speaker 1: Inside of France, you have the split, right, you have
Speaker 1: the split between you know, like the people who are
Speaker 1: like who are like French radicals, but in the sense
Speaker 1: of like the original French Revolution. Who are you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: they want like they want an elected democracy. They absolutely
Speaker 1: do not want to like deal with the fact that
Speaker 1: that the workplace is not a democracy. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and you have you have a bunch of socialists, and
Speaker 1: the socialists are like, hey, can we do something about
Speaker 1: like property relations and like the fact that there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of poor people with no jobs, and you know,
Speaker 1: and the socialists gets slaughtered, but you know, they don't die.
Speaker 1: I mean, okay, you just said, okay, So a lot
Speaker 1: of these people get horribly slaughtered, but a lot of
Speaker 1: them escape and lives on, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: the lead well, I mean, there's interesting story here, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of the leaders like live on. A lot
Speaker 1: of these people, like for example, but a bunch of
Speaker 1: people flee to the US and they wind up being
Speaker 1: like the like a lot of the officer core of
Speaker 1: the Union army and in the Civil War is made
Speaker 1: up by these by these socialists who like had to
Speaker 1: flee after the revolutions failed and like Prussia and stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so but many of them do in fact die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go great for them, and and you know,
Speaker 1: and you get to see one of the other things
Speaker 1: that's going to happen a lot, which is that. Okay,
Speaker 1: so like the the sort of like the French like
Speaker 1: like the French radicals who are like pro capitalism but
Speaker 1: also pro democracy like ally with the conservative factions, and
Speaker 1: then they also all get killed when Napoleon, Napoleon the
Speaker 1: Third takes power. But man, it's really it's really it's
Speaker 1: really hard to root for someone here and that yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's those It's like this is really like
Speaker 1: like the revolution produces his own grave digger ship, Like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: what what did you expect was going to happen when
Speaker 1: you allied with like the landlords and I Napoleon Third.
Speaker 1: This good thing, this mistake will never be made again.
Speaker 1: No good good thing. Yeah, yeah, pay no mind to
Speaker 1: the rest of this episode anyway. Continue. So, yeah, you
Speaker 1: have the split between people who want electoral democracy but
Speaker 1: you know, to catorships in the workplace and these people
Speaker 1: who want like democracy in the workplace. And this also
Speaker 1: prefigures a split inside of socialism itself. Um for you know,
Speaker 1: for for for the and this isn't even I like
Speaker 1: in my script, I say like for for for the
Speaker 1: most radical factions of socialism, you know, like in control
Speaker 1: over the means of production, which is like the thing
Speaker 1: that you want means that like production is controlled either
Speaker 1: by like free associations and workers like you know you
Speaker 1: direct democratic unions, is later called syndicalism or like workers councils,
Speaker 1: and that that's you know, I say, it's the most
Speaker 1: radicollection like that that's a very popular conception of like
Speaker 1: what this is going to be. Like if you read marks,
Speaker 1: like marks is like, oh yeah, free associations a workers sure.
Speaker 1: But you know, as as the sort of like eighteen
Speaker 1: forties roll into the eighteen citties and the eighteen seventies,
Speaker 1: there's this faction of the movement that becomes just like
Speaker 1: obsessed with with the bureaucratic technologies of the states, and
Speaker 1: you know, like they they they they watch the state
Speaker 1: really get involved in the economy in a way that
Speaker 1: it like kind of hasn't before. Then they they in
Speaker 1: over the course of sort of industrialization, they watch with
Speaker 1: like incredible envy as they see like these incredibly elaborate
Speaker 1: like planning schemes. They see the state building roads and
Speaker 1: canals and railroads and then entire cities with these like
Speaker 1: complex electrical grids and like gas lions and plumbing systems
Speaker 1: and especially trains, like specifically trains. This drives them all
Speaker 1: completely insane, and they become they begin to believe that
Speaker 1: like a single centralized planning body, like non amercratic association
Speaker 1: of workers, like a single centralized state planning body can
Speaker 1: like you know, bring about the long saw after like
Speaker 1: cooperative commonwealth of socialism and all all these people get
Speaker 1: they get obsessed with like such a planning right, and
Speaker 1: this becomes this starts to sort of like consume more
Speaker 1: and more of the left um in Germany, which is
Speaker 1: home to like the powerful German Social Democratic Party, which
Speaker 1: is like probably the most powerful socialist party in the world.
Speaker 1: At this point, the socialists become divided into two camps.
Speaker 1: There there's the revisionists led by Edward Bernstein, who like
Speaker 1: he like renounces Marxism and revolution and like entirely in
Speaker 1: favor of performing capitalism in the state from like within.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you have these orthodox Marxists that
Speaker 1: are like led by Kolakotski, whose whole thing is that
Speaker 1: he hates Bernstein, and like the only thing that these
Speaker 1: two people that these two groups agree on is that
Speaker 1: I the only thing they agree on is the bureacratic
Speaker 1: state planning is the thing you're supposed to be fighting
Speaker 1: for and not like democratic workplaces. And this leads the
Speaker 1: SDP to like they they do a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are like disastrous. Um. One of the things that
Speaker 1: they wind up doing a lot is like actively working
Speaker 1: with the bosses to like destroy the like workplace autonomy
Speaker 1: for their own unions. So like they'll there'll be things
Speaker 1: where it's like like there's like there's a famous examples,
Speaker 1: Like there's like a like a I think they're like
Speaker 1: an they're on metal workers and I think they make
Speaker 1: knives or something. And they have a lot of control
Speaker 1: of the production process, right, they can control like how
Speaker 1: much stuff gets produced, the process, like how it works,
Speaker 1: like what they're actually doing. And the STP is like, no,
Speaker 1: this is bad because it's inefficient, and so they like
Speaker 1: basically crush their own union and this this goes in
Speaker 1: really disastrous directions. But we're still the single person who
Speaker 1: becomes like the most obsessed with like the potential of
Speaker 1: bureacutic state planning is uh, one very very very obscure
Speaker 1: guy named Vladimir Elias lenin, who I don't expect anyone
Speaker 1: to have heard of Front of the Pod like front
Speaker 1: I just had len Oh that's funny. Yeah. So, as
Speaker 1: David Greavord points out, Lennon's obsession with like the German
Speaker 1: postal Service is such STI like, Okay, So he writes
Speaker 1: a very famous book about like what a future social
Speaker 1: state is going to be, called State and Revolution, and
Speaker 1: like almost all of it is a lie. But he
Speaker 1: also says this in it Um. A witty German social
Speaker 1: democrat of the eighteen seventies called the postal service an
Speaker 1: example of the socialist economic system. This is very true
Speaker 1: at present. The postal service is a business organized along
Speaker 1: the lines of a state capital of monopoly. Bab the
Speaker 1: imperially is the whole thing about imperialism is making everything
Speaker 1: off of this. But so to organize the whole national
Speaker 1: economy on the lines of the postal service, so that
Speaker 1: the technicians, foreim and bookkeepers, as well as all officials
Speaker 1: that received no salaries higher than a workman's wage, all
Speaker 1: under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat. This
Speaker 1: is our immediate aim. And if you think about what
Speaker 1: this means for about five seconds, right, what he's saying
Speaker 1: is that socialism is the entire economy being planned by
Speaker 1: a bureaucratic state. And and you know this this like
Speaker 1: this sits off this like massive series of confrontations with
Speaker 1: the part of the workers movement who you know, like
Speaker 1: what to control the work that they do, and you know,
Speaker 1: like make like you know, the people who like who
Speaker 1: think that like the revolution means that they're actually going
Speaker 1: to be able to make decisions over their work and
Speaker 1: not you know, just like work for like a slightly
Speaker 1: different set of bureaucrats. And this struggle between you know
Speaker 1: this the sort of like new socialist bureaucrats and like
Speaker 1: democracy and the workers movement is you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's an enormous part of the struggle that happens here.
Speaker 1: And there's there's like another version of it happening between
Speaker 1: the workers movement itself and the capitalist state, like in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, um, the workers movements in like in
Speaker 1: Italy and Germany and like Frances and that's the extent
Speaker 1: that they have. These they form these parties that are
Speaker 1: called like states within a state, and you know, these
Speaker 1: things are these massive networks of these workers institutions. They
Speaker 1: have like free schools, they have workers associations, they have
Speaker 1: like friendly society is. They have libraries, they have theaters,
Speaker 1: they have like unions if co ops, they have like
Speaker 1: neighborhood associations, they have tenant unions in mutual aid societies
Speaker 1: and you know, and these things are all run democratically
Speaker 1: by like by by the workers who formed the associations,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like the people who are doing
Speaker 1: this are like you know, the hope is that like
Speaker 1: this is going to be the basis for the new
Speaker 1: social society. Right. It's like, okay, we we can just
Speaker 1: come together and like do this stuff. We can do
Speaker 1: it democratically, and we can administer this stuff ourselves and
Speaker 1: the and these things are enormously popular. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this like terrifies the sort of old ruling class. Um.
Speaker 1: And Otto von Bismarck, who's the guy basically running the
Speaker 1: German state in this period, like his solution to this
Speaker 1: is to create like bureacratic state run versions of like
Speaker 1: all of these things. And so he creates like state
Speaker 1: run library, state run theaters, like state run welfare services,
Speaker 1: and he's using these as as like a replacement to
Speaker 1: the sort of workers institutions. And he has this great
Speaker 1: line retells an American observer quote, My idea was to
Speaker 1: bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win
Speaker 1: them over, to regard the state as a social institution
Speaker 1: existing for their own sake and invested and interested in
Speaker 1: their welfare. And like this works. This is this is
Speaker 1: an enormous success. This is one of the greatest propagandic
Speaker 1: ures ever because like it's it's so successful in convincing
Speaker 1: people that the thing that they're fighting for is like
Speaker 1: the state bureaucratic version of this thing and not the
Speaker 1: version where they do it themselves. That like when when
Speaker 1: the socialists like take power, that they confuse Bismarcks, like
Speaker 1: literally the welfare state bribe thing that he liked made
Speaker 1: to buy off the movements, Like they confused that with
Speaker 1: socialism itself. And like to this day everyone believes this.
Speaker 1: It's like it's it's I don't know, I lose my
Speaker 1: mind constantly over this because all of these things that
Speaker 1: Bismarck developed, like specifically to destroy the socialist movement. Everyone
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, this is socialism. It's like no, no,
Speaker 1: please stop, and you know, and this is really effective,
Speaker 1: particularly on the leadership of the movement. But like the
Speaker 1: actual like people in these parties, like India's movements, don't
Speaker 1: forget it. And and as as the sort of like
Speaker 1: twenty century drawst were closed and you get like the
Speaker 1: so as as the nineteenth century draws were closed, and
Speaker 1: you get like the twentieth century. The workers who are
Speaker 1: like doing the uprisings are not sort of like like
Speaker 1: the you know, the workers who are doing the uprisings
Speaker 1: haven't like drinking the kool aid. And the thing that
Speaker 1: they do immediately when they start doing uprisings is they
Speaker 1: start building these democratic institutions, but particularly workers councils um
Speaker 1: the most famous of these are like other workers councils
Speaker 1: that form sort of spontaneously in the Russian revolutions of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, these are like this is actually like this
Speaker 1: is what like the they're called soviets because soviet is
Speaker 1: just like the word for council in Russian. And these
Speaker 1: these things are originally these like ad hoc strike committees,
Speaker 1: and then they eventually become these like formalized elect like
Speaker 1: elected bodies of representatives from like the various factories who
Speaker 1: are like coordinating a strike and okay, so let you know,
Speaker 1: five they lose and they all die. But in seventeen, uh,
Speaker 1: they do this again and they form the Soviets again,
Speaker 1: and this time the councils start to take like a
Speaker 1: larger role in coordinating production directly and you know, coordinating
Speaker 1: between different factories and industries, and they turn into this
Speaker 1: sort of like counterpower thing to the new government. And
Speaker 1: this kicks off this open period of warfare that stretches
Speaker 1: like literally from Italy to Argentina between the different socialist
Speaker 1: factions who like people like the different factions of this
Speaker 1: movement who want democracy in the factory, and this like
Speaker 1: a lot newly formed like anti democratic alliance of like
Speaker 1: social Democrats, Bolsheviks and capitalists who like you know, are
Speaker 1: like okay, well some of them are in favor of
Speaker 1: like you can have Okay, there's a whole range of
Speaker 1: this thing, right, Like. The thing that unites all of
Speaker 1: these movements, the social Democrats, the Bolsheviks, the capitalists and
Speaker 1: later the fascist is that they like emphatically like do
Speaker 1: not want democracy in the factor, and they're willing to
Speaker 1: put aside their differences to make sure it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's still there's still a huge fight
Speaker 1: that happens here between between nineteen nine twenty, you get
Speaker 1: works councils in we get workers councils in Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: Ireland and Ireland. There's there's these like two giant revolts
Speaker 1: by cynicalist workers unions in Brazil and Argentina, and these
Speaker 1: all get crushed um in Italy. Italy has like one
Speaker 1: of the most intense conflicts between these like a lot
Speaker 1: of cynicalist in the Italian state, and they have this
Speaker 1: this really famous like set of factory occupations where instead
Speaker 1: of like so like before those people would go on strike,
Speaker 1: right you go watch Rick and you leave your factory.
Speaker 1: And in Italy they were like, okay, well what if
Speaker 1: we just stayed in the factory and took it over
Speaker 1: so that they couldn't like just like a restarted production
Speaker 1: with scabs, and we now control the factory. And there's
Speaker 1: this huge wave of it in in Italy in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen writeen like teens and early twenties, and you
Speaker 1: know it looks like for a little for like a bit,
Speaker 1: it like it really looks they're going to bread down
Speaker 1: the government, but the factory occupations get crushed. But they don't.
Speaker 1: They don't get crushed by the government. They get crushed
Speaker 1: by the Italian Socialist Party and like their union, the
Speaker 1: General Confederation of Labor, and like this is how fascism
Speaker 1: wins in Italy, like to a large extent. It's that
Speaker 1: like when when like you know, and it happens in
Speaker 1: Germany too, It's like when when when when the sort
Speaker 1: of the social democrats and the capitalists are faced with
Speaker 1: this possibility that like workers could take over the factories,
Speaker 1: the social Democrats turn on them and just kill them all.
Speaker 1: And the problem with that is that like okay, well
Speaker 1: who who who who do you do the killing with
Speaker 1: the answer is the fascists, and then the social Democrats
Speaker 1: like themselves all get exterminated by the fascist It's it's
Speaker 1: this like you know, it is it is a is
Speaker 1: A is a terrible cycle that we're going to see
Speaker 1: like literally over and over and over again. Um yeah
Speaker 1: it's bad. Um that sounds not great? Yeah yeah do
Speaker 1: do do you know who else will slaughter your your
Speaker 1: factory council? Oh? Oh, I actually know this one. Mm alright, Carrison, go,
Speaker 1: we have a few options here. There is are our
Speaker 1: good friends at the Washington State Patrol. Um, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to set up a highway business next to the
Speaker 1: highway and run via workers, cancel State Patrol come up,
Speaker 1: be like not on this highway, You're done. Um probably
Speaker 1: also like Amazon or something who knows. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 1: back to see you know, okay, okay, we are back
Speaker 1: to see like the worst defeats that they're going to have,
Speaker 1: that that like the people who want like a factory
Speaker 1: council are going to have in this period, which for
Speaker 1: once actually has nothing to do with Amazon or the
Speaker 1: capitalists whatsoever, which is that like the worst balling they're
Speaker 1: gonna get is from Lennon and the Bolsheviks, who I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people sort of like know the
Speaker 1: history of the Russian Revolution, but like the factory councils
Speaker 1: are the people who like basically put the Bolsheviks in
Speaker 1: power in the first place, like to a large extent,
Speaker 1: like there there's a lot there are the people who
Speaker 1: like were the shock troops of this and like literally
Speaker 1: the moment Lendin takes power, she starts undermining the Soviets.
Speaker 1: Um he publishes this thing, like like like three or
Speaker 1: four days after that Chrial revolution, he publishes his thing
Speaker 1: on the draft to cree on workers control, which is like,
Speaker 1: you know, he he basically is like he's he's trying
Speaker 1: to like shift power from these councils to the Bolshet
Speaker 1: party in the state. And this doesn't really work initially
Speaker 1: because these groups are like pretty powerful. But in you know,
Speaker 1: he publicly Lenin's like, no, we draw drive power from
Speaker 1: the Soviets, like where where we're the people who support
Speaker 1: these councils. But then like Lennon's, he's like shipping away
Speaker 1: from them. And then in nineteen eighteen he writes this thing.
Speaker 1: He writes this this this paragraph from the Immediate Task
Speaker 1: the Soviet Government, which is like one of the wildest
Speaker 1: things I've ever read in my life. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: a lot. It's it's wild, it is She's okay. Unquestioning
Speaker 1: submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the
Speaker 1: success of labor processes that are based on large scale
Speaker 1: machine industry. Today, the revolution demands and the interests of
Speaker 1: socialism that the masses, unquestioning lee obey the single will
Speaker 1: of the leaders of the labor process, which is like
Speaker 1: what what how how about you explain to our good
Speaker 1: viewers why that is so bonkers? Like some of them
Speaker 1: might just hear that and be like, oh leftist words cool,
Speaker 1: moving on, even just the first two words unquestioning, Yeah,
Speaker 1: makes me like that, but like a questioning submission. The
Speaker 1: whole thing about like the masses must unquestionably obey the
Speaker 1: will of the single leader. Like what this is like,
Speaker 1: like what is happening? This is you know, the and
Speaker 1: the thing that's happening here is that Lennon. Lennon is
Speaker 1: being really candid about what it means for there to
Speaker 1: be a boss, Like what it means for there to
Speaker 1: be someone who's position is above you that can order
Speaker 1: you to do literally whatever they want, and if you
Speaker 1: don't obey them, like bad things happen and you start
Speaker 1: or get shot. Yeah, she's she's she's incredibly candid about this,
Speaker 1: right like this, this, this, this is what like having
Speaker 1: a boss means. It means like question exhibition to the
Speaker 1: single will of the leader, which is like this, this
Speaker 1: is how I talked about Sophie all the time. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: shaking her head, I'm with you, Sophie campaign scare said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're welcome. Whatever you say, Sophie, thanks scare God. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this. There's this line. Um, it's sort of
Speaker 1: sententially related to the story. I read this thing once
Speaker 1: about so the workers who took over the Surban actually
Speaker 1: think it was the students shore of the a bunch
Speaker 1: of students like take over this, uh, like like the
Speaker 1: like the like the big academy in in Paris, and
Speaker 1: they send this like I think it's a telegram to
Speaker 1: like the Chinese embassy, and like the end of it
Speaker 1: is I think, if I'm remembering the exact words correctly,
Speaker 1: it's uh, the revolution will not be complete until the
Speaker 1: revolution will not be complete until the last capitalist is
Speaker 1: hung with the entrails of the last bureaucrat. Ye was wild.
Speaker 1: That's that's the thing this brought to mind for some reason.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean going back to sort of
Speaker 1: Lenin and his like unquestioning like submission to the single well,
Speaker 1: like he's more candid about what like one man rule
Speaker 1: in the factory or like having a boss you have
Speaker 1: to obey like means, but the system is describing like
Speaker 1: isn't different than any other political system, like Bolshevik rule
Speaker 1: in the factory like isn't really different than capital, social
Speaker 1: democratic or fascist rule. And you know, the movement for
Speaker 1: democracy and the factory as you know, as as as
Speaker 1: these people are crossed, especially in across the nation twenty
Speaker 1: one like it from for Democracy in the factory is
Speaker 1: faced by four implacable enemies who are willing to put
Speaker 1: aside all of their ideological differences to ensure that like
Speaker 1: no one ever like gets to control their workplace. And
Speaker 1: you know, and as as the twenties blend into early
Speaker 1: nine thirties, like the movement seemed to have disappeared, but
Speaker 1: they didn't. They absolutely didn't. Even though even though they
Speaker 1: got murdered by the fascist, the communists, social democrats and
Speaker 1: the capitalists, They're gonna be back next episode to do
Speaker 1: like twelve more revolutions and yeah that that that's that
Speaker 1: that that that that come come come back tomorrow for
Speaker 1: us talking about like why these revolutions happens, what the
Speaker 1: ruling class did to stop them. And then yeah, the
Speaker 1: the lead up to Chianamen Square to see the sort
Speaker 1: of like the final standard the Chinese working class, and yeah,
Speaker 1: like get to what Tianeman actually was, what a Cliff
Speaker 1: Sanker It could Happen here as a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. Well more podcasts through cool zone Media. Visit
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Speaker 1: It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media
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