1 00:00:01,720 --> 00:00:07,880 Speaker 1: Call Zone Media. Welcome to it had happened here. I'm 2 00:00:07,920 --> 00:00:12,480 Speaker 1: your host, Nia Wong. Today is the day before the 3 00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:17,120 Speaker 1: thirty sixth anniversary of the Tianneman Square massacre. We're doing 4 00:00:17,200 --> 00:00:21,840 Speaker 1: something a little bit different. Three years ago I wrote 5 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:26,000 Speaker 1: a pair of episodes about Tieneman democracy in the International 6 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:29,680 Speaker 1: Workers Movement, expanding off a piece I'd written for laos 7 00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:34,360 Speaker 1: On a year before that. That was a long time ago. 8 00:00:35,159 --> 00:00:38,000 Speaker 1: The world is a fundamentally different place than it was 9 00:00:38,040 --> 00:00:41,880 Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. Europe has been consumed by war. 10 00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:47,040 Speaker 1: Whole revolutions rose and fell. The fast threat we defeated 11 00:00:47,040 --> 00:00:50,519 Speaker 1: in the streets returned to power in a new and 12 00:00:50,600 --> 00:00:56,440 Speaker 1: more terrifying form. In this new, uglier and more brutal world, 13 00:00:57,080 --> 00:01:00,360 Speaker 1: I wanted to return to Tianeman, to return to one 14 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:03,880 Speaker 1: of the great horrors of another age, to see if 15 00:01:03,880 --> 00:01:06,840 Speaker 1: we can take anything new from the wreckage of the 16 00:01:06,880 --> 00:01:10,720 Speaker 1: death of Hope. I'm no longer the same person I 17 00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:14,760 Speaker 1: was when I originally wrote these episodes, and so today 18 00:01:15,319 --> 00:01:22,240 Speaker 1: and tomorrow are Tianamen remastered. There were really three Tianemens. 19 00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:26,080 Speaker 1: The first and most famous Tieneman was a student protest 20 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:29,800 Speaker 1: inside Tianaman Square itself. If you've heard the word Tienemen 21 00:01:29,880 --> 00:01:35,480 Speaker 1: before this story, you know the second Tienemen was the 22 00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:40,039 Speaker 1: Tienemen of the blocks of Beijing around the Square, blocks 23 00:01:40,040 --> 00:01:44,039 Speaker 1: sees and transformed by Beijing's working class. If you've heard 24 00:01:44,080 --> 00:01:48,480 Speaker 1: about this Tienemen at all, it's probably in the context 25 00:01:48,520 --> 00:01:50,880 Speaker 1: of the tanks rolling through them on their way to 26 00:01:50,960 --> 00:01:54,680 Speaker 1: the Square. And then there was the third Tienemen, the 27 00:01:54,760 --> 00:01:59,720 Speaker 1: protests in other cities, of which we still years after 28 00:02:00,160 --> 00:02:05,320 Speaker 1: the original piece. No distressingly little about Our focus today 29 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:09,959 Speaker 1: is on the first two. The students of the student 30 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:14,200 Speaker 1: protests were a weird ideological grab back that cannot simply 31 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:18,160 Speaker 1: be reduced down to the simplistic pro democracy label they've 32 00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:21,160 Speaker 1: been settled with in the three and a half decades 33 00:02:21,240 --> 00:02:26,000 Speaker 1: since Tienemen. The short version is this, the students were 34 00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:29,960 Speaker 1: pissed off about what's called reform and opening not going 35 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:32,960 Speaker 1: fast enough, and we should talk about what reform and 36 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:37,200 Speaker 1: opening actually was. On the one hand, you had some 37 00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:42,480 Speaker 1: steps to ease restrictions on free speech, rehabilitate intellectuals and 38 00:02:42,680 --> 00:02:46,320 Speaker 1: other people were so called bad class backgrounds, and allow 39 00:02:46,440 --> 00:02:50,000 Speaker 1: for a broader public discourse. This was paired with market 40 00:02:50,040 --> 00:02:53,680 Speaker 1: reforms I started to bring capitalism back to China. This 41 00:02:54,480 --> 00:02:57,040 Speaker 1: was a shit show in a lot of ways. If 42 00:02:57,080 --> 00:02:59,720 Speaker 1: you want to hear about the CCP reinventing what's essentially 43 00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:02,840 Speaker 1: dipped P and che about five years into this process, 44 00:03:03,440 --> 00:03:05,840 Speaker 1: go listen to my Behind the Bastard's episode about the 45 00:03:05,840 --> 00:03:09,640 Speaker 1: poisoned milk scandal. But Reform and Opening is remembered as 46 00:03:09,639 --> 00:03:12,640 Speaker 1: a kind of golden age of free expression, a golden 47 00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:16,440 Speaker 1: age of hope and possibility where things really seemed like 48 00:03:16,680 --> 00:03:23,360 Speaker 1: they could be different. This is not entirely accurate. Reform 49 00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:27,120 Speaker 1: and Opening also saw a bunch of absolutely draconian crackdowns 50 00:03:27,160 --> 00:03:30,480 Speaker 1: on the social sphere. There was the One Child policy, 51 00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:33,440 Speaker 1: a hideous expansion of the states into the sphere of 52 00:03:33,480 --> 00:03:38,080 Speaker 1: social reproduction, replete with forced sterilizations and the reimposition of 53 00:03:38,120 --> 00:03:42,119 Speaker 1: patriarchal power. It saw the tightening of one man rule 54 00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:45,320 Speaker 1: in the factory, the destruction of any form of worker's 55 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:49,240 Speaker 1: decision making and control over the process of their own labor. 56 00:03:50,360 --> 00:03:52,680 Speaker 1: In these horrors, you can see the beginning of the 57 00:03:52,720 --> 00:03:57,760 Speaker 1: fragmentation of Tiannemen and Chinese politics more broadly, already forming, 58 00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:02,000 Speaker 1: the students wanted market form to go faster, They wanted 59 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:05,360 Speaker 1: more freedom of speech, they sort of wanted democracy, but 60 00:04:05,520 --> 00:04:08,160 Speaker 1: mostly they wanted to be in charge of the party 61 00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:11,320 Speaker 1: so they could crush the bureaucracy that was holding market 62 00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:16,080 Speaker 1: reforms back. It's worth noting, of course, that many of 63 00:04:16,120 --> 00:04:20,760 Speaker 1: these students were involved in what became known as neo authoritarianism, 64 00:04:21,080 --> 00:04:23,560 Speaker 1: which holds that the strong central party should take full 65 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:27,960 Speaker 1: control of society and destroy factions in the bureaucracy. It 66 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:30,560 Speaker 1: was an ideology that survived the death of the protests 67 00:04:30,720 --> 00:04:33,159 Speaker 1: and went on to become a major faction of the 68 00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:37,040 Speaker 1: CCP itself in the nineties and two thousands, and this 69 00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:39,600 Speaker 1: is where some of the truly weird shit at Tianeman 70 00:04:39,640 --> 00:04:44,280 Speaker 1: comes from. The students were, in many ways an incredibly 71 00:04:44,360 --> 00:04:47,719 Speaker 1: hierarchical movement which escalated to the point where student leaders 72 00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:50,640 Speaker 1: were kidnapping each other for control over stages and microphones, 73 00:04:51,800 --> 00:04:55,400 Speaker 1: and these protests, in terms of their nominally stated goal 74 00:04:55,440 --> 00:04:59,680 Speaker 1: of influencing the factional fights inside the party, were studyingly 75 00:04:59,680 --> 00:05:01,960 Speaker 1: in a f actual The guy they were trying to 76 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:04,360 Speaker 1: defend inside the party wound up getting ousted and put 77 00:05:04,440 --> 00:05:06,680 Speaker 1: under house arrest for the rest of his life, and 78 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:11,640 Speaker 1: the changes they demanded failed to occur. But Tianeman, as 79 00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:15,159 Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, was also the workers, and for most 80 00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:19,799 Speaker 1: of the protests the students absolutely hated them. Students barred 81 00:05:19,800 --> 00:05:22,760 Speaker 1: workers from entering the square itself until the final hours 82 00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:25,440 Speaker 1: of the protests, tried to stop workers from carrying out 83 00:05:25,480 --> 00:05:29,480 Speaker 1: a general strike, and relations were in general extremely bad. 84 00:05:30,400 --> 00:05:33,320 Speaker 1: This raises the question what were the workers doing there 85 00:05:33,320 --> 00:05:37,520 Speaker 1: in the first place. There's a few answers. The simplest 86 00:05:37,560 --> 00:05:40,080 Speaker 1: and most immediate one is that the workers were pissed 87 00:05:40,080 --> 00:05:42,280 Speaker 1: off at how badly the Party was treating students in 88 00:05:42,320 --> 00:05:44,719 Speaker 1: the square. But there were other things going on too. 89 00:05:45,320 --> 00:05:47,800 Speaker 1: The late in eighteen eighties in China saw rampant and 90 00:05:47,920 --> 00:05:52,599 Speaker 1: skyrocketing inflation. The rapid price increases threatened the supply of 91 00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:56,160 Speaker 1: cheap grain that composed a huge supply of welfare services 92 00:05:56,200 --> 00:06:01,720 Speaker 1: provided to urban workers. Meanwhile, marketization was accelerating, and suddenly 93 00:06:01,800 --> 00:06:05,279 Speaker 1: you had CCP princelings racing down the streets in imported 94 00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:09,279 Speaker 1: sports cars, driving past workers on their bikes, and spending 95 00:06:09,320 --> 00:06:13,520 Speaker 1: a year's salary gambling at the racetrack. And this pissed 96 00:06:13,560 --> 00:06:17,760 Speaker 1: people off, so they started organizing. I'm going to read 97 00:06:17,800 --> 00:06:21,080 Speaker 1: a section for a piece by Uron, saying about what 98 00:06:21,279 --> 00:06:25,359 Speaker 1: the workers were doing during the struggle to obstruct the military. 99 00:06:25,720 --> 00:06:28,880 Speaker 1: Workers started to realize the power of their spontaneous organization 100 00:06:28,960 --> 00:06:33,279 Speaker 1: and action. This was self liberation on an unprecedented level. 101 00:06:34,040 --> 00:06:38,000 Speaker 1: A huge wave of self organization ensued. The worker's autonomous 102 00:06:38,040 --> 00:06:42,839 Speaker 1: federation membership grew exponentially, and other workers' organizations both within 103 00:06:43,360 --> 00:06:48,039 Speaker 1: and across the workplace mushroomed. The development of organization led 104 00:06:48,040 --> 00:06:52,000 Speaker 1: to a radicalization of action. Workers started organizing self armed 105 00:06:52,040 --> 00:06:56,080 Speaker 1: quasi militias such as Quote Picket Corps and Quote Dared 106 00:06:56,080 --> 00:06:59,880 Speaker 1: to Die brigades to monitor and broadcast the military's whereabouts. 107 00:07:00,600 --> 00:07:04,000 Speaker 1: These quasi militias were also responsible for maintaining public order 108 00:07:04,360 --> 00:07:06,960 Speaker 1: so as not to provide any pretext for military intervention. 109 00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:10,800 Speaker 1: In a sense, Paijing became a city self managed by workers. 110 00:07:11,360 --> 00:07:14,520 Speaker 1: It was reminiscent of Petrograd's self armed workers organized in 111 00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:18,800 Speaker 1: the months between Russia's February and October revolutions. At the 112 00:07:18,800 --> 00:07:22,560 Speaker 1: same time, Pijing workers built many more barricades and fortifications 113 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:25,680 Speaker 1: on the street in many factories that organized strikes and 114 00:07:25,720 --> 00:07:28,720 Speaker 1: slow downs. A possible general strike was put on the 115 00:07:28,720 --> 00:07:32,000 Speaker 1: table as well. Many workers started to build connections between 116 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,840 Speaker 1: factories to prepare for a general strike. This was unaccepsible 117 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:39,880 Speaker 1: to the party, and so for the third time in 118 00:07:39,960 --> 00:07:44,040 Speaker 1: seventy years, the CCP fed its own working class to 119 00:07:44,040 --> 00:07:47,320 Speaker 1: the machine guns. On the night of June third, the 120 00:07:47,440 --> 00:07:49,800 Speaker 1: army began to slaughter its way to the workers defending 121 00:07:49,840 --> 00:07:53,160 Speaker 1: the square. It was the workers who bore the front 122 00:07:53,240 --> 00:07:56,720 Speaker 1: of the massacre. Most of the casualty and later political 123 00:07:56,720 --> 00:08:00,720 Speaker 1: oppression were against members of the workers faction. The army 124 00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:03,360 Speaker 1: soon reached the square itself for the Western press corps 125 00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:06,160 Speaker 1: bore witness to what became known as the Tianaman Square massacre. 126 00:08:07,120 --> 00:08:09,960 Speaker 1: This is where you get tank Man and the most 127 00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:13,240 Speaker 1: famous accounts of the massacre. But by that point it 128 00:08:13,360 --> 00:08:16,760 Speaker 1: was almost all over. The protests were crushed and the 129 00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:20,800 Speaker 1: Chinese working class died with it. But before the last 130 00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:24,280 Speaker 1: bullet had even been fired, every faction under the sun 131 00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:27,720 Speaker 1: began to construct their own narratives about what had just happened. 132 00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:31,280 Speaker 1: The most common narrative is that Tianeman was a clash 133 00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:34,960 Speaker 1: between democracy and authoritarianism, and to some extent it's not 134 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:39,040 Speaker 1: exactly wrong. There were a lot of other pro democracy 135 00:08:39,040 --> 00:08:43,120 Speaker 1: movements in this period. You see them in Taiwan and Korea. 136 00:08:43,400 --> 00:08:46,480 Speaker 1: They swept across huge swaths of Latin America and eventually 137 00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:49,960 Speaker 1: spread to places like the Philippines. But the real question 138 00:08:50,240 --> 00:08:54,280 Speaker 1: of the pro democracy movements was what kind of democracy. 139 00:08:55,360 --> 00:08:57,960 Speaker 1: The students at Tieneman, to the extent that their democratic 140 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,200 Speaker 1: principles were sincere and not simply cover for a deeply 141 00:09:01,240 --> 00:09:04,679 Speaker 1: authoritarian version of liberalism that demanded rule of law by 142 00:09:04,679 --> 00:09:08,560 Speaker 1: a new class of intellectuals to oversee market reforms, believed 143 00:09:08,600 --> 00:09:13,679 Speaker 1: in a narrow conception of political democracy. This political democracy 144 00:09:13,760 --> 00:09:17,200 Speaker 1: operates at the level of the state. It's based on 145 00:09:17,320 --> 00:09:21,760 Speaker 1: free citizens equal before the law, participating in elections to 146 00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:25,960 Speaker 1: choose representatives who pass laws and generally oversee and manage 147 00:09:25,960 --> 00:09:30,600 Speaker 1: the state bureaucracy. This model of political democracy relegates the 148 00:09:30,600 --> 00:09:35,760 Speaker 1: workplace to a separate economic sphere into which democracy does 149 00:09:35,920 --> 00:09:40,360 Speaker 1: not extend. The capitalist firm or its state owned equivalent, 150 00:09:40,960 --> 00:09:45,280 Speaker 1: remained the absolute dictatorship of the capitalists and their managerial flunkies. 151 00:09:46,280 --> 00:09:49,240 Speaker 1: Even the progressive wings of the pro democracy movements in 152 00:09:49,280 --> 00:09:54,720 Speaker 1: Taiwan and South Korea maintained this private dictatorship. Workers would 153 00:09:54,720 --> 00:09:58,560 Speaker 1: be given rights under the progressive regimes, permission to form unions, 154 00:09:58,679 --> 00:10:02,040 Speaker 1: access to the welfare state, limited protections from the worst 155 00:10:02,040 --> 00:10:05,880 Speaker 1: physical and psychological abuses their bosses could inflict. But no 156 00:10:05,920 --> 00:10:09,840 Speaker 1: matter how progressive the pro democracy movement, the legitimacy of 157 00:10:09,920 --> 00:10:13,360 Speaker 1: the dictatorship of the bosses was not up for dispute. 158 00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:19,439 Speaker 1: To them, democracy meant a democratic state, not a democratic workplace. 159 00:10:20,160 --> 00:10:24,040 Speaker 1: The workers of Tienemen alone disagreed. They stood against not 160 00:10:24,080 --> 00:10:27,160 Speaker 1: only the rest of the world's pro democracy movements, but 161 00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:31,120 Speaker 1: the tide of history itself. By applying the principles of 162 00:10:31,160 --> 00:10:35,160 Speaker 1: the pro democracy movement to their own concerns skyrocketing inflation, 163 00:10:35,600 --> 00:10:40,840 Speaker 1: mounting debt, rampant corruption by government officials, spiraling inequality, and 164 00:10:40,920 --> 00:10:45,240 Speaker 1: petty bureaucratic oppression, Beijing's working class reinvented an old and 165 00:10:45,280 --> 00:10:49,880 Speaker 1: now largely forgotten traditional democracy in the factory, democratic workers 166 00:10:49,960 --> 00:10:54,960 Speaker 1: self management. This is, to a large extent, what Tianmen 167 00:10:55,080 --> 00:10:58,160 Speaker 1: was actually about. It was the culmination of a century 168 00:10:58,200 --> 00:11:00,760 Speaker 1: and a half long war between the democratic wing of 169 00:11:00,800 --> 00:11:04,800 Speaker 1: the classical workers' movement and essentially every other ideological movement 170 00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:09,319 Speaker 1: on Earth. The worker's movement would fight capitalists and communists, 171 00:11:09,440 --> 00:11:14,440 Speaker 1: liberals and fascists, monarchies and republics, social democracies and theocracies, 172 00:11:15,440 --> 00:11:20,760 Speaker 1: and at Tienemen they would lose one final time. That 173 00:11:20,880 --> 00:11:24,680 Speaker 1: defeat is the origin of the modern world. One man 174 00:11:24,760 --> 00:11:29,040 Speaker 1: rule in the factory, in its thousand thousand forms is 175 00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:32,120 Speaker 1: the author of the hell of the twenty first century. 176 00:11:32,920 --> 00:11:35,560 Speaker 1: And when we come back, we're going to look at 177 00:11:35,559 --> 00:11:39,240 Speaker 1: the international part of the struggle that ended at Tianeman. 178 00:11:50,240 --> 00:11:53,760 Speaker 1: To fully understand the magnitude of Tianemen, we need to 179 00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:57,640 Speaker 1: go back to the revolutions of eighteen forty eight. If 180 00:11:57,640 --> 00:12:00,880 Speaker 1: you want a detailed accounting of eighteen forty go listen 181 00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:06,679 Speaker 1: to the Revolutions podcast. It's great. It's also many, many, many, many, 182 00:12:07,040 --> 00:12:10,320 Speaker 1: many many episodes. The short version is that there were 183 00:12:10,360 --> 00:12:13,079 Speaker 1: a bunch of revolutions across Europe in eighteen forty eight, 184 00:12:13,120 --> 00:12:16,560 Speaker 1: collectively known as the Springtime of the Peoples. It was 185 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:19,640 Speaker 1: the first wave of revolutions where socialists were a real 186 00:12:19,679 --> 00:12:24,160 Speaker 1: political faction. Frederick Engels death that angles of Marx and 187 00:12:24,200 --> 00:12:27,440 Speaker 1: Engels fame was on the barricades with a rifle fighting 188 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:30,360 Speaker 1: in Prussia. There was a huge revolution in France where 189 00:12:30,360 --> 00:12:33,120 Speaker 1: they deposed the king and the question of how far 190 00:12:33,240 --> 00:12:37,160 Speaker 1: democracy was going to go came for the first time 191 00:12:37,440 --> 00:12:41,280 Speaker 1: to the forefront. Inside of a democratic movement itself, you 192 00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:44,640 Speaker 1: had a split between the sort of French radicals who 193 00:12:44,679 --> 00:12:48,679 Speaker 1: done the original French Revolution, who wanted electoral democracy but 194 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:53,120 Speaker 1: dictatorship in the workplace, and the new socialists who wanted 195 00:12:53,160 --> 00:12:56,360 Speaker 1: to question property relations and the question of class itself, 196 00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:00,600 Speaker 1: and most importantly for our purposes, whether democracy would extend 197 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:06,920 Speaker 1: past the political sphere and directly into economics. These prefigures 198 00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:10,200 Speaker 1: a split inside the socialist movement itself. For the most 199 00:13:10,280 --> 00:13:13,920 Speaker 1: radical factions, control over the means of production meant that 200 00:13:13,960 --> 00:13:17,520 Speaker 1: workers would control the production process directly through free associations 201 00:13:17,520 --> 00:13:21,200 Speaker 1: of workers direct democratic unions, a position later known as 202 00:13:21,200 --> 00:13:25,480 Speaker 1: syndicalism or workers councils. But more conservative factions of the 203 00:13:25,480 --> 00:13:29,720 Speaker 1: socialists became enamored with the bureaucratic technologies of the state. 204 00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:33,640 Speaker 1: They watched with envy as the industrializing powers of the 205 00:13:33,640 --> 00:13:38,640 Speaker 1: eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies engage in increasingly elaborate planning schemes, 206 00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:43,520 Speaker 1: first of roads canals in railroads, then of entire cities 207 00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:48,360 Speaker 1: with complex electrical grids, gas lines and plumbing systems, and 208 00:13:48,400 --> 00:13:52,199 Speaker 1: began to believe that centralized state planning, not the democratic 209 00:13:52,200 --> 00:13:55,839 Speaker 1: association of workers, could bring about the long sought after 210 00:13:55,960 --> 00:14:00,559 Speaker 1: cooperative commonwealth of socialism, and that planning obsessed facts began 211 00:14:00,679 --> 00:14:04,560 Speaker 1: to encompass more and more of the left. In Germany, 212 00:14:04,760 --> 00:14:08,679 Speaker 1: home to the powerful German Social Democratic Party, socialists became 213 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:12,920 Speaker 1: divided between two camps, the Revisionists led by Edward Bernstein, 214 00:14:13,280 --> 00:14:16,800 Speaker 1: who renounced Marxism and Revolution entirely in favor of reforming 215 00:14:16,800 --> 00:14:22,400 Speaker 1: capitalism in the state from within, and Karlkovski's orthodox Marxists. Basically, 216 00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:26,160 Speaker 1: the only two things these factions, who otherwise despise each other, 217 00:14:26,600 --> 00:14:30,160 Speaker 1: agreed on was the primacy of state bureaucratic planning over 218 00:14:30,200 --> 00:14:35,280 Speaker 1: workplace democracy. This led to the Social Democratic Party disastrously 219 00:14:35,360 --> 00:14:38,280 Speaker 1: working to break the workplace autonomy of many of its 220 00:14:38,320 --> 00:14:43,040 Speaker 1: own workers, but were still The person who became most 221 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:47,520 Speaker 1: obsessed with the potential of bureaucratic state planning was one 222 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:53,040 Speaker 1: Vladimir Bilitch Lenin. As the anthropologist David Graeber pointed out, 223 00:14:53,720 --> 00:14:57,200 Speaker 1: Lenin's obsession with the German postal service was such that 224 00:14:57,320 --> 00:15:01,280 Speaker 1: he included this passage about the future social state in 225 00:15:01,360 --> 00:15:04,960 Speaker 1: his famous State and Revolution a text written between the 226 00:15:04,960 --> 00:15:09,840 Speaker 1: February October revolutions of nineteen seventeen. Quote a witty German 227 00:15:09,880 --> 00:15:13,280 Speaker 1: social democrat of the seventies of the last century called 228 00:15:13,280 --> 00:15:16,560 Speaker 1: the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. 229 00:15:17,200 --> 00:15:20,880 Speaker 1: This is very true. At present. The postal service is 230 00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:24,440 Speaker 1: a business organized on the lines of a state capitalist monopoly. 231 00:15:25,320 --> 00:15:29,160 Speaker 1: Imperialism is gradually transforming all trust into organizations of a 232 00:15:29,200 --> 00:15:32,920 Speaker 1: similar type to organize the whole national economy on the 233 00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:37,120 Speaker 1: lines of the postal service, so that the technicians, foreman, bookkeepers, 234 00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:40,080 Speaker 1: as well as all officials receive salaries no higher than 235 00:15:40,120 --> 00:15:44,240 Speaker 1: a workman's wage, all under the leadership and control of 236 00:15:44,280 --> 00:15:50,040 Speaker 1: the armed proletariat. This is our immediate aim. Lenin's idealized 237 00:15:50,080 --> 00:15:52,200 Speaker 1: form of socialism would thus take the form of a 238 00:15:52,240 --> 00:15:57,560 Speaker 1: total state bureaucracy tasked with planning the entire economy. This 239 00:15:57,640 --> 00:16:00,880 Speaker 1: would set off a massive series of confrontations with the 240 00:16:00,880 --> 00:16:03,720 Speaker 1: part of the workers movement who wanted workers control over 241 00:16:03,760 --> 00:16:07,520 Speaker 1: the means of production to mean workers making decisions overworked 242 00:16:07,600 --> 00:16:11,560 Speaker 1: themselves and not just working for a different set of bureaucrats. 243 00:16:11,680 --> 00:16:15,080 Speaker 1: The struggle between bureaucracy and democracy in the workers movement 244 00:16:15,720 --> 00:16:18,880 Speaker 1: mirrorred the struggle between the workers movements and the capitalist state. 245 00:16:19,800 --> 00:16:23,040 Speaker 1: By the eighteen eighties, the workers movement had created variable 246 00:16:23,160 --> 00:16:26,640 Speaker 1: states within a state in countries like Germany and Italy. 247 00:16:27,440 --> 00:16:31,680 Speaker 1: These quote unquote states were vast networks of workers' institutions, 248 00:16:32,400 --> 00:16:36,920 Speaker 1: ranging from as grape were described free schools, workers associations, 249 00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:42,240 Speaker 1: friendly societies, libraries and theaters end quote to unions, co ops, 250 00:16:42,280 --> 00:16:46,640 Speaker 1: neighborhood associations, tennis unions, mutual aid societies, and political parties 251 00:16:46,720 --> 00:16:50,880 Speaker 1: ran democratically by workers themselves, which provided vital services to 252 00:16:50,880 --> 00:16:53,960 Speaker 1: workers and their families, and served, so the workers hoped, 253 00:16:54,240 --> 00:16:58,320 Speaker 1: as the basis for a new socialist society. Fearing the 254 00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:02,440 Speaker 1: popularity of these democratic works workers' institutions, Otto von Bismarck 255 00:17:02,480 --> 00:17:06,399 Speaker 1: created bureaucratic, state run versions of the library's, theaters and 256 00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:10,480 Speaker 1: welfare services to replace them. Telling an American observer quote, 257 00:17:10,840 --> 00:17:13,600 Speaker 1: my idea was to bribe the working class, or shall 258 00:17:13,640 --> 00:17:16,320 Speaker 1: I say, to win them over, to regard the state 259 00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:19,560 Speaker 1: as a social institution existing for their sake and interested 260 00:17:19,680 --> 00:17:25,000 Speaker 1: in their welfare. And this works. It was enormously successful. 261 00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:29,680 Speaker 1: Socialists themselves came to confuse Bismarck's welfare state bribe with 262 00:17:29,880 --> 00:17:33,680 Speaker 1: socialism itself, and when they took power, they replicated the 263 00:17:33,680 --> 00:17:37,760 Speaker 1: bureaucratic nature of many of Bismarck's programs, eliminating the democratic 264 00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:41,720 Speaker 1: aspects of the older workers' institutions entirely. But where their 265 00:17:41,800 --> 00:17:45,480 Speaker 1: leaders I'd forgotten the democratic core of the Rowan ideology, 266 00:17:46,119 --> 00:17:50,720 Speaker 1: workers themselves never did. As the nineteenth century drew to 267 00:17:50,760 --> 00:17:54,560 Speaker 1: a close and the twentieth century began, workers who engaged 268 00:17:54,560 --> 00:18:00,000 Speaker 1: in spontaneous uprisings instinctively began to form democratic institutions, particular 269 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,119 Speaker 1: clarly workers councils. The most famous of these councils, of course, 270 00:18:04,680 --> 00:18:07,960 Speaker 1: were formed between the spontaneous Russian revolutions of nineteen oh 271 00:18:08,040 --> 00:18:13,320 Speaker 1: five in nineteen seventeen. These councils, called soviets, were originally 272 00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:15,720 Speaker 1: formed in nineteen oh five out of ad hoc strike 273 00:18:15,800 --> 00:18:19,800 Speaker 1: committees that became formalized elected bodies of representatives in the 274 00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:24,480 Speaker 1: various factions who worked to coordinate the general strike. The 275 00:18:24,560 --> 00:18:26,960 Speaker 1: revolution of nineteen oh five was crushed by the Czar, 276 00:18:27,320 --> 00:18:30,040 Speaker 1: but in nineteen seventeen the Russian working class would once 277 00:18:30,080 --> 00:18:35,040 Speaker 1: again form workers' councils as another revolution commenced. This time, 278 00:18:35,240 --> 00:18:39,200 Speaker 1: the councils would take control of production, directly coordinating between 279 00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:41,879 Speaker 1: various factories and industries, as well as serving as a 280 00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:46,400 Speaker 1: worker's counterpower to the new revolutionary government. The Russian Revolution 281 00:18:46,560 --> 00:18:49,680 Speaker 1: kicked off a period of open warfare that stretched from 282 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:52,760 Speaker 1: Italy to Argentina between the forces of democracy and the 283 00:18:52,840 --> 00:18:57,119 Speaker 1: factory and the newly formed anti democratic alliance of social Democrats, 284 00:18:57,160 --> 00:19:02,480 Speaker 1: Bolsheviks capitalists. Between nineteen in seventeen and nineteen twenty, workers 285 00:19:02,560 --> 00:19:06,320 Speaker 1: councils formed in Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine, and Ireland, and 286 00:19:06,359 --> 00:19:10,320 Speaker 1: were matched by revolts of syndicalist unions in Brazil and Argentina. 287 00:19:11,080 --> 00:19:15,800 Speaker 1: These uprisings were all crushed in Italy, which saw some 288 00:19:15,880 --> 00:19:19,160 Speaker 1: of the most intense conflict between syncalists and the Italian state. 289 00:19:19,760 --> 00:19:22,520 Speaker 1: The famous occupation of the Factories was ended not by 290 00:19:22,520 --> 00:19:26,000 Speaker 1: the Italian government but by the Italian Socialist Party in 291 00:19:26,040 --> 00:19:30,840 Speaker 1: their union, the General Confederation of Labor. This, in large part, 292 00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:34,760 Speaker 1: was how fascism won in Italy and in Germany. Faced 293 00:19:34,760 --> 00:19:38,040 Speaker 1: with workers movements on the verge of seizing power, social 294 00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:41,440 Speaker 1: democrats turned on the working class slaughtered their own comrades, 295 00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:46,720 Speaker 1: propelling the fascists into power in their wake. Ironically, the 296 00:19:46,760 --> 00:19:49,800 Speaker 1: worst defeat of the democratic workers movements will come not 297 00:19:49,920 --> 00:19:52,720 Speaker 1: at the hands of the capitalists or social democrats, but 298 00:19:52,760 --> 00:19:55,840 Speaker 1: from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the very party at the 299 00:19:55,840 --> 00:19:59,879 Speaker 1: workers councils had put in power. Lenin began to undermine 300 00:19:59,920 --> 00:20:03,320 Speaker 1: the the power of the Soviets almost immediately. Published mere 301 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:07,280 Speaker 1: days after the October Revolution, his draft Decrees on Workers 302 00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:11,800 Speaker 1: Control stated in no uncertain terms that real power and 303 00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:15,040 Speaker 1: authority lay with the new state and the Bolshevik dominated 304 00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:19,320 Speaker 1: trade unions. In the face of massive and unexpected resistance 305 00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:22,000 Speaker 1: from the workers councils, the decree is needed to be 306 00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:25,400 Speaker 1: modified before they could be implemented. But while publicly declaring 307 00:20:25,400 --> 00:20:28,560 Speaker 1: his support for the workers councils, the Bolshevik slogan was 308 00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:32,159 Speaker 1: after all, all power to the Soviets, Lenin continued to 309 00:20:32,160 --> 00:20:34,439 Speaker 1: trip away at their power until he finally admitted his 310 00:20:34,480 --> 00:20:37,320 Speaker 1: real position of democracy in the Factory in nineteen eighteen 311 00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:41,480 Speaker 1: in the Horrifying the immediate tasks of the Soviet government 312 00:20:42,080 --> 00:20:48,400 Speaker 1: quote unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary 313 00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:50,960 Speaker 1: for the success of labor processes that are based on 314 00:20:51,119 --> 00:20:56,480 Speaker 1: large scale machine industry today, the revolution demands, in the 315 00:20:56,520 --> 00:21:01,560 Speaker 1: interests of socialism, that the masses on we obey the 316 00:21:01,600 --> 00:21:06,720 Speaker 1: single will of the leaders of the labor process. This 317 00:21:07,600 --> 00:21:10,000 Speaker 1: is obviously one of the most disturbing things I've ever read. 318 00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:14,000 Speaker 1: But to be clear, while Lenin is more candid about 319 00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:17,480 Speaker 1: what one man rule in the factory actually entails, the 320 00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:21,040 Speaker 1: system he's describing isn't actually different from one man rule 321 00:21:21,040 --> 00:21:24,240 Speaker 1: and any other political system. Bolshevik rule in the factory 322 00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:27,720 Speaker 1: would be no different than capitalist, social democratic, or even 323 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:31,760 Speaker 1: fascist rule. The movement for democracy in the factory now 324 00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:35,560 Speaker 1: faced four implacable enemies willing to put aside their ideological 325 00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:40,520 Speaker 1: differences to ensure that workers would not run their workplaces directly, 326 00:21:41,160 --> 00:21:43,760 Speaker 1: and as the nineteen twenties bled into the nineteen thirties, 327 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:47,000 Speaker 1: the movement seemed to have all but disappeared in a 328 00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:52,800 Speaker 1: haale of bullets and blood. But they didn't. And next episode, 329 00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:57,760 Speaker 1: our heroes, the collective hero the world's working class will 330 00:21:57,760 --> 00:22:02,480 Speaker 1: be back. They will do any many more revolutions, and 331 00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,760 Speaker 1: we're going to talk about why those revolutions happened, what 332 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:08,680 Speaker 1: the ruling class did to stop them, And then returned 333 00:22:08,720 --> 00:22:11,359 Speaker 1: to the lead up to Tianaman Square to see the 334 00:22:11,359 --> 00:22:13,959 Speaker 1: final stand of the Chinese working class. 335 00:22:17,880 --> 00:22:20,359 Speaker 2: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 336 00:22:20,560 --> 00:22:23,640 Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 337 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:27,280 Speaker 2: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 338 00:22:27,359 --> 00:22:30,920 Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can 339 00:22:30,960 --> 00:22:33,280 Speaker 2: now find sources for it could Happen Here listed directly 340 00:22:33,320 --> 00:22:35,600 Speaker 2: in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.