Speaker 1: Pod cast. Yeah, that that counts as an intro on Look, yes,
Speaker 1: we've we've we've now started the podcast. The podcast that
Speaker 1: we are starting is it could happen here, and I
Speaker 1: it's me because for loong, I'm I'm doing I'm doing
Speaker 1: the host thing, and I have a bunch of other
Speaker 1: people with me who do a lot of things. I
Speaker 1: have Garrison, yes, I have Sharen, yes, and I have Sophie,
Speaker 1: our lovely boss. Sophie Lictor bed all praise on high
Speaker 1: your words, not mine, weird. I did not enjoy that
Speaker 1: at all my takeover. So so Sophie unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately
Speaker 1: lacks to shear ruthlessness to crush the workers movement. Well
Speaker 1: we will see. Yeahs to be determined, and I don't
Speaker 1: buy it, So Sophie, Sophie is very sad. I'm sorry, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Um So, when when we last left off Lennon, Lennon
Speaker 1: has like in theory, crushed the last sort of remaining
Speaker 1: factions of like the workers but who want democracy the factories.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for the Leninist like literally no many how
Speaker 1: no matter how many workers they kill, and they are
Speaker 1: going to kill enormous numbers of workers. The demand for democracy,
Speaker 1: and the factory like just refuses to die for over
Speaker 1: a hundred years. The development of the sort of mass
Speaker 1: factory system and logistical infrastructure that you need to support it,
Speaker 1: maybe most importantly coal mines and railroads that I use
Speaker 1: to transport stuff generate this incredibly militant working class that
Speaker 1: sees you know, democratic control over the workplaces like the
Speaker 1: fundamental aspect of its liberation. Um. Ideologically, this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is this is manifested in like a series of
Speaker 1: interlocking beliefs about like the nature of the working class
Speaker 1: and like what class society is, um, all of which
Speaker 1: are sort of necessary components of this. Like it becomes
Speaker 1: this like incredibly like this like instinctive formation of workers
Speaker 1: council at the moment like an uprising happens. And this
Speaker 1: is something that that's very interesting about about the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Is it, Like yeah, like what when whenever there's like
Speaker 1: a crisis, someone someone like like about everyone in the
Speaker 1: factory is like, okay, we're we we've taken control of
Speaker 1: the factory now like we we were forming a council,
Speaker 1: were forming a giant assembly, and like we don't do
Speaker 1: this anymore, and we're gonna come back to like why
Speaker 1: we don't do this anymore? But like this hasn't happened,
Speaker 1: Like the last time it happened was like in Argentine
Speaker 1: and two dozen't one and I don't even know if
Speaker 1: Garrison Garrison might have been alive for that. Thanks, But
Speaker 1: like it's well, I will say. The other time it
Speaker 1: does happens when after after a recording session, when our
Speaker 1: boss Sophie leaves, meet me and Chris will stay on
Speaker 1: the line to talk, usually about Star Wars, and that
Speaker 1: in a way kind of is a worker's counsel just
Speaker 1: for the factory of podcasting. Yeah, talk about Star Wars
Speaker 1: in front of me. I feel so bad for Sophie.
Speaker 1: Next next, next time, puppy face, that's okay. Featuring your
Speaker 1: petite bush wat tactics won't work on me. Oh god, Well,
Speaker 1: all the people on the Separddit who think that we
Speaker 1: hate Sophie are going to just have a feel day
Speaker 1: with this episode. Conspiracy is my favorite recurring conspiracy theory bit.
Speaker 1: That's a real conspiracy o man o, man wow, I've
Speaker 1: a lot of catching up on to you. You do
Speaker 1: not because it's not true run away. So meanwhile, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: so it in the period when people actually like did
Speaker 1: this seriously, you know, there's a lot of sort of
Speaker 1: ideological things that come together to make it so that
Speaker 1: when people like you know, like when when bread prices
Speaker 1: increased too much, this is what people do. Um. And
Speaker 1: a lot of this has to do with the physical
Speaker 1: experience of what being a worker is in like you know,
Speaker 1: the n centuries, like you have these like these these
Speaker 1: these these incredibly rapid like technological expansions, and you know,
Speaker 1: the people who are who are doing this stuff like
Speaker 1: see themselves as the creative of the new world, right like,
Speaker 1: and this is like literally this is happening, Like, these
Speaker 1: are the people who are literally like they are building
Speaker 1: the cities, right like all of the sort of the
Speaker 1: infrastructure of the modern world is physically being created by them.
Speaker 1: And this creates this you know, like if you're the
Speaker 1: person who is like who has transformed like this fishing
Speaker 1: village into this giant industrial city, right um, you know
Speaker 1: you you you see yourselves as the creator like literally
Speaker 1: physically the creator of this new world is being developed.
Speaker 1: And then the second belief that that it produces that
Speaker 1: drives this movement is that the people who produced this
Speaker 1: world should be its inheritors and so and this this,
Speaker 1: this sort of this is what drives the workers movement
Speaker 1: in this period, which is that like, okay, so if
Speaker 1: if you if you are literally physically creating the new world,
Speaker 1: and you think that because you have created it, it
Speaker 1: should be yours. Uh, the next that the thing that
Speaker 1: you do, because it's not yours, right, like you don't
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know, like the people who build cities
Speaker 1: are not the people who owned the cities. And you
Speaker 1: know if you see this, yeah, like yeah, okay, like
Speaker 1: in the city is actually owned by like three real
Speaker 1: estate speculators and like a bunch of cops and more
Speaker 1: applicable examples like the people who build the cup podcast
Speaker 1: is not own the podcast. Yeah no, we don't own
Speaker 1: the podcast. Like we we are exactly applicable result that
Speaker 1: you know that can of that. You know, everyone understands
Speaker 1: that example. Yeah we I actually don't think that people
Speaker 1: understand that we don't own the podcast. It's actually unclear
Speaker 1: to me. I I people people have weird things about
Speaker 1: how podcasting works. But yeah, we don't own the podcast.
Speaker 1: We just create it and we do all the work.
Speaker 1: And then Sophie sits in her leather chair looking down
Speaker 1: at all the leather chair. Think, I think at all
Speaker 1: my podcast creations I have created, and then all of
Speaker 1: us past so bad? How could you think I could
Speaker 1: sit here on an five degree day in a leather
Speaker 1: chair to Sophie, at least get your facts right, my
Speaker 1: word a chair? Continue, Chris. Okay. So for for for
Speaker 1: the people who are like actually watching their boss, like
Speaker 1: sitting around smoking a giant cigar in a factory while
Speaker 1: they pound like hammers, or like work at a hospital
Speaker 1: and get a watch like just started a massive cigar
Speaker 1: and a comically large to prop. But because for the record,
Speaker 1: whenever I do hang out with my other boss, Robert,
Speaker 1: he often does sit in some chair smoking a cigar,
Speaker 1: and I do think it is in fact leather. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we're describing Robert before me, the slave away in
Speaker 1: my laptop writing scripts and yeah, just work in the
Speaker 1: podcast minds. Yeah, it's it's it is. It is really
Speaker 1: hard out there, yea, and continue. So okay, So, like
Speaker 1: the belief that you produced the world and that if
Speaker 1: you produce you should own it. It's like this this
Speaker 1: is not unique to the part of the workers movement
Speaker 1: that like you know, thinks that also you should like
Speaker 1: have a democracy and the factory and like you should
Speaker 1: have the autonomy to decide how you do your work
Speaker 1: and what needs to be done. Uh. That those beliefs
Speaker 1: like broadly comprise the ally of like the entire workers movement,
Speaker 1: and and by you know, by by the twenty century,
Speaker 1: the workers movement is really really broad, right, I mean
Speaker 1: it stretches from sort of like really mild social democratic
Speaker 1: trade unionists to like the intellectual heads of these like
Speaker 1: Leninist vanguard parties. But what what makes the democratic wing
Speaker 1: unique is that their concern is the fundamental alienation of
Speaker 1: factory life. And and this this is i mean, originally
Speaker 1: like it is very much factory life, but like this
Speaker 1: this gets expanded out as this goes on into sort
Speaker 1: of the like the fundamental alienation of labor itself, which
Speaker 1: is just this condition of being reduced to an object
Speaker 1: by bosses who use you as a tool to do something.
Speaker 1: And you know, and this this is a concern for
Speaker 1: everyone in some sense, but but for the Lenins and
Speaker 1: social democrats, alienation is just like a product of ownership
Speaker 1: or distribution. Right. So you know, if if that's what
Speaker 1: you believe the way you defeat alienation is through the
Speaker 1: working class of productive capacity, not in it, not in
Speaker 1: sort of like any kind of like in a human
Speaker 1: like humanity of creativity. Like all I to do is like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you flip a switch, right, and the factory is now
Speaker 1: owned by the state instead of being owned by like
Speaker 1: JP Morgan or something like, Now your alienation is gone.
Speaker 1: That's how it works. Yeah, Or and and your social democracy.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, okay, so you you you you flip
Speaker 1: a switch and taxes get higher, and now you have
Speaker 1: a union, but you're still working for gold You're still
Speaker 1: working for the Goldman Sachs. But you know, but for
Speaker 1: for for for for the wing of the workers movements
Speaker 1: that you know actually cares about democracy. This doesn't solve anything, right, like,
Speaker 1: as long as the fundamental relation of being the like
Speaker 1: of being an object rights. As long as like you,
Speaker 1: fundamentally the worker are are not are not a human
Speaker 1: being who has agency and control and autonomy over their life.
Speaker 1: As long as you're just an object that you know,
Speaker 1: like you're you're like you you you're a living human
Speaker 1: tool that the one man ruler of the factory can
Speaker 1: like you know, can can wield round to do whatever
Speaker 1: they want as as long as that persists. Changes in ownership,
Speaker 1: structure and need like health benefits missed the entire point,
Speaker 1: and this kind of the degradation that comes from just
Speaker 1: being a tool can only be solved by returning agency
Speaker 1: and autonomy to the working class. And that means like
Speaker 1: actually giving the class control over the production process. And
Speaker 1: you know, in in in six in Spain, workers are
Speaker 1: like funk this and decided to take the entire thing
Speaker 1: into their own hands. And they do this by just
Speaker 1: seizing their workplaces and mass and this becomes known as
Speaker 1: a Spanish revolution um and it is one of the
Speaker 1: most extensive sort of experiments. And like workers democratic self
Speaker 1: managements or like whatever whatever you want to call people
Speaker 1: making their own decisions in the workplace like that has
Speaker 1: ever happened, like especially in the modern era. Like everything
Speaker 1: from like public utilities to like bakeries to hospitals to
Speaker 1: shoe factories like falls under the direct control of these
Speaker 1: like democratic unions. And once their bosses have been like
Speaker 1: you know, chased from the premises and like flee and
Speaker 1: terror uh, these workers set about like transforming the entirety
Speaker 1: of Spanish society along democratic lines, like they pulled their
Speaker 1: resources together collectively and that they allocate them democratically for
Speaker 1: the benefit of society as a whole. And for a
Speaker 1: brief moment this works. They have this incredible, like this
Speaker 1: triumphant experiment democratic self managements, and output increases dramatically and
Speaker 1: social services are expanded, and like in in In in
Speaker 1: the span of two years in the middle of a
Speaker 1: civil war, like the workers of Spain are able to
Speaker 1: create a universal health care system that expands kara into
Speaker 1: like like rural areas of Spain where like you couldn't
Speaker 1: get it before. But you know, the problem is once
Speaker 1: again is that this is happening to the civil war
Speaker 1: and and a lot like you know, using sort of
Speaker 1: like nominally anti fascism like as as they're sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, they're using the threat of the need
Speaker 1: to post fascism as as a sort of front like
Speaker 1: a French for what they're actually doing. You get this
Speaker 1: alliance of liberals, liberal socialists and Stalinists who just like
Speaker 1: brutally stamp out any attempt that you democratic self management,
Speaker 1: and like you have like Soviet car duration like n KVD,
Speaker 1: like Soviet secret police, guys like literally leading armies into
Speaker 1: into these cities and like like like killing the workers
Speaker 1: and then physically like taking control of these factories that
Speaker 1: people had sees and giving them back to the bosses,
Speaker 1: which is you know, this is this is great. This
Speaker 1: is a great communist stuff. And yeah, the you know,
Speaker 1: and this this this ends exactly how you would expect
Speaker 1: it to end with. Oh yeah, like this this the
Speaker 1: Stalinists get everything they want. They murder all of the
Speaker 1: people who want like a factory council, and then they
Speaker 1: all get killed by Franco. But you know, undeterred by
Speaker 1: sort of the casualty tolls of these like massacres by
Speaker 1: people who want bosses. Uh, this just keeps happening, and
Speaker 1: you know, by the time you get to like all
Speaker 1: this stuff is back like there there's there's factory councils
Speaker 1: again in Hungary, you get them in Italy and France
Speaker 1: and the Zichoslovakia eight there's like like they're they're, they're,
Speaker 1: they're there's councils being like there, there's there's communes being
Speaker 1: formed in like Vietnam. There's like they're there. We've talked
Speaker 1: about the Court on Asonu in in Chile on the
Speaker 1: show before, Like, these things are happening everywhere, and I
Speaker 1: think Hungary in particular is a really interesting one because
Speaker 1: so there's a revolution in Hungary against sort of the
Speaker 1: Soviets in the X that's it gets a lot of
Speaker 1: the same liberal mythologizing that you get with Tenemen, but
Speaker 1: like kind of more egregious here. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think, like I got taught this revolution in schools
Speaker 1: is like one of the few ones that we actually get,
Speaker 1: and they taught it as this like this is like
Speaker 1: the Hungarian revolution was just like kind of nationalists, like
Speaker 1: liberal democratic revolution for people who wanted like democracy and
Speaker 1: freedom and like free markets. And then like you know,
Speaker 1: if you go read about what the people were at
Speaker 1: but people actually doing the revolution we're saying, you get
Speaker 1: quotes like this, This is a direct quote from a
Speaker 1: member of one of the Hungarian workers councils the time
Speaker 1: when the boss is decided, our fate is over, and
Speaker 1: it's like, ha, these these got these guys do not
Speaker 1: seem like I don't know, these guys don't steam like
Speaker 1: liberal democrats that something weird is happening here. That's something
Speaker 1: that's actually happening is it like Hungarian workers like sea
Speaker 1: control of their factories and like the workplaces, and they
Speaker 1: formed workers councils the overs of the government and then
Speaker 1: the Russian slaught of them all. But you know, like
Speaker 1: this is not a liberal democratic revolution at all, that
Speaker 1: this is a revolt against the tatorship in the workplace.
Speaker 1: And there's an identical revolts break out across both the
Speaker 1: capitalist world and the communist world, and in the newly
Speaker 1: de colonized society start seeing them too, and you know,
Speaker 1: and to the sort of like dismay of both the
Speaker 1: communists and the capitalists who are both like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: why is and we keep forming workers councils like this
Speaker 1: solution to alienation, Like it's not like an ideological thing, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not that there's like a group of
Speaker 1: people who are like secretly infiltrating these countries and being like, okay,
Speaker 1: you needful workers councils. This this is this stuff is
Speaker 1: happening in places where there's just like none of that.
Speaker 1: So like what one of one of the sort of
Speaker 1: like movements that does stuff like this is is the
Speaker 1: revolution in Algeria? Um, you know, and they're like they're
Speaker 1: there they were like Algeria like does have a pretty
Speaker 1: high level of political education, but the political education they're
Speaker 1: getting is from like it's it's from the National Liberation Front,
Speaker 1: which is like asofar As, it's any one thing. It's
Speaker 1: like it's a nationalist vanguardist movements, which is you know
Speaker 1: that they're the people who like fight the French colonizers
Speaker 1: and beat them. And their ideology like asofar As, you
Speaker 1: can describe one idea allogion. Like the thing that they
Speaker 1: want is like the state having this decisive role in
Speaker 1: national development. But you know, immediately it's taking power off.
Speaker 1: And Bambella, who's Algeria's first president, like discovers that, you know,
Speaker 1: he he's not actually going to be the one like
Speaker 1: making the decision about what the country's economic cruature is
Speaker 1: going to be because he takes power and a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of like French people who live in Algeria of flee,
Speaker 1: and basically what happens immediately after is that all of
Speaker 1: like all of these this property that had been originally
Speaker 1: like held by by by French sort of colonists, like
Speaker 1: it gets immediately seized by the Algerian working class and
Speaker 1: you know, they build their own workers councils, and you know,
Speaker 1: BenBella is like, Okay, I guess I guess we have
Speaker 1: like workers councils now, like I guess I guess we
Speaker 1: have sort of like autonomous democratic production and BenBella is
Speaker 1: like kind of trying to undermine them. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: really get a chance too, because once again there's a
Speaker 1: military coup and BenBella, like he I think he escapes,
Speaker 1: it doesn't die. But like the fact that the councils
Speaker 1: all sort of get dismantled again. But like the number
Speaker 1: of times this has happened is getting just like completely
Speaker 1: out of hand, and it's like yeah, okay, the it's
Speaker 1: like yeah, okay, so every time this happens, they murder everyone.
Speaker 1: But like, you know, the revolutions keep happening, and they
Speaker 1: keep happening, and they keep happening, and you know, even
Speaker 1: even as late as like the late seventies, like it's
Speaker 1: not clear that that that like it's it's not clear
Speaker 1: that the people who want one man role the factory
Speaker 1: are gonna win. Like there's this moment in Italy nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven where it's like this this like giant student
Speaker 1: Student and Worker Coalition almost takes power. Um, Like in
Speaker 1: Spain even after like fifty years of of like Franco
Speaker 1: and like the fascist octatorship, like the c n T,
Speaker 1: which is the anarchist union that had done the revolution
Speaker 1: like reappears in the seventies again even though everyone thought
Speaker 1: it was gone, and like, you know, this is a
Speaker 1: real this is a real source of strife for especially
Speaker 1: the sort of capitalist managerial elite. Who are you know
Speaker 1: they this stuff keeps happening. It's like okay, like it
Speaker 1: is an unacceptable risk that one of the one day,
Speaker 1: one of these groups is going to win. And so
Speaker 1: they start looking for a way to like dismantle this
Speaker 1: sort of like systemic things that like create that that
Speaker 1: caused people to do this. But you know, but they're
Speaker 1: but they're trying to do it in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve them giving up their power. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Vicky Austen. While it's out this sort of like
Speaker 1: this like instinctive embrace of like democracy and the factory,
Speaker 1: like as a political program, it's only possible as long
Speaker 1: as factories, as long as like the factory functions is
Speaker 1: the point of encounter. Her. I think It was her
Speaker 1: term for which she calls it a darker Gora, which
Speaker 1: is like, so Gore is like like the sort of
Speaker 1: like the Greek marketplace in the center of a town.
Speaker 1: Everyone goes there and you like talk about things, right,
Speaker 1: and the factory serves as this kind of like it's
Speaker 1: this sort of like dark version of it where like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, you know, it facilitates these interactions
Speaker 1: that allow people to sort of like identify with each
Speaker 1: other and like you know, create collective meaning by like
Speaker 1: interacting with each other. But on the other hand, it
Speaker 1: exists to exploit you, and it's like terrible and you're
Speaker 1: just getting you know, you're getting physically and socially destroyed
Speaker 1: like every moment you're in it. But you know it's
Speaker 1: it's still is a place where you can like assemble
Speaker 1: an identity as like like you and a bunch of
Speaker 1: people around you can go like, hey, like we are workers, right,
Speaker 1: like we are the working class, and this this is
Speaker 1: like a shared political identity that you have that allows
Speaker 1: you to do things. And so the thrust of sort
Speaker 1: of the attack against this takes the form of this
Speaker 1: attack on like the shop floor as like a site
Speaker 1: of like formation of identities that that can allow you
Speaker 1: to mobilize stuff. And so this takes like a number
Speaker 1: of forms. Um most famously, there's there's it's the industrialization
Speaker 1: and this sort of like spatial relocation of factories. So
Speaker 1: like like part of what's going on, right is that
Speaker 1: you have a you have a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: work in a factory, and then they live like around
Speaker 1: like right around the factories. Right, they work in a
Speaker 1: coal mine, and the eyyone lives in a town around
Speaker 1: the coal mine. And this means that everyone sees each
Speaker 1: other constantly, and they're like constantly like running into each
Speaker 1: other and like physically talking to each other. And you know,
Speaker 1: this is a really good way to create radical politics.
Speaker 1: So what happens is you these factories get sent out
Speaker 1: to the suburbs, and this allows you to create places
Speaker 1: where you know, workers are isolated from each other, and
Speaker 1: you know, and the other thing you can do is
Speaker 1: you turn workers into homeowners and you sort of like
Speaker 1: buy them all off for this combination of like cheap
Speaker 1: credit and this promise that like their houses will not
Speaker 1: be a financial asset. And so as the sort of
Speaker 1: eighties rolls on, the sort of the the like the
Speaker 1: herald of democratization of finance replaces democrazation. The factory is
Speaker 1: sort of the capitalist class. Like the other thing they
Speaker 1: do that's like really insidious is they they tied like
Speaker 1: the remaining union pensions into the stock market. And this
Speaker 1: is stuff like you see today with like four O
Speaker 1: one case, and it means that like if you want
Speaker 1: to like have a retirement, you are like physically literally
Speaker 1: invested in the stock market, which ties you know, which
Speaker 1: ties everyone sort of like into the system. And corporations
Speaker 1: start to turn workplaces into these like enormous propaganda apparatus.
Speaker 1: Is you get like like Walmart in particular, has these
Speaker 1: like like these vast ideological like programming things that they
Speaker 1: run that are designed to sort of like get you
Speaker 1: to identify with like the corporation itself and not with
Speaker 1: like the other people you're you know, like the other
Speaker 1: people you're within the class as a whole, and you know,
Speaker 1: and like the other thing that they're able to do
Speaker 1: is the fact that capital is mobile and workers like
Speaker 1: aren't allows you know, combines with like logistics advances, and
Speaker 1: it means that like if workers ever start getting an
Speaker 1: upper hands somewhere, capitalists can just leave. And the process
Speaker 1: that you see is that as this sort of the
Speaker 1: total number of people working in in the like in
Speaker 1: industrial work keeps decreasing, right as a cential of the population,
Speaker 1: it keeps decreasing. And as this happens, capitalists are just like, okay, scirt,
Speaker 1: we're gon, we're gonna, We're gonna pick up our tools
Speaker 1: and leave. And this spits out like enormous populations who
Speaker 1: are just like kicked out of pratitional workforce entirely. And
Speaker 1: these developments, this is what actually like eventually destroys the
Speaker 1: classical workers t mouvement is the abilability to leave in
Speaker 1: the sort of destruction of the factory is like a
Speaker 1: site of stuff. But in order for this to work,
Speaker 1: the one thing they need is a place to move
Speaker 1: to write. They need somewhere with this large exploitable labor
Speaker 1: supply that has been like crushed enough that it won't
Speaker 1: revolt against them. And the capitalist class finds that in
Speaker 1: our products and services, and we're we're we're back. We're
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're we're back to China. And Okay,
Speaker 1: so I've been talking about the way this sort of
Speaker 1: like this this whole system like this whole factory system
Speaker 1: mass production stuff like develops. But China is weird because
Speaker 1: this is the one place where the factory system works
Speaker 1: like really differently than everywhere else. Um. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons for this, one of which is it like
Speaker 1: so Chinese like stayed on firms. It's like almost impossible
Speaker 1: for them to fire someone because I mean there's a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons for this, and one of them is
Speaker 1: that like people's entire sort of social sphere is built
Speaker 1: around their work unit. And like their work unit is
Speaker 1: like it's it's the company you work for, and there's
Speaker 1: this whole sort of like legal apparatus built around it,
Speaker 1: and it's like you know, and like this like unit
Speaker 1: gives you everything from like your retirement, like it like
Speaker 1: feeds you. Like there's often like entertainment stuff like tied
Speaker 1: into it, like you healthcare, you get like childcare from it.
Speaker 1: And the CP also gets rid of the peace rate system,
Speaker 1: which is just like this is this thing that like
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so there's a lot of capitalist places
Speaker 1: to work with this word's like okay, so the peace
Speaker 1: rate system is you pay people for like every unit
Speaker 1: of something they produce, So like you get paid by
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like how many like how many
Speaker 1: pounds of like cherities you can pick. And so the
Speaker 1: USSR brings this back because the USSR and the US
Speaker 1: are really not that different. But China is like, nah,
Speaker 1: this like sucks. This is capitalism, and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like I'm gonna say, the fact Chinese factory system is great,
Speaker 1: but like because they don't have the peace rate system
Speaker 1: is because they can't fire people. You get this very
Speaker 1: you get this weird thing where it's like the people
Speaker 1: who run the factories like don't have very good ways
Speaker 1: to force people to work, and because of this, they
Speaker 1: like they sort of like have to allow this degree
Speaker 1: of participation in the worker process, like in the labor
Speaker 1: process that like you don't really see most of the
Speaker 1: places and the everything they have that I luckily Garrison
Speaker 1: and I also have this is we have the ability
Speaker 1: to criticize our bosses. Although we we have more of
Speaker 1: this these guys. But one day, go ahead, one one okay,
Speaker 1: we we we've got it. We we don't we don't
Speaker 1: have our big character poster yet, but like one day
Speaker 1: Garrison and I are going to show up to the
Speaker 1: office with like giant big character posters with your faces
Speaker 1: on it. They like have specifically Roberts are gonna have
Speaker 1: a list of crimes on it. My favorite part of
Speaker 1: like big labor protests when they make those giant like puppets.
Speaker 1: If we just make a giant's tick puppet version of
Speaker 1: Robert and Sophie that we just prayed around the office,
Speaker 1: that's long as mind's bigger than Robert's, that's fine, we
Speaker 1: can do that, great right, full support. So we were
Speaker 1: got to do this in China. It's it's weird, like
Speaker 1: you have the ability to do this, but like it's
Speaker 1: like run to the party, and so if someone gets
Speaker 1: unpopular enough, like the party will like start a campaign
Speaker 1: about how bad like that one boss is, and then
Speaker 1: you can show up to like the meeting and go like, hey,
Speaker 1: I hate my boss. This guy sucks. But then it's
Speaker 1: replacing with like another boss. Right, So it's not like
Speaker 1: it's not actually a democratic system really, but the way
Speaker 1: that it works ensures that like the people who are
Speaker 1: managers are like pretty popular at least to some extents,
Speaker 1: like are popular and people don't like really hate them.
Speaker 1: And this means that you know, because there's all of
Speaker 1: this stuff that makes the Chinese factor is different from
Speaker 1: like the other systems, and also because of like structural
Speaker 1: stuff in Maoism that I mean, I could talk about that,
Speaker 1: but I don't like talking about Maoism. But basically the
Speaker 1: product of this is that, like you have in China
Speaker 1: during this period a lot of demands for democracy, but
Speaker 1: they're really they're not they're not tied to the workplace
Speaker 1: at all. They're they're they're mostly like political demands for
Speaker 1: like democracy in the party or stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: that means, like you know, at least in the cities,
Speaker 1: this system like kind of works okayish until the Cultural Revolution,
Speaker 1: where everything falls apart. And this means that it is
Speaker 1: at long last time for me to do the Cultural
Speaker 1: revolution rant, which is something I have been planning for.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I'm very I'm very excited about this. I've
Speaker 1: been waiting for an excuse and I finally have one. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the cultural revolution rant is that everyone gets the
Speaker 1: Cultural revolution completely wrong, Like everyone every like it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's one of the rare events where like it's
Speaker 1: misinterpreted in like exactly the same way by both people
Speaker 1: who support it and the people who oppose it um
Speaker 1: and Okay. The first thing to understand about this, right is, like, okay,
Speaker 1: so the the initial the very very beginning of the
Speaker 1: culture revolution, like it's basically a in sort of like
Speaker 1: teenagers kind of like it's like middle schoolers essentially, and
Speaker 1: they're attacking these they're attacking like other kids at their school.
Speaker 1: And these kids are kids who have what's called a
Speaker 1: black blood background, like black blood, which means that like
Speaker 1: they're they're the children of people who were from like
Speaker 1: quote unquote bad class backgrounds. And this is really weird
Speaker 1: for a number of reasons. One because you have you
Speaker 1: have a sort of like a pseudo class system based
Speaker 1: on like who your parents were, right, you have people
Speaker 1: who have red blood who had like good class backgrounds,
Speaker 1: like your parents are workers, or your parents worked with
Speaker 1: the party or something. And then you have people who
Speaker 1: are from like bad class backgrounds quote unquote, who like
Speaker 1: are persecuted and like, okay, like I don't really care
Speaker 1: that much if you're like persecuting like a Shanghai oligarch
Speaker 1: who like collaborated with the French and Japanese imperialists or whatever.
Speaker 1: But like a this extends to like the children of
Speaker 1: these people and a lot of the children these people
Speaker 1: weren't even alive when their parents were like you know,
Speaker 1: like doing stuff that was bad. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is that like the term bad class background this is
Speaker 1: really loose. Like I I know people whose families were
Speaker 1: declared like declared like black class backgrounds, who have black
Speaker 1: blood and like you know, they're they weren't allowed to
Speaker 1: hold in the government position. And the reason that this
Speaker 1: happened to them was that her dad had made bird
Speaker 1: feeders before the revolution and they considered that like petite bourgeois.
Speaker 1: And it's like this is like this is like like
Speaker 1: what like what what are you doing? Like you you
Speaker 1: you reproduced like you've turned class into like a pseudo
Speaker 1: race thing that's like her like you like inherit from
Speaker 1: your parents, even though like their parents don't own property anymore.
Speaker 1: Because it's it's really bizarre and and and what's what's
Speaker 1: happening here is the kids from the red class backgrounds
Speaker 1: are are are you know, they're they're the kids of
Speaker 1: the new of the new Chinese elite, and they're just
Speaker 1: like picking on attacking the kids who are like now
Speaker 1: this this sort of like like my minority class and
Speaker 1: so what it amounts to at the beginning of this
Speaker 1: is a bunch of privileged, rich kids who are like
Speaker 1: attacking a bunch of kids are being persecuted for stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like not their fault at all. And you know,
Speaker 1: part and the other, the other part of this, like
Speaker 1: this is the part of the people. I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like Mao is trying to like play power games
Speaker 1: inside the party blah blah blah blah blah. But you know,
Speaker 1: things get more and more chaotic, and you get you
Speaker 1: get circutting his attacks on like CCP bureaucrats and cadres
Speaker 1: and stuff, because Mao is trying to like Mao was
Speaker 1: trying to solidify his place in the party and he's
Speaker 1: like blah blah blah. There's other stuff that's happening. Um
Speaker 1: but then it gets really interesting. Um. So, so the
Speaker 1: starts in at six, right, and at the very beginning
Speaker 1: of sixty seven, there's something there's something called the January Storm,
Speaker 1: which is where a bunch of rebel workers just seize
Speaker 1: control of Shanghai and like they run the party out,
Speaker 1: they run the other they run I think they run
Speaker 1: the army out too, And you know, and now like
Speaker 1: they they control the city of Shanghai. And this is
Speaker 1: like an oh funk moment from Mao because you know,
Speaker 1: now he has to deal with this city that has
Speaker 1: been taking over by its own working class. And I
Speaker 1: found this this incredible line from Joe and Lai who's
Speaker 1: having meeting with Mao and they're trying to figure out
Speaker 1: what to do about the fact that like this, this, this,
Speaker 1: like that Shanghai has been seized by by these workers
Speaker 1: and I'm just gonna read this. When asked whether the
Speaker 1: new leadership should be elected from the bottom up, Joe
Speaker 1: and ly replied bluntly that quote anarchism is bound to
Speaker 1: develop if we immediately implement direct elections of the Paris
Speaker 1: Commune type. And I think this is like this is
Speaker 1: this really incredible, like like the thing you can find right,
Speaker 1: because it's like, okay, well, there's two things that can
Speaker 1: happen here. One is either like, okay, you you you
Speaker 1: you give these people democracy and the ability to vote, right,
Speaker 1: and Joe and Lyon Matt look at this and you're like,
Speaker 1: that would be anarchist if we can't do that. And
Speaker 1: the second thing is you don't do that, and you
Speaker 1: oppressed them and they take the second line, and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like it takes them a bit to get this ramped up, right,
Speaker 1: It takes them a bit to get the sort of
Speaker 1: kind of revolution thing they're doing to like stop all
Speaker 1: of this rebel stuff that they've started to to get
Speaker 1: it takes some about a year. But but by ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the students and the workers who had like you know,
Speaker 1: done done this sort of uprising stuff so are getting slaughtered.
Speaker 1: Like's just master killed on an unimaginable scale. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this is this is where everyone gets the Culture Revolution
Speaker 1: completely wrong, because everyone the entire memory of the Culture
Speaker 1: Revolution is from basically the first two years of it, right,
Speaker 1: which is like all the stuff about like like you know,
Speaker 1: like professors being marched out onto the street and dunce
Speaker 1: caps and like students like humiliating the professors and like
Speaker 1: like party officials being like marched around with like placards
Speaker 1: on them, and like people like that's something like the
Speaker 1: chaos of the revolution. Like that's that's stuff everyone remembers.
Speaker 1: That's the first two years of this. There's still like
Speaker 1: I mean, you can are like there's there's there's the
Speaker 1: short the short the quote unquote short culture revolution, which
Speaker 1: is like the high point of the activity goes from
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen nineteen sixty nine, and then there's like a
Speaker 1: longer one that goes to like the death of maud
Speaker 1: If and how you want to count it. But almost
Speaker 1: all of the actual violence in this period happens in
Speaker 1: this in in in the third phase, which is the
Speaker 1: so the first phase of the Didicial uprising, and then
Speaker 1: the rebel groups start fighting each other. But then phase
Speaker 1: three is when the state like cracks down on like
Speaker 1: start starts like starts trying to crush this like rebel
Speaker 1: student factions. And I'm going to read from Walder who
Speaker 1: did ah, so is this guy n in Walder who
Speaker 1: who went to he did a bunch of work in
Speaker 1: the Chinese archives, which he like went and like found
Speaker 1: the death tolls. And I'm gonna read like he like
Speaker 1: he goes he'll s a bunch of archives. He goes
Speaker 1: to a bunch of state archives, and he like like
Speaker 1: tracks down the death certificates and tracks down like who
Speaker 1: died where? And this this is what he wrote about it.
Speaker 1: More than three four of all documented deaths and local
Speaker 1: animals are due to the actions of authorities in the
Speaker 1: in this third phase and then more than of those
Speaker 1: persecuted for alleged political crimes. So what are he's saying
Speaker 1: here is that seventy five percent of all of the
Speaker 1: deaths the entire Culture Revolution weren't done by like the
Speaker 1: revolution parts. They were done by the state murdering the
Speaker 1: workers faction, the rebel factions. And not only that, nine
Speaker 1: of of the actual political persecution was done by the
Speaker 1: states and not by the rebels. And when when when
Speaker 1: when you actually look at what this means, Like this
Speaker 1: means everything everything anyone ever talks about the Culture Revolution
Speaker 1: is completely wrong. It wasn't like the thing had happened
Speaker 1: to the Culture Revolution. Wasn't that sort of student radicalism
Speaker 1: got out of control and they started killing everyone that
Speaker 1: preaces all this violence. The thing that actually happens is
Speaker 1: that there's a student like uprising, right, But what happens
Speaker 1: is that the sort of conservative and state factions just
Speaker 1: slaughter them. And I Walt Walter estimates that the total
Speaker 1: number of people dead, it's somewhere between one point one
Speaker 1: and one point six million people, and again, like seventy
Speaker 1: five percent, and I think it's actually slightly higher than that,
Speaker 1: like percent of the people who were killed in this
Speaker 1: are killed by the state, and you know this, this
Speaker 1: has an enormous effect on I mean just everything that
Speaker 1: happens in Chinese and Chinese society from then on, because,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, the popular memory of the Cultural
Speaker 1: Revolution persists as this thing that was like, this is
Speaker 1: what happens if you like if people outside the party
Speaker 1: and like students in radicals like start like making trouble.
Speaker 1: Is that you get all these people dead. But then
Speaker 1: you know, you have the people inside the state who
Speaker 1: like know how many people they had to kill in
Speaker 1: order to hold onto power, right, they kill they kill
Speaker 1: probably more people than like the you know, there's there's
Speaker 1: there's there's a very famous massacre of like communists or
Speaker 1: like suspected communist Indonesia that doesn't get called a genocide
Speaker 1: because it was technically on political lines, but like it
Speaker 1: was one of the worst Eni coommunist massacres in history,
Speaker 1: and they killed more people from that during this period,
Speaker 1: and that like that level of violence and the fact
Speaker 1: that the people running the state understand what they had
Speaker 1: to do, it means you get you get an elite
Speaker 1: that's incredibly paranoid about like anything that like smells like
Speaker 1: organizing happen outside the party. And the other thing happens
Speaker 1: is that like the most radical students and workers of
Speaker 1: this period just get that they're all dead right. They
Speaker 1: killed they killed like they they killed like a million
Speaker 1: people the you know, for for for for for every
Speaker 1: one person who got killed, there's about nineteen people who
Speaker 1: were like persecuted in a lot of way. And that's
Speaker 1: like a lot of people are tortured. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people are like sent to prisons. They're like like
Speaker 1: really horrible stuff happens to people. And this process keeps
Speaker 1: going like through through the seven Like there there's a
Speaker 1: huge spike in like state killings nineteen seventy, and by
Speaker 1: by the end of the seventies, like anything that's sort
Speaker 1: of like could have cohered into into like a movement
Speaker 1: that like wants democraty in the workplace, for example, it's
Speaker 1: just gone. Because all of all of the radicals, like
Speaker 1: and anyone, anyone who wanted anyone who wanted democraty in factory,
Speaker 1: any the people who were like even sort of like
Speaker 1: just like sort of rebellious, like these people have all
Speaker 1: been killed. And the consequence of this is that throughout
Speaker 1: the through the eighties, you get the politics that's driven
Speaker 1: by this like sort of like intellectual liberal like liberal
Speaker 1: democratic politics that ignores completely ignores work class entirely. And
Speaker 1: you know, and these these people start to take power,
Speaker 1: and you get danjel Paying. Well, I think I think
Speaker 1: it's it's like right before it takes power. But danjel
Speaker 1: Ping wise up implementing the one child policy, which is
Speaker 1: this like incredibly draconian and really successful attempts just like
Speaker 1: re established the states like patriarchal control over the household
Speaker 1: and strips like hundreds of millions of women from like
Speaker 1: like of of of autonomy over their own bodies, and
Speaker 1: you know, and and and and and it really looks
Speaker 1: like through through the through through through like the late
Speaker 1: seventies and the eighties, it looks like like the Chinese
Speaker 1: ruling classes succeeded, right like they finally destroyed that they
Speaker 1: finally destroyed like any opposition to them. But then you know,
Speaker 1: things get very weird, which is that itemen happens and
Speaker 1: you know by by by night nine, like the whole
Speaker 1: like like as as a rule, like in general everywhere
Speaker 1: the sort of classical workers neve meant that was like
Speaker 1: at demanding democracy the factory. Like they're basically done, and
Speaker 1: so they're they're unable to sort of do their own
Speaker 1: revolutions now. The only thing they can do is sort
Speaker 1: of like latch onto other stuff. But the problem that
Speaker 1: the party has is that so they've had a lot
Speaker 1: of measures in place to try to make sure that
Speaker 1: you never got these kind of movements in China, and
Speaker 1: they kind of worked. But when it went through the nighties,
Speaker 1: like China starts implementing a market economy, right, they start,
Speaker 1: they started they started like cutting this the welfare state.
Speaker 1: They start like destroying the sort of like limited control
Speaker 1: that works has had in the factories, and they kind
Speaker 1: of like unknowingly reproduced the conditions that have been producing
Speaker 1: these revolutions in every other country. And you know, as
Speaker 1: this massive inflation wave hits, they turned China into this
Speaker 1: powdern keg and this you know, and this combined with
Speaker 1: so like the liberal democratic students moving gets you this
Speaker 1: really interesting and weird ideology that these workers happen. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read it from from an interview with with
Speaker 1: with one of the workers who was a gentleman. Why
Speaker 1: do a lot of workers agree with democracy and freedom
Speaker 1: in the workshops, does what the workers say count or
Speaker 1: what leader says? We later talked about it. In the
Speaker 1: factory the dictatorship. Sorry, in the factory, the director is
Speaker 1: a dictator. What one man says goes. If you view
Speaker 1: the state through the factory, it's about the same one
Speaker 1: man rule. Our objective is not very high. We just
Speaker 1: want workers to have their own independent organizations in work units.
Speaker 1: It's personal rule. For example, if I want to change jobs,
Speaker 1: the bus company foreman won't let me go. I ought
Speaker 1: to go home at five at five pm, but he
Speaker 1: tells me to work overtime for two hours. And if
Speaker 1: I don't cut my bonus, this is a personal rule.
Speaker 1: A factory should have a system. If a worker wants
Speaker 1: to change jobs, they ought to have a system of
Speaker 1: rules to decide how to do it. Also, these rules
Speaker 1: should be decided upon by everyone and then afterwards anyone
Speaker 1: who violates it will be punished according to the rules.
Speaker 1: This is rule by law. Now, we don't have this
Speaker 1: kind of legal system. And okay, that's a really like
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think it's a really interesting sort
Speaker 1: of like fusion of a whole bunch of stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, like the sort of like
Speaker 1: ruling discourse that's happening that the things that students are
Speaker 1: talking about is like that we need the democracy, read
Speaker 1: the rule of law. And but you know, the workers
Speaker 1: in these factories are looking at are looking at like
Speaker 1: the situation they're facing, and they're like, ha, we don't
Speaker 1: have a democracy like here either, right, And so you
Speaker 1: get this, you get what's a really conservative framing of
Speaker 1: the sort of a very sort of very classical like
Speaker 1: critique of woman ruling the factory that has been happening
Speaker 1: for like, you know, like a hundred years. But what's
Speaker 1: just thinking about this is that like any actual attempt
Speaker 1: to like do this right get gets you to workers control,
Speaker 1: like democratic workers control in the factory. And as Walder
Speaker 1: who wald Walder also wrote another like he's a guy
Speaker 1: who went and interviewed a bunch of the people who
Speaker 1: have been of workers who have been involved with this,
Speaker 1: and as as they point out like this unlike really
Speaker 1: like any other time in Chinese history, like the the
Speaker 1: people who are part of like the Beijing Autonomous Workers
Speaker 1: Autonomous Federation are you know, they don't they don't have
Speaker 1: an intellectual class like this. These are these are just
Speaker 1: a bunch of workers and they have very little connection
Speaker 1: like they don't they they have very little like political
Speaker 1: connections right like beforehand, like to to the laberal circles
Speaker 1: are just sort of hearing what they're reading and this
Speaker 1: is this means like what you have here is like
Speaker 1: it's not like an intellectra like this is. This is
Speaker 1: just a bunch of workers and for you know, for
Speaker 1: for for like one final time, their instinct when when
Speaker 1: the revolution sort of like starts, is the demand democracy
Speaker 1: in the factory. And this demand, like above all others,
Speaker 1: is completely politically unacceptable. And you know, and when when
Speaker 1: the army markers on Beijing, it's it's these workers that
Speaker 1: they wipe out, and they wipe them out so thoroughly
Speaker 1: that the fact that this is what these people were
Speaker 1: fighting for is it's it's scrubbed. For the record of
Speaker 1: the DCP, it's scrubbed like the protomocracy move it doesn't
Speaker 1: remember it, even though their entire thing is memory. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and this this ensures that the meeting of these actual events,
Speaker 1: what the people were fighting for, what they were trying
Speaker 1: to do, has been almost completely lost. And I think
Speaker 1: at this point we can finally ask what what what
Speaker 1: actually was tianeman Um And in some sense in the
Speaker 1: in the Chinese context itself, it's a transition between two
Speaker 1: different Chinese working classes. These protests are sort of like
Speaker 1: this is the last like political sort of like mobilization
Speaker 1: of like the of the old Chinese working class, which
Speaker 1: is in these people who had been in the cities,
Speaker 1: who had been like they had been the beneficiaries of
Speaker 1: this old sort of like socialist period welfare state, and
Speaker 1: these people in in the streech around Chaneam and they
Speaker 1: mount the last attack of the of the classical workers stutments.
Speaker 1: And when they lose, this entire class like this, this
Speaker 1: this entire urban working class that had been around since
Speaker 1: like the twenties, that have been sort of the driver
Speaker 1: of Chinese radical politics, that had been like that have
Speaker 1: been have been fighting and striking for like seventy eighty years.
Speaker 1: They they're they're gone. They're completely destroyed. And over the
Speaker 1: course of the economical structure in the nineties there they
Speaker 1: ceased to exist as a class, and they're replaced by
Speaker 1: a new Chinese working class, which is drawn from sort
Speaker 1: of these rural and sort of semi urban under classes
Speaker 1: of the old social system who are like draggings, who
Speaker 1: are dragging the cities from from their villages, from their towns,
Speaker 1: and who now fill actually, well, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what the numbers are today because it's weird because
Speaker 1: of COVID, But like there were two and seventy seven
Speaker 1: billion of these people of this enormous market worker like
Speaker 1: force who formed the backbone of like the entire Chinese
Speaker 1: working class. And these people who they have rural house
Speaker 1: and registrations, and this means that they don't get any
Speaker 1: of the benefits, like the sort of like welfare benefits
Speaker 1: that you would get from living in a city. And
Speaker 1: this means that they're you know, the they they constitute
Speaker 1: like an entirely new class of of workers. And instead
Speaker 1: of you know, like whatever sort of privileges had had
Speaker 1: been like carved out by the old working class, this
Speaker 1: one gets nothing. And the other thing that they get
Speaker 1: is this entire raft to sort of capitalist ideology that's
Speaker 1: based into like every aspect of their workplace culture. This
Speaker 1: this is massive attempt in China to get people to
Speaker 1: buy homes and you know, the like when where the
Speaker 1: old working class could at least like positive the factory
Speaker 1: is like a place where you could have democracy, where
Speaker 1: like life could be improved by like different controlled factories.
Speaker 1: Like this new working class like the thing that they
Speaker 1: want the most is to leave the factory and become
Speaker 1: a business owner. And you know, like this this probably
Speaker 1: sounds familiar to like us, right, Like this is this
Speaker 1: is the old joke about like about the about the
Speaker 1: American working class, which is that everyone sees themselves as
Speaker 1: temporarily temporarily embarrassed millionaires and like yeah, you know, in
Speaker 1: modern China, it's like, yeah, okay, it's like people consider
Speaker 1: themselves to be like temporarily embarrassed small business owners. And
Speaker 1: this stuff. This, this this ideological self conception of like
Speaker 1: I'm going to work in the factory, that I'm gonna
Speaker 1: become a small business owner is completely inimical to the
Speaker 1: formation of like the classical or reservement. And there hasn't
Speaker 1: been that kind of formation in China sense. And this
Speaker 1: this is not really unique thing, right that the death
Speaker 1: of that workers movement has seen a sort of like
Speaker 1: complete and total collapse of the demand for like democrat
Speaker 1: self management like everywhere across the entire world. And you know,
Speaker 1: incredibly stubborn lee, like the working class like refuses to
Speaker 1: sort of cohare itself in the factory. And so in
Speaker 1: this sense, China is really just relate to the game.
Speaker 1: They they they got slightly earlier, they got, they got
Speaker 1: slightly later to the point that we're at now. You
Speaker 1: said there was gonna be a happier ending. They had.
Speaker 1: The happy ending was last episode. This episode is this
Speaker 1: episode ending is really depressing. Well, I mean, okay, they're they're, they're, they're,
Speaker 1: they're Okay, there's a slightly less depressing note kind of Okay.
Speaker 1: The thing that's less depressing here is that for my
Speaker 1: entire literally my entire lifetime has been the US lurching
Speaker 1: from one economic leaps so another, and the world, the world,
Speaker 1: like the international economic system. Like I think I was
Speaker 1: born in like the middle of like the dot com collapse,
Speaker 1: and then I got eight and then like there's been
Speaker 1: a bunch of economic collapses in the last like three years,
Speaker 1: and you know, the whole system has like learned from
Speaker 1: crisis to crisis to crisis. And that means that there's
Speaker 1: been an incredible, just like a rapidly increasing number of
Speaker 1: revolutions everywhere. Even though the sort of like darker gore
Speaker 1: of the factory, like as ceased to be this thing
Speaker 1: that like creates the working like the identity of the
Speaker 1: working class. And this means that you know, okay, so
Speaker 1: in order to have some kind of mass movement, you
Speaker 1: need some kind of collective identity to to mobilize around.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if you can't make this in
Speaker 1: the factory, the place where it's going to be made
Speaker 1: instead is the street. And this means in the last
Speaker 1: you know, like twenty yes years, like with with without
Speaker 1: the sort of positive identity in the workplace to to
Speaker 1: to to hear itself around, workers are really only a
Speaker 1: sort of mobilize on a mass basis, like indirect opposition
Speaker 1: to a threat that can that can that can confront
Speaker 1: like everyone at the same time. And this is the
Speaker 1: only thing that can do this is really the state.
Speaker 1: And you know, the state has the ability to to
Speaker 1: increase the price that basic commodities and slash wellfare benefits,
Speaker 1: and that becomes the only available enemy. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you look at what revolutions have been in
Speaker 1: the last twenty years, it's a constant fight against the police,
Speaker 1: because fighting in the police is the only thing that
Speaker 1: can that can allow you to create a new social identity,
Speaker 1: like a sort of sort of collective identification, and you know,
Speaker 1: and so this means it collected like modern revolts, like
Speaker 1: everything we've seen over the last like four years. The
Speaker 1: form that it takes is mass street movements and you know,
Speaker 1: continuous confrontation with the police. And you get to literally
Speaker 1: see this with with occupy, right. Occupied was originally like
Speaker 1: the like the slogan occupy was about the Argentina in
Speaker 1: factory occupations in two one. But then you know that stops,
Speaker 1: like that's the end, like just one like that that
Speaker 1: that's that's the end of the whole cycle. There's there's
Speaker 1: no more factory occupations actually stitude. You get one in
Speaker 1: Bosnia has A Govia, which is funny because it's like
Speaker 1: they occupy a bunch of factories, but like they don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with them, and so you get
Speaker 1: just like a regular like occupy like in like into
Speaker 1: the sort of like square occupation you'd get in like
Speaker 1: New York or whatever, where everyone's sort of like sitting
Speaker 1: in a circle talking about stuff, but it's happening in
Speaker 1: a factory. But but they're not like trying to run production.
Speaker 1: They're not trying to do any of that stuff. They're
Speaker 1: just sort of like they're in the factory. Isn't is
Speaker 1: no longer this sort of like space of like creation
Speaker 1: and possibility that could be turned into something new. It's
Speaker 1: just like a place where you go that's like indistinguishable
Speaker 1: from like a square. And you know, the last ten
Speaker 1: years it's like people people. Originally it was like it
Speaker 1: doesn't let right, so everyone's everyone's occupying squares. But you know,
Speaker 1: by by Bouz fourteen, people have figured out that you can't,
Speaker 1: like it's it's almost impossible to hold a square if
Speaker 1: the police attempt to run you out. And so this
Speaker 1: gets your place with running street flights with the police.
Speaker 1: But this, you know, this places everyone who's trying to
Speaker 1: do this in this incredibly dangerous bind because you know,
Speaker 1: the like the old workers councils were able to bring
Speaker 1: down states, like largely they got crushed by outside militaries,
Speaker 1: but they are able to bring down states because you know,
Speaker 1: there is an enormous amount of power in being able
Speaker 1: to control production. But the problem is that like you know,
Speaker 1: if you're in a square, right, like you don't have
Speaker 1: the ability to do that and with without the sort
Speaker 1: of without the factory occupations alongside them. There have been
Speaker 1: a lot of general strikes in the last four years.
Speaker 1: There's want of peruse one in France, there's someone in
Speaker 1: Hong Kong and Soudan, and every single one of them
Speaker 1: has been crushed. But you know, but but this is
Speaker 1: a real problem, right because the current labor conditions aren't
Speaker 1: going to produce another way of factory occupations, and so
Speaker 1: the way forward for anyone who, like you know, wants
Speaker 1: to have a democracy in the workplace is completely unclear.
Speaker 1: And I think, I think that's the actual legacy of
Speaker 1: Tiana Man. The workers who are assembled outside Tianamen Square
Speaker 1: had already left their factories, and you know, for for
Speaker 1: for all that they spoke the language of the old
Speaker 1: workers movements, right, they spoke a democracy in the factory
Speaker 1: and one man rule. They stood and fought and died
Speaker 1: like we do in the streets. There's this bridge between
Speaker 1: sort of the classical workers movements and us, and you know,
Speaker 1: they face the same revolutionary crisis that we face. The
Speaker 1: crisis of Popular and Palestine, Columbia, on Iran and Myanmar,
Speaker 1: or Hong Kong, of this, this crisis of victory that's
Speaker 1: just beyond the horizon, can't be grasped. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't think the people at Cenomen have any answers to
Speaker 1: give us, Like, I don't think they do. I think
Speaker 1: they ran, They ran headlong into the crisis that we
Speaker 1: ran into, and they all died. Yeah. I think expecting
Speaker 1: answers from the dead is demanding too much of those
Speaker 1: who before and after us died fighting for liberation. And
Speaker 1: all we can really do now is find our own
Speaker 1: way when, with the names of the dead in our lips,
Speaker 1: build the world they died fighting for. It could Happen
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Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.