Tiananmen and the Question of Democracy, Part 1

Sharene is also here. Hello, Hi, Sorry my fault, keep going, no worries. So this is this is the thirty third anniversary of the Caamon Square massacre. UM. Tomorrow's episode. I think we'll actually be going out on I guess the day that it started kind of starts like the it of like June three. Um, and okay, I'm curious what you choose, Like I don't know, like received like cultural

memory of Channaman is because I don't know. I think I got a kind of weird one, like being from a Chinese family, but as a white Canadian, I have zero amount of my knowledge about the tam Tannaman Square massacre. Not really about Tanneman. Uh, it's just Yeah, that is something I never never have really learned about. Yeah, I know that it happened in That's that's the American lesson we got on the history of that massacre, that it

happened in nineteen really mediocre. Yeah, Okay, Well today and tomorrow we're gonna we're gonna go, well, we're gonna talk I think less about what happens there specifically and more about the sort of broader history that's in. But I guess let's start out so in sometimes there's there's really three tenements. Um, there's there's the student protests that's inside Tanement Square itself. There's this part of Beijing like around the squares, like a bunch of blocks are taken over

by workers. And then there's a bunch of protests in other cities. And unfortunately, we're not gonna be talking about the Protestant the other cities because like basically nothing is known about them other than that like they happened, but the people who would know aren't talking so for some somewhat obvious reasons. Um, yeah, and the students themselves, I think like the normal version of tianement is like these there's the students and they're like protomocracy protesters, right, but

they're way weirder than that. There's there's like this weird ideological grab bag thing going on. Um, they're they're they're basically what they're piste off about is that this thing is called the reform and opening, like isn't going fast enough and we should talk about what that sort of is so perform and opening is. It's this period in

China and sort of the eighties and songs of the nineties. Um. And on the one hand, you have these sort of steps to like ease restrictions on speech and like rehability to intellectuals and like allow for broader public discourse. But the other half of it is that like they're they're being they're basically they're bringing markets back in China, right, And this this is a ship show in a lot

of ways. If you want to hear about like the CCP reinventing debt p and age in about five years, Um, go listen to my Baschard's episode and the poison Milk scandal. It's a it's a trip. But on the other hand, you have you know, so you have kind of like opening up, right, you have just more discourse. You're they're not pursue intellectuals again, sort of that there, they're they're

they're persecuting the intellectuals that they had persecuted. Um. But on the other hand, you get this absolutely draconian sort of like a set of crackdowns in the social sphere.

You have the one child policy, you have this like really powerful tightening of one man rule in the factory, and you have the sort of the destruction of these for what we'll get into this more later, but like the the sort of limited decision making capacity that workers have had in the factories, um, just this sort of dismantled.

And so you see these sort of gaps beginning to form here, right Like, on the one hand, you have these students who want market reforms to go faster, and they want more freedom of speech, They like kind of want democracy, but like mostly what they want is to be in charge of the party so they can crush the sort of like bureaucracy they see as holding market

reforms back. And it's worth noting that like a lot of these students are involved in what becomes known as neo authoritarianism, which is the sort of ideology that holds that like the strong central party should take full control of society and destroying the factions in the bureaucracy and so you know, and that that's how you can lead to element and this stuff like that stuff like ne authoritarianism survives the protests and goes on to become like

a pretty major faction in the CCP itself, and then I us in two thousand's and you know, this is this is where things just get weird, right, Um, the student movement itself is very hierarchical, and it gets to the point where like but by by by the end of the student movement, there these the student leaders are like kidnapping each other over like who has control of the microphones, and like the stages in the square it is.

It is extremely bizarre. And you know, and in terms of like the protests actually like if the what their torches are trying to do is you're trying to influence this factional fight inside the CCP over like the speed at which reformers are going to go, and this it doesn't work. It's like stunningly ineffectual. The guy they're trying to defend like winds up getting outed and put in her house to rest of the rest of his life

if so. Okay, so those are the student protesters. But the part and that that the student protesters are the part of this that like everyone knows, partly because some of those people escaped to Hong Kong and you know, they're they're very influential sort of shaping the memory there.

But there's also the workers that I mentioned earlier, and the students basically hate the workers, um for for for most of the time this protest is going on, and this is the this is months, right, they literally will they will not let any of the workers go into

the into tenement square like that they have. They have this whole system and like in order to get into like increasing like like closer to the center of the square, you have to be a student, and then you need to get to the center of the squere you have

to be like a member of the leadership. It's very weird, and you know, and like one of the things that workers are trying to do is they want to carry out a general strike, and the students are like, no, absolutely not, do not do a general strike because largely because okay, so if these people start doing a general strike,

like that's not something that's not under our control. And you know, okay, So this raises the question like if the relate between the students who are at tenement and the workers at chenemen are this bad, like why are the workers even there? Um? And And there's a few answers to this question that the sort of the simplest and most immediate one is that like the workers are

initially they come out because they're pissed. They see how badly like the cops in sort of like the party is is treating the students in the square, so they get mad. But but but there's there's other stuff going on to the late eighties is the ladies in China is sort of a mess economically that there's rampant inflation and the sort of rapid increase in prices is a threat to you know, the sort of like cheap supply grain, which is like the sort of main subsidy that if

you're an urban worker that you get. And meanwhile, you know, you have marketization happening, so at the same time that every the prices are increasing for everyone and they can't get access the stuff that they need. You have just like CCP princelings like racing down the street and imputed sports cars and like these are like the only these are the only cars, right like people people I don't know, like like people are starting to get bicycles and mass

sort of in this period. But then you know, I was like, hey, here's here's this like party boss guy who was a sports car. They're like spending years salaries like gambling at race tracks, and people just get piste off. So they they start organizing. And I'm going to read from a section of a piece by Rhans Jong about what what they were doing. Um during the struggle to obstruct the military, workers started to realize the power of

their spontaneous organization and action. This was self liberation on an unprecedented level. A huge wave of self organization and suit the Beijing Works Autonomous Federations. Membership grew exponentially in other workers organizations both within and across workplaces mushrooms. The development of organizations led to a radicalization of action. Workers started organizing self armed quasi militias such as picket cores and Dared or Die brigades to monitor and broadcast the

military's whereabouts. These quasi militias were also responsible for maintaining public order, so as not to provide any pretext for military intervention. In a sense, Beijing became a city was self managed by workers. It was reminiscent of petrograds self farm workers organized in the Soviets in the months between Russia's February and October revolutions. At the same time, Beijing workers built many more barricades and fortifications and on the

street in many factories that organized strikes and slowdowns. A possible general strike was put on the table as well. Many workers started to build connections between factories prepare for a general strike. And yeah, like this is the part of it that like people don't talk about because it

wasn't in the square. And I mean the other part, the other faction, like the fact that that's going on here is that like so the press Corps is like sitting in the square, and this is why Kianna ministers this sort is like this is massive spectacle, right because all of this, everything that's happening here inside the square was happening like in front of the entire Western Press Court and like people are like, you know, like people are just like pointing cameras at their window, right, and

you know, but on the other hand, the people out side of the square, the workers outside of the square are the workers are getting more organized, and this is like this is absolutely unacceptable to the party, and so yeah, on on on the night of June three, the army just starts killing them. Um. They there have been a couple of attempts earlier to clear to to to clear

the sort of fortifications, and it hadn't really worked. But this time, like they they're they're able to bring in builtering units that aren't from Beijing or like aren't from around the area, and they kill an enormous number of people. Um yeah, and and I think it's I think it's important to note that, like both in terms of the killings that happened immediately and the political persecution after that, it's it's mostly the workers bearing this. Especially in the

initial massacre. Most of the killing happens as the armies like fighting its way into the square. And you know, I mean they kill people in the square too, but you know, and eventually they into the square, and this is where you get like tank man and like the

sort of the famous accounts of the massacre. But like, but that blade is basically over right, because one of the other things has happened is that over the course of this protest, a lot of the students have left because they sort of they sort of gave up after the like factional conflict like stopped. But so so most of the people like who are there are are are on the outs, are like other workers on the outside

of this trying to defend it. And when those people get killed and the art the army gets to build the square, it's it's the whole thing is already over. And you know, these protests get crushed and you know, but before the last bullet has been fired, everyone everyone left standing is trying to create their own narratives. But

what just happened? Um, The most common one is that Chinaman is this like clash between democracy and authoritarianism, and like, okay, to some extent, that's not wrong, although I mean, you know, we've already mentioned that there are a lot of neo authoritarian students there, but like, you know, okay, this is this is kind of a fair interpretation of what's going on. Like there's a lot of other protomocracy movements in this period,

like the region, most famously there's tagwan So Korea. UM. But the actual question of what's happening here is is really a question of what kind of democracy there's You know that that these people are fighting for the students at Tianaments, you know, to the extent that their democratic principles are sincere and not a cover for a sort of like deeply authoritarian version of liberalism that's you know, demanded by like in the sort of new class of

intellectual servercy market reforms. To the extent that they like, they actually believe in this right, they believe in a very narrow conception of political democracy. And you know this this democracy is sort of political democracy operates as the level of the state. Right, It's based on free citizens who are equal before the law, participating in elections. The chief representatives, you like, past laws and you know, oversee

and manages state bureaucracy. But you know, this model of political democracy, which is this is the one that we live under, right, It really gets the workplace to a

separate economic sphere into which democracy doesn't extend. The capitalist firm or its state owned equivalent remains the absolute dictatorship of capitalists and advantagial flunkeys, and even even the sort of progressive wings of the pro democracy movement in like Taiwan and South Korea, like maintain this private, this private didctatorships.

You know, if if, if, if you're a work in one of these states, right, you get rights, you get you know, you get the ability to form unions, you get access to the welfare state, you get these sort of limited protections from the worst like physical and psychological

abuses that your bosses can inflict. But no, no matter how progressive, the pro democracy movements actually are the legitimate Jesus sorry, the legitimacy of the dictatorship of the bosses, which was not up for dispute, you know, to to to to these sort of protmocracy movements, right, like democracy means a democra state and not a democratic workplace. And this is this is the huge divide between what's happening at Tianeman and what's happening like everywhere else in the world.

The workers that Tianeman are the only people left in this entire sort of like run of protomocracy movements that disagree. They are standing against not only that, like every they're standing not only against their own governments, against a lot of the students who are who are also like at

these protests. They are standing against literally the entire type of history itself, bye bye bye, you know, by applying the principles of protomocracy movements like their own concerns, right, which is skyrocketing inflation, mounting debts like rampant corruption to government officials like spy, rocketing and spiraling inequality and petty

bureaucratic oppression. Beijing's working class had reinvented a old and now like largely forgotten tradition of democracy and the factory that I'm gonna I'm calling it democratic your self management because there's no good name for it, and they're all kind of clunky. Fair, I mean, this is based on who these people were at the time. That makes sense that all of their names for things were pretty clunky. Yeah. Well, the thing is that they don't name like like this.

And this is one of the things about Okay. One of the real problems with studying chairman, right, is it like, okay, so we have really good accounts from the students, right, because some of the students flee and they're able to make it out. We have like jack shit basically from

the workers. We have. But what we do have is we have some of the We have some of the documents they produced, and we have a lot of interviews that we're done with with people there, and they I don't know that they have very very idiosyncratic ways of expressing what they believe, and so you know, you'll get things where like Okay, they're like, okay, wake, we we believe in the rule of law, right, and then the next sentence will be like we we we have calculated

the exact amount of surplus value that has been distracted from us according to marks. And it's like what, because Yeah, the thing that they're doing is like that they're they're they're synchronizing this new they're synchronizing sort of like a political tendency that's trying to address the sort of duel to kaderships are dealing with, right like, because they're they're dealing at the same time with like this political dictatorshi at the party has and also the fact that their

bosses now like completely control everything that they do. And because of this, they you know, they they wind up being like the last or I guess technically second to last because Argentina happens, although that that's sort of convoluted method itself, but they're they're in the twentieth century, like they are the last people who are fighting for democracy in the factory. And this, like to a large extent,

is what schandem is actually about. It's it's the culmination of a century and a half long war between the democratic wing of the classical workers jument and like every single other ideology that exists, and these guys over that century and a half long span, they're going to fight Communists, are going to fight capitalists, are going to fight liberals and fascists and monarchies and republics and social democracies and theocracies,

and at Tieneman, they're gonna lose one more time. And that defeat, the fact that they lose here, and the fact that these people get slaughtered, the fact that like their crushed so effectively that no one even remembers what they were, don't even remembers they exist or like much less like what they were fighting for. This defeat is

the origin of the modern world. That one man ruling the factory, like the the individual, single boss who has total control and power over you is in in its sort of thousand forms, is the author of the hell that is the twenty one century and when we come back from this commercial break, we are going to look at the international part of the struggle that Tianneman is

sort of like the conclusion of. So here's some ads maybe the job working at their distribution center, heying gig, and we're back to look at y You two also must live in the the the absolutely one man dictatorship in the factory. So it's it's not not not not not not as much one man. It's the one algorithm you have to you have to listen to what your iPad tells you when you're walking through the Amazon distribution center.

That's true. Yeah, they have. It is funny because it's like that they they've somehow made a worse version of it. It It was like, okay, yeah, it's like it's it's yeah, it's like, okay, now now now you were ruled by a computer whose whose job it is to make one person an extremely large amount of money. It's even for

further like depersonalized and further disjointed from actually being a human. Yeah, it's it's I don't know that there's there's there's some metaphor here which if I wasn't like sick out of my mind out how like power depersonalizes, the dehumanizes you until the point where you're replaced with the machine that you can make here, but I I don't know one in one in every two days, the rumor randomly starts binding on me. So yeah, I can't. I can't do that.

The lesson here, The lesson here is is that when you're thinking about factories and how bosses suck and how it's not great to work at a factory, just have a boss that tells you what to do. The lesson is that it can always get worse because it could always be a computer. Yeah, anyway, continue, So okay, So to get a sense of like what this fight is and like how how we got to Tiana, men, we need to go back to the Revolutions of which is at first glance not like not an incredibly obvious place

to start. Um. Okay, if if you want like a really detailed, like blow for blow account of the Revolutions of eighteen forty eight, go listen to the Revolutions podcast. It it's good. I am not gonna do it here because oh my god, there's so much stuff. But the very short version is that so in h forty eight across Europe. There's a bunch of revolutions that are collectively known while sometimes known as like the Springtime of the

People's and this is this is the first revoluence. This is the first wave of revolutions where socialists are like a real thing. Um like Frederick Angles like that angles like the marks and angles. Angles is like on a barricade with a rifle fighting in Prussia. There's like, yeah, I'm not gonna sadly, I can't get into Augustva willage here, but like go go, go, go google Augustva Village is

He's wild. There's a huge revolution in France where they like that they finally deposed the king and you know this, there's this question here and as these revolutions look like they're winning, there's this question of how far democracy is going to go and what it's going to mean. Um, and you have a large thing. You have this. This is in a lot of ways very similar to what

you're dealing with with in in China. In the nine Inside of France, you have the split, right, you have the split between you know, like the people who are like who are like French radicals, but in the sense of like the original French Revolution. Who are you know, Okay, they want like they want an elected democracy. They absolutely do not want to like deal with the fact that

that the workplace is not a democracy. And then you know, and you have you have a bunch of socialists, and the socialists are like, hey, can we do something about like property relations and like the fact that there's a bunch of poor people with no jobs, and you know, and the socialists gets slaughtered, but you know, they don't die.

I mean, okay, you just said, okay, So a lot of these people get horribly slaughtered, but a lot of them escape and lives on, and so a lot of the lead well, I mean, there's interesting story here, Like

a lot of the leaders like live on. A lot of these people, like for example, but a bunch of people flee to the US and they wind up being like the like a lot of the officer core of the Union army and in the Civil War is made up by these by these socialists who like had to flee after the revolutions failed and like Prussia and stuff. But yeah, so but many of them do in fact die. Yeah, it doesn't go great for them, and and you know, and you get to see one of the other things

that's going to happen a lot, which is that. Okay, so like the the sort of like the French like like the French radicals who are like pro capitalism but also pro democracy like ally with the conservative factions, and then they also all get killed when Napoleon, Napoleon the

Third takes power. But man, it's really it's really it's really hard to root for someone here and that yeah, I know, it's those It's like this is really like like the revolution produces his own grave digger ship, Like, oh, hey, what what did you expect was going to happen when you allied with like the landlords and I Napoleon Third. This good thing, this mistake will never be made again. No good good thing. Yeah, yeah, pay no mind to

the rest of this episode anyway. Continue. So, yeah, you have the split between people who want electoral democracy but you know, to catorships in the workplace and these people who want like democracy in the workplace. And this also

prefigures a split inside of socialism itself. Um for you know, for for for the and this isn't even I like in my script, I say like for for for the most radical factions of socialism, you know, like in control over the means of production, which is like the thing that you want means that like production is controlled either by like free associations and workers like you know you direct democratic unions, is later called syndicalism or like workers councils,

and that that's you know, I say, it's the most radicollection like that that's a very popular conception of like what this is going to be. Like if you read marks, like marks is like, oh yeah, free associations a workers sure.

But you know, as as the sort of like eighteen forties roll into the eighteen citties and the eighteen seventies, there's this faction of the movement that becomes just like obsessed with with the bureaucratic technologies of the states, and you know, like they they they they watch the state really get involved in the economy in a way that

it like kind of hasn't before. Then they they in over the course of sort of industrialization, they watch with like incredible envy as they see like these incredibly elaborate like planning schemes. They see the state building roads and canals and railroads and then entire cities with these like complex electrical grids and like gas lions and plumbing systems

and especially trains, like specifically trains. This drives them all completely insane, and they become they begin to believe that like a single centralized planning body, like non amercratic association of workers, like a single centralized state planning body can like you know, bring about the long saw after like cooperative commonwealth of socialism and all all these people get they get obsessed with like such a planning right, and this becomes this starts to sort of like consume more

and more of the left um in Germany, which is home to like the powerful German Social Democratic Party, which is like probably the most powerful socialist party in the world. At this point, the socialists become divided into two camps. There there's the revisionists led by Edward Bernstein, who like he like renounces Marxism and revolution and like entirely in favor of performing capitalism in the state from like within.

And then you know, you have these orthodox Marxists that are like led by Kolakotski, whose whole thing is that he hates Bernstein, and like the only thing that these two people that these two groups agree on is that I the only thing they agree on is the bureacratic state planning is the thing you're supposed to be fighting for and not like democratic workplaces. And this leads the SDP to like they they do a lot of things

that are like disastrous. Um. One of the things that they wind up doing a lot is like actively working with the bosses to like destroy the like workplace autonomy for their own unions. So like they'll there'll be things where it's like like there's like there's a famous examples, Like there's like a like a I think they're like an they're on metal workers and I think they make

knives or something. And they have a lot of control of the production process, right, they can control like how much stuff gets produced, the process, like how it works, like what they're actually doing. And the STP is like, no, this is bad because it's inefficient, and so they like basically crush their own union and this this goes in

really disastrous directions. But we're still the single person who becomes like the most obsessed with like the potential of bureacutic state planning is uh, one very very very obscure guy named Vladimir Elias lenin, who I don't expect anyone to have heard of Front of the Pod like front

I just had len Oh that's funny. Yeah. So, as David Greavord points out, Lennon's obsession with like the German postal Service is such STI like, Okay, So he writes a very famous book about like what a future social state is going to be, called State and Revolution, and like almost all of it is a lie. But he also says this in it Um. A witty German social democrat of the eighteen seventies called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true

at present. The postal service is a business organized along the lines of a state capital of monopoly. Bab the imperially is the whole thing about imperialism is making everything off of this. But so to organize the whole national economy on the lines of the postal service, so that the technicians, foreim and bookkeepers, as well as all officials that received no salaries higher than a workman's wage, all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat. This

is our immediate aim. And if you think about what this means for about five seconds, right, what he's saying is that socialism is the entire economy being planned by

a bureaucratic state. And and you know this this like this sits off this like massive series of confrontations with the part of the workers movement who you know, like what to control the work that they do, and you know, like make like you know, the people who like who think that like the revolution means that they're actually going to be able to make decisions over their work and not you know, just like work for like a slightly

different set of bureaucrats. And this struggle between you know this the sort of like new socialist bureaucrats and like democracy and the workers movement is you know, it's it's it's an enormous part of the struggle that happens here. And there's there's like another version of it happening between the workers movement itself and the capitalist state, like in the eighteen eighties, um, the workers movements in like in Italy and Germany and like Frances and that's the extent

that they have. These they form these parties that are called like states within a state, and you know, these things are these massive networks of these workers institutions. They have like free schools, they have workers associations, they have

like friendly society is. They have libraries, they have theaters, they have like unions if co ops, they have like neighborhood associations, they have tenant unions in mutual aid societies and you know, and these things are all run democratically by like by by the workers who formed the associations, and you know, and like the people who are doing this are like you know, the hope is that like this is going to be the basis for the new social society. Right. It's like, okay, we we can just

come together and like do this stuff. We can do it democratically, and we can administer this stuff ourselves and the and these things are enormously popular. Um, and you know, and this like terrifies the sort of old ruling class. Um. And Otto von Bismarck, who's the guy basically running the German state in this period, like his solution to this is to create like bureacratic state run versions of like

all of these things. And so he creates like state run library, state run theaters, like state run welfare services, and he's using these as as like a replacement to the sort of workers institutions. And he has this great line retells an American observer quote, My idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their own sake and invested and interested in their welfare. And like this works. This is this is

an enormous success. This is one of the greatest propagandic ures ever because like it's it's so successful in convincing people that the thing that they're fighting for is like the state bureaucratic version of this thing and not the version where they do it themselves. That like when when the socialists like take power, that they confuse Bismarcks, like literally the welfare state bribe thing that he liked made to buy off the movements, Like they confused that with

socialism itself. And like to this day everyone believes this. It's like it's it's I don't know, I lose my mind constantly over this because all of these things that Bismarck developed, like specifically to destroy the socialist movement. Everyone was like, oh my god, this is socialism. It's like no, no, please stop, and you know, and this is really effective, particularly on the leadership of the movement. But like the actual like people in these parties, like India's movements, don't

forget it. And and as as the sort of like twenty century drawst were closed and you get like the so as as the nineteenth century draws were closed, and you get like the twentieth century. The workers who are like doing the uprisings are not sort of like like the you know, the workers who are doing the uprisings

haven't like drinking the kool aid. And the thing that they do immediately when they start doing uprisings is they start building these democratic institutions, but particularly workers councils um the most famous of these are like other workers councils that form sort of spontaneously in the Russian revolutions of nineteen seventeen, these are like this is actually like this is what like the they're called soviets because soviet is

just like the word for council in Russian. And these these things are originally these like ad hoc strike committees, and then they eventually become these like formalized elect like elected bodies of representatives from like the various factories who are like coordinating a strike and okay, so let you know,

five they lose and they all die. But in seventeen, uh, they do this again and they form the Soviets again, and this time the councils start to take like a larger role in coordinating production directly and you know, coordinating between different factories and industries, and they turn into this

sort of like counterpower thing to the new government. And this kicks off this open period of warfare that stretches like literally from Italy to Argentina between the different socialist factions who like people like the different factions of this movement who want democracy in the factory, and this like a lot newly formed like anti democratic alliance of like social Democrats, Bolsheviks and capitalists who like you know, are like okay, well some of them are in favor of

like you can have Okay, there's a whole range of this thing, right, Like. The thing that unites all of these movements, the social Democrats, the Bolsheviks, the capitalists and later the fascist is that they like emphatically like do not want democracy in the factor, and they're willing to put aside their differences to make sure it doesn't happen.

But you know, there's still there's still a huge fight that happens here between between nineteen nine twenty, you get works councils in we get workers councils in Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine, Ireland and Ireland. There's there's these like two giant revolts by cynicalist workers unions in Brazil and Argentina, and these

all get crushed um in Italy. Italy has like one of the most intense conflicts between these like a lot of cynicalist in the Italian state, and they have this this really famous like set of factory occupations where instead of like so like before those people would go on strike, right you go watch Rick and you leave your factory. And in Italy they were like, okay, well what if we just stayed in the factory and took it over so that they couldn't like just like a restarted production

with scabs, and we now control the factory. And there's this huge wave of it in in Italy in the late nineteen writeen like teens and early twenties, and you know it looks like for a little for like a bit, it like it really looks they're going to bread down the government, but the factory occupations get crushed. But they don't.

They don't get crushed by the government. They get crushed by the Italian Socialist Party and like their union, the General Confederation of Labor, and like this is how fascism

wins in Italy, like to a large extent. It's that like when when like you know, and it happens in Germany too, It's like when when when when the sort of the social democrats and the capitalists are faced with this possibility that like workers could take over the factories, the social Democrats turn on them and just kill them all.

And the problem with that is that like okay, well who who who who do you do the killing with the answer is the fascists, and then the social Democrats like themselves all get exterminated by the fascist It's it's this like you know, it is it is a is A is a terrible cycle that we're going to see like literally over and over and over again. Um yeah it's bad. Um that sounds not great? Yeah yeah do do do you know who else will slaughter your your

factory council? Oh? Oh, I actually know this one. Mm alright, Carrison, go, we have a few options here. There is are our good friends at the Washington State Patrol. Um, if you're trying to set up a highway business next to the highway and run via workers, cancel State Patrol come up, be like not on this highway, You're done. Um probably

also like Amazon or something who knows. Yeah, and we're back to see you know, okay, okay, we are back to see like the worst defeats that they're going to have, that that like the people who want like a factory council are going to have in this period, which for once actually has nothing to do with Amazon or the capitalists whatsoever, which is that like the worst balling they're gonna get is from Lennon and the Bolsheviks, who I don't know how many people sort of like know the

history of the Russian Revolution, but like the factory councils are the people who like basically put the Bolsheviks in power in the first place, like to a large extent, like there there's a lot there are the people who like were the shock troops of this and like literally the moment Lendin takes power, she starts undermining the Soviets.

Um he publishes this thing, like like like three or four days after that Chrial revolution, he publishes his thing on the draft to cree on workers control, which is like, you know, he he basically is like he's he's trying to like shift power from these councils to the Bolshet party in the state. And this doesn't really work initially

because these groups are like pretty powerful. But in you know, he publicly Lenin's like, no, we draw drive power from the Soviets, like where where we're the people who support these councils. But then like Lennon's, he's like shipping away from them. And then in nineteen eighteen he writes this thing. He writes this this this paragraph from the Immediate Task the Soviet Government, which is like one of the wildest things I've ever read in my life. I'm just saying

a lot. It's it's wild, it is She's okay. Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labor processes that are based on large scale machine industry. Today, the revolution demands and the interests of socialism that the masses, unquestioning lee obey the single will of the leaders of the labor process, which is like what what how how about you explain to our good

viewers why that is so bonkers? Like some of them might just hear that and be like, oh leftist words cool, moving on, even just the first two words unquestioning, Yeah, makes me like that, but like a questioning submission. The whole thing about like the masses must unquestionably obey the will of the single leader. Like what this is like, like what is happening? This is you know, the and

the thing that's happening here is that Lennon. Lennon is being really candid about what it means for there to be a boss, Like what it means for there to be someone who's position is above you that can order you to do literally whatever they want, and if you don't obey them, like bad things happen and you start or get shot. Yeah, she's she's she's incredibly candid about this, right like this, this, this, this is what like having

a boss means. It means like question exhibition to the single will of the leader, which is like this, this is how I talked about Sophie all the time. Yeah, well, shaking her head, I'm with you, Sophie campaign scare said, Yeah, you're welcome. Whatever you say, Sophie, thanks scare God. I'm thinking about this. There's this line. Um, it's sort of

sententially related to the story. I read this thing once about so the workers who took over the Surban actually think it was the students shore of the a bunch of students like take over this, uh, like like the like the like the big academy in in Paris, and they send this like I think it's a telegram to like the Chinese embassy, and like the end of it is I think, if I'm remembering the exact words correctly, it's uh, the revolution will not be complete until the

revolution will not be complete until the last capitalist is hung with the entrails of the last bureaucrat. Ye was wild. That's that's the thing this brought to mind for some reason.

But you know, I mean going back to sort of Lenin and his like unquestioning like submission to the single well, like he's more candid about what like one man rule in the factory or like having a boss you have to obey like means, but the system is describing like isn't different than any other political system, like Bolshevik rule in the factory like isn't really different than capital, social

democratic or fascist rule. And you know, the movement for democracy and the factory as you know, as as as these people are crossed, especially in across the nation twenty one like it from for Democracy in the factory is faced by four implacable enemies who are willing to put aside all of their ideological differences to ensure that like

no one ever like gets to control their workplace. And you know, and as as the twenties blend into early nine thirties, like the movement seemed to have disappeared, but

they didn't. They absolutely didn't. Even though even though they got murdered by the fascist, the communists, social democrats and the capitalists, They're gonna be back next episode to do like twelve more revolutions and yeah that that that's that that that that that come come come back tomorrow for us talking about like why these revolutions happens, what the

ruling class did to stop them. And then yeah, the the lead up to Chianamen Square to see the sort of like the final standard the Chinese working class, and yeah, like get to what Tianeman actually was, what a Cliff Sanker It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts through cool zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening,