Eyewitness in China
The events in Tiananmen Square, May-June 1989
by Steve Jolly
absolute joy
Once I made some points like that you could see the absolute joy at the fact that somebody had come over to support them.
They put out a little chair, sat me down, they would be forcing cigarettes down my throat - of course I gallantly fought them off! - and cold drinks and so on. And you should know how poor those students are. Even if you are at university over there - and I'll come to this later - you are not, economically speaking, part of a privileged elite. These people, some of whom had been on a hunger strike, were just sitting there and were treating me as a king almost, because I was a socialist there, and willing to support them.
As soon as I started talking, tens of people came around. At one stage 50 people were around the tent. There would have been more, only because I was sitting down so low inside the small tent it was not possible for people to hear what I had to say. What it reminded me of was John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World. It was even more fulfilling than that because we weren't there just to be journalists. We were there to learn of course, but also to assist the development of that movement with Marxist policies and Marxist organisation.
In the discussions they would outline to me the experiences of the past few weeks in China as far as the student movement was concerned, and their ideas as to the perspectives and the next step. What they basically wanted from me was what I had to offer. They said a lot of times: "We are getting a lot of money from overseas and that is great. But we want more than money. We want ideas. That is the best way you can help us." That was said to me time and time again in other discussions.
What I said to these Shanghai students that day, and in most of the other discussions I had, went this way. "Well", I said, "the first lesson you need to draw out is the importance of this student movement being linked to the workers, that the students cannot win the struggle on their own." And I went into the question of the power of the working class, the reason why the workers have to lead this struggle, and why it is important for the students to try to make links in every possible way - and if there was any development towards an independent trade union movement they should support it and nurture it. Because that was their key to victory - not only for the workers, but for the students themselves. We went over the whole question why the revolution in Russia in October 1917 led by the working class was different from the Chinese revolution of 1949, which was of course not led by the working class.
The second point we would go onto then, once that point had gone home, was the demands, the programme, that was necessary for the workers' movement, and for the students' movement, having already agreed the need for these two struggles to be taken forward together. We would go on to Lenin's four points to counter bureaucracy: the elections of all officials, officials to earn no more than a skilled worker, and so on; the need for a free press, of being against a one-party state, of the right of all people who stand on the basis of a planned economy to be able to organise themselves. We would stress the need for the workers to be armed - not on an individual basis, six or seven workers armed to pop off Deng or Li Peng, and I must say that there were some terrorist illusions amongst the students, more out of frustration than anything else - but the need for everybody to be armed. Not a "People's Liberation Army", but an armed people, that's how we would pose it.
Democratic Reform Under Stalinism?
The third point that we discussed ... and I must say that this was the most difficult point, where we had the most trouble in winning acceptance from some of the students and workers, although nine times out of ten we won agreement in the end. It was this: is it possible in a Stalinist country like China, or indeed in the Soviet Union or East Germany, for a strong workers' movement or a strong students' movement, with the right programme, to win democratic rights from a Stalinist government? Because what those Shanghai students, and other students and workers I spoke to, said to me was "We think that is possible. Look what is happening in the Soviet Union today. Look at the Polish elections at the moment. And look at also the West: you have got capitalism which is a worse system than we have, yet you have got democratic rights Surely we can have it here in a so-called socialist government?" These questions would have to be answered and explained theoretically right back from square one.
Incidentally, the students have quite a lot of information about the outside world, even through the official press. Insofar as the bureaucracy comes into conflict with US imperialism it is in their interest, for example, to outline the situation facing blacks in America, of mass unemployment, the division between rich and poor. Though that will go side by side with a sympathetic analysis of the Pakistani regime, or the Chilean dictatorship - because the Chinese bureaucracy supports those regimes. The government papers also just reprint a lot of material from the capitalist press internationally.
Chinese Bureaucracy
In particular, there is a lot of information on developments in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Deng and the bureaucracy see it as in their interests to highlight the problems that glasnost and perestroika are facing. They think it will have a good effect on the consciousness of the masses in China. About two months ago Deng made an important speech to the elite of the bureaucracy. It was reported in the Hong Kong newspapers. "We have two choices here" he said, more or less. "We can go along the road of Gorbachev. But in a country of one billion people that would be playing with fire. Look at the problems Gorbachev has got. He has unleashed a movement of opposition, which is going to blow up in his face. He thinks he is being smart but he in not. In China we have no alternative, except to keep our heads, and hold things down. So what if we have to kill a million people, we have got a billion." It is the same contempt for the people that the old Chinese Emperors displayed.
But, nonetheless, despite its refusal to go the way of Gorbachev and glasnost, the Chinese bureaucracy is faced with a movement all the same.
Anyway, the way we tried to answer this point about the possibilities of democratic reform under Stalinism was like this. First of all, things are different in the West. The capitalist class has economic power through its ownership of the means of production. It also has political power, through its state. In the face of a strong workers' movement sometimes the capitalists are forced to allow a Labour government, even a left-wing Labour government, even a left-wing Labour government, to come into office - as long as they still have economic control of society and can dictate to that government what it can and cannot do. For example, what is going on in Australia at the present time.
That is possible in the capitalist world, I would say in the discussions, but only if you have a strong labour and trade union movement - and I had to go over all the points about that. And then point out that democratic rights existed only for 15% of the population in the capitalist world, living in the capitalist countries. And that they are won only through struggle. I would discuss, for example, the history of the suffragettes' movement: how women workers won the vote in Britain. And the question of the Eureka Stockade in Australia which is how the vote was won in the 1850s for the working class there. The vote wasn't given on a plate.
I would discuss how the issue was totally different in the Stalinist world. Why? Because of the nationalisation of the economy - in China as a result of the 1949 revolution, and in Russia because of the 1917 Revolution - all the bureaucracy has got is state power. The state controls the key levers of the economy, and therefore if the bureaucracy lose state power they lose their privileges, they lose everything. As far as Deng is concerned today, if he lost state power he would be strung up from the nearest lamppost. Consequently the bureaucracy will fight to the bitter end against genuine democratic rights for the working class and the students movement in China.