 Okay, so we're here with Daniel Moorley of the Editorial Board of Socialist Appeal and regular contributor to marxist.com. And we're talking today about the Tiananmen Square movement, the 25th anniversary of which is this year. So Daniel, could you start off by explaining a little bit about the movement? Okay, so the movement began in the middle of April for 1989. And it was initiated by students, which in that day, 25 years ago, represented a much smaller proportion of the population than they do today. And a more really slightly more elite section of the population than today. The movement basically started in response to the death of Hu Yao Bang, I've pronounced that correctly, who had been a general secretary of the Communist Party and was seen as a liberal and was pushed out and then he died. And certainly she started actually as a sort of mourning for him. But it quickly developed some demands. It was a very spontaneous movement really. And its demands mainly were basically of a democratic nature for reform of the Communist Party for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, those kinds of demands in general. There were also demands relating to education like better payment for intellectual jobs, journalists, things like that, which obviously reflects the background of those who were involved in the movement. But it also very quickly became sort of a magnet really for all of the discontent in society and therefore the working class began to be attracted to the movement too. So early sections of the working class, particularly in Beijing, within the movement itself, the formation of the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation and that sort of fraternised with the students but there was some tensions there as well. But thanks to the formation of that organisation some social demands were put into the movement as well, in particular for workers' control of production. There was a lot of anti-corruption demands as well. So the movement had a very, I mean it only existed for two months so obviously it didn't have a complete programme, it wasn't perfectly consistent. It generally had a democratic anti-bureaucratic anti-corruption kind of character and rapidly spread around the country from Beijing to about 400 cities and initially met with some support even from sections of the regime before the regime had really decided what to do about it. And a number of events at place obviously famously the image of the tank man standing in front of that line of tanks. That indicates the repression which came later on the 4th of June 1989. It was the day really when they put an end to the movement they decided to send in about 300,000 troops to crush the movement violently. And that really just put an end to it, put an end to the movement itself with obviously the consequences. There were reverberations from it but that was the end of the movement. Okay so can you give us a bit of the background of this movement? What were its causes? Well basically two fog really. On the one hand obviously China had ever since 1949 been a planned economy but also a planned economy that was Stalinist really in its leadership. Everyone I think is familiar more or less with the fact that it was under the leadership of Mao until 1976 and sort of modelled itself on the Soviet Union although there were some differences. So no freedom of speech and expression for example and a sort of bureaucratic dictatorship over things. So there was always obviously discontent if you like at the bureaucracy and the lack of democratic freedoms and that can be seen and expressed in the movement especially because of its student or intellectual character. Democratic demands particularly were at the forefront so of course by that on the one hand. But what really brought it to the forefront what made it happen in 1989 rather than at any other time were the economic reforms that had been taking place for just over ten years then started by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. And these economic reforms were basically pro-capitalist reforms which were still in their more or less early stages down in comparison with today but had made some very important differences in Chinese society. But crucially hadn't removed the one major source of discontent really in China which was the bureaucracy. So the bureaucracy the dictatorship remained but you now had the introduction of incentives for workers and for managers. You had a sort of dual pricing system so the introduction basically of market prices for things and you had an explosion of corruption in the black market that went along with this. So in my opinion the real cause of the movement, the immediate cause obviously being Fuyao Bank's death and he was also his expulsion from power. But the real kind of spark of the movement was the inflation, the falling living standards, the increasing inequality, the sense of alienation that this obviously generates and also just the general turbulence that any time the repressive regime begins to change, begins to shake up society then it's always a very dangerous time for that regime and this was a period like that, it was a period of big economic changes, of growing class polarization, of a lot of corruption, of falling living standards for many, not for everyone but for sections of society. And I suppose the sort of change in the sort of structures of society, the economic structures created uncertainty and also a questioning of sort of established norms which I suppose gave rise to the movement itself. But yes it was a movement mainly for democratic reforms in defence of Fuyao Bank and what they saw he stood for that was really, you know so there's an accumulation of these two main factors, the economic and the bureaucracy and corruption. Okay you mentioned earlier some of the reverberations that resulted from this movement, what were some of the consequences of the Tiananmen Square movement? Well initially for the first couple of years not very much other than the repression of those involved but when we take a step back and look at the bigger picture we can see that the consequences were profound and I would argue that actually what's interesting about it is it shows the way in which on the contrary to the idea that capitalism brings democracy or needs democracy is actually the very opposite because the successful repression of the movement, the destruction of the movement, violently gave if you like a political kind of breathing space for the existing apparatus, the existing regime to expand the economic reforms in other words the introduction of capitalism. The leader of the Communist Party at the time of the repression and the one who really sort of led the repression was Deng Xiaoping who ironically is always kind of celebrated in the west as the great reformer, they never really mentioned that he was responsible basically for the repression of Tiananmen Square. So he is famously the great pro-capitalist if you like in China's history, the capitalist roader and he led that repression and in 1992 which is only three years later once the sort of dust had settled he famously began his southern tour where he went around key areas on the south coast of China, key economic areas where economic reforms were going to be piloted basically and he sort of led that, he really pushed for that and in my opinion it was the political breathing space they were afforded by the successful crushing of the movement that gave him the confidence to begin to move down that road and with that you had in the 1990s that was when really the capitalist reform really sped up the privatisation of huge numbers of state-owned enterprises, the taking away of the benefits that came with that for working-class people, the sacking of tens of millions of working-class people and the creation of the Rust Belt and particularly in northern parts of China, north-eastern parts of China you have very rapid economic reforms but no real democratic reforms to go with, in fact arguably even more a tightening up of the bolstering of the police force in the army. On the other hand there were very profound consequences for the labour movement which of course as we know is going to explode or rather the working-class is going to explode in scale thanks to the economic reform, thanks to the growth of capitalism in China that's created a huge working-class but the Beijing Autonomous Workers Federation that was created then and was destroyed also by the repression but nevertheless that sort of symbolised if you like the rebirth of the Chinese working-class or rather the rebirth of their own independent organisations if you like which have slowly but surely since then with the growth of the numerical growth of the working-class have gained little by little especially recently so on the other hand that experience I believed at least to some limited extent actually in a period of growth of the working-class rather than causing it was like an omen if you like of the growing political independence of the working-class which we're now really beginning to see bear fruit. Okay so here we are today 25 years on from the Tiananmen Square movement what kind of lessons can we draw from that movement for today? Yeah well the movement I think much like the Revolution in Egypt in the last few years obviously was much more short-lived than that and didn't topple the regime but similarly to that was the first movement for a long period of time really from the first sort of independent movement of the masses and as such was confused disorganised more or less leaderless similarly with Egypt and in particular its class character was led really by Petty Bourgeois elements although as I said the working-class began to play a role in it it was led by Petty Bourgeois elements students mainly and that really reflected the conditions of China at the time in other words the working-class was smaller then and interestingly also the crushing of the movement was enabled by the probably partly by the fact it was mainly students and obviously students are sort of politically weak they can't really go organise a strike which is going to cripple the country so that makes them very sort of weak in the face of repression but also the way in which they repressed the movement was through the army of course and the army at that time was composed basically of peasants and the peasants in China then would have been very distant if you like from the sort of intellectual layers in the cities that they would have seen and also from the working-class and it would have been much more pliable tool in the hands of the bureaucracy basically to get what they want today however is a very different situation although the problems that they were responding to in 1989 have only gotten worse obviously the dictatorship is still there but the level of corruption and inequality has only increased since then enormously and we know that now China is one of the most unequal countries of the world corruption is a huge issue in China, bigger than it was then and inflation and things like that are reaching into people's living standards so all of those problems are the same if not worse but on the other hand and this is an enormously progressive thing from a Marxist point of view the Chinese working-class is absolutely huge now China is the biggest working-class in the world and very interestingly it's beginning to understand that it's beginning to flex its muscles, it's beginning to sort of feel its own strength there are more strikes year after year in the first three months of this year, in the first quarter of 2014 this level of strike activity was up 31% from last year and last year was already a record-breaking year for the number of strikes a better organised, more confident, more militant and interestingly they're winning to a large extent and the working-class is beginning to form its own independent organisations it's in some areas like in Guangdong it's being actually allowed to form its own trade unions to a limited extent obviously monitored by the state and everything and other workplaces like Foxconn are also allowing the workers to form a union although again obviously that's an initiative from Foxconn itself so they're trying to control that but that indicates the objective change that is forcing if you like a change in the leadership of China which the leadership as repressive as it is feels it cannot stop the working-class and it might be better to allow them some freedoms to organise and express themselves basically and that shows the tremendous strength of the Chinese working-class and as I said it knows that strength it's conscious of its interests to a large extent and it's beginning to learn how to organise itself and the students also are much more sort of pulled into the trajectory of the working-class there are far more students today I think there's something like seven million students graduating every year in China now it's about ten times more than it was in 1989 something like that and the students are much like in countries like Britain are proletarianised many of them upon graduating can only get jobs in factories like Foxconn some of the Foxconn workers are actually graduate students they find themselves having similar wages to what the workers get or even worse in some cases and many of them can't find jobs there's a growing crisis of graduate unemployment again very similar to Britain of course now that China is a capitalist country it will begin to have the same problems of capitalist countries so the student population is much closer to the working-class there are signs of the Chinese students beginning to look to the working-class to begin to try and help organise them to hold Marxist study circles independently of the official ones provided by the state that kind of thing and so clearly if there's going to be another Tiananmen Square movement and I certainly believe there will be there will be an explosion at some point of revolutionary activity aimed at toppling the regime and sure it will probably be confused initially again of course there's no sort of prepared leadership in advance there's no you know there's under a totalitarian regime there's not much chance to practice if you like political power so it will probably have a large element will be largely confused in some ways but on the other hand I think that the class character of it will be overwhelmingly working-class it won't be petty bourgeois led in the main and it will have a high degree of class consciousness involved in it and enormously powerful working-class so the lessons for today I suppose are going to be felt almost automatically is that the weakness of the movement then was its petty bourgeois character it's sort of student character and today it will be led by a class which is the largest and most powerful working-class in the world who knows how to strike and if it does strike not only affects the Chinese ruling class but also the whole of world production so they have enormous power in their hands and as I said they are increasingly conscious of that I think that in that respect the lesson if you like will automatically be learnt on the other hand the students if they want to play a role in the movement they have to use the abilities that they do have in other words the amount of free time the ability to study etc they should use that to train themselves up in revolutionary and Marxist ideas and to go to the working class to help them in their struggles and to organise Marxist study circles in the universities but also in workplaces and to begin to build up their own forces in preparation for such an event because I am absolutely sure that that will take place there is a seething discontent in Chinese society there is an acute awareness of the inequality of the corruption of the injustice and one final thing as well that doesn't bode well for the regime is how will they stop this for a start we have indicated the economic power that this class has which wasn't really there before but also you have the fact that the means of repression are not so strong as before they started to spend more on internal security than in defence even though they are spending increasingly large amounts on defence as well which is worrying their neighbours in the region nevertheless they are spending more on internal security and I think that is the first time in their history and that means they are very worried about what is going on also the statistics show that in the strikes of this year there has been a police presence of some kind on 45% of the strikes of 2014 whereas it was only about 11% of police presence on the strikes of 2013 so that is an enormous difference clearly the regime is very conscious of what is going on and is very worried but how do you stop such a movement taking place as I said in 1989 the army they sent 300,000 troops in 300,000 troops is a huge number of troops those are not elite troops those are ordinary people back then they had the advantage that on the one hand they were from a peasant background and were rather alienated from the city and secondly obviously those involved in the movement were largely relatively privileged students which also would have alienated the peasants today the movement is likely to be working class led and it will often be the migrant workers or the children of migrant workers and the army is much closer to the working class simply because the working class has expanded so much and you have the fact obviously that many of the workers are probably related to people who are in the army who are related to peasants if you like so if you want to use a force of that kind of scale of 300,000 or more that you would need to sort of smash a movement on the scale that we are going to see in China there is going to be an acute danger of fraternisation in other words of the rank and file of the army and the police force especially the army being influenced by the movement and the sheer force and strength of the movement and therefore there is a big question mark over whether they could even use these means of repression to hold the movement back so I would argue that China has long overdue Tiananmen if you like, another Tiananmen square it is coming, something like that is going to come a strike wave, a mass mobilisation across the country and there is a big question mark over whether the regime can resist that and we would obviously support such a movement enormously and argue that in order to complete its task and really liberate the Chinese masses they can't just fight for democratic reforms because the key problem in China today is the enormous inequality, the pollution the exploitation etc. They need to fight for socialist demands to go back to socialism although genuine socialism this time socialism with workers democracy and I believe that that actually is something that the working class will be looking towards anyway Okay Daniel, thank you very much