Most I know are generally opposed to violence, with some exceptions allowed for any revolution or class struggle.
When it comes to countries like the US or China, using violence in the form of the military or police against your own population is such a big difference in power that any violence ought to be as minimal as possible.
Using tanks and rifles against a group of civilians is so far beyond that, that it’s not within what I think any of the IRL socialists I know would deem appropriate or acceptable.
This has two interesting issues right in the first sentence.
Most I know are generally opposed to violence, with some exceptions allowed for . . .
The idea of violence being a categorical bad with “exceptions” where it is permissible due to some carveout is deontological reasoning that has no place in a materialist assessment. Violence has severe downsides that mean that it should be minimized, but the degree to which it can be minimized without some greater downside (particularly violence from another party) coming about or continuing is something that varies situation to situation. Sometimes violence isn’t useful, so its introduction only has downsides. Sometimes it is one of several options that are all reasonably arguable. Sometimes it is clearly the only option to prevent a much greater violence.
with some exceptions allowed for any revolution or class struggle.
[Setting aside the word “any” there] What do you think these words, “revolution” and “class struggle,” mean?
Do you think a revolution – or whatever makes it worthwhile, since that surely is not revolution for its own sake – is something that is achieved eternally after fighting for a few years, or something that must be continuously protected from forces trying to sabotage you from all angles?
Do you think that “class struggle” is something where you hang a few capitalists, wash your hands of the blood, and then kick back and relax? Or is it a continuous process of trying to resolve the contradictions in society on a basis that follows the broad democratic consensus of the working class? There are going to be workers who are bought off by capital, or radicalized by cults it supports, or any number of other things, and these workers will then seek to destroy your socialist state while Trotskyists in the North Atlantic cheer them on. Do you let this small group – typically representing foreign powers or the most monstrous of infections you have let fester in your own society – dictate the destruction of the socialist state even as the majority wishes for it to be preserved?
I am reminded of a quote from Michael Parenti in one of his lectures:
Mercenary armies, destruction of the productive facilities of the society, more invasion, more sabotage, economic boycott, economic embargo, monetary embargo, technological embargo. These have distorting effects upon a society…
When the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua ten years ago, filled with ideals and hopes for their nation and their people, they discovered a very awful thing, and it wasn’t about themselves, even though they had to do it to themselves. It was about that capitalist encirclement. They discovered that they needed a secret police. They discovered that they needed a security police because all around them, coming in from two borders and within their own society, were acts of sabotage, espionage, attack, mercenary invasion and the like, and they understood that if the revolution was going to survive, it would have to build up instruments of state power, instruments of coercion even, and these instruments, by the way, can make mistakes, and these instruments can not only make mistakes. They can commit some serious crimes, although in Nicaragua the impressive record is how few crimes there were, given the utterly dire conditions they were under.
(It’s worth noting that “secret police,” as far as I can tell, is what you call the “intelligence agency” of a country hostile to the US)
This is all glossing over the fact that the violence by the CPC was not directed at the civilian students – who it gave plenty of warning to evacuate – but to the militants who had already immolated and lynched unarmed soldiers who were supervising the protests.
Unfortunately for the CPC, there was also a group of students (a tiny subset of the larger movement) being lead by people who were either religious zealots (Christians, in this case) or bought off and were consciously making the group stand its ground in hopes that they would be caught in the crossfire, which happened in some cases. We know this in part because one of those leaders very helpfully told us as much in an interview. She did escape and had a fruitful career in the US working with various Republican think tanks and the like. I assume that the recruitment vector was her being Christian, but I don’t know.
Anyway, that’s just a very basic overview because I thought I shouldn’t leave your actual claims uncontested, but I mostly wrote this comment for the first couple of paragraphs.
The idea of violence being a categorical bad with “exceptions” where it is permissible due to some carveout is deontological reasoning that has no place in a materialist assessment.
I am pointing out what I have perceived as the general consensus among socialists that I interact with, not trying to make any assessment, immaterial or otherwise in the above comment.
In so far as exactly when violence is justified, I believe that it is highly contextual, and ought to be justifiable so as not to allow abuse of power.
This last point is also where I believe we disagree, because were it factually correct that the various violence-monopolies that you refer to always meted out justifiable violence in perfectly proportional portions in order to protect the proletariat or some other noble cause, I would perhaps consider it a fair point. However I don’t think having an “intelligence agency” with little to no oversight with a license to kill and abuse their own citizens results in the best end result for the citizenry, and frequently it seems that the most vulnerable citizens receive the hardest end of the stick.
This isn’t to say that I can’t agree with it in principle, only that whatever the Tiananmen square massacre was, it was a far cry from a being the proportional and justifiable response to an outside threat.
This is all glossing over the fact that the violence by the CPC was not directed at the civilian students – who it gave plenty of warning to evacuate – but to the militants who had already immolated and lynched unarmed soldiers who were supervising the protests.
If you already have your conclusion ready, finding evidence to support your position is not only very easy, it is inevitable. Just ask any flat-earther or holocaust-denier. While it’s most likely true that a lot of soldiers were killed, and that some were indeed lynched by civilians, it is an outright lie to claim that the troops were the peaceful victims of an enraged mob:
I fell as I ran, together with the students, for our lives. The troops always came up, chased and beat us; dispersed and hit with baton viciously the students who came before them, falling, crawling and running in panic. We didn’t dare to stay, being dealt blows while running. As I fell again, the troops came up and hit me twice. Luckily I was not injured, but it still hurt. They hit with all their might, with no sympathy. Many students are pushed down, hit to the point that their heads bled and the blood spilt onto me.
~ Hui, W. (2019). Ten Questions about June-4th
Furthermore, in the book Hui also mentions 5 protestors that were shot dead within the first phase of the Tiananmen square dispersal, all supported by evidence from verified sources. While 5 people dead is not a massacre (that happened later), it does show that the PLA were not simply some “unarmed soldiers supervising the protests”.
It’s difficult to understand the chaos and pandemonium of that event, where several elements of the army ended up fighting each other as well as protestors. u/SickHobbit on r/askhistorians sums up quite thoroughly here in this excellent response: Why were the 27th Army Group killing other Army Groups/Police at Tiananmen Square?
If you are interested in some actual academic sources on the topic, I would recommend these:
- Béja, Jean-Philippe. The impact of China’s 1989 Tiananmen massacre. 2010.
- Brook, Timothy. Quelling the people: The military suppression of the Beijing democracy movement. 1998.
- Lim, Louisa. The people’s republic of amnesia: Tiananmen revisited. 2014
This is disappointing, you seemed more interested in actual conversation before.
If you already have your conclusion ready, finding evidence to support your position is not only very easy, it is inevitable.
When you stay in the realm of aphorism, it is much easier to support this thesis. When trying to apply this in the concrete it falls apart here. I am talking about photos and videos, typically from western journalists, of the events leading up to June 4th. They didn’t come from a parallel world, nor were they synthesized from thin air because someone wanted to believe in them.
While it’s most likely true that a lot of soldiers were killed, and that some were indeed lynched by civilians, it is an outright lie to claim that the troops were the peaceful victims of an enraged mob:
You are failing to follow the simple timeline I explained before, which makes your attempt at refutation worthless even if we supposed you were correct. Your quote is from the dispersal, when I referred to unarmed soldiers supervising the protest, I was there talking about the period prior to the dispersal, and the lynching was immediate prior to it. Obviously during the dispersal itself, people were struck if they were not already outside of the square, but I don’t think anyone was shot since it’s plainly the case that no one died. Let’s make this as easy as possible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests_and_massacre#Other_estimates
Here you can see linked a number of western sources which a) show that the 10,000 dead estimate is hysterical and recanted by the person that said it (despite some people in this very fucking thread asserting it!) and b) that no one died in the square itself. Hundreds did obviously die in the ensuing violence around the square, but anyone claiming that, for example, five people in the square itself were immediately shot should be regarded as unreliable.
I’m curious how you believe the lynching took place during or after the dispersal. Being technical, I think the two soldiers in question here were killed by other means and then strung up after (along with being stripped and immolated), but if the military was already on the offensive at that point, how would this be accomplished? It seems like an absurd ritual to engage in while rifles and tanks are coming for you, and we do have photographs of these corpses and their onlookers. I’ve avoided linking them because they are graphic photos and that also makes them a nuisance to find, but I can dig them up if this is a real sticking point for you.
