Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy. In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence for effective persuasion. You behave like Chinese state apologists to most people.
Now maybe you're right, TBH I can't claim to know for certain, but if you actually want to convince people you need to do more than point to documents I have no more reason to believe than the pictures and documents I've already seen. Why should I believe your sources vs what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn't agree with you? Especially when it seems apparent that current Chinese leadership has an obvious authoritarian quality and ends justify the means type of attitude. You may deny this but all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
Very well said. I forget that one can already be on the defensive when engaging due to poor faith arguments or extraordinary claims which seem so obvious by others but which still need hard evidence to believe rather than gestures and seemingly innocuous phrasing.
I would say the more extraordinary of these claims is the one believed by a tiny subset of the western world (at least when these claims are made in the western world).
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
Demanding evidence and the writing off evidence as "auth-communist propaganda" is just declaring your prejudice correct with an extra step. Shall we say that internal memos of the US government are "auth-communist propaganda" too?
Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
It's interesting because you seem to have still inherited your beliefs from the state you decry and corporate media.
The united states has the world's largest prison population by both total incarcerated and percentage of the total population. People from the US calling any other country authoritarian is fucking hilarious, and should make it clear how little meaning the word actually has in common usage.
I'm just going to paste the entirety of On Authority by Engels here, I know you don't read theory but at least try
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.
Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.
Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
I'm going to send you an emoji of a pig pooping on his own balls. I'm not sure if emojis are transfered properly through another federated instance, so if it doesn't work please send me a message so we can fix it.
No ML denies that China is 'authoritarian'. They argue that all states are.
Almost everything Marxists say is poorly understood by their detractors and framed in a negative light in one way or another.
what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn’t agree with you?
This makes it seem as though you haven't read the literature and arguments of either side. If that's the case you shouldn't be coming to any conclusions at all, especially to dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox. By definition, the counter narrative is going to sound unorthodox in light of the orthodox claims. The correct approach is to read the source and judge it on its own merit and in light of other known facts.
Same energy as saying that Soviets 'pressed' women into science careers in the same era as liberals were paying Nazi fashion designers (Dior) to design clothes for women (the 'new look') that made working almost impossible, so as to force them back into the home after their taste of (relative) freedom during the war years.
(To be fair to Dior, his sister was based and he apparently named a perfume after her but my source for this is rather cleansing (Wikipedia) so who knows how true that is.)
This makes it seem as though you haven’t read the literature and arguments of either side.
Correct, I have not studied this event.
If that’s the case you shouldn’t be coming to any conclusions at all
You'll notice I didn't come to a conclusion.
dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox.
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying. If you have a non-standard position, if you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
You're proudly proclaiming that you know little about the subject? Yet you still felt like joining in, because...?
Not to mention the fact that you're essentially asking that people chew up this complex topic and regurgitate a dumbed down version... because you're a yank and being uneducated is part of your "culture"?
You can read, and you have a mind, it's up to you to put those two things together to inform yourself and form opinions.
Nope, I'm assuming y'all want to get people on your side right? I was just giving an example of what people outside of your bubble see when they see posts like this. No need to get your panties in a bunch.
To clarify for some of us that don't understand, are you saying the poster is sealioning or engaging in bad faith? I haven't ever seen this word and I'm not sure if there's some specific reference I am not getting.
Rare to see an anarchist one. Though I'm guessing this one is "anarchist" because they have a Rage Against the Machine tattoo and went to a BLM protest once (But left early because some of the other protesters made them feel uncomfortable.)
"In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim" is a conclusion. If you publicly claim that something happened, you should be prepared to provide some kind of evidence, even if it's flimsy. If you're actually willing to learn, read section 3 of this article
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying.
In Nazi Germany in 1944, I think it would be regarded as an unorthodox position that Jews aren't specifically inclined towards greed and evil conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race. By your epistemology, wouldn't it be true that the person defending the Jews is the one that has the burden of proof and not the people who cling to antisemitic conspiracy theories?
you're just loudly denouncing everyone who has investigated the event in question as wrong because they go against your (admittedly) ignorant view of reality
you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
Says an "anarchist"
On a post
About a book
That's is literally the source of the information in which you say we should be proving.
You not only have no right to complain about being made fun of and harassed but deserve it. lol
Do you expect everyone to read your book? How credible is this author? What about this book makes a true understanding of the events accessible rather than just being another person voicing their opinion of evidence the choose to accept?
this is pure JAQing off. you'd have answers to your questions if you spent more time investigating and less time regurgitating state department propaganda
expecting everyone to do the work for you because you're too lazy is shit
y'all are doing god's work out there comrade. even if no known substance can pierce their ultradense skulls you might still catch someone who can be saved, and that's worthwhile
If I had a sufficiently powerful laser I could point it at one of the retroreflectors they put up there and get a reflection back, there is actual proof, and the fact that the Soviets even acknowledged it says a lot about its veracity. Do you think that just because some of the stuff that the US says is true that I'm to take the other things at face value without proof? If NBC cites CBS cites AP cites Reuters cites CBS cites NBC... am I supposed to just be like oh well there's a lot of citations so clearly it must be true? Please try to challenge this "west good by default" mindset that you have, it clouds your judgment.
Oh, good response. I should keep this in mind in the future when people try to call us "conspiracy theorists." Establishing that we believe in things that have evidence behind them, and don't just say everything the US says is a lie.
Many leftists conspiracy theories are just "Yeah, the US toppled this government and slaughtered a huge number of people. Here's the CIA written article on the CIA website where they admit to it".
I guess that's why people never listen to us. Our conspiracy theories are boring. They're all "shady government agents doing exactly what you'd expect them to do."
We don't get any fun stuff like secret cabals or lizard people or hologram moons. It's all just real world espionage shit, which is much less fun and exciting than James Bond.
Just came from a forum thread where OP was like "i don't want to be a conspiracist but I think tech companies are working together to suppress tech workers!" And I had to be all yeah bruh they go caught ten years ago and had to pay some fines and pinky promoise not to get caught again. Shit's exhausting I hate it here I wanna go live in Tamriel.
This is all silly! The moon landings were faked. They had Kubrick film it! Of course Kubrick being Kubrick he insisted on filming on location...
My favorite "The moon landings were faked" is the old 90s game Battlezone. In Battlezone the moon landings really happened... but they were a cover up because the US sent a secret army of advanced hover-tanks to the moon to gather a nigh-magical unobtanium resource as part of their solar-system spanning secret war with the Soviets. In the first cut-scene the camera pulls back from the Apollo site to show the secret high tech US army base. It was a fun game. Shame about the anti-communsit brainworms. A hybrid FPS/RTS vehicle sim. Cool concept, if a little clunky.
If some tourist also asked me about some shootout that happened in my country I would bail ASAP too. Serial killer shit lol who begins a convo with "so what about that time yall killed students"
"Hey, what do you think about the 2020 antifa uprising where the antifa burned all America's cities down and executed white parents and small business owners?"
My understanding is that most people in China don't really care about the 1989 unrest and are perplexed as to why westerners make such a huge deal of it.
The country that says Iraq had WMD said China did a thing that wouldn't make any sense for them to do. That is the extraordinary claim. Why do you feel that a claim made by the US, who has only ever lied to you, is a reasonable starting point?
I think the US verifiably lies more than other countries, and has international publishing efforts that make it harder for other countries to lie like we do. Being the hegemony and the long time sole superpower does put you in unique positions
extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence
All it takes to prove that the massacre did happen is evidence. Where is this extraordinary evidence?
Proving that something doesn't exist is much harder. There was a liberal in here earlier though that was also saying that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I gave him links, you can see them below. First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre. This includes a CBS reporter and a Latin American diplomat.
First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre.
In the square itself, maybe, but all eyewitnesses agree that the PLA shot and killed many hundreds of protesters in Beijing during the protests, which had been (until that point) largely peaceful.
So while you at the author of this article might be correct to say that there was no actual massacre in Tiananmen Square itself, there certainly was a massacre going on around it.
That was my analysis as well. It's really hard to tell where his seething hatred for China (and really all of Asia) ends and the truth begins. There's very little actual substance.
Gold star for you! This is significantly better than the usual nonsense that's pushed. But after having claimed a massacre for so long, this still seems like damage control to me.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you? Or do you think that the CPC account of the situation might be closer to reality? They claim that after the protest was broken up, some violent instigators began attacking the military in the area around the square. And yes, hundreds died, and many of them were soldiers.
There was a massacre that morning. Journalists have to be precise about where it happened and who were its victims, or readers and viewers will never be able to understand what it meant.
Again, the reporter's point is not that "there was no massacre"; it just didn't happen in the square.
Yep. Even after being forced to admit that he made it up, he's still reporting about things he admits he never saw. Which I have to admit, is a pretty bold move.
I'm really confused by this one. He admitted he lied, and so did many of his colleagues. But you believe that he's still telling the truth about the massacre?
Look, we don't know exactly what happened there that night. But it's clear that the west lied through their teeth about the entire thing, and the lies are self perpetuating at this point. China's story seems to check out. You HAVE to see that.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China's evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about? This is 100% pure propaganda, and it's mostly, perhaps entirely untrue.
It's hard to know exactly what happened, of course, but the facts of the matter are that even the CCP themselves acknowledged the fact that hundreds died and all the Western journalists who were there confirmed that the PLA shot and killed hundreds of protestors.
Also, while it's true that Western journalists may have been biased, it's also certainly true that China's authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth either, especially if they were responsible for the deaths of many civilians.
While the extent of the massacre in Beijing may be contested, it seems incontrovertible that it did occur.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China’s evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about?
Asides from the fact that this is classic whataboutism, you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians.
It is perfectly possible to deplore both massacres, in Beijing and in Mai Lai. This is not a simple zero sum contest between China and the US where one must be the good guy and the other the bad guy.
you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians
It's not portrayed at all. Every year you'll see articles about Tiananmen Square in corporate media -- My Lai (or any of a dozen similar U.S. atrocities) are left to history classes.
you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians
That's the thing, I've lived in the US my whole life, and the My Lai Massacre isn't portrayed at all. Like our genocides in Korea and Indonesia, we simply don't talk about it. I was already a socialist when I learned that America invaded Russia in 1918, even joining forces with Imperial Japan to do so. Every subsequent piece of our history I've learned, every incomprehensibly vast crime, has served more and more to put our programmed greivances against the PRC in perspective: clashes are bad, people dying is bad, but to claim that it's somehow a vast and unprecedented sin is a sick joke coming from the country that did the Tuskegee experiments and the Iraq War.
This is not to say "China is infallible and perfect", because it's still a state, and all states operate at least a little bit in the realm of Bad Shit. What I am saying is that the US is incapable of not lying through it's bloodstained teeth, and the 20th century alone shows that it is not to be trusted with anything whatsoever.
I'm about done discussing this with you, as you already seem to have a reasonable amount of facts.
But your insistence that China fired upon peaceful protests based on "China’s authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth " is absolutely insane and not at all fact based. There's zero evidence to support that. The PLA must really be bad at massacres if they allowed that many of their vehicles and personnel to be killed by unarmed civilians.
Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") denotes in a pejorative sense a procedure in which a critical question or argument is not answered or discussed, but retorted with a critical counter-question which expresses a counter-accusation.
I have done nothing of the sort. I've addressed every topic. I'm inquiring further about why this one particular event is of such importance in showing how evil China is, while things like this are just one of those things. The fact that this keeps popping up every single year and actual American massacres are barely mentioned should indicate to you that the people running the propaganda machine really want you to hate China.
They've shown themselves very willing to twist the truth, but you still insist that the core claim is true, no matter what. The clear use of this as propaganda should lead you to question it.
But I doubt that any further conversation will be productive. You have the basic facts correct, which is better than most. Many people did die that night. Many of them soldiers. The fighting happened in many separate locations away from the square. Those are the facts. If you extrapolate a massacre out of that, there's no facts I can draw upon to argue with you, other than repeating that the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Why would I believe your sources over others? Especially when there are what appear to most people to be pictures of the Chinese state using lethal military force against protesters and dead bodes on the ground. Are these fake pictures?
Again, fantastical claims. Where are these pictures?
Edit: I love that this is the second person to come in here who gives us shit for being conspiracy theorists, disregards first hand eyewitness accounts, and runs away when pressed for evidence. Murder trials in the US must work very differently than I've been led to believe.
Do you believe in Last Thursdayism? I choose not to because reality has no meaning that way and the consequences are still the same.
Do you believe in your own birth? After all, you couldn’t possibly remember it. How do you know aliens didn’t just materialize you out of nothing? Again, I choose not to subscribe to the alien-materialization theory because there’s a much better hypothesis that seems to make a lot more sense.
Honestly, you want a simple, widely accepted, heavily west-biased source? Literally just read the wikipedia article.
"[CBS and WP journalists] could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square"
"cables from the United States embassy in Beijing agreed there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square"
Nobody here is denying there were protests, or that a limited number people died in clashes with police across the country. But literally no reputed source, western lib or otherwise, claims that the government was out in Tianenmen killing civilians in major numbers.
I have only seen what is common of Americans to see, just like 911. Do you think 911 happened? I've been there, was there no twin towers ever? They're not there now. I haven't seen any special highly credible documents about that either, but I'm pretty sure it happened (who did is another question).
Communism evolved in to the Xeelee, killed everyone in the universe, and then went back in time to the beginning of the universe again to kill everyone in the univserse again 69 times! Checkmate, socialists!
It's a clickbaity title, and it's disappointing to see people engaging with it on the grounds of contrarianism, I guess.
The truth is (which I would assume/hope many here agree with) is that the violence associated with the protests was very real. It was , however, greatly exaggerated by western media in many cases. This has been known for decades, I'm not sure what this book offers that would change that at this point (no, I'm not going to read the article)
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy.
It only sounds crazy if you assume you cannot possibly be a victim of a propaganda campaign, which I get it it's uncomfortable to think about but consider it and do your own research.
Coming even from from an anarchist (i.e. someone who is also distrustful of government, media, etc), this type of stuff makes you guys sound crazy. In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim and therefore is going to require extraordinary evidence for effective persuasion. You behave like Chinese state apologists to most people.
Now maybe you're right, TBH I can't claim to know for certain, but if you actually want to convince people you need to do more than point to documents I have no more reason to believe than the pictures and documents I've already seen. Why should I believe your sources vs what as far as I can tell is the rest of the academic world that doesn't agree with you? Especially when it seems apparent that current Chinese leadership has an obvious authoritarian quality and ends justify the means type of attitude. You may deny this but all it takes for me to believe it is to see the fear in the faces of Chinese people when asked certain questions.
deleted by creator
Very well said. I forget that one can already be on the defensive when engaging due to poor faith arguments or extraordinary claims which seem so obvious by others but which still need hard evidence to believe rather than gestures and seemingly innocuous phrasing.
I would say the more extraordinary of these claims is the one believed by a tiny subset of the western world (at least when these claims are made in the western world).
A bunch of people on Lemmy pointing me to likely auth-communist propaganda is no different to me than a bunch of Christians pointing me to the bible. Why would I believe your websites any more than I believe the bible, or CNN?
Demanding evidence and the writing off evidence as "auth-communist propaganda" is just declaring your prejudice correct with an extra step. Shall we say that internal memos of the US government are "auth-communist propaganda" too?
It's interesting because you seem to have still inherited your beliefs from the state you decry and corporate media.
Y'all really love that word authoritarian, don't you 😂
Define "Authoritarian" in any kind of useful way challenge level: Impossible.
Is it not appropriate?
The united states has the world's largest prison population by both total incarcerated and percentage of the total population. People from the US calling any other country authoritarian is fucking hilarious, and should make it clear how little meaning the word actually has in common usage.
Um acktually tankies, don't you know I hate the US too?
Anyway, back to my angry ranting about China's authoritarianism using US state department propaganda about them.
I never claimed the U.S. wasn't authoritarian. I think the U.S. is in fact extremely authoritarian, maybe even on the same level as China.
And yet you believe everything 1 tells you about the other. I wonder white
I don't but you can go on thinking whatever you like about me.
You clearly do.
I'm just going to paste the entirety of On Authority by Engels here, I know you don't read theory but at least try
A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.
Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.
On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.
Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation without authority?
Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labour had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.
Let us take by way of example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other labourers whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]
If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.
Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?
But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.
When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.
We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organisation, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.
We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organisation of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?
Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion; or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction.
edit: ok that was mean I should not have said that
Yeah, that "it's just like religion" argument really is a blast from the past. As in, edgy atheist spaces c. 2010.
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I'm going to send you an emoji of a pig pooping on his own balls. I'm not sure if emojis are transfered properly through another federated instance, so if it doesn't work please send me a message so we can fix it.
This was such an unexpected response lmfao
Clearly you have not heard the legend of
this dope ass bear 
No ML denies that China is 'authoritarian'. They argue that all states are.
Almost everything Marxists say is poorly understood by their detractors and framed in a negative light in one way or another.
This makes it seem as though you haven't read the literature and arguments of either side. If that's the case you shouldn't be coming to any conclusions at all, especially to dismiss one side outright for being unorthodox. By definition, the counter narrative is going to sound unorthodox in light of the orthodox claims. The correct approach is to read the source and judge it on its own merit and in light of other known facts.
"No investigation, no right to speak"
-a quote from an EVIL AUTHORITARIAN!
Same energy as saying that Soviets 'pressed' women into science careers in the same era as liberals were paying Nazi fashion designers (Dior) to design clothes for women (the 'new look') that made working almost impossible, so as to force them back into the home after their taste of (relative) freedom during the war years.
(To be fair to Dior, his sister was based and he apparently named a perfume after her but my source for this is rather cleansing (Wikipedia) so who knows how true that is.)
Correct, I have not studied this event.
You'll notice I didn't come to a conclusion.
Your position is in fact unorthodox in my culture (U.S.) -- that's what I'm saying. If you have a non-standard position, if you actually want to convince people you need to make the information accessible and give people a reason why they should believe it over their normally acceptable sources. Making fun of them is probably counter-productive (even if it is fun).
You're proudly proclaiming that you know little about the subject? Yet you still felt like joining in, because...?
Not to mention the fact that you're essentially asking that people chew up this complex topic and regurgitate a dumbed down version... because you're a yank and being uneducated is part of your "culture"?
You can read, and you have a mind, it's up to you to put those two things together to inform yourself and form opinions.
Why did you paraphrase culture, it's true 😬
Anti-intellectualism and proud ignorance is one of the cornerstones of American culture.
Nope, I'm assuming y'all want to get people on your side right? I was just giving an example of what people outside of your bubble see when they see posts like this. No need to get your panties in a bunch.
Ah okay you're a pinniped, that makes sense
To clarify for some of us that don't understand, are you saying the poster is sealioning or engaging in bad faith? I haven't ever seen this word and I'm not sure if there's some specific reference I am not getting.
Thats what I'm saying yeah, just trying not to let my undergrad zoology go to waste
I avoided plant bio and animal bio for as long as I could. I have to take them soon, wish me luck!
Rare to see an anarchist one. Though I'm guessing this one is "anarchist" because they have a Rage Against the Machine tattoo and went to a BLM protest once (But left early because some of the other protesters made them feel uncomfortable.)
"In 2023 saying Tiananmen Square massacre never happened is an extraordinary claim" is a conclusion. If you publicly claim that something happened, you should be prepared to provide some kind of evidence, even if it's flimsy. If you're actually willing to learn, read section 3 of this article
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In Nazi Germany in 1944, I think it would be regarded as an unorthodox position that Jews aren't specifically inclined towards greed and evil conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race. By your epistemology, wouldn't it be true that the person defending the Jews is the one that has the burden of proof and not the people who cling to antisemitic conspiracy theories?
To paraphrase comrade Mao; no investigation, no right to speak
To be clear, I'm not speaking of this event, I never made any claims of knowledge about this event.
you're just loudly denouncing everyone who has investigated the event in question as wrong because they go against your (admittedly) ignorant view of reality
Says an "anarchist"
On a post
About a book
That's is literally the source of the information in which you say we should be proving.
You not only have no right to complain about being made fun of and harassed but deserve it. lol
Do you expect everyone to read your book? How credible is this author? What about this book makes a true understanding of the events accessible rather than just being another person voicing their opinion of evidence the choose to accept?
this is pure JAQing off. you'd have answers to your questions if you spent more time investigating and less time regurgitating state department propaganda
expecting everyone to do the work for you because you're too lazy is
shit
We always do the work for them anyway and it's still not enough to permeate the thick lib brain barrier.
y'all are doing god's work out there comrade. even if no known substance can pierce their ultradense skulls you might still catch someone who can be saved, and that's worthwhile
lol nice
bro, just go read the book, or at least parts of it and skim for quotes to smack us down with, if its really that flimsy fucking get us for it!
"I could beat you up if I wanted to but I don't so I won't waaaaaaaa"
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Could you do me a favor and kindly add this to your reading list?
"anarchists" please stop believing state department propaganda
Do you think we went to the moon?
If I had a sufficiently powerful laser I could point it at one of the retroreflectors they put up there and get a reflection back, there is actual proof, and the fact that the Soviets even acknowledged it says a lot about its veracity. Do you think that just because some of the stuff that the US says is true that I'm to take the other things at face value without proof? If NBC cites CBS cites AP cites Reuters cites CBS cites NBC... am I supposed to just be like oh well there's a lot of citations so clearly it must be true? Please try to challenge this "west good by default" mindset that you have, it clouds your judgment.
Oh, good response. I should keep this in mind in the future when people try to call us "conspiracy theorists." Establishing that we believe in things that have evidence behind them, and don't just say everything the US says is a lie.
Many leftists conspiracy theories are just "Yeah, the US toppled this government and slaughtered a huge number of people. Here's the CIA written article on the CIA website where they admit to it".
I guess that's why people never listen to us. Our conspiracy theories are boring. They're all "shady government agents doing exactly what you'd expect them to do."
We don't get any fun stuff like secret cabals or lizard people or hologram moons. It's all just real world espionage shit, which is much less fun and exciting than James Bond.
Just came from a forum thread where OP was like "i don't want to be a conspiracist but I think tech companies are working together to suppress tech workers!" And I had to be all yeah bruh they go caught ten years ago and had to pay some fines and pinky promoise not to get caught again. Shit's exhausting I hate it here I wanna go live in Tamriel.
That guy probably believes Iraq had weapons of mass destructions.
Of course they did! They bought them from the French and used them with the knowledge and support of the US in the Iran-Iraq war!
They didn't have any weapons of mass destruction in 2003, of course.
This is all silly! The moon landings were faked. They had Kubrick film it! Of course Kubrick being Kubrick he insisted on filming on location...
My favorite "The moon landings were faked" is the old 90s game Battlezone. In Battlezone the moon landings really happened... but they were a cover up because the US sent a secret army of advanced hover-tanks to the moon to gather a nigh-magical unobtanium resource as part of their solar-system spanning secret war with the Soviets. In the first cut-scene the camera pulls back from the Apollo site to show the secret high tech US army base. It was a fun game. Shame about the anti-communsit brainworms. A hybrid FPS/RTS vehicle sim. Cool concept, if a little clunky.
I loved that game.
Yes
The "I talked to one person so now I'm an expert on the situation" school of historical anyalysis.
I too would be scared talking to a patchouli oil scented, dreadlocked white boy anarchist.
If some tourist also asked me about some shootout that happened in my country I would bail ASAP too. Serial killer shit lol who begins a convo with "so what about that time yall killed students"
Imagining a scenario where a Chinese tourist randomly brings up the Columbine massacre while they're visiting
"Hey, what do you think about the 2020 antifa uprising where the antifa burned all America's cities down and executed white parents and small business owners?"
"I think you're a cop".
My understanding is that most people in China don't really care about the 1989 unrest and are perplexed as to why westerners make such a huge deal of it.
The country that says Iraq had WMD said China did a thing that wouldn't make any sense for them to do. That is the extraordinary claim. Why do you feel that a claim made by the US, who has only ever lied to you, is a reasonable starting point?
Do you think the U.S lies a whole bunch but other countries don't lie or only a little?
I think the US verifiably lies more than other countries, and has international publishing efforts that make it harder for other countries to lie like we do. Being the hegemony and the long time sole superpower does put you in unique positions
All it takes to prove that the massacre did happen is evidence. Where is this extraordinary evidence?
Proving that something doesn't exist is much harder. There was a liberal in here earlier though that was also saying that we're a bunch of conspiracy theorists. I gave him links, you can see them below. First hand reports from people who were actually there say that there was no massacre. This includes a CBS reporter and a Latin American diplomat.
In the square itself, maybe, but all eyewitnesses agree that the PLA shot and killed many hundreds of protesters in Beijing during the protests, which had been (until that point) largely peaceful.
So while you at the author of this article might be correct to say that there was no actual massacre in Tiananmen Square itself, there certainly was a massacre going on around it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057762.stm
https://earnshaw.com/writings/memoirs/tiananmen-story
https://apnews.com/article/4d3bc613370f4f1d97bf841d1ef5ef6c
correct me if I'm wrong, but skimming through this drivel, I'm left with the impression that the author never actually saw anyone get shot
That was my analysis as well. It's really hard to tell where his seething hatred for China (and really all of Asia) ends and the truth begins. There's very little actual substance.
it's filled with gems like "Emperor Deng"
This line cracked me up:
holy shit that is so selfawarewolves territory
what the fuck lmfao
Reputable journalism indeed
Gold star for you! This is significantly better than the usual nonsense that's pushed. But after having claimed a massacre for so long, this still seems like damage control to me.
Do these photos look like the aftermath of a massacre to you? Or do you think that the CPC account of the situation might be closer to reality? They claim that after the protest was broken up, some violent instigators began attacking the military in the area around the square. And yes, hundreds died, and many of them were soldiers.
Yes, they do. The term "massacre" doesn't necessarily imply that the protestors didn't fight back after the PLA started killing them.
I might suggest you read this then. It's by a reporter for the Washington Post, who was in the city reporting on it at the time.
Again, the reporter's point is not that "there was no massacre"; it just didn't happen in the square.
Yep. Even after being forced to admit that he made it up, he's still reporting about things he admits he never saw. Which I have to admit, is a pretty bold move.
So you initially linked it as a source and now you've realized what it actually says, it's unreliable and worthless?
Seems par for the course around here, tbh.
I'm really confused by this one. He admitted he lied, and so did many of his colleagues. But you believe that he's still telling the truth about the massacre?
Look, we don't know exactly what happened there that night. But it's clear that the west lied through their teeth about the entire thing, and the lies are self perpetuating at this point. China's story seems to check out. You HAVE to see that.
Furthermore, why is this event of a couple hundred casualties pushed so hard by the media as proof of China's evilness, when Mai Lai or the 228 incident are barely talked about? This is 100% pure propaganda, and it's mostly, perhaps entirely untrue.
It's hard to know exactly what happened, of course, but the facts of the matter are that even the CCP themselves acknowledged the fact that hundreds died and all the Western journalists who were there confirmed that the PLA shot and killed hundreds of protestors.
Also, while it's true that Western journalists may have been biased, it's also certainly true that China's authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth either, especially if they were responsible for the deaths of many civilians.
While the extent of the massacre in Beijing may be contested, it seems incontrovertible that it did occur.
Asides from the fact that this is classic whataboutism, you are categorically wrong to suggest that the My Lai massacre is portrayed in Western media today as anything other than a horrific attack upon civilians.
It is perfectly possible to deplore both massacres, in Beijing and in Mai Lai. This is not a simple zero sum contest between China and the US where one must be the good guy and the other the bad guy.
It's not portrayed at all. Every year you'll see articles about Tiananmen Square in corporate media -- My Lai (or any of a dozen similar U.S. atrocities) are left to history classes.
Where it is convienently left out that the only extraodinary thing about My Lai was that it got out. The US armed forces are animals.
That's the thing, I've lived in the US my whole life, and the My Lai Massacre isn't portrayed at all. Like our genocides in Korea and Indonesia, we simply don't talk about it. I was already a socialist when I learned that America invaded Russia in 1918, even joining forces with Imperial Japan to do so. Every subsequent piece of our history I've learned, every incomprehensibly vast crime, has served more and more to put our programmed greivances against the PRC in perspective: clashes are bad, people dying is bad, but to claim that it's somehow a vast and unprecedented sin is a sick joke coming from the country that did the Tuskegee experiments and the Iraq War.
This is not to say "China is infallible and perfect", because it's still a state, and all states operate at least a little bit in the realm of Bad Shit. What I am saying is that the US is incapable of not lying through it's bloodstained teeth, and the 20th century alone shows that it is not to be trusted with anything whatsoever.
It's incredible how much becoming a communist is filling in the missing gaps of history that liberal society just conveniently left out.
I'm about done discussing this with you, as you already seem to have a reasonable amount of facts.
But your insistence that China fired upon peaceful protests based on "China’s authoritarian and notoriously opaque government cannot be trusted to tell the truth " is absolutely insane and not at all fact based. There's zero evidence to support that. The PLA must really be bad at massacres if they allowed that many of their vehicles and personnel to be killed by unarmed civilians.
I have done nothing of the sort. I've addressed every topic. I'm inquiring further about why this one particular event is of such importance in showing how evil China is, while things like this are just one of those things. The fact that this keeps popping up every single year and actual American massacres are barely mentioned should indicate to you that the people running the propaganda machine really want you to hate China.
They've shown themselves very willing to twist the truth, but you still insist that the core claim is true, no matter what. The clear use of this as propaganda should lead you to question it.
But I doubt that any further conversation will be productive. You have the basic facts correct, which is better than most. Many people did die that night. Many of them soldiers. The fighting happened in many separate locations away from the square. Those are the facts. If you extrapolate a massacre out of that, there's no facts I can draw upon to argue with you, other than repeating that the burden of proof is on the accuser.
Also, for reference, here are photos from a massacre that actually did happen.
Never noticed that the upper estimate is almost twice the body count of the June 4th incident.
And the only military casualty was friendly fire.
Why would I believe your sources over others? Especially when there are what appear to most people to be pictures of the Chinese state using lethal military force against protesters and dead bodes on the ground. Are these fake pictures?
Again, fantastical claims. Where are these pictures?
Edit: I love that this is the second person to come in here who gives us shit for being conspiracy theorists, disregards first hand eyewitness accounts, and runs away when pressed for evidence. Murder trials in the US must work very differently than I've been led to believe.
You mean thr picture of a few people lying on the ground clearly alive near a bunch of what are quite clearly bicycles?
Do you believe we went to the moon? If so why? If not why?
Do you believe human caused climate change is a thing? Why?
You're believing somebody, why do you believe those people?
Do you believe in Last Thursdayism? I choose not to because reality has no meaning that way and the consequences are still the same.
Do you believe in your own birth? After all, you couldn’t possibly remember it. How do you know aliens didn’t just materialize you out of nothing? Again, I choose not to subscribe to the alien-materialization theory because there’s a much better hypothesis that seems to make a lot more sense.
Do you believe your eyes and ears, or has
the party 
already commanded you to disregard their evidence?
Honestly, you want a simple, widely accepted, heavily west-biased source? Literally just read the wikipedia article.
Nobody here is denying there were protests, or that a limited number people died in clashes with police across the country. But literally no reputed source, western lib or otherwise, claims that the government was out in Tianenmen killing civilians in major numbers.
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I have only seen what is common of Americans to see, just like 911. Do you think 911 happened? I've been there, was there no twin towers ever? They're not there now. I haven't seen any special highly credible documents about that either, but I'm pretty sure it happened (who did is another question).
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Of course 9/11 happened.
Interesting…
I didn't wish to see that 🤮
i'm sorry you ended up as collateral damage
Another name to the victims of communism memorial.
noooooooo not the PPB
Communism evolved in to the Xeelee, killed everyone in the universe, and then went back in time to the beginning of the universe again to kill everyone in the univserse again 69 times! Checkmate, socialists!
Welcome to the federation
here's some brain bleach
read this
Anarchists and illiteracy, name a more iconic duo.
It's a clickbaity title, and it's disappointing to see people engaging with it on the grounds of contrarianism, I guess.
The truth is (which I would assume/hope many here agree with) is that the violence associated with the protests was very real. It was , however, greatly exaggerated by western media in many cases. This has been known for decades, I'm not sure what this book offers that would change that at this point (no, I'm not going to read the article)
It only sounds crazy if you assume you cannot possibly be a victim of a propaganda campaign, which I get it it's uncomfortable to think about but consider it and do your own research.