S8 Ep114: Tiananmen Square, the Unmasking of Communism, and Karl Marx's Hegelian Roots Professor Sean McMeekin Professor Sean McMeekin's book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, begins with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 as the
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John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
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Summary
- Tiananmen Square, the Unmasking of Communism, and Karl Marx's Hegelian Roots
Professor Sean McMeekin's book, To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, begins with the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 as the "tearing off of the mask" of communism, revealing raw force and brutality. The discussion traces communism back to Karl Marx, noting that he was a Hegelian who drew from Hegel the idea of history as a product of "incessant struggle," which Marx reduced to class struggle between oppressors and oppressed. Marx's theory, described as an "abstract word game" and a "philosophical project," posited that history would inevitably simplify into a "binary dialectical cataclysm" between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Batchelor. |
| 0:12.0 | This is CBS I on the World. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm John Batchelor. |
| 0:16.0 | It is the spring of 1989, Beijing, |
| 0:19.0 | Tiananmen Square, a gathering of students that grows over several weeks, |
| 0:24.6 | anticipating and then observing the visit of the leader of the Soviet Union, a man named Gorbachev, |
| 0:32.6 | making a call on the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, the CCP itself, led by a man named Deng Xiaoping. |
| 0:41.3 | That meeting is a world-scale event. |
| 0:44.3 | Events in Europe have been changing the direction of communism, Marxist-Leninism, |
| 0:51.3 | and the TV cameras are invited into Beijing during that period of conversation |
| 0:58.0 | in some fashion an alliance of two communist states that are changing their ways. |
| 1:04.0 | Deng Xiaoping is seen as a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev is seen as a reformer. |
| 1:10.0 | And gathering in the square are also TV reporters and radio reporters from around the world. |
| 1:15.6 | In other words, all attention. |
| 1:17.6 | And then is the death of a man named Yao Bang, Hu Yao Bang. |
| 1:22.6 | His death leads to outpouring of sympathy across the nation because he was seen as a reformer or a lighter hand of the brutality that the people of China have visited. |
| 1:35.5 | This event does not begin, but it ends, a new book, to overthrow the world, the, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. |
| 1:46.6 | I welcome Professor Sean McMeakin. |
| 1:49.4 | He's done an enormous amount of work putting this all together. |
| 1:54.0 | And because I've read pieces of this over the years in individual books, |
| 1:58.1 | it is a great insight to put it all together and to make you read it continuously. |
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