A reply to "Dear Cheerleaders, we need to have a chat about imperialism" about libertarian communist dialogue and criticism in regards to the Rojava revolution and anti-imperialism.
Decolonize
09 April 2015
by Stefan Bertram-Lee for Kurdish Question*
Since the West noticed the existence of the Rojava Revolution during the heroic defence of Kobane in September 2014 (though of course the process of Social Revolution in Rojava entered its present phase after they asserted their autonomy in 2012) there has been article after article denouncing and rejecting the Revolution put out by various Western Far Leftists. From the infamous ‘Anarchist Federation Statement on Rojava - December 2014’ to the latest ‘Dear Cheerleaders, we need to have a chat about imperialism’, these articles have common themes. The most disgustingly colonialist of these ideas is the one that the Rojava Revolution is pantomime, but the notions surrounding the ‘class nature’ of Rojava, and the alliance between the USA and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), are also worth discussing.
Each time I see another author, one that is supposed to be a fellow ‘Anarchist’, (For whatever that is worth) giving the slightest credence to the idea that the Rojava Revolution is all an act put on for Western Leftists I am shocked, for I have heard few ideas that are more absurd. This idea is made explicit in the ‘Anarchist Federation Statement on Rojava - December 2014’, which states that the PYD ‘initiated an intensive marketing campaign by the PKK towards Western leftists and anarchists in order to look for support and allies.’[1] While not so obvious in ‘Dear Cheerleaders, we need to have a chat about imperialism’, it can clearly be seen in the author’s doubts about the eyewitness accounts of Janet Biehl and David Graeber, the author being unclear on whether he believes them to be good naturedly hoodwinked by the PYD, or if they are in on this grand conspiracy to trick the Western Leftist.[2] The idea that a Social Revolution that stretches across the northern half of Syria, that encompasses hundreds of thousands of people and has driven back the horrifying patriarchal force that is Da'esh (ISIS) is nothing but a play is simply something I cannot wrap my head around, but what is more unbelievable is the intended audience of the supposed play.
These critics seem to believe that the PYD looked out at our world knowing it would need support in the post-USSR world, where Marxist-Leninism didn’t cut it anymore, and that they were willing to pretend to be whatever would get the most support. They saw a world dominated by the network of Western Financial Neo-Liberalism, where all dissent against capitalism is ruthlessly and viciously put down, where the left have been forced so far back we are failing to defend the gains that were made 70 or more years ago. The PYD looked out at this world, and decided the best ideology to imitate would be that of an obscure American Left-Libertarian theorist, who by the end of his life had even rejected Anarchism, and was more or less ideologically isolated. What cold hearted cynic would choose this? To appeal to the broken remnants of the Western Anarchist Movement, a pale shadow of what it once was, weighed down and trapped by its history, having won no victories since the breakdown of the Anti-Globalisation movement a decade ago. Why would they not choose to pretend to be Western Liberals? We do not even have to imagine where it would have got them; we can simply see it in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). A client of the USA and Turkey, they have received all the help they could ask for, when the PYD begged for heavy weapons the KRG received them, and they have been the focus of the USA’s bombing campaign throughout. It should be obvious that the PYD did not choose the path of least resistance; they chose a principled ideological path that has only made life harder for them.
But we should be clear on another point. If their ideology really was a ‘marketing campaign’, then it was an abject failure. The critics of the Rojava Revolution are keen to emphasise that what is happening there is nothing at all like what was happening in some places in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and in some ways I agree with them. The Social Revolution in Spain had the backing of tens of thousands of foreign volunteers, the Rojava revolution does not. There is no massive wave of international volunteers; there is no mass outflow of arms or money or food, or really anything at all. If the impotency of the Western Left to provide substantive help to a foreign revolution was not clear before it should be now. I would make clear here that I mean no disrespect to all those in the West who are doing what they can for Rojava, and those like Ivana Hoffmann who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the revolution. But if we look to those few volunteers who have gone to Rojava (A fraction of the number who went to Spain) we can see that the majority of them are not leftists, and of those who are even fewer are Anarchists. Many, like Ivana Hoffmann, are Marxist-Leninists, and if the PYD are as cynical as their critics believe perhaps they would have been better off sticking to their old ideology. It is clear that despite the heroic actions of a few, and support from others, the Western Left has not made a substantive difference to the situation in Rojava.
The criticism of the Rojava revolution as pretence while the most egregiously wrong, is not the only criticism. It is also attacked on the basis of not being a real ‘Proletarian Revolution’. This has been one that has been present since the very start. I remember being at the London Anarchist Bookfair in October 2014, Rojava was just exploding into the popular consciousness as the siege of Kobane kicked off. We all knew very little, but all wanted more. We all dutifully crowded into a too small room to be told of what was happening there. The speaker took questions afterwards and one of them asked ‘Who owns the Means of Production?’ The speaker did not understand the question. He tried again asking ‘What happened to the bourgeoisie?’ But the speaker did not understand.
Partly this was due to the speaker not speaking English natively, but it also showed a disconnect. The social reality of the Kurds, (And the history it is constructed from) is decidedly different to that of those who have grown up in the west, and so their perception of what a revolution is (and so what their revolution was) is very different. To a western Anarchist who first crossed blades with his oppressor during the Anti-Globalisation movement the idea of a free territory asking for foreign investment stinks of nothing less than counter-revolution, but our experience is not the experience of all. This is not to say that the limits to the economic revolution in Rojava do not worry me, much of the success of the mutualisation of the economy comes from the fact that many of the most powerful elements of the bourgeoisie fled. This installs a fear that in a real confrontation with capital the PYD may retreat.
But on what basis is this to dismiss the Rojava revolution? It is only such if you believe that the relationships of capital are the prime and only factor determining the success of a revolution. We can hope that the foreign investment that the PYD wishes for will be held to a stringent system of public consultation as are done in the Zapatista Territories. (A Zapatista community recently got running water 20 years after the revolution, when a western charity said it would be done in a few months back in 1994 if they were given free reign. But if that is the price of dignity, so be it.) But even if the PYD betrayed the revolution of the Rojava people by bending to the forces of capital, then the Rojava revolution would still be a success. This is because what has occurred in Rojava is a women’s revolution, one I believe to be the best developed in the history of our civilisation.
The Women’s Revolution goes far deeper than the ‘representation’ and ‘pretty women with guns and European features’ so many, even on the left, focus on. In Rojava any decision made by the popular assemblies can be overturned by the women’s assemblies. As what is most vital here is not that the women can overturn decisions, but that they can choose which decisions are their business. This is the final overthrow of a patriarchal system, which assigns women a sphere and presumes itself non-meddlesome when it fights any attempt to reach beyond that sphere. Finally we can choose what is ours, not have to appeal to someone who does not understand our reality to grant it to us.
The critics of Rojava pass doubt on how much power these committees have, or will have if the PYD choose to crackdown on them, but I believe the unique structure of the Rojava Revolution makes such a situation unlikely. In the EZLN you have an army which is partially formed of women, while in the YPJ you have a women’s army. In Rojava (and throughout all parts of Kurdistan where the Kurdistan Communities Union, KCK is influential) women have self-organised into a system of parallel structures, for every aspect of men’s organisation (as what any organisation of mix gender is under a system of men’s domination) there is a women’s one. As we know only organisations belonging to people themselves can ensure their own liberation, in this sense men’s organisations cannot liberate women. So in Kurdistan women are presented with a unique opportunity to liberate themselves, the tools to defend and push forward our liberation with the help of no one but our fellow women are there. The women of the Spanish revolution were predominantly disarmed and their revolution overturned by the end of the war, if the men of Kurdistan ever wish to do the same then I wish them the best of luck, for they will face an enemy far more organised and fierce than they have ever faced before.
The final aspects the committed western ‘Anti-Imperialist’ objects to about the Rojava Revolution is the PYD’s cooperation with the United States. This is something that is undoubtedly true; the PYD has received air support and some minor amounts of arms from the United States, this is something that any supporter of the Rojava Revolution should have no interest in denying. The author of ‘Dear Cheerleaders, we need to have a chat about imperialism’ objects to this on the basis that this has made the Autonomous Territories in Rojava ‘dependent’ on US aid for their survival, and by engaging with open cooperation with the United States they have made themselves a pawn in a relationship the United States will inevitably dominate. The first thing we must do is cast out of our minds entirely the notion that any form of cooperation with the United States is inherently negative. If the United States military asked if I could spot for them in order to kill soldiers of a reactionary force engaged in active combat with my comrades, I would do it. If the United States offered to supply me with arms so I could combat a reactionary force, I would do it. I would hope any Anarchist would, as to do anything else is to put purity above good sense.
The second idea that must be attacked is that the United States airstrikes were the deciding factor in the Siege of Kobane ‘’now that Kobane is saved from IS, in large part by US air attacks’’, says Peter Storm. This is simply not true. As the United States has found, a war cannot be won by airstrikes. Undoubtedly the airstrikes were helpful, but to act as if without them Kobane would have fallen is nothing but Colonialist logic. It ignores all the victories that the YPG/YPJ and other guerrilla forces associated with the KCK have accomplished without the slightest amount of help. Would Mr. Storm also claim that the relief of Shingal came because of US airstrikes? Or would he recognise it came from the heroic actions of the KCK fighters, who the US instantly erased the role of in the siege? To claim that the United States’ airstrikes are so important is nothing but a reproduction of colonialist hegemony where western forces can do as they will in the rest of the world, and win every time.
Storm callously and with only the slightest historical knowledge goes onto speak of the Spanish genocide of the Americas. If he knew the slightest thing about history he would know that it was not a few hundred conquistadores that conquered the civilisations of what is now ‘Latin America’ but rather a century’s long genocidal war with the full power of European Civilisation behind it combined with the Europeans being resistant to highly infectious diseases the indigenous did not. But this is beyond the point, what Storm is attempting to claim is that cooperation with an Imperial power inevitably leads to the destruction of the lesser power, but he gives the perfect counter example to this in his own text, the Mujahedeen. The Mujahedeen, or as those are now billed by the west, the Taliban, have successfully resisted Imperialist forces since the 80s. (Unfortunately to defend a regime that is even more reactionary than our own.) First armed and funded by the United States in order to resist Soviet invasion, the United States turned their back on them during the start of its ‘War on Terror’. The US’s coalition was able to evict them from government, but never remove from their rural strongholds, and once the US forces finally withdraw they will in all likelihood return to government (and start cooperating with the US, of course). So why could the Kurds not do the same to any US invasion? Only the mind of a Western Anarchist imagines victory as impossible. We do not learn from our defeats, simply imagining that defeat is inevitable, for us and all others, something readily encouraged by the hegemonic forces around us.
So it is clear that the Rojava revolution does not need the permission of Western Anarchists to be able to succeed, it does not need us one way or the other. Whether myself and people like Janet Biehl, David Graeber and Petar Stanchev ‘win’ this argument or whether people like Afed and Peter Storm do, does not really matter for the Rojava revolution, we are simply too few. The only people this argument is important for is ourselves. In the west we have failed, while in Chiapas and Rojava a social revolution has occurred. We need to examine our tactics and our methods, and compare them to the PYD and EZLN, and see where we have gone wrong and where they have gone right. We cannot win by fighting as if the territory we are fighting on is the United States prior to WWI, or Spain prior to WWII, the same old tired Anarcho-Syndicalism will not win in the 21st Century. Subcomdanate Marcos says that when he first went to Chiapas all he could do was talk, and not listen, and so he failed. The peasants did not listen to those who could only talk. It is only when he learnt to listen that he was able to move forward, and this lesson is one that must be learnt by all Western Anarchists. We are not winning, and we need to listen to those who are.
[1] http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/international/435-anarchist-federation-statement-on-rojava-december-2014.html
[2] http://libcom.org/blog/dear-cheerleaders-we-need-have-chat-about-imperialism-04042015
* Stefan Bertram-Lee is a Second Year Undergraduate at the University of Essex and is President of the Zapatista Solidarity Group Essex.
Comments
Flint wrote: Chilli Sauce
Flint
Ah.
Some shifty fucking goalposts
Some shifty fucking goalposts itt
(No subject)
But seriously, we get it.
But seriously, we get it.
The representational democratic form of the State doesn't give us the right to vote out capitalism, so you have constructed a strategic framework for getting us from this situation to one that literally puts us all, collectively, in a position to "vote" out capitalism. And that's what you see happening in 'Rojava'.
This is a two stage theory of revolution; first stage, through a directly democratic State, the people (all classes included) collectively manage capitalism. In this stage, they implement economic programs that develop the productive capacity for abundance in goods and services. There will still be exploitation, but that's okay, because they'll be "worker self-management of enterprises", putting Capital under our collective leash.
Once the economy is developed, and the peoples of the Third World are transformed into lean, mean Ultimate Fighting Communities (otherwise known as UFCs), then they can link up, upon which the time will be right to "vote" out capitalism. Its what the likes of Graeber have been dreaming of for such a long time now, a kind of libertarian Bolshevism for the 21st century.
I hereby commend you (as well as Graeber, Biehl, etc.) for this serious effort to offer us an immensely unique path forward for contemporary global conditions.
And you said I "(deliberately or not) caricatured or misrepresented (your views) even further". I guess you was wrong about that, and in fact, we have broke some grounds and made some further clarifications on your views.
Thanks.
Oh, btw, when the UFCs link
Oh, btw, when the UFCs link up, they collectively become known as the UUFC, or the 'Union of Ultimate Fighting Communities'.
Quote: But it's difficult to
You do realize that famines are caused by the existence of money and perfectly functioning markets, right? That the reason people die from starvation is that they don't have money or anything else to exchange for food? That typically there is always lots of food in famine struck areas, but that as soon as the people in the area do not have anything left to exchange, food often leaves the area. It certainly always fails to go into famine areas. See Irish famine, Bengali famine, the Orissa one, Ethiopia in the 1980s and many other examples.
Money is just not a good allocator of anything. Why? Because it just reflects need/demand backed with cash, not actual/real needs. After all, if people have no money how are they supposed to "send the market" signal that they are hungry?
In any case, I do actually get your point about money. It is not as easy to get rid of as we would like especially within a global capitalist system. You may find Gaston Leval's discussion on collectivist book-keeping during the Spanish revolution interesting. It shows how villages tried to deal with the problem of distribution, some with money, some without, some with labour vouchers, others with free consumption (even at day one of revolution). But what I found most interesting is that it gives pretty good evidence that the so-called "calculation" problem of communism is all bs and that it is perfectly possible to allocate resources without using money (just keep good books about actual consumption and production; semi-literate farmers managed to do that in the 1930s, I am pretty sure that Rojavans or anyone of us could also do something similar (especially considering that we have access to all kinds of tech that makes it even easier to keep track of things, where they are and where they are needed; I mean this is basically what Wal-Mart and Amazon does, they don't actually need money to tell them when they need to restock, they collect information about their SKUs). That money is this great fucking market signal and efficient allocator of goods is all just Austrian propaganda (though effective at that).
CO wrote: The point is that
CO wrote:
The point is that to try to go directly from the semi-feudal capitalist-statist system they are imbedded in at present to full communism with no markets or money would be a disaster.
You are aware that you are using a classic Marxist argument against anarchism, aren't you?
Flint, thanks for the stuff on meat. I wasn't questioning that meat was imported in the Soviet Union, I just don't think that imports started primarily with meat itself, which was what I understood you to have said. I won't get into it, it is off topic and I am a vegetarian, but yes, people are and were crazy about meat and this presented a problem requiring import. In Poland rising meat prices and failure of the state to be able to subsidize this for a longer time caused large worker movements. This is another topic completely. I remember visiting Cuba and seeing how the state was trying to promote vegetarianism with completely dismisal effects. Another time, another topic. :-)
Well I'm not sure the time I
Well I'm not sure the time I put into reading this thread was really worth it. On the other hand, it was mostly on the bosses time, so I feel less resentful for that, at least.
On the thread so far, with the honourable exception of Flint, the common consensus between the OP, Connor and his various detractors seems to be that we can meaninfully argue about the significance and content of Rojava (and the democratic autonomy turn in general) in the absence of any real examination of the recent history and current structures of Kurdish society in the region (as opposed to in the very large, perhaps even majoritarian, diaspora).
Personally I disagree. That is because unlike rooieravotr and a few others on this thread, I actually am interested in the materialist analysis of historical forces. In other words, my interest and analyses are shaped by a kind of, admittedly highly anti-orthodox, Marxianism.
One of the most daft pieces of hyperbole in the OP is the line:
If only... No, not a chance. It's not even the beginning of the end, or even the end of the beginning (to paraphrase Churchill).
However a beginning has been made. Any examination of the evidence of what's happening on the ground, or even the latest candidate lists for the coming elections (and naturally, I find the electoral aspect the one with the least potential for progressive change), will show that.
The questions to be answered (apart from those who simply put their fingers in their ears and shout "nationalist!, nationalist!" until the nasty frightening questions go away), are "why?" And by "why?", I don't mean so much, "to what end?" as "in response to what problems?"
The trouble is, after the last few months trying to open debate on these questions, only to have people divert the argument back to a ground on which they don't have to learn anything new, particularly about a society other than their own, I seriously doubt whether any of the people who engage with these threads (again with one or two honourable exceptions) have any real interest in analysing the world so as to change it.
edit: some background ref, AM: Turkey's minorities join race for parliament
Agent of the Fifth
Agent of the Fifth International
I'm really getting sick of even dignifying the kind of over-the-top stupidity you dish out by responding to it, so on your very self-conscious "Strawman!" (Chilli Sauce's catchphrase) all I'll really say is that you come across like an eleven-year-old who thinks he's funny having a tantrum.
Everyone except Flint
Events have truly taken a turn for the bizarre here. Because for some reason I'm now being criticised as a "Marxist" for having critical views about jumping straight from capitalism to full communism (in Rojava and elsewhere), when for over fifteen pages of comments I was lambasted repeatedly for not being Marxist enough. And no, I'm not trying to claim that everyone who did so is, or identifies as, a Marxist. But to be repeatedly condescended to for apparently failing to take account of Marxian economics, instead looking to another economic framework which I find to be more explanatory, really comes across as weird when one of the few things Marx was actually right about - that we can't just go straight from states/markets/money to an economic system without them without incurring catastrophe - comes in for such a hard time when it emerges from something I've written.
But yes, it is true that if libertarian communism is the final goal, the Marx of the Gotha Program was correct to argue that it must have a lower phase (transitioning out of capitalist-statism with some features of it like incomes and prices remaining) and a higher phase in which all statism, the market economy, and money have been transcended.
And this has never been a uniquely Marxist position among socialists. Peter Kropotkin argued in the Conquest of Bread that full transition to a communist economy after a revolution (by which, at the time, he meant insurrection) would take about 3-5 years. Errico Malatesta argued several decades later that he was being far too optimistic about the prospects of jumping into a system in which people could just take goods freely from storehouses, while still desiring communism himself as a long-term goal. This wasn't confirmed by the man himself in his own words, but James Guillaume claimed Mikhail Bakunin wanted full communism of the Kropotkinian kind too but believed that a collectivist anarchist system was a necessary intermediate phase in between that and what we have now. I agree.
In short, the problem was that Marx saw a "transitional stage" as a period in which all the means of production were centralised in the hands of the state. This was a recipe for totalitarianism. There was no reason why, in the transition to a specifically moneyless economy on a large-scale, that this transition shouldn't be libertarian socialist in character - involving directly-democratic localities, worker self-management of enterprises, and decentralised planning to gradually erase market relations as a means of allocation.
In Rojava, they may be - depending on external factors (US and ISIS) and internal factors (the choices the PYD and confederated assemblies make) - at the beginning of such a libertarian socialist transitional phase. But certain necessary material, economic, and technological conditions (not to speak of geopolitical conditions) must be realised if a move towards full communism doesn't want to end up being self-managed austerity - which could well lead, after a few years, to a desire among the people to reinstitute capitalism and bring back foreign investment.
It's nothing if not odd that I was being attacked for not focusing sufficiently on economics when it came to defending Rojava and social ecology, yet when it comes down to the harsh realities of how to go from here-to-there in the region (or anywhere else) every hardline materialist suddenly becomes a head-in-the-clouds idealist who thinks money itself causes famines [!] (not the nonsensical logic of the capitalist market imperatives it is imbedded within), that pointing out it can be necessary as a unit of account is dismissed as unnecessary, that strong degrees of self-sufficiency are a necessary prerequisite to a moneyless system is untrue (I wonder what Kropotkin would have said about that), and that prices are not a good indicator of demand is Austrian propaganda.
On that one note, yes, prices now are not a good indicator of genuine consumer needs, but that's because of the distortions in demand signals generated by (1) the growth imperative of the national and internationalised market economy, and (2) the disparities in purchasing power between consumers created by material economic inequality. You could also add (2.5) because of the very existence of capital and credit markets for the rich (which combined with extravagant luxury goods is called plutonomy) instead of just goods and services markets. As Takis Fotopoulos explains, prices could be made into an effective means of rationing scarce goods in the context of an economy that has not yet achieved (A) relative abundance in being able to produce food and manufactures easily with highly automated technologies, and (B) regional self-reliance and a relatively high degree of local self-sufficiency.
Neither A or B are even close to being possibles at the moment in Rojava - despite food production being less of a problem that in other regions. If this war is going to end (and especially if it isn't any time soon) it needs to rebuild its infrastructure and develop a strong manufacturing base if there's to be any hope of feasible communism, or even non-communist libertarian socialism. For that, (sorry) it needs foreign investment, even by private capital (though if they're smart, they'll only try this as a last resort).
So yes, this will mean compromising to some extent with globalised capital. But then so does any anarcho-syndicalist who's ever been on strike, knowing the strike wouldn't lead to the collapse of the state and capitalism, in order to achieve better wages or working conditions. If Rojava shut itself off from the entire world economically and abolished all incomes and prices straight away, development would become virtually impossible and they would end up democratically managing a very bare bones existence where every week was little more than a struggle to just get buy. You don't think that would lead to a desire to say "to hell with this shit" and beg for some foreign capital anyway?
Endlessly shrieking about class relations while later revealing this pie-in-the-sky mentality about going right into a moneyless economy in a society with bare-bones technology and little capacity for full self-reliance tells me that all this talk about "class" isn't really about economic necessities at all.
"Class" here is being used not as the very real economic category it is, but a politicised term referring to the same outmoded Marxian/syndicalist models of struggle and revolution that have failed to work out in the past.
Connor Owens wrote: "Class"
Connor Owens
You've got us there. National liberation has half worked though there are nations everywhere and liberation nowhere.
Bastarx If every movement
Bastarx
If every movement associated with the concept of nationhood is "nationalist" and therefore doomed like every other nationalist movement of the past, then every movement associated with "workers" and class struggle is therefore Leninist and prone to lead to totalotarianism.
20th century had a lot of "workers states" but communism nowhere.
Not true obviously, but this shows how the analogy between the two is both disingenous and dumb.
akai is not the
akai is not the representative of a monolithic and centralized membership-based cadre organization called Libcom.
Mentioning that your position reminds her of a classical Marxist argument against anarchism does not turn you into a Marxist.
You still need to learn about how to deploy an effective insult. Comparing someone to an 11-year old throwing a tantrum only makes you sound foolish.
Ocelot, I think the libcom
Ocelot, I think the libcom library has a lot of "anti-orthodox marxist" materialist analyses. There's been reports from several comrades who've direct experience with the PKK in Turkey, there's been statements of interest, solidarity, and critique from the ICC, Anarkismo writers, WSA. And finally, there are longer texts on here that seek to explain the history of the PKK and it's position in Kurdish movement (or so I thought) http://libcom.org/history/stalinist-caterpillar-libertarian-butterfly-evolving-ideology-pkk-alex-de-jong EDIT: Also, reading this at work has been helping me fuck off for the past 3 days. Good stuff.
I don't think ideology is completely divorced from practice, and I do think it's discussion is important, especially when people have such mixed up and shitty ideas as Connor's. Further, if you'd like to suggest that there is anything so immediate and concrete that I can do from Florida to help Kurdish people (please! Just an address! I'll send socks I swear!) then I'm all ears. It's telling that the most ardent "anti-marxist" supporters of the PKK have an "anti-marxism" which so many have pointed out converges with the most milk-toast Socdem politics and Stalinist types of nationalism (the worst parts of marxism!). Further, plenty of people have engaged in good faith for a long time, and have made concrete suggestions about what they feel the limitations and skepticism are of the situation, only to be labeled colonial, racist, losers (really shitty insults, but it's impossible to find a leftist with an imagination anyway, right?)
Re: Autonomism get's more attention than it seems to merit. The Aufheben article is a good jumping off point for some of the flaws in that tradition relating to value-theory.
Connor Owens wrote: Agent of
Connor Owens
I can't see why you can't avoid bringing up Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin, Fotopoulos, Guilluame, and numerous other thinkers, especially if you can't write anything coherently accurate about said thinkers, or if they don't offer anything useful towards this thread.
Or why you have to write lengthy paragraphs on the huge injustices posters have supposedly done to you, like in that big bolded paragraph.
Or why you have to write things like this:
Or why you have to, as it seems, make the case that what your advocated and what you see as a necessary phase in Rojava is "anarchist collectivism", regardless of what that actually meant theoretically. It is true that anarcho-collectivism was by some (including Bakunin) a two stage approach towards full communism. But even the lower stage is not really what you have in mind.
Why can't you just stick strictly to your own ideas (which bears close similarity to what posters may have accused you of holding) or analysis of Rojava, in this thread?
Is it because your trying to attach all sorts of credentials to the ideas you hold, to your specific program that you are trying to win libcommies over to?
Quote: So yes, this will mean
Yeah, those aren't remotely analogous situations. The former is about attempting to manage capital in the favor of "the people"; the former is about asserting our needs over the needs of capital.
Thing is - not everything
Thing is - not everything Owen's says is wrong it just that it's mostly self-contradictory, though I do believe that when he explains his point of view based on what he refers to as material reality, he just proves that there is no way that the movement in Rojava could ever possibly advance towards communism and could at best form only some kind of temporary co-operative enclave economy, meaning that it would have to come to terms with (rather than involve itself in any undermining of) the wider regional powers and capitalist economy.
I'm not sure I should bump
I'm not sure I should bump these up, but I'll just re-link them here for anyone interested on the issue of nationalism:
http://libcom.org/library/against-nationalism
http://libcom.org/library/earth-not-flat-review-against-nationalism
The conversations under those pieces are really good.
I think Joseph Kay really knocks it out of the ball park, when he wrote:
Joseph Kay
Maybe JK could have stepped in a bit earlier, and contributed a bit? Just saying..
Agent of the Fifth
Agent of the Fifth International
Fwiw I'm following the thread in the dwindling hope of learning something, but as I don't know much about what's happening in Rojava I don't have much constructive to add.
Agent Quote: why you have to
Agent
Why do you have to write lengthly paragraphs trash talking me in the first place in the hope that you'll get some kind of reaction
I actually had to put my face in my hands for a few seconds in sheer disbelief of what I'd just read above. Your view of the world is clearly so ridiculously dogmatic, narrow, and rigid that the very thought that someone with whom you disagree might be something other than satan incarnate never enters your head. The Bakuninist two-phase approach is part of "my own ideas" because I (as in me, myself) happen to hold them. If I didn't hold it, I wouldn't have espoused it.
I don't even know how I can take this level of utter contempt and cynicism for other people seriously. You've concocted this absurd fantasy in your head about what anyone who disagrees with you (or at least me) "must" apparently hold to, due to not agreeing with you, to the extent that when they mention something you might actually agree with, you assume they must not even believe in it.
After all, every single thing that this person writes must be the most stupid shit ever right? If he says something sensible then it can't, therefore, fit into his worldview.
Chilli Sauce
Yeah, keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. It may make whatever reformist acts of workplace organising you're doing feel more revolutionary than trying to set up a self-managed economy and directly-democratic polity. If it satisfies your effort justification to keep reiterating this meaningless distinction without a difference, go ahead.
Me, I just can't even take seriously the idea that isolated acts of economic reformism in the Global North are somehow superior for bringing us closer to libertarian socialism than what's happening in Rojava right now.
Spikeymike
And so, apparently, because Rojava (you claim) can't advance towards communism - even though that's their aspiration and have constructed directly-democratic/self-managed associations to move in this direction - there's nothing worth supporting there at all, even in potential. And it holds no lessens for what could be done constructively in our own parts of the world. Best to just keep studying 19th century economic texts and writing commentaries for ultraleft Marxist journals a few dozen people end up reading. That'll get us to libertarian socialism by the end of the month if we do it right.
Pennoid wrote: Further, if
Pennoid
With all due respect to your sock solidarity, before the war Rojava was an exporter of both cotton and sheep (thus they have wool).
In the U.S., You can probably donate to the following without being accused of funding the PKK
Heyva Sor a Kurdistane (Kurdish Red Crescent)
http://www.heyvasor.com/en
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kurdish-Red-Crescent/736373926447332
Roj Women Donate
http://rojwomen.org/donate/
Kobane Reconstruction Board
http://helpkobane.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kobane-Reconstructing-Board/1392691501039799
Books for Rojava
https://rojavareport.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/books-for-rojava/
New York donations:
https://www.facebook.com/rojavasolidaritynyc/posts/414218938747986
---
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is now building a clinic in Kobane. There is a shortage of ambulances and medicine.
http://www.kurdishinfo.com/msf-building-a-hospital-in-kobane
https://rojavareport.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/doctors-without-borders-open-new-hospital-in-kobane/
https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org
You may be able to earmark a donation.
--
Who knows what a government will think about anarchists fundraising for anarchists. :)
If you want to donate to DAF, I know Denver was making a collection.
If you want to donate financial or material solidarity in the way of cash, computers (laptops), video cameras, phones and other items, please email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
Donations needed for Kobané resistance the International of Anarchist Federations is coordinating funding to DAF.
The International of Anarchist Federations, which our organization belongs to, has set up a fundraising to support the Kurdish resistance. Funds pass by our comrades of the Revolutionary Anarchist Organization (DAF Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet) who are themselves engaged on both sides of the border. Help us to share information!
In: Société d'entraide libertaire (SEL)
Bank: CM Enseignant Franche-Comté
IBAN: FR76 1027 8085 9000 0205 7210 175
BIC: CMCIFR2A
Object, specify: DAF (Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet)
Joseph Kay wrote: Agent of
Joseph Kay
Lol. The conversation on nationalism and national liberation was in the other thread (like first couple pages). And by now, I guess its fortunately/unfortunately(?) have long been passed.
The Lafarge Cement Plant
The Lafarge Cement Plant
Pennoid wrote: Re:
Pennoid
There's a difference between operaismo, Autonomism and post-Autonomism. There are no operaists or Autonomists any more. Those were things of their time and their place. There are post-Autonomist theorists like Negri, Berardi, Marazzi, Lazzarato, Vercellone, etc. But on the whole they follow the Negri line in declaring the end of the law of value, capital as a mask for political command and so on.
So, tl;dr re Aufheben article. The most well-known strand of post-autonomist writers reject value theory, full stop. (There are lesser known writers in the broad post-operaist tradition who do not follow Negri's rejection of the law of value, however). In other words, Negri and co have aligned themselves very much with the Nitzan & Bihler "Capital as Power" flat ontological plane.
{/aside}
Re the discussion of the impossibility of jumping directly to a moneyless economy, this made me think of this bit from a roarmag article by a lad I know who was in Kobane in February:
Rebuilding Kobani: call for help from a city in ruins
Quote: The Bakuninist
I geddit, so when other people take ideas from others and make them their own, they are just dogmatic followers, but when you do it, it is rational, critical and really fucking just swell. And this also come from the guy who's been the main name dropper on all Rojava threads. Some self-reflection is in order.
Ocelot With all due respect,
Ocelot
With all due respect, communism in one shop is hardly applicable to a whole non-contiguous region with hundreds of thousands of people.
And I already said that full libertarian communism (no states, no markets, no money) would work fine in local agrarian communities of a few hundred to a few thousand people as long as they could be relatively self-sufficient. But even then, complications arise with allocation in urban areas and coordinating planning across vast distances.
Even if going straight to a moneyless economy didn't result in disasters such as starvation, the best it could hope for given the conditions in Rojava at present - as it would by default exclude any kind of foreign investment - would be self-managed austerity. A very bare bones existence, few chances for development in infrastructure or technology, and people probably ending up discontented and wanting capital injections with strings attached anyway.
The following is a list of
The following is a list of what I see as the key problems those of the broad class struggle tradition have with Rojava. I'm going to be using this list as a set of notes for a discussion I'm attending on Rojava that's organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement in Dublin. It would be good to hear what others have to think of the following assessment and whether it reflects or doesn't reflect their views.
The problems, from my own perspective, are threefold:
1. It's Nationalist/National Liberationist
The PKK and PYD are concerned with liberating their Kurdish populations from national oppression from Turkey and Syria. Therefore they are a nationalist organisation concerned with building a liberal nation-state. This can never be revolutionary, has always ended in bourgeois statism in the past, and can never lead to libertarian socialism
The PKK in Turkey avoided telling Kurds to participate in the second of two general strikes while they were negotiating with the Turkish government, meaning they put their nationalist interests above class interests.
The alternative solution should therefore be to abandon their national aspirations - whether statist or anti-statist in form - and adopt a position of international class solidarity with the proletarians of the world.
2. It's not explicitly aligned to the concept of class war and international class solidarity.
The project in Rojava - in line with Murray Bookchin's more broad conception of social struggle, is oriented around building democratised localities and geographic confederations rather than workplace organising. It should instead be class struggle oriented.
They have an open economy sector in which limited private capital and foreign investment is allowed, though only when subordinate to democratic restrictions by the cantons, and all finance capital (including interest) is banned.
If they allow any place at all for private capital or private property, even when subordinate to democratic communal control, it's a bourgeois/liberal project, therefore not worth supporting.
The democratic assemblies, feminist initiatives, worker cooperatives, attempts to replace the police, turn landscapes into eco-cities, don't matter if class concerns and putting the means of production under proletarian control aren't put front and centre.
If they were revolutionary they would abolish money straight away and move to full libertarian communism with a worker-controlled, not community-controlled, economy.
3. It's imperialist or supportive of imperialism in the region
The PYD cooperated with the U.S. in directing them towards certain targets, during the siege of Kobane. The U.S. then bombed them, aiding in the YPG/J defence of the canton.
This therefore makes them supporters of US imperialism or at the very least pawns of imperialism in the Middle East.
They should have refused all assistance and gone it alone in their fight.
Wanting to collude in any way with U.S. makes the PYD at best compromisers with the U.S. and at worst seeking to become US allies, meaning they will abandon any pretence of libertarian socialism in exchange for the U.S. allowing them their own nation-state.
There's also what you could call "problem zero" among some, which is:
0. The "revolution" is a ruse.
The academic delegation to Rojava - which included supporters David Graeber and former Bookchin collaborater Janet Biehl - were hoodwinked by the Tev-Dem and taken around Potemkin villages in the style of the old tours of the USSR under Stalin given to left-wing intellectuals from the west.
Ocalan and his supporters are still a Stalinists/bourgeois nationalists and has simply adopted the ideas of Murray Bookchin in order to get support from social anarchists in the west.
Setting up false dichotomies
Setting up false dichotomies and polarized positions based on mischaracterizations of others' perspectives and your own (mis)understandings is the intellectual equivalent of having a conversation with an imaginary playmate.
Connor, I wanted to give you
Connor, I wanted to give you a benefit of the doubt originally, but looking back you obviously had an axe to grind since you started posting here, and the ideological shadow-boxing you are engaging in now makes your responses seem in bad faith. Either you wanted to argue with people (congratulations) or you haven't realized that you are stoking the flames with your responses.
Black Badger + gram
Black Badger + gram negative
I posted the above list explicitly asking for feedback as to whether or not it did accurately reflect the views of the anti-Rojava side of this debate. Far from "intellectual shadow boxing" this was an attempt to gain some coherent understanding from the "other side" and to correct whatever inaccuracies I myself may be guilty of in my characterisations of those with whom I've disagreed here. Nor is the above meant to be illustrative of each person who is anti-Rojava, I imagine most only adhere to a small portion of the above positions.
So I'm overtly asking now, aside from "problem zero" (which I think is only believed by zany conspiracy theorists) are there any items on the list that are totally unrepresentative of your own reasons for not seeing libertarian potential in Rojava?
The following are my personal
The following are my personal opinions; whatever overlap each or several of them might have with anyone who posts or lurks on Libcom is purely coincidental, accidental, unintentional, and perhaps even metaphysical.... And I apologize in advance for not being as detailed as some people might prefer.
1. From its/their inception, the PKK/PYD/etc umbrella self-identified as a Marxist-Leninist Party/military formation/vanguard fighting for Kurdish independence within the framework of international treaty-making. The ideological cocoon in which it was enmeshed -- until the capture and realignment (including, but not limited to, a unilateral cease-fire with the Turkish state) declared by Ocalan -- mandated the usual Machiavellianism both internally and externally; the hierarchical enforcement of ideological conformity of the Party line, including all levels of disciplining of recalcitrant cadre (up to and including execution), running feuds with other Kurdish formations that were either anti-Marxist-Leninist or otherwise insufficiently "revolutionary" (up to and including execution), combined with an undisputed cult of personality around Ocalan means that the PKK/PYD/etc umbrella needs to be looked at as a formation/tendency that, over the past generation and a half, has accepted, celebrated, and extended a fully hierarchical ideological culture of discipline and obedience to the dictates of Ocalan and a few other Party hierarchs. For me the issue of nationalism is secondary to the long and despicable history of PKK/PYD/etc cadre actions. To believe that in the years since Ocalan's capture, his declaration of cease-fire with the Turkish state, and magical conversion to some species of non-statist nationalism or Bookchinite "democratic confederalism," that the PKK/PYD/etc cadre have now also magically transformed from a highly centralized, disciplined, and consolidated hierarchical paramilitary formation into cheery quasi-social ecologists whose economic proposals and flirtations with the US war machine can be ignored or downplayed because of the glowing reports from Biehl, Graeber, and a few other non-celebrity visitors strains credulity. Whatever the nature of the positive quasi-libertarian experiments occurring in the Rojava region, how much credit should/must be given to PKK/PYD/etc cadre remains a good question. Hierarchical ideological culture doesn't disappear overnight (or even within a decade) merely because the great leader decides that the organizational culture of his Party needs to change. Positive libertarian experiments derive from the rank and file of self-organized dispossessed/exploited people, not from Party dictates from an untouchable leadership. The main reason for my continued skepticism toward what's happening in the Rojava region has to do with a long history of hierarchical politics rather than my disgust as nationalism. Nationalism is a subset of hierarchy.
Aside from that, I am in no position to give suggestions or issue demands to the PKK/PYD/etc cadre about some conditions that must be met in order for me to be able to stand in solidarity with their struggle. How presumptuous.
2.If any of the projects and experiments in the Rojava region are aligned with any part of Murray Bookchin Thought, I would find them unappealing. As I wrote previously, Bookchin's ideas (from the mid-1980s when I first encountered them through the time he finally admitted that he wasn't an anarchist) were predominantly harmful to the Anglophone anarchist milieu. Any continued use of his analytical categories or strategies makes me cringe.
Separately, the economic experiments that I've read about seem to replicate many of the same challenges inherent in trying to carve out a non-capitalist infrastructure within a larger capitalist environment. The internal contradictions of trying to be better at capitalism than regular capitalists in order to survive inside a capitalist environment are, it seems to me, insurmountable. But that doesn't mean it's not worth trying. In a situation that resembles civil war, it's ridiculous to try to come up with infrastructure that could be the basis of a self-managed economy not subject to war. Whatever the folks involved on the grassroots level can come up with should be applauded and perhaps people with first-hand experience in co-ops and collectives can try engaging in some critical discussions with the folks in Rojava, but whatever those might look like, they should probably take place outside the framework of the PKK/PYD/etc umbrella since that umbrella looks an awful lot like a non-territorial government.
3. Since "going it alone" is not a viable option, this question is even more of a set-up than the others. The taint of US imperialism was inevitable once the Erbil enclave came under attack by Daesh. The way you've set up your fake question is to create a guilt by reluctant association into a programmatic failure. That's the logic of Anti-Imperialism.
0. The right-wing anarchists Biehl and Graeber were not "hoodwinked" into seeing things that weren't there -- I apologize for and retract my characterization of their experiences as tours of Potemkin villages. The more accurate description would be that they were primed to see a revolution that many of us wouldn't necessarily recognize due to their pre-existing shitty politics. Their Tev-Dem guides may have only shown them the most exciting parts of the semi-self-organized assemblies (etc) in the Rojava region, but looking at things a little less passionately, their tours and experiences remind me more of the tours of Cuba that left-libertarians had in the 80s and 90s, where they were taken to neighborhood assemblies and academic gatherings where Party hierarchs were mostly absent. Anti-authoritarians are thereby exempted from seeing the predominant authoritarian infrastructure that allows a limited degree of anti-authoritarian content -- even to the point where a certain spontaneity is expected and encouraged. People see what they want to see, especially in a cultural context that is exotic and exciting.
While any possible change away from Stalinism is undoubtedly a good thing, it doesn't necessarily translate into a libertarian alternative, Bookchinite or otherwise. Plenty of ex-Stalinists became capitalists... And if Ocalan and the PKK/PYD/etc hierarchy decided to become Bookchinites to solicit solidarity and other forms of support from "social anarchists" in the West, more's the pity. We are a sorry lot when it comes to capitalist fundraising and paramilitary training.
Connor Owens
Connor Owens
Oh for sure. What exists at the moment in Kobane is disaster communism. Which is not that rare, you'll get it during the immediate aftermath of any major disaster. Except that the professional aid agencies that mostly take over this process, in less contested circumstances, have a whole set of procedures "not to damage the local economy, aid its speedy reconstruction". In fairness this is a non-trivial task, buy all the food locally available and you drive prices up so much, surrounding poor people not in direct receipt of aid handouts starve. Bring all the food in from outside, prices collapse, commercial networks and destroyed and local production could even grind to a halt.
But the point is that aid agencies aim is always to act like a scab on a wound, and heal the hole in market forces as quickly as possible, to re-establish business as usual in the shortest possible term.
The question for communists is, that given historically that most revolutions have started in the midst of situations of breakdown, civil war and chaos, i.e. usually with disaster communism as a starting point, should the immediate aim be the re-establishment of market relations, wage labour, production for profit, or is there another way in the direction of submitting social production to social control?
That seems to be the implied intent behind the scattered stories of regime-abandoned land being taken over by "cooperatives" and distribution and re-distribution of existing stocks of consumables (e.g. Flint's anecdote about the farmer who had 90% of her grain stockpile re-distributed for immediate consumption) and deploying labour and resources for planned intent. Now as to how much economic activity is actually passing through this alternative route, and how much is happening at all, remains to be established. But I can't see that the anti-capitalist response to the question of "where to next to get out of disaster communism" as being "back to the market".
So Flint despite my
So Flint despite my reservations about the work of many NGO's that I've expressed before I will be upping my contributions to 'Medecins sans Frontieres' who I think do some useful works as they say 'Accross Frontiers'. In some of the very early discussion threads I think I made a number of points regarding the limited options open to people in Kobane/Rojava on leaving or staying and fighting and my not being in a position to either advise or judge, whilst being supportive in the limited ways open to me and others to express our natural humanitarian concern. This despite the very different assessments made by myself and other 'critics' of the claimed 'revolutionary' potential of the movement (and especially it's significance as a model elswhere) and whatever it's relative progressiveness judged in terms of the ethnic cleansing of ISIS in the civil war. Some of those careful comments have unfortunately got lost in in the more strident battle lines drawn up by Owen's in pursuit of his 'Social Ecologist' ideology. - in respect of which I stand by all my earlier remarks.
Connor Owens wrote: I don't
Connor Owens
Spikymike wrote: So Flint
Spikymike
MSF always seems like they are doing good things in places few others will go. They were in Haiti. They were fighting Ebola. Good folks, MSF. I've always felt good about my contributions to them.
But they don't push a revolutionary ideology, like say DAF does.
Weren't MSF pretty strident
Weren't MSF pretty strident in calling for NATO intervention in ex-Yugoslavia?
bastarx wrote: Weren't MSF
bastarx
I don't know about that. What I'm seeing now suggests that they wanted to maintain their neutrality in regards to the NATO campaign against Serbia in regards to Kosovo and even went so far as to expel their Greek section because of it wanting to support Serbia.
Flint wrote: bastarx
Flint
Maybe I'm misremembering.
Chilli Sauce Funny how you
Chilli Sauce
Funny how you completely ignored the last two things I wrote (which had actual content that I asked people to respond to) in favour of responding to a response to someone else writing BS.
When one looks back at everything you've written on this thread and the other one, it's fairly clear you have no actual arguments for the stances you take, just endless accusations that others are making bad arguments. And not even good accusations backed up by evidence, just pitiful cries of your motto "strawman!" over and over.
Quote: Funny how you
Mate, I'm not gonna respond to your incessant strawmen. I mean, that's the whole reason we've had pages of debates about Marx: because of actually addressing what people say, it's been "endless accusations" of "Marxist".
I mean, seriously, I said that there's a difference between going on strike to demand concessions from capital and attempting to manage capital in our interests - and considering they want "community consultation" over foreign investment, that's clearly part of the strategy in Rojava.
You respond by saying I'm claiming strikes - ehhem, "economic reformism" - in the "global north" (The working class has no hemispheres!) are more important than what's happening in Kobane.
You see how you shifted the entire argument, side-stepping the entire issue whether capital can ever be managed in the advantage of "the people"? Can you really not see how that's creating a strawman?
And that's a direct question for you to answer.
Also, I think I've might of
Also, I think I've might of used the term "strawman" on libcom maybe 5 times in the last 7 years before you showed up. I assure you it's not my motto - which, according to my profile anyway, is "One long series of bad haircuts".
At least that much is true.
Oh, and my pictures are funny. I mean, look at that pot and kettle. I had to trawl through clip art to find that little gem.
Fuck sake, Chilli. Are you
Fuck sake, Chilli. Are you still arguing with this bellend? Believe me, nothing good will ever come of it and you are simply allowing Connor to be a Father Ted to your Bishop Brennan.
Owens seems like he's upset
Owens seems like he's upset at us, up in the "Global North", for not immediately establishing those neighborhood assemblies.
Like damn libcom, why you wasting your time on trying to build the organisation, militancy and consciousness of the working class, one step at a time, when you could just throw up them "democratic communities".
But...
No buts, look at Rojava you colonialist, purist Marxoid Anarchists.
But...
Do it now, go outside, build my democratic communities NOW!
Hi there, Really bored to
Hi there,
Really bored to always read these apology speeches and writings about Rojava and its "democratic confederalism", "direct democracy", "cooperatives", "mixed economy", "social economy" and other stuff which are nothing but only the ongoing (re)-organization of the society of Kapital under somehow "new" reformed shapes and clothes...
Let’s for instance have a look for a while on one of the pillars of this “new” progressivism widely distilled to justify the revolutionary nature of the social movement in Rojava: the “multi-ethnicity” and “multiculturalism” so much praised by all the propaganda channels of the ideological apparatuses holding sway in Rojava as well as acting elsewhere in its favour.
What matters to us, we as revolutionary proletarians, communist militants, or anarchist ones, it’s not what “differentiates” us, it’s not our “singularity”, the fact that we are “Czech” or “French” or “British” or “American” while others are “Kurdish” or “Assyrian” or “Chaldean” or “Sunni” or “Shia”, etc. What is important on the contrary is what unifies us as a human and militant community against the global and universal dictatorship of Capital which materializes for all of us through exploitation, alienation, commoditization of our bodies and our lives, misery, war, death… What matters for us is to display very clearly our contempt for all national community, community of citizens, people’s community, for all democratic community in the deep sense of what democracy is, i.e. not a simple form (parliamentary democracy, “workers’” one or direct one) but rather the essence of capitalism and therefore the negation of class antagonism and the dilution of the proletariat (revolutionary class) into this bourgeois entity that is the people, the nation and ultimately the State. What matters above all is the fact that we are, or become, brothers and sisters of misery and exploitation, brothers and sisters of revolution; and that we recognize it consciously.
The worst product of racism is still and always anti-racism that is based on the same ethnic bourgeois categories, which obviously does not take into account the essential class determinations, here without opposing one ethnic group (“superior”) against the other (“inferior”), but to advocate the “multi-ethnicity”. This phenomenon is eminently religious (from the Latin religere meaning to link) because it’s indeed a matter of linking what has been separated. Humanity has been separated from itself, from the nature, from its activity and its production, to be turned into slaves, serfs and modern proletarians. Mankind are separated from their genuine human community and they are linked as a multi-“something” false community: multiethnic, multicultural, multinational… Internationalism is not the addition of various or even different nationalisms or all nationalisms, but on the contrary its complete and accomplished negation…
Agent of the Fifth
Agent of the Fifth International
Hang on a minute.
If you want to end capitalism's use of commodity exchange as the organising principle for social production - i.e. abolish market forces - and now you're saying that democratic neighbourhood councils have no role to play in managing society or the economy... what exactly are you proposing? Dictatorship of the party?
In your haste to pile on the Connor-bashing frenzy you seem to have raised the cry "No power to the soviets!".
Don't make me quote "Fighting for Ourselves" or Rocker at you.
Look, if you guys can't see
Look, if you guys can't see the glorious Marxist-Bergerist-Bookchinist revolution as the leading light in the 21st century, well, that's just because you're colonial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOMEUamYkc
ocelot wrote: Agent of the
ocelot
Is this sarcasm?
If not, I'm sure Owens or anyone else could not possibly come away with the interpretation of me being in favor of the "dictatorship of the party", rather than "all power to the Soviets".
Ehh, total class rule has no
Ehh, total class rule has no allegiance to a social management of dictatorial form, or any form. I think there is a tendency for it to be councilist, but council forms are not a bulwark against reaction or revolutionary measure, but a means to possibly enact revolutionary measures. Major soviets in the Russian Revolution acted pretty reactionary in some instances, yeah?
Guerre de Classe wrote: The
Guerre de Classe
fou à lier
There's visionary politics and there's raving mysticism. This is "communization" as teh Apocalypse of teh Negation!!!
If yer soviets full of
If yer soviets full of racists, then all power to the soviet is just all power to the racists. Kill the formal silver bullet in your head.
Pennoid wrote: Ehh, total
Pennoid
So "total class rule" is a transcendant content free of any troublesome formal or concrete aspects? Really? So the last 140 years or so of anarchists concerning themselves about federalism, recallable delegates, binding mandates, blah, blah, blah is all just a waste of time? What are we gonna do, just have a group hug?
Really you remind me of the cynical SWPers who obstruct attempts to set up direct democratic structures in mass campaigns like the anti-water tax, etc, on such hand-wavey, "hey man..." grounds.
No content without form. No abstraction without the concrete.
I guess my direct response to
I guess my direct response to Connor's three and a half questions wasn't Marxist enough...
Serge Forward wrote: Fuck
Serge Forward
What can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment. Plus, a good excuse to post snarky pictures - and really, isn't that what the internet's all about?
ocelot wrote: Agent of the
ocelot
To be honest, I think that's really a bit of a stretch to draw all that from Agent's post.
You did respond Black Badger.
You did respond Black Badger. I took your words into account and will be keeping them in mind for an essay I'm writing about this subject.
Everybody else on the other hand continue to act like nine-year-olds having tantrums and throwing out immature ad-homs - Agent of the Fifth International and Chilli "Strawman!" Sauce being the worst as usual.
The last wave of comments regarding the economic situation in Rojava made it clear that most of those crying "But what about class?" have very little understanding of economics, or even of how class relations actually work - given the utopian belief that three underdeveloped, non-contiguous, war-torn areas can immediately abolish money and go straight to a libertarian communist economy.
They all seem to have absorbed the proletarian socialist discourse about class and class struggle without really having an idea of what that really means in practice. I know this because I've asked them (and you) several times and have yet to hear anything concrete.
Akai for instance said he would provide something in the way of how an anarcho-syndicalist revolution should take place, contrasting it with Rojava. Then he refused to do so because he claimed I had not answered certain questions of his. Like a child who says "Mum! Mum! Billy's not eating his greens! So I'm not going to either!"
The ultimate question that drives class struggle is how do we - the working classes, the people, the multitude, whatever label - gain control of the means of production, distribution, and investment so as to restructure the economy on libertarian socialist lines with worker controlled enterprises and democratic planning of production, consumption, and allocation of goods and services. Correct?
Well then how is it not a class issue to set up directly-democratic assemblies, municipalise productive resources and arrable land, then plan economic activity at the communal level with coordination on a wider scale being carried out by administrative councils with recallable delegates? The means of production would be expropriated from the ruling elite and put under the control of the popular classes for their own benefit. This is the broad social ecologist strategy (though there are variations) and I still fail to see how this is incompatible with class struggle as traditionally understood.
Building democratised localities and achieving worker self-management always went hand in hand in classical anarchism. Why is it now regarded as the most unpardonable sin to place slightly more focus on the former when for so much of proletarian history almost all the emphasis has been on the latter?
The commentors here haven't, by contrast, been able to offer anything in the way of an alternative strategy for how to get from here-to-there other than vague appeals to "class solidarity".
Do they recommend the old get-everyone-unionised-and-declare-a-general-strike tactic?
Armed insurrection organised by anarcho-syndicalist federations?
Some sort of dual power strategy in which worker controlled businesses gradually replace capitalist ones?
Not a word so far.
The entire discussion - when not specifically about Rojava (and even then...) seems to be caught in a never ending cycle that proceeds like so:
1. I explain the social ecologist position of broad social struggle (including, but not limited to, class struggle) and critique what I see as the limitations of the more traditional libertarian class struggle position.
2. A chorus crying "strawman!" appears, accompanied by juvenile insults.
3. I ask what the real positions they hold are, if what I described were strawman.
4. No answer. But what does come back are the most nonsensical strawman claims about social ecology combined with overt lies about my stances, leading me to explain what the social ecologist strategy is again, before the cycle repeats once more ...
Okay then, to clear things up, forget about Rojava for a minute, let me ask this instead:
What do you think is the best way to achieve libertarian socialism where you live, and what are the short-term, mid-term, and long-term tactics used to accomplish this goal?
Quote: The commentors here
And you said you'd read Fighting for Ourselves, did you?
And my question...?
Quote: What do you think is
As I've said in an earlier comment, I sadly (because of the pathetic state of so-called anarchist or communist groups, at least where I live) think that some natural disaster is really the only kick in the ass needed for people to start organizing collectively. Occupy Sandy is a stand out to me. But this is basically an anarchist version of Heidegger's "only a God can save us" argument, mostly reflecting my cynicism and disillusion about organized anarchism where I live.
I think it is worthwhile thinking about why people seemed to know what to do when the Spanish Revolution happened. Anarchists had been agitating, organizing, and educating for about 40 years prior. The way I see it we are at year zero, and bar some natural disaster in which a form of disaster communism would emerge, it will decades before any results will be seen.
Erm, well yeah, like I said,
Erm, well yeah, like I said, for the class to rule it will need forms akin to councils, but there is nothing inherently revolutionary in the applied form. I take that to be what Guerre was getting at, that in the name of "one man one vote" democratic forms, class divisions are obliterated. And in the scheme of "one-worker, one vote" forms, programatic divisions (Social Dems vs. Anarchists and Communists) are obliterated, which often tend to converge around lines about building class power. So we have to be careful about the idea that municipalism is a raw good, that pure democracy is an inherent good. I'm not like principally anti-democratic. It's just that it's not enough.
I didn't say anything about precious anarchy sooooooooooooooooo
I find it odd that my
I find it odd that my comments would be somehow incorporated into an essay. If you're using my comments as representative of anything beyond my own personal analysis, you're doing it incorrectly and in bad faith. If you're using my comments as a substitute for your imaginary playmate dialogue, maybe you should ask me one or two follow-ups for clarification (I can't believe that all of my perverse scribblings are so comprehensive that they can stand on their own -- especially in a scatter-shot context like the one you created). I'm already sighing and shaking my head in anticipation.
Social revolution in Rojava
Social revolution in Rojava is the fiction of Western leftists.
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PYD commandor in Rojava openly says they need american investments. Here is what the field commander in Rojava said (16.00): "If the americans defeat ISIS in Iraq it cood push those fighters towards us. So the Americans have a duty to protect people... Rojava is new territory and new market. And everyone can play a role here including the americans". In other words, Americans must protect human rights in Rojava and invest money there... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKhjJfH0ra4
"But on what basis is this to
"But on what basis is this to dismiss the Rojava revolution? It is only such if you believe that the relationships of capital are the prime and only factor determining the success of a revolution. We can hope that the foreign investment that the PYD wishes for will be held to a stringent system of public consultation"http://libcom.org/library/dear-mr-anarchist-you-aren%E2%80%99t-listening. - This is from the text of Rojava supporters. OMG! And somebody still discuss that?
edit never mind
edit never mind