It had already begun to become clear, as early as the summer of 2024, that 2025 would be a remarkable year. Setting aside what many people were saying, the developments unfolding in the United States, Europe, Ukraine and the Middle East were providing substantial evidence of this. (They actually still do and we should also add 2026 or even the entirety of the 2020s)
The Turkish state and its extraordinary organization, the Palace Regime, have made some moves through the hands of Bahçeli. The name of Bahçeli means “State” and perhaps because of this, his speeches were/are perceived as “speeches of the state” (In my opinion, this is meaningless; whether it is Bahçeli or Fidan or someone else, the policies of the state are clear. The point is that Bahçeli is put on the stage. The stage always wants actors to play characters that suit it; in the Palace Regime, even “character” is too much, just an actor will do). In other words, the state does not have a very wide garden, it has narrowed down. In October (2024), Bahçeli suddenly shook hands in the DEM Party benches in the parliament and then made statements expressing that “there will be great developments in the world” and that he hoped Turkey would continue to exist (of course, I cannot fully reflect his cryptic language as to “what does he mean by saying this”, but this is what he meant). The topic was the Kurdish question; in Öcalan’s words, the “Kurdish problematic”. According to many people, Devlet Bahçeli had in fact stepped in as the state.
And the process initiated by these moves began to take clearer shape on 27 February 2025 with Öcalan’s “Call for Peace and a Democratic Society.” Öcalan rightly expressed the view that you make peace with the party you wage war against, which is true, and suddenly Bahçeli began uttering phrases such as “founding leader.” The emphasis on you make peace with the one you fight -based on the fact that they fought against the Turkish state- also signaled to us that Bahçeli was proclaiming himself, true to his name, as the state. Otherwise, we have no information that Bahçeli went to İmralı; on the contrary, the information circulating suggests that Erdoğan and Öcalan met at the Palace, though how accurate it is remains unknown. As we said, we do not know and it is not important. What is clear is that Bahçeli’s statements are being treated as state statements. And one must note that the question “Where does NATO stand in this project?” remains before us. Without clarifying NATO’s position, the picture remains incomplete and every incomplete picture is, at the same time, a mistaken one.
We are in the present.
Öcalan has called for a farewell to armed struggle and for the dissolution of the PKK. Bahçeli had already voiced these proposals loudly. But that holds no meaning for us. What matters are Öcalan’s statements and that is how we see it.
The Congress convened and these two decisions were taken. The Congress convened in early May 2025. Judging from October 2024 (Bahçeli shaking hands with the DEM Party benches on behalf of the state), 8 months later the PKK announced its dissolution.
In a sense, the PKK has taken steps and we do not know what steps the state has taken yet, so we can say that there are none.
This process proceeded with the symbolic burning of the weapons in a large steel container. The burning was characterized as a “political act” by Besê Hozat (she is the leader of the group and according to information leaked to the press, Öcalan wanted her to be convinced). The term “political act” must also have a meaning.
After the congress adopted the decision to dissolve, a new call from Öcalan was issued on 9 July. This call was published in the 52nd issue of the journal Democratic Modernity (dm). At least, this is the furthest point to which we have been able to trace it. In the same issue of dm, a text signed by Abdullah Öcalan was published under the title “Being at the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question.” As noted in dm’s footnote, this text is the perspective document (written on 25 April 2025) and is structured as a political report and submitted by Abdullah Öcalan, to the 12th dissolution congress of the PKK. (This means the text was authored before the political act of laying down arms.) A second footnote states that the original document consists of a total of seven sections, that the 1st, 2nd and 4th sections have been omitted from the published version and that certain parts have also been removed from the remaining sections. In other words, the text as published is not the complete (full) version.
We had previously shared with Kaldıraç readers an article evaluating the decisions adopted at the PKK’s 12th Congress, to the extent that they were made public. In that article, we discussed the decisions regarding disarmament and dissolution. Naturally, it is impossible for us to remain indifferent to the steps taken by the Kurdish movement. And as we emphasized there as well, these decisions are their own and they are not obliged to ask anyone’s permission. Our assessment is an expression of our views based on this fundamental point. Today, however, we have obtained the July 9 call and the perspective document Öcalan submitted to the congress (in the form in which it was published). We wish to examine these texts.
Öcalan’s text (“Being at the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question”) also contains discussions on Marxism and this concerns us directly. This is not only because we view Marxism as a science but also from the point of view of the revolution in the region, now that the goal of the “nation-state” has disappeared. After all, the most developed movement in our region is the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
***
We should begin with a note.
From time to time, various sections of the left have characterized the Kaldıraç Movement as “close to the Kurds,” “Kurdishist” and similar labels because of its stance on the Kurdish issue. In truth, such remarks about us have always been, and still are, results of the persistent resurfacing of the Kemalist vein within the Turkish left whenever the Kurdish movement is at issue. On the other hand, many have also told us and many other revolutionaries alongside us; if you support the Kurdish movement so much, then go join them.” This is simply another version of the old refrain: “Communists, go to Moscow.” The Kurdish movement has been at war with the Turkish state for 50 years according to Öcalan’s words and for more than 40 years according to our knowledge. If we really thought that the Kurdish movement needed a few dozen revolutionaries from Turkey in order to be victorious, we would join that movement without a second thought (the same goes for “to Moscow”). For this, we would not seek a complete ideological unity or any such. In our opinion, victory will only be possible as long as a revolutionary movement develops in every area of the country, apart from the Kurdish areas, on the revolutionary path of the working class. In our view, the struggle for “national liberation” could only succeed through socialist revolution and internationalist struggle in the current period of time. This applied yesterday and it applies today as well. With some differences, of course. For example, the PKK dissolving itself is a serious shift in situation. We will live and see together how this and some other differences will be reflected in the practice of social revolution. The decision is theirs and we respect it.
All these factors form the basis of our approach to the Kurdish movement as a fraternal revolutionary force. (In the history of our revolutionary movement, there is a “younger brother–older brother” attitude. This is a reflection of the dominant culture; what we mean, however, is internationalist fraternity. The understanding of “Who do you think you are—such a small organization—and how can you call yourselves fraternal with such a large movement?” is an old habit within the Turkish left and breaking habits is harder than splitting the atom.) Of course, we have not, up to this point, become a force comparable to theirs. Because of this, the term “fraternal force” may not be taken seriously from the perspective of the Kurdish movement. Yet within our revolutionary internationalist understanding, this has always been, and will continue to be, independent of relative strength. Just because we see things this way does not guarantee that others will view us as “internationalist fraternities.”
The period we are passing through is such a period: a time in which the world’s revolutionary movements are emerging from defeat.
On this basis and understanding, we believe that the following discussion is both necessary and essential.
We do not have all the details of the negotiations between the state (the state, not Bahçeli and Erdoğan) and Öcalan and through him the PKK. For this reason, we will proceed with the discussion by diligently adhering to these two texts. We have already approached the PKK congress resolutions with the same rigor. The reader can access these two texts through the 52nd issue of dm. Of course, the “July 9th Call” is after the dissolution congress.
The “July 9th Call” was written after the second text (“the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question.”). And the July 9th call begins with the words “Dear comrades, the stage our communalist comradeship movement has reached…”
A long quote is required.
“The point reached has to be considered very valuable and historic. Meanwhile, the efforts of the comrades who maintain bridge relations are of equal value and equally worthy of appreciation.
“As a result of all these developments, I have prepared a Manifesto for a Democratic Society that should be considered a historic transformation. This manifesto is capable of successfully replacing the nearly 50-year-old manifesto ‘The Path of the Kurdistan Revolution’. I am convinced that it carries a historically significant social content not only for the Kurdish historical society but also for regional and global societies. I have no doubt that it constitutes a successful example of the historical manifesto tradition.
“I must make it clear that all these developments were the result of the meetings I held in İmralı. The utmost care was taken to ensure that the talks were conducted on the basis of free will.
“The stage reached necessitates new steps to be taken in practice. In order to make progress, it is essential to emphasize, understand and adhere to the requirements of this stage and the necessary steps.
“The PKK movement, which was based on the denial of existence and aimed at establishing a separate state, as well as the national liberation war strategy it relied upon, has been brought to an end. Existence has been recognized and therefore the principal goal has been achieved. Its becoming outdated should be understood in this sense. What remains has been evaluated as excessive repetition and an impasse. On this basis, comprehensive criticism and self-criticism will continue.
“Since politics does not tolerate a void, the void must be filled with the program titled Peace and Democratic Society, the strategy of democratic politics and comprehensive law as the fundamental tactic. We are speaking of a process of historical significance; one that is decisive for the future.
“The voluntary laying down of arms as part of the overall process and the work of the comprehensive commission to be established by law and authorized by the Turkish Grand National Assembly are important. It is imperative to show care and sensitivity in taking steps without falling into the vicious logic of you-me-first. I know that the steps taken will not be for nothing. I see and trust the sincerity.
“Therefore, efforts are being made to take even more concrete, illuminating and breakthrough steps. The main theses I have put forward are as follows:
“Achieving the Peace and Democratic Society goal, with everyone fulfilling their responsibilities, is possible through a positive integrationist perspective. The conclusion drawn from all that has been explained is this: the PKK has abandoned its nation-state objective and with this renunciation of its fundamental aim, it has also given up its core war strategy, thereby bringing its former mode of existence to an end. It is expected that this historic juncture will be carried even further forward.
“It should be considered natural for us to ensure, openly before the relevant parties and the public, the laying down of arms in a manner that will hold meaning for both the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and its commissions, as well as dispel public doubts and fulfill the requirements of our commitment. The establishment of a mechanism for disarmament will move the process forward. What has been done is a voluntary transition from the stage of armed struggle to the stage of democratic politics and law. This should not be seen as a loss but must be regarded as a historic achievement. The details regarding disarmament will be determined and swiftly put into effect.” (dm, issue 52, p. 5)
This long quotation provides the basic framework of the text of the “July 9th Call,” the published text. This long quotation also eliminates concerns over possible loss of emphasis in quotations made in pieces.
As can be seen, Öcalan refers to a “communalist movement.” Whereas, in our Marxist literature, and even prior to that, the emphasis has always been on the communist movement. This difference in emphasis seems to reflect Öcalan’s claim to originality. While discussing the political report written on April 25 and submitted to the PKK congress, we will have the opportunity to observe this claim to originality more clearly. Let’s get to the point.
The “July 9th Call” actually outlines the process that has taken place. Let’s call that number one.
Number two, the text announces the “Manifesto for a Democratic Society.”
Number three, it states that the denial of existence has been eliminated and, as a result or in connection with this, the “nation-state objective” has been abandoned. These two factors ground the dissolution of the PKK.
It is known that, based on the year 1992, we indicated that a genuinely original stage for resolving the Kurdish question had been reached, whereas the PKK stated this as 1993 in its Congress documents. Therefore, considering that the text of the ‘July 9 Call’ describes everything beyond this point as ‘excessive repetition and deadlock,’ it appears that this original situation was identified by us in 1992 and in the PKK congress documents in 1993. What is the basis of this original situation? Normally, national liberation would reach a solution once it resulted in a separate nation-state. Whether this nation-state would emerge within capitalism (as is the case with the Turkish Republic) or through a socialist revolution that breaks completely from the system is a separate question. (and by separate, it is meant a very important separate) Within the capitalist–imperialist system we exist in, national liberation has no path outside of socialism. A nation-state within capitalism essentially means becoming another form of colony within the imperialist system. For this reason, if the year 1992 is taken as a basis, the problem that began to emerge before the Kurdish revolution was that of a revolutionary–internationalist Kurdish revolution as part of the regional and world revolution. Considering the years 1992 or 1993, it is clear that this socialist solution was difficult. At that time, there was no doubt about this as well. But the correct strategy cannot be found by merely answering whether it is difficult.
Of course, this affects the struggle. In other words, doing what is difficult means enduring other difficulties as well.
Of course, the Kurdish Movement will choose its own path. Not that they will ask us about it. And of course, we will see it as our right to criticize this path. Today, it is possible for us to see that this path has become clearer.
Fourth, the text tells us that the goal of a ‘nation-state’ has been abandoned. This should mean aiming for a revolution throughout the entire country and the region, prioritizing becoming a part of the world revolution rather than establishing a separate state. However, the text does not say this; instead, it derives from this a conclusion of a ‘Democratic Society.’ In fact, this is not a new discourse either. Many articles on this topic had previously been published in dm. But regarding what ‘democratic society’ actually is, the text Öcalan submitted to the congress provides considerable clarity.
We’re heading there.
As stated in the footnote, some of the headings were not published in the text; they were removed. We do not know the political reasons for this. However, Öcalan states in the ‘July 9 Call’ that, ‘I must clearly state that all these developments took place as a result of the meetings I held on İmralı. Maximum care was taken to ensure that the discussions were conducted on the basis of free will.’ In other words, we may assume that the text was known to the state. In this case, the removal of headings 1, 2 and 4 from the text may carry another meaning. Otherwise, there would be no harm in something already known by the state becoming known to the revolutionary public or the general public. If any struggle, organization, or individual is to have a secret (and in fact, the first place you must hide your secret from should be the state) and if this is already known by the state, then it no longer holds meaning as a secret. Perhaps they did not publish these sections for an entirely different reason. We do not know.
“It has embarked on such a course and in my view, this is a healthy method. Based on this method, we have expanded the initial phase a bit further and under state supervision we are preparing the program with this meeting.” (A. Öcalan, “Being at the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question” dm, p. 8).
As can be seen, Öcalan is explicit and openly stating the situation. Thus, it is not an exaggeration to assume that the state is already well-informed. Both the “July 9 Call” and the text presented at the congress are documents known to the state and “approved” by it.
In heading 3 (headings 1 and 2 were not published), Öcalan or the text (even if the state intervened in the text, it is now Öcalan’s text) discusses “The dilemma of the state and the commune in historical society.” “Historical society” emphasizes that society is a historical entity. Every society is historical, everything is historical and naturally, since every society is historical (referring to the entirety of social history), the dilemma of state and commune is brought into question in history. We should understand it in this way.
Another long quote is needed.
“Historical materialism should substitute the ‘commune’ for class struggle. Isn’t this not only a realistic approach but also the most sound path toward socialism in the science of sociology, through the thought and practice of freedom? I believe that, instead of a definition of historical materialism and socialism based on class conflict, an alternative founded on the dilemma of state and commune is more accurate. I find it more appropriate to reconsider Marxism and implement this in place of the existing concept. In other words, history is not a history of class struggle, but rather a history of conflict between the state and the commune. Marxism’s theory of conflict based on class divisions is the main reason for the collapse of real socialism. It does not even need to be criticized. Yet foremost among its causes is the attempt to construct a sociology based on this class division. So what does the state–commune dilemma, which replaces this distinction, mean? A highly valuable observation. Or perhaps it is known but has not been systematized. What I am attempting here is a systematic thinking. I want to analyze historical materialism within this conceptual framework. Moreover, I want to base contemporary socialism not on a class-dictatorship-oriented communism, but on a set of concepts that regulates the relations between state and communality. It gives me the impression that this will lead to highly constructive and striking results. I ground this in the idea that society is essentially a communal phenomenon. This is sociality. And sociality means commune. The primitive commune means clan. As for the word commune specifically, we must analyze on what basis sociality—so far as we know—began in the cultural rise of the Mesopotamian region, in the emergence of Sumerian society, that is, in the origins of the state, the city, property and class. Placing the state at the beginning is appropriate and placing the commune alongside it. But then where is sociality? Moreover, I want to base contemporary socialism not on a class-dictatorship-oriented communism, but on a set of concepts that regulates the relations between state and communality. It gives me the impression that this will lead to highly constructive and striking results. I ground this in the idea that society is essentially a communal phenomenon. This is sociality. And sociality means commune. The primitive commune means clan. As for the word commune specifically, we must analyze on what basis sociality -as far as we know- began in the cultural rise of the Mesopotamian region, in the emergence of Sumerian society, that is, in the origins of the state, the city, property and class. Placing the state at the beginning is appropriate and placing the commune alongside it. But then where is sociality?” Society is the foundation of the matter. Because until around 4000 BC, the form of social development was the clan. You could also call it a tribe. A tribe is actually a union of communes. A clan is a commune. The family had not yet formed. Family and clan essentially have the same meaning; they express the same phenomenon. The family had not significantly differentiated from the clan, nor had the clan from the family. With the advent of the Neolithic, a striking development occurs. The clan is predominantly connected to the Neolithic. Before the Neolithic, it is the clan. We can also understand the connection of the commune to our Kurdish word “kom” from our own language. “Kom” or “kombun” means commune, to gather. It is a word still in use today, which shows that the Aryan language also emerged from this root, with at least a 10,000-year history. It is clear that the Aryan language group developed around this concept of the commune. The Kurdish word “kom” proves this and its word derivations also explain it. “Komagene” refers to the name of a state. The clan leader generates the state. The clan members whose interests are harmed form the commune. In fact, this is the reality. It’s very simple. I have not made a great discovery here. The one who suppresses the clan becomes the state; whoever the tribal chief is, their ordinary members continue as the commune and later as the family. Those at the top form the state. The state becomes a dynasty. Those below are the constantly oppressed clan, and once there is a state, there is also an oppressed clan. This is how the differentiation begins. Marxism’s claim that the proletariat emerged this way and developed that way seems a bit forced to me.” (dm, age, s. 8-9).
1
Here, Öcalan says, ‘I find it more appropriate to reconsider Marxism and to implement it rather than just discuss the concept.’ There is a possibility of a grammatical error in the second part of the sentence. Nevertheless, these lines are being presented to the congress of the PKK, which has become one of the most advanced guerrilla movements within the world’s national liberation movements. Moreover, the title of the report is ‘Being at the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question’ and the critique of Marxism occupies a significant part of it. This shows that it is serious. The idea of reconsidering Marxism is serious. The task of reconsidering Marxism must also be taken seriously.
This idea has been around since the 1890s. Karl Kautsky and Bernstein were the first pioneers of this work. In other words, the idea of revising Marxism is neither new nor a great discovery. Throughout history, these revisions have always included attacks on Marxism.
We Marxist-Leninists do not view theory as dogma. Of course, depending on the class struggle and the development of social life, many new problems arise and from this perspective, these problems must be addressed. Memorized formulas are not theory.
In our history, the path taken by the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) and Dev-Yol when they dissolved themselves after the September 12 counter-revolution is another example. We do not intend to make comparisons. We are simply emphasizing that this path has been used before.
A better example is Gorbachev’s attacks on Marxism-Leninism during the dissolution of the USSR, based on his theses that “imperialism can exist without colonies” and “imperialism can exist without war.”
Whenever there is a change of course, reconsidering Marxism always comes up. However, when approached as a science, dialectical and historical materialism (or Marxism, or Marxism-Leninism) already continuously develops and advances in accordance with the development of the struggle. If this process, i.e., the development of science, is not referred to as a kind of ‘revision,’ which in this case it is not, then what is meant by ‘revision’ is a change of course that goes beyond even a train switching tracks mid-journey and It often implies re-engaging in a task that consists merely of reviving old currents that have already been tried and tested.”
Otherwise, science is not static, cannot be static and is constantly ‘revised.’ If revision, by clinging to the pragmatism of modern bourgeois ideology, becomes a form of ‘discrediting,’ this is already something thousands of ideologues attempt every day and it is also a form of class struggle; indeed, one of the fiercest.
Unfortunately, this is also the case here.
2
If a scientific effort or study, or a scientific idea, is to be criticized, as a rule, the assumptions of that science must also be criticized. Suppose you are going to conduct a scientific experiment, you inevitably start from certain assumptions. If you are going to critique the results of this experiment in a scientific sense, then, consistently, you must also critique the assumptions of this study.
This also applies to dialectical and historical materialism. If you want to criticize Marxism, if you want to “re-examine” it, you must clearly criticize its foundations and prove that those foundations and assumptions are incorrect. For example, you would need to explain what ‘class’ actually is or at what stage in human history and in what way the state emerged. Bourgeois economics and bourgeois sociology accept the state and society as given, but, for instance, they are not concerned with ‘the origins of the family, private property and the state.’ They simply take the family, private property and the state as existing, just as religion takes humans and the world as existing entities.”
In other words, the thesis that ‘history is not the history of class struggle, but a conflict between state and commune’ is not only incorrect but also simplistic. We will address its inaccuracy shortly. It is simplistic because the claim that ‘the history of class societies is the history of class struggles’ assumes that society is a whole divided into mutually opposing classes. As is known, the contradiction is inherent in matter and here the matter is society. If the state and the commune are the two poles, then it means that classes are not. In that case, to demonstrate that the history of class societies is not actually a history of class struggle, one would need to show that society, materially speaking, is not divided into classes. If we are so serious about reconsidering Marxism, we undergo this effort. If we do not do this, then either our minds are confused or we are finding a framework for practical steps to be taken. This is a simplistic approach, resembling the approach to imperialism taken by Gorbachev, who was at the helm of the USSR during the transition to a new era.
“Replacing class struggle with the commune” actually means detaching the commune -namely, that first experience in which the working class seized power- from the very process of class struggle. In other words, the commune and class struggle are not things that can be substituted for one another. The commune refers to the fact that, in their struggle against the bourgeoisie, the workers of Paris temporarily took power. This was a result of class struggle.
The state, too, is the result of the existence of classes in the beginning and of class struggle as it develops.
So both the state and the commune are productions of class struggle. That is to say, if there were no class struggle, they would not exist. In that case, a categorical mistake is made in the sense of “substitution” and it is easily made.
In class struggle, of course, there can be temporary peace agreements. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was an agreement Lenin signed as a step back in the face of the imperialist encirclement. But there is no need to “invent a theory” to justify such a move. Class struggle is a process with ups and downs and at times you are confronted with the reality of having to make agreements that you may not like. Yet you do not need to claim that “imperialism can exist without colonies” in order to justify this. Once you say that, you are doing something entirely different: you turn a practical situation into a theoretical principle and then you mutilate the theory to fit your new practice.
In my opinion, it is quite common for every person (and we have all experienced this) to witness instances where each subject develops a “theory” to explain his or her situation. Yet the idea of the “unity of theory and practice” has nothing to do with this. In other words, the attitude of “since my practice is like this, let me find a theory for it” (or, for some, not even a theory, but simply an explanation that will convince themselves) is a way of constructing the theory–practice relationship in reverse. It is to set up the equation in reverse. The theory or science that emerges from practical action functions, and should function, to scientize the new practical action. A person who has talked under torture or someone abandoned by the one they love immediately finds an explanation for themselves: “revolution was impossible anyway,” or “I never really loved them,” and so on. Naturally, these are only examples and every example is limited; none expresses the situation fully. However, developing a theory that conveniently fits our situation may simply be our pragmatic tendency inherited from dominant ideology. Whether you choose to criticize Marxism or your own past, the result is the same: this stance, this pragmatic path, cannot become a source of illumination and does not pave the way.
3
Dialectical and historical materialism is a science. It develops and is developed at every moment of life. So much so that if we understand human history and society as a continuation of nature, then the only coherent science of history emerges from this framework. Moreover, it is Marxism that makes history not just a record of events, but a science.
At a certain stage in history, human society emerges. Human society is a continuation of nature, or, put differently, the human being is nature becoming conscious of itself. This, too, is a social process. And unfortunately, we are still in this process of becoming human today. A communist society, in fact, signifies the completion of this process of humanization and a fundamental transformation of humanity’s relationship with nature.
At the earliest stages of this social development, classes do not exist. In other words, at the very beginning, when human beings are engaged in the business of survival, of making a living for themselves, in those first moments, there are no classes in that society yet. This is what we call the primitive communal society. It is communal because everything is the shared property of the community.
This also means that from the very beginning there is no state. The state is the outcome and expression of a social process divided into classes.
Yet in that primitive society without a state, there existed the commune, as Öcalan calls it. Öcalan at times describes the commune as the form of society without the “state”. However, a stateless society already existed at the very beginning. Yes, it was a primitive society, but it was a stateless one. So in that period, there was no dichotomy between the state and the commune.
The state emerges at a certain stage of social development. It is grounded in the existence of classes. It is a tool through which one class suppresses another. In other words, the state is not the common product of the whole society; it is the armed and political organization of the ruling class. In this regard, Engels’s ‘The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State’ is instructive. And in a time when Marxism is being so thoroughly discredited, it becomes a duty to recall and revisit Lenin’s ‘The State and Revolution’ as well.
This stage takes shape with society’s division into conflicting, antagonistic classes. That is, in a society split into opposing classes, the state is the means by which the ruling class forces (and manufactures consent for) its own interests upon the whole of society. The state is the political organization of the ruling class. The ruling class has other political organizations as well, but the most developed of these is the state. The state is an apparatus of coercion. It appears to stand above society. Yet, as dialectics teaches us, if everything were as it appeared, there would be no need for science. The state, which arises from society but seems to hover above it, is in reality the organized form of the ruling class’s interests, imposed upon society.
The slave-owning state is the first form of the state. Even leaving aside the more developed slave states of Rome and Athens, in its earliest forms as well, the slave state was the state of the slave owners. Thus, at a certain stage, society becomes divided into classes and the state emerges from this division. Therefore, if one wishes to argue otherwise, one must demonstrate that the state is not the result of the existence of classes.
The division of society into antagonistic classes develops in parallel with the emergence of private property and more precisely, private ownership of the means of production.
Forms of social organization such as the clan, the tribe and the family are not counter-organizations to the state. They exist, but unless we are speaking in Durkheim’s terms of “the science of sociology,” society is not made up of these units. In bourgeois “sociology,” the economic foundation of society or political economy is absent; it is passed over. They acknowledge classes and yet treat society as if it were an entity independent of those very classes.
We need to elaborate the matter a bit further.
The human being, in the sense that nature becomes conscious of itself, is an expression of a rupture from nature.
From the very beginning, the human being distinguishes itself from other living beings, let us narrow it further; from other animals, by producing tools of production in order to secure its means of subsistence. At a certain stage, private property over these tools of production emerges and the class that holds the means of production naturally forms the state to govern society in accordance with its own interests.
A human being engages, at the most fundamental level, in two essential activities. The continuation of life is shaped by these two. First, they reproduce biologically in order to sustain their lineage, which is something all living beings do. Second, they produce their own material means of subsistence. They do not merely transform nature to produce food; they also create the tools of production required for that purpose. Humans do this within social life and in this sense, society is a continuation of natural history. Moreover, the human being increasingly possesses the capacity to produce more than what they personally consume. That is, more than the material goods needed to replenish their own mental and physical energy. This potential becomes actualized and real through the development of the means of production. Without this, a slave owner could never appropriate the labor of the slave. If every person produced only enough to sustain themselves and never exceed that limit, the labor of a slave would never be sufficient to sustain a slave owner.
The family, the clan and the tribe are forms of social organization within historical development. The more advanced the organization based on reproduction, that is, on the continuation of one’s own lineage, the more backward is the organization based on production in a society. As production develops in human societies throughout history, forms of organization grounded in production come to the forefront and correspondingly, blood-based forms of organization recede. The dissolution of the clan occurs within this objective process. The clan and the tribe are not social organizational forms of capitalism. Private property develops the family and under capitalist private property this development is further intensified; later, in the advanced stages of capitalist development, even these familial bonds begin to erode. Despite this, the bourgeois state claims to take the family as its foundation and accuses us communists of rejecting the family. Yet it is capitalist relations of production themselves that dissolve the family. The contemporary “nuclear family” is the outcome of this very process.
Otherwise, in the course of social development, the clan and the state, the tribe and the state, the family and the state do not develop in conflict. On the contrary, the ruling power reshapes these organizational forms in its own manner and preserves aspects of the culture based on them in certain respects. For example, in some cases where the bourgeois revolution has not been completed, organizations such as the clan, which are characteristic of the feudal period, are preserved by the relations of sovereignty itself, and this is a sign of bourgeois reaction.
Human society passes into class society with the breakdown of primitive communal society. The first of the class societies is the slave society, in which slave owners and slaves constitute two opposing classes. The second is feudal society, whose antagonistic poles are the feudal nobles on one side and the serfs and peasants on the other. The most developed form of class society is capitalist society. We can indeed say that it is the most advanced class society. It is also the last class society, and its being the last means precisely that it is the most developed; capitalist society has already been ruptured by socialist revolutions. It does not need to happen hundreds of times. We know, from the experiences of the Commune and the Soviets themselves, that capitalism is the final class society. And these class societies are closely interconnected; one can even develop within another. And it can indeed be said that the history of these class societies is the history of class struggles and this is true. Because in each of them, the society in question contains two poles formed by these classes. For example, not every family comes into conflict or contradiction with the state. A bourgeois family, together with other bourgeois families, is among the proprietors of the state, while a working-class family has no such position. Thus, if we are to speak of the “commune” in opposition to capitalism (without romanticizing the past) we must be speaking of the abolition of classes and of the state as the instrument of class domination. Otherwise, we end up exaggerating the “positive” elements found within the clan or the tribe. Similarly, if we go even further back, we end up equating primitive communal society with communist society, which is a society that will emerge only through the socialist revolution and the socialist transition, in which the working class abolishes first the bourgeois class and then itself.
In each class society, the state develops further as the instrument of domination of the ruling class. The feudal state is more developed and more organized than the slave state and the capitalist state is more developed than the feudal state. To say “more developed” however is not an affirmation; on the contrary, it means that the ruling class’s instrument of domination has become more developed. And every state takes shape according to the class struggle unfolding in its particular era and period. For this reason, when analyzing any given state, the principle of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation must be taken as the foundation.
In slave society or feudal society, there are more areas into which the state has not yet penetrated or which it cannot yet control, compared to capitalist society. For this reason, we frequently encounter situations in which those who oppose the capitalist state idealize the past. In capitalist society, the ruling class begins to control every sphere of life. Today, under the monopoly capitalist system, this control exists in its most advanced form. Balzac, while criticizing capitalist development in France and the emerging bourgeois culture, in fact began from an attachment to the old order but ultimately was compelled to reveal all the filth of the old, the full face of feudal domination and aristocracy as well.
From this point of view, it can be said that the state or capitalist domination is opposed to society as a whole. On this basis, it can be argued, and it is not inconvenient, that the socialist revolution is not only the path to the liberation of the working class but also the path to the liberation of all society. But if this argument is introduced in order to deny the existence of the working class, then the socialist revolution becomes a fantasy. Because the working class is the vanguard force that will overthrow capitalism and in fact, the working class’s march to communism through socialist revolution also means the destruction of all classes, including itself as a class. In other words, socialist revolution to abolish classes is the path to communism. The commune is the organizational form of socialist society, the classless society of the future and if there is no socialist revolution, no class struggle etc., the commune will be swept off its feet.
If you overlook this, both historical materialism collapses, as without affirming that class struggle leads to this point there can be no historical materialism, and what remains is not a Marxism to be revised, but no Marxism at all.
4
It is obvious that I am not as well acquainted with Kurdish linguistics as Öcalan. Therefore, discussing whether the word “kom” is in fact the basis of the word “commune” is not a discussion I can engage in in terms of Kurdish linguistics.
Concepts and words have histories. Commune entered the history of class struggle with the Paris Commune. Those who call themselves communists, in fact, began to emphasize this identity only after the Paris Commune. When Börklüce Mustafa and the Bedreddin movement spoke of a “collective society”, perhaps they were advocating a form of it, a form that we cannot exactly call communism, but a form that contains its elements. Their perspective was rooted in peasantry and peasant uprisings. Primitive communal society likewise describes a “communal” life. Yet this resembles, rather than replicates, the form we observe in the Paris Commune. In the former, there is no private property over the means of production (and the means of production themselves are extremely limited); in the latter, there is a conscious will and intention to abolish private property over the means of production and to turn socially owned productive forces into the common wealth of society. This situation illustrates the law of “the negation of the negation,” one of the core principles of dialectical and historical materialism. The first negation is the dissolution of primitive communal society and the emergence of private property over the means of production; the second negation is the abolition of private property in the means of production and the transition to social property. The same logic applies to the state: if the first negation is the emergence of the state as an expression of the existence of classes, then the second negation is the withering away of the state as a result of the abolition of classes brought about by the victory of the socialist revolution. This law (the negation of the negation) is also present in a broader cycle: humanity’s separation from nature as a part of nature itself and ultimately, through communism, the formation of a new unity with nature at a higher level.
The history of words is, of course, worth examining. For example, the term strike (grève) comes from workers in France gathering in a square called “Grève” after walking off the job. But today, going on strike generally means shutting down the workplace and taking to the streets. Otherwise, simply gathering in any square does not constitute a strike.
The Paris Commune, developed by the Parisian proletariat, represents the first formation of a new society. And those who call themselves communists have made the question of state and power the subject of their own practice for the victory of this movement, of this practice. The Paris Commune placed before the revolutionary movement the task of smashing the bourgeois state and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. All revolutionaries, including Marx, dealt with these problems.
From here, one may proceed to the critique of real socialism.
Real socialism or the October Revolution of 1917, was not “mistaken” because it carried out a revolution, seized political power and established a dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets were new centers of power that emerged within the class struggle against Tsarism, just like the Paris Commune. The faults of the socialist experience which the October Revolution created cannot be explained by the attitudes of individuals. Likewise, the successes of a guerrilla movement cannot be reduced to the heroism of isolated individuals. Such heroism matters. But history cannot be reduced to it. Doing so would constitute an exceedingly narrow understanding of history. Great individuals are the product of great events; great events generate great leaders. The reverse is not true. Whatever the circumstances, human beings are not merely biological entities but products of historical and social conditions. Therefore, the Soviet experience must be approached with this perspective.
The October Revolution was encircled from the very first moment.
Socialism in one country became a practical outcome of this encirclement. The Bolsheviks sought to spread the revolution. The German Revolution was defeated in 1919. There is no need to list others. The revolution could not spread rapidly throughout the world and remained confined to the Soviet Union. The ruling class, the world bourgeoisie, responded to the October Revolution with a counterrevolution. This is how the Spartacists in Germany were defeated. This wave of counterrevolution created, on the eve of the Second World War, a form of state organization known as fascism. Fascism is the bourgeois state adapting itself to the conditions, in an extraordinarily organized form. In every class society, class struggle shapes the state. Therefore, although every state is a bourgeois state, each must be examined concretely. Let us return to the October Revolution. The world proletariat, having been unable to spread the revolution globally, found itself confronted with counterrevolution. And over time, under the attacks of the capitalist-imperialist system, the Soviet Union was forced to turn inward; although it was reborn from its own ashes several times, it was unable to succeed in spreading the revolution. Gradually, this practical condition—this objective situation—was elevated to the level of strategy, resulting in the strategy of “peaceful coexistence.” This entire process also had internal consequences in terms of social organization, overcoming the horizon of commodity production and so on. For example, if a socialist country compares itself with a capitalist country by looking at the amount of household appliances per person, this means that the idea of transcending the horizon of commodity production has fallen into the background.
A remark is necessary here. Within Soviet history, the condition of “peaceful coexistence,” this practical condition, became a strategy. This means that the word “peace” should be taken into consideration as in this example. It is an experience.
There are, in fact, many extensive and valuable studies on this subject, namely on the dissolution of the Soviet system. We consider ourselves, as a movement, to have been shaped under the influence of two defeats (the counterrevolution of September 12 and the dissolution of the USSR) and one revolutionary upsurge. (the rise of the Kurdish movement) Therefore it would be appropriate to note that we have published studies on this subject. (Transition from Capitalism to Communism, published by Kaldıraç Publishing House) For this reason we can say that a more comprehensive discussion of the Soviet experience goes beyond the scope of our topic. We proceed from the understanding that all experiences of socialism, despite all their shortcomings, constitute our shared value and our shared history. For this reason we approach the first generalizations that come to mind on this subject with caution.
The shortcomings of the practice displayed by the experience of real socialism in the field of social organization cannot lead anyone to argue that the issue can be solved by setting aside revolution and adopting a communalist approach. The socialist revolution, above all, requires a revolutionary form of organization. Without revolution, a path to liberation cannot be established through municipalism. Moreover, this form of municipalism has been advocated since earlier periods of history, it is not new and it has not been shown to lead anywhere.
But we do accept the following. Today, even before overthrowing the capitalist system, within the struggle carried out against the capitalist state, it is possible to create forms of organization belonging to the future society, just like the Soviets, just like the commune. How far these forms will develop will of course become clear within social struggle, within class struggle. Their essence is the commune, yet they may find different paths of development. And the struggle of today creates the early forms of the human being of the future society. Struggle also offers us the organizational forms of the new society. The Paris Commune is an example of this and it is for this reason that we are communists. Naturally, this can be developed and realized, provided that the organization, the revolutionary organization is placed at the forefront.
Leaving aside the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system, a communalist path within society is not realistic. It would only mean fitting a theory to the concrete situation and to do this it is almost obligatory to attack Marxism. We can understand this. But we don’t consider it right, certainly not at all scientific.
The main points of attack launched against Marxism by the bourgeois camp, in whatever breadth this bourgeois camp may appear, have always focused on the following: (1) the existence of the working class or its vanguard role, (2) taking power and dismantling the state of the ruling class, (3) establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. These attacks have been regarded as more effective than frontal assaults. This is because they have influenced the “intellectuals” or the producers of ideas who stand on the side of the working class and they have been effective in creating an ideological vacuum.
“… when there is a state, there is an oppressed tribe. This is how the disintegration begins. For Marxism to claim that the proletariat emerged like this, the proletariat developed like this, seems a bit forced to me.”
At the end of the quotation above, the following sentences appear. The state and the tribe constitute two opposing poles, and Öcalan, on this basis, says that it is somewhat forced for Marxism to claim that the proletariat developed in this or that way. The Kurdish movement developed on the basis of poor peasantry. The peasantry is one of the fundamental classes of the old society and is of course dissolving under capitalism. For this reason the PKK named itself the Kurdistan Workers Party. The word “worker” points to the future. Naturally, within the Kurdish people there were, and still are, collaborationist forces that developed through their ties to tribes. The Barzani movement was the one that developed on the basis of tribes. What has dissolved the tribes culturally is the Kurdish Freedom Movement. Now this foundation is being detached rather than established on the basis of the working class. Participation of the Kurdish middle classes in the Kurdish revolution (the breaking of tribal bonds is a revolution, and it is impossible to reverse this) took place in Turkish Kurdistan where tribal ties had already been dissolved. These middle classes, if the year is 1993, would either act in accordance with their own class character when joining the revolution, or whether they wished it or not, would become part of the Kurdish revolution advancing along a socialist path. This was the situation. For this reason, the Barzani line, which is also an extension of colonialism, and the opposing PKK line emerged. As the imperialist war, the war of division, intensified in the Middle East, the objective problems faced by the Kurdish revolution became clear. To serve as a lever for a socialist revolution that may develop in the region is one possible path. It is also a historical responsibility. Naturally, no one can compel the Kurdish movement to do this. However, this objective situation is not something that can be bypassed by claiming that the matter of how the proletariat emerged or developed is a forced argument.
“Yes, such industrial revolution based proletarianization and bourgeoisification still exist, but they are the result of a development that spans thousands of years. Bourgeoisification, the precursor to proletarianization, existed in Babylon, in Sumer, in Assyria. It existed in Athens and in Rome. It later passed into Western Europe. It is something that Europe invented but they enlarged its scale and made it hegemonic. A form of exploitation called capitalism and its hegemony emerged. This hegemony became valid across the entire world. Its roots go back to Sumerian society. This is the story of state formation, the slave state, the feudal state, the capitalist state. In fact, this is how it needs to be interpreted. What matters is, where is the commune? In the last years of his life, Marx, because of the Paris Commune, in which many people he knew closely were killed, and this is striking, it is said that nearly seventeen thousand communards were killed, wrote an assessment titled The Paris Commune in their memory. He sets Capital aside, because his predictions had taken a major blow. In my view there is an internal rupture. He turns to the idea of the commune. He does not use the concept of class much and he also uses the concept of the commune.”
…
“Marx, at the end of his life, does not want to use the concept of dictatorship and turns toward the concept of the commune. He also makes a distinction between the state and the commune, although he cannot develop it much. In the end, in my view, this distinction is valid throughout history, historical materialism did not proceed as a class war, I should not even say war, it proceeded in the form of the commune and the state. All of history consists of this.” (ibid., p. 9).
Öcalan says these things. The reader can, of course, read the full published text through dm. With the long quotations at the beginning, we have in fact laid out some basic issues. After these quotations, there is no need to repeat them. But there are some points to be added based on these excerpts.
1
“Yes, such industrial revolution based proletarianization and bourgeoisification still exist, but they are the result of a development that spans thousands of years. Bourgeoisification, the precursor to proletarianization, existed in Babylon, in Sumer, in Assyria. It existed in Athens and in Rome. It later passed into Western Europe. It is something that Europe invented but they enlarged its scale and made it hegemonic. A form of exploitation called capitalism and its hegemony emerged. This hegemony became valid across the entire world. Its roots go back to Sumerian society. This is the story of state formation, the slave state, the feudal state, the capitalist state. In fact, this is how it needs to be interpreted. What matters is, where is the commune? In the last years of his life, Marx, because of the Paris Commune, in which many people he knew closely were killed, and this is striking, it is said that nearly seventeen thousand communards were killed, wrote an assessment titled The Paris Commune in their memory. He sets Capital aside, because his predictions had taken a major blow. In my view there is an internal rupture. He turns to the idea of the commune. He does not use the concept of class much and he also uses the concept of the commune.”
…
“Marx, at the end of his life, does not want to use the concept of dictatorship and turns toward the concept of the commune. He also makes a distinction between the state and the commune, although he cannot develop it much. In the end, in my view, this distinction is valid throughout history, historical materialism did not proceed as a class war, I should not even say war, it proceeded in the form of the commune and the state. All of history consists of this.”
Let us begin here. How eclectic the text is and how pragmatism comes into play can be understood in these lines. Of course, this can also be called a reflection of the claim of “authenticity”. The text also reflects a spoken language. Therefore, we will not dwell on certain points.
So, proletarianization and bourgeoisification are the result of a development that spans thousands of years. Very well, but what changes if it is the result of thousands of years of development? After all, Marx himself did not hesitate to say that it was not they who discovered class struggle. Marx says that what we have added is this, that we have shown that this class struggle leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat and this is one of the new elements. In other words, the fact that bourgeoisification and proletarianization have a history of thousands of years does not change anything.
Moreover, it is said that bourgeoisification existed even before proletarianization, in Babylon, Assyria, and Sumer. Öcalan may be referring here to the existence of commodity production. If this is the case, it is incorrect to claim that the bourgeoisie was born at the moment commodity production first emerged. He must be aware of this distinction, since after saying that it passed from Athens and Rome into Europe, he then adds that it is something Europe invented. This suggests that, after Europe’s invention, one may look back and argue that the roots of commodity production were present in the earliest forms of class society. However, this is different from what is described as “proletarianization and bourgeoisification.” In slave society, commodity production is not in fact the foundation of the slave system. The foundation of the system is the slave owner’s appropriation of the slave’s labor.
From here he goes on to say that Marx, in the final period of his life, wrote on the Paris Commune and no longer used the concept of class as much. And he adds that toward the end of his life Marx did not use the concept of dictatorship and turned toward the commune.
This is not correct. In our view Öcalan knows this as well. The texts are there. Perhaps he was unable to access these texts under the conditions of İmralı and for this reason was unable to review them again. We do not know this. Moreover, Marx attached great importance to the Paris Commune because he saw that in the proletariat’s struggle against the bourgeois class a new form of society was also being developed. And contrary to what Öcalan says, Marx states that the Paris Commune remained inadequate in taking power and extending it throughout the entire country and that while it destroyed the machinery of the bourgeois state, it fell short in completely smashing it and establishing the power of the proletariat. Yes, from this experience certain forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat also take shape, such as organizations based on the election and recall of every official, and the principle that all state functionaries, from the highest to the lowest, receive a single and the lowest wage. These were developed by the commune. But in all these texts there is never a rejection of proletarian power, of the dictatorship of the proletariat, that is, the rule of the working class.
Perhaps the fear felt by the bourgeoisie in the face of the Paris Commune can be summarized by the following lines of Marx:
“After the Commune’s decree of April 7, which ordered retaliation and declared that its duty was ‘to protect Paris against the cannibalistic conduct of the Versailles bandits and to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ Thiers still did not stop the barbarous treatment of prisoners. … But as soon as Thiers and the interval generals learned that even their gendarme spies captured in Paris disguised as National Guards, even the Sergents de ville (the policemen) who were caught with incendiary bombs on them, were pardoned, and as soon as they understood that the Commune’s decree regarding retaliation was an empty threat, the mass killings of prisoners began again and continued without interruption to the very end. The houses in which the National Guards had been sheltering were surrounded by gendarmes, petroleum was poured over them (here for the first time) and they were set on fire …” (Marx and Engels, Selected Works 2, Sol Publishing, p. 259).
So, the Paris Commune is defeated through such an assault.
Let us continue quoting from Marx:
“On the morning of March 18, Paris awoke to this thunderclap: Vive la Commune! But what is the Commune, this sphinx that so disturbs bourgeois common sense?
‘The proletarians of the capital,’ said the Central Committee in its proclamation of March 18, ‘have understood that the time has come for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the management of public affairs, in the weakness and treachery of the ruling classes.’
“But the working class cannot be content with taking the existing state machine as it is and using it for its own purposes” (Marx-Engels, ibid., p. 260).
Thus, the Commune emerges at a certain stage of the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the working class. In other words, it is not independent of classes or of class struggle.
And again, this means that the proletariat cannot be satisfied with taking over the old state machinery as it is and using it for its own interests, it must break it apart and establish its own power in its place. Since the understanding of the “nation state” has been surpassed, it is necessary to orient oneself toward this goal, whether in the country or in the region.
Marx says the following:
“The true secret of the Commune was this, it was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing class against the appropriating class, the finally discovered political form in which the economic emancipation of labor could be realized.” (Marx and Engels, ibid., p. 267).
Marx wrote the following to Kugelmann on April 12, 1871:
“If they are defeated, they will only be defeated because of their ‘good-heartedness.’ They should have marched on Versailles as soon as Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard withdrew. They missed the opportunity because of scruples of conscience. They did not want to initiate a civil war, as if that intriguer Thiers had not already initiated the civil war with his attempt to disarm Paris!” (Karl Marx, Specter, Selected Writings, Ayrıntı Publishing, p. 636).
I believe these quotations are sufficient to explain the relationship between the Commune and the proletariat. To march on Versailles is to overthrow the bourgeois state.
2
We learn from Öcalan that “Marx, at the end of his life, does not want to use the concept of dictatorship and turns toward the concept of the commune. He also makes a distinction between the state and the commune, although he cannot develop it much. In the end, in my view, this distinction is valid throughout history, historical materialism did not proceed as a class war, I should not even say war, it proceeded in the form of the commune and the state. All of history consists of this.” Is this really all history consists of? Does Marx see the Paris Commune, which was developed by the proletariat against the bourgeois state, as independent, detached, irrelevant from the war between the bourgeoisie and the working class? When you say the Paris Commune against the bourgeois state, it means that you distinguish between “state and commune” and never mention the class struggle? This is a very forced conclusion.
And again we learn that Öcalan’s thought is this: “In the end, in my view, this distinction is valid throughout history, historical materialism did not proceed as a class war, I should not even say war, it proceeded in the form of the commune and the state. All of history consists of this.”
This may, of course, be Öcalan’s own thought, and that is not an issue for us. But why is Marx being included in this? A person can, if they wish, state, “this is my view,” without involving Marx at all.
Is it absolutely necessary to revise Marxism? In a work titled “Being at the End of an Era and on the Threshold of a New Period in the Kurdish Existence and Question” what is the basis for the need to revise Marxism?
In other words, it is enough to reject Marxism to say that the Kurdish movement’s next path of development will be completely different, and it is quite possible to do this without attempting revision. After all, there is freedom, everyone can choose the path they wish. But once you bring Marx into it, it means you are in fact trying to create a theoretical foundation for the present difficult situation by way of Marx. A theory fashioned to suit the path you intend to take is not a scientific path, it is pragmatism. Theory is a guide, and bending or twisting theory in order to deviate from the path when difficulties and setbacks arise is pragmatism.
3
Thus, the profound revision of Marxism arrives in this way.
Öcalan proposes a new path to the Kurdish movement, to the PKK Congress, and on this new path, there is no social reality based on class struggle, instead, there is “state and commune,” and these two things, let us not even call it war, stand opposed to each other.
A political movement, without doubt, presents the line it adopts as a line for the future. For this reason, the idea of what kind of future is one of the fundamental questions of political struggle. You may agree or disagree, but you cannot object to a movement setting forth its plan for the society of the future.
For this reason, the plan is presented through the dichotomy of state and commune. Let us listen.
“‘The concept of moral and political society is another expression of the assessment of the commune. It is the commune finding expression in the face of the state. The language of the new peace period will also be political. We will defend the freedom of the commune. As the name itself suggests, we are abandoning the language of nation statism, we are abandoning the concepts based on nation statism, we are grounding ourselves in ethical and political concepts based on the commune. We called it moral and political society, but this is the name of the commune that is becoming free. It is something ethical and political, not even legal. There is law, it will develop, the municipal law. We will want it to find expression in legislation, it will be a condition and a principle for us. Its more scientific expression is the freedom of the commune. From now on we will be communalists. Replacing the concept of class with the commune is much more striking, much more scientific. Municipalities are still communes. We also have kom. Is there no morality, is there no ethics, there certainly is. Indeed the commune is a matter that will proceed through ethics rather than through laws. The commune is a democracy. Democratic politics means politics. Commune is a noun, ethical political is an adjective. We call this the most profound revision of Marxism. We are replacing Marxism’s concept of class with the commune.’ (ibid., pp. 9–10).”
I will not dwell on points such as the concept of “ethical political society.”
The language of the nation state is being abandoned, this is the proposal. Indeed, the nation state belongs to capitalism. It expresses the formation of the bourgeois market and its connection to bourgeois domination, and almost every nation state rests on the assimilation of other nations. This occurred more mildly in France, developing over time, differently in Germany, differently in the United States, and in Turkey it was carried out through massacres and a politics of destruction and denial.
If a people’s awakening and liberation movement in the present era does not transcend capitalism, does not orient itself toward socialism, it takes on the form of a subordinate nation state tied to capitalism. Nevertheless, the struggle itself is valuable, as in the resistances expressed in the names Simón Bolívar and José Martí. But if the outcome does not reach social emancipation, that too is an outcome.
I need to insert the following note regarding the October Revolution. It is known that the dictatorship of the proletariat or if you prefer, the democracy of the proletariat, which was established with the October Revolution, did not, from the very beginning, choose an ethnic identity or a geographical name. In other words, it did not call itself the Russian socialist republic or the Eurasian socialist republic. This in itself carries meaning. This internationalist understanding did not continue in the same way, this is another matter. But the fact that it is called the People’s Republic of China does not mean that it can be treated as a classical nation state. Moreover, the transcendence of the horizon of the nation state is also connected to the disappearance of the machine called the state and the disappearance of the state means the global spread of socialism and the transition to communism. When classes disappear, this occurs and the working class not only overthrows the bourgeoisie as a class, in the end it abolishes itself as a class to the extent that it abolishes its opposite. At that moment, the state also disappears. This happens across the entire world because the world capitalist system is a world system. It cannot be done under imperialist encirclement. The October Revolution called itself the Soviets and the soviet emerged as another form of the commune.
The text above is, on the one hand, a proposal of a path for the Kurdish Movement, and on the other hand it explains the question of the commune as the fundamental basis of this path. But attention must be paid, this is not the commune you read in Marx. In Paris, the commune existed in order to overthrow bourgeois power and to organize the power of the working class. It did not succeed in this. But it demonstrated the end of capitalism and the place to which class struggle would lead in the society of the future. The commune was unable to extend itself across the entire country, and if it had extended itself, it would have had to organize a proletarian state, a proletarian dictatorship, in order to defeat and suppress the bourgeois class it had deposed from power. We call this proletarian state the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class has little need, unlike the bourgeois class, to conceal its own domination by calling it “democracy.” But the dictatorship of the proletariat is of course not a democracy for a minority as the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is, it is a democracy for the broad masses and for the working class.
This profound revision of Marxism should not make us forget the existence of the views that have historically been defended as municipal socialism. This means that it was already known before. Of course, the organization of the people, the development of communal forms of life in their own spheres and the establishment of workers’ communes in factories are very important. The example of Terzi Fikri in Fatsa is important. But this neither rejects the revolutionary party nor the power of the working class, the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the contrary, these forms of organization mean great opportunities for the period after the working class takes power. From today onward these are important. The organizational forms of the society of the future are created by the working class itself during the struggle, in the very midst of the fight against the bourgeois class and the bourgeois state.
The text Öcalan presented to the dissolution congress is truly thought provoking. It is a text that appears to have been specifically crafted for the integration of the Kurdish Revolution into the system.
It seems that in the serious discussions he conducted with the state, Öcalan received “internal” information regarding the history of the Turkish state, from tribal structures all the way to the emergence of the first Turkic state. As if the Republic of Turkey were a natural continuation of those states formed in Central Asia. It is not. “Internal,” in both senses of the word, means both from the inside and from above, in the sense of discussing the problems of the Turkish state with its highest officials, and also in the sense of sincere or heartfelt.
From time to time many researchers trace the history of the Turkish state back to Central Asia. There is no class in these narratives. There are those who argue, in one way or another, that the issue of statehood, the “state formation” problem in Turkish history, was never approached as a class-against-class struggle; that no ruler desired this; that great Turkish leaders always had a sincere and genuine concern about how to govern this society; that they even always shared the state with those of non-Turkish descent; that some leaders took wrong stances and others took right stances; that the state either disappeared or developed under good or bad leaders; etc. This is present in some aspects of the Turkish history thesis. Within this framework many historical events can be examined and the difficulties of governance can be discussed almost as a kind of brainstorming in the form of “if you were the ruler at that time what would you have done,” and the dichotomy of state and tribe can be presented. But this is not scientific work, it is an attempt to write history in a particular way.
As an approach to Turkish history, there is in fact a thesis that under a “steppe federation” they organized a more “democratic” state. There are practices and processes through which nomadic peoples formed a federation within various tribal states on the Central Asian steppe. Of course, while the Turkish state may present itself as a continuation of this history when it suits its interests, it cannot conceal the fact that it is, in fact, a continuation of the Ottoman system. (For a more detailed study on the subject, see our work “Anatolia Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: History and Revolution”).
In these sincere efforts, the state must have expressed its sincere desire for assistance in expanding its shrinking domain. This means that a form of self-criticism must have been present.
The history of the Turkish state is clear. Within the framework of the notion that saving the state requires a nation, discussions such as tribe and state, nation and state, are certainly present in the Kemalist understanding. In this case, the problem of “manufacturing the nation,” which is essential for a state, also arises. This, of course, necessitates ignoring class struggle. Yes, there are classes, but that’s not the main point. A peaceful society living in prosperity does not tolerate bad leaders. If we create a prosperous society free of terror, everything will go well and we will protect our state. It is known that the Turkish state defends these very things.
In many nomadic societies the formation of the “state” displays very different examples. For this reason, even though they are not the predecessors of the Republic of Turkey, the steppe federation in Central Asia is of interest. In a nomadic society, faced with the harshness of nature, the question of “how should the tribe be governed” may arise. But in the end this too is a state. What is involved is a form of state development different from the state organization in settled societies. In settled societies where production is developed, the state is more advanced. Here, kin based forms of organization dissolve. But from this it cannot be argued that human history consists solely of the dichotomy of “state and commune,” that is, state and society. Moreover, nomadic societies are conquered by the settled societies they themselves conquer, and they shape themselves accordingly. Their understanding of the state also reflects this. It is not the case that nomadic societies exist continuously as nomadic societies in an isolated world.
The state emerges as an instrument of domination for the ruling class. It is the monopolization of the use of force. Through this instrument, through its armed men, through the state, the ruling class keeps the broad masses under pressure. The established order continues in this way.
“When the king declares his private property to the people, he is simply stating that the owner of private property is the king.” This is how private property owners declare their own power.
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“Nation-states are characteristically power-oriented. The fact that power is held by the proletariat or the bourgeoisie may create a political difference, but not in terms of the culture of domination it produces. Moreover, class-against-class struggle is also wrong. It only deepens social divisions based on class. Instead of class-against-class struggle, we have substituted the dichotomy of commune against the state.” (ibid., p. 12).
The presence of the proletariat or the bourgeoisie in power creates a profound difference, because the rule of the proletariat and the rule of the bourgeoisie cannot be lumped together merely as two forms of domination. Yes, both are forms of the state, but the dictatorship of the proletariat is, in the literal and future-oriented sense, a semi-state, a state that aims to abolish itself. In this regard, the “withering away of the state” is a specific and appropriate emphasis. Naturally, under imperialist encirclement, for example, the Cuban state cannot abolish itself. Why do we oppose the dissolution of the Soviet Union despite its problems? The self-abolition of the Cuban state cannot be something to applaud. And of course, the longer a socialist state exists within a single country, the more it inevitably contains tendencies toward degeneration. For this reason, the emancipation of the proletariat cannot be confined to a single country.
When we speak of class against class, it does not, as claimed, deepen social division based on class. On the contrary, the resolution of the contradiction between the two classes lies precisely here. The working class not only abolishes the bourgeois class, it abolishes itself along with it. And a material force can only be fought with another material force. Class against class is, of course, also the expression of the will to overthrow bourgeois domination. The commune is likewise a declaration of class against class.
The class division within society is already deep enough. It was not the working class, nor us and nor for example the PKK that created it. A classless and privilege-free society is a deception unless we are speaking of communism and that deception has its place in the history of the Republic of Turkey.
In other words, being communalist or communist cannot be achieved by rejecting the seizure of power, the destruction of the bourgeois state, the realization of the socialist revolution, the spreading of the revolution worldwide, and the construction of a new collectivist society. If there is no struggle for power, then being a communalist can indeed turn into something moral or religious. I say “something” because what it is unclear what it is, apart from being a pleasant dream, even a bit mystical.
“Democratic society is the political program of this period. It does not target the state. The politics of democratic society is democratic politics. The commune itself is a democratic commune. … Just as the nation-state is a weapon of capitalism, the founding principle and weapon of the peoples is also the commune. Through municipalities, this communal society can also be organized. Theoretically and practically, this is possible, but only with care and with a genuine anti-capitalist struggle. If the founding cadre is confused in its thinking or its will is distorted, this cannot succeed.”
We prioritize achieving this with the Republic of Turkey. Our current negotiations have brought the matter to this point.” (ibid., pp. 12-13).
This final quotation may be considered as proof for what we have stated above. If “it does not target the state” means only that it does not target a particular nation-state, then there is no problem. But as long as the state, understood as the apparatus of bourgeois domination, continues to exist, how will the commune come to life? Through municipalities? Really? Besides, the notion of municipal socialism is not new.
Sometimes the ideologues of those in power create dilemmas that invert the issue. An example is useful, even if it falls a little bit outside the main topic. For instance, when one asks, “during the period of the Armenian genocide, what would you have done if you were in charge, the state is collapsing, the Ottoman Empire is in a difficult situation, what would you have done if you were in the Ottomans’ place?”, the genocide itself ends up being absolved. Likewise, asking today, “If you were the Israeli state, what would you do in the face of the Palestinian resistance and the Hamas attack?” serves to justify the genocide in Palestine. In reality, all such questions make one forget what the state actually is. They do this very often.
The dead end created by these questions is, of course, the expectation that you place yourself in the position of what is called the Ottoman state or the Israeli state. As if they were a mother who unintentionally beats her daughter, you are asked to imagine yourself in their place. If you say, “As a mother I would not beat my daughter,” then the additions follow: “Alright, but what about in this situation or that situation?” Yet the issue here, unlike the example of mother and daughter, is not something individual. The state is not a mother or a father. The state is the instrument of repression of the ruling class.
For example, they say the economy is in bad shape, so what would you do if you were in charge of this economy, with such foreign debt, such inflation, such infrastructure? Yet we are already trying to overthrow this system. For instance, we reject private property, we nationalize the means of production and we approach what is called foreign debt in a completely different way.
Or we, in fact, seek to abolish the state itself, which is the very expression of the existence of classes, and to create a stateless and borderless world built on communism across the entire globe. Why should I place myself in the position of the Ottoman state? Is she a mother like me?
These examples may be a bit off topic. But if we are to debate the relationship between tribe and state or commune and state, it is impossible not to have such examples come to mind.
Yes, the Kurdish question has today become an issue concerning the entire Middle East. Every element of the ongoing imperialist war of partition among Western powers is seeking a place for itself here. Moreover, this is not new; Barzani is the living example of this. This process has imposed extremely difficult conditions on the Kurdish Freedom Movement. We can clearly see this. Precisely for this reason, we consider policies aimed at fostering the development of a region-wide socialist revolution to be important. It is possible to see openly the massacre policies imposed on the Kurdish people. For this reason, they continuously brandish threats from under the table, presenting the prospect of a “Gaza-ization” process. It is an imposition of massacre. But this is only one side of the reality. On the other side, within Kurdish society there are those who collaborate with imperialist powers, their local partners, and these constitute a class. The Western bourgeoisie are their masters. Therefore, amid these war clouds, beneath it all, class struggle is also at work within Kurdish society.
This exists in every country in our region. Whatever our own view may be, to find a way out of this is, to search for a path is of course everyone’s right. But this should not be tied to discovering a theory tailored to a difficult situation and linking it to an attempt to radically revise Marxism in a pragmatic manner. Calling what is useful to us “science” and what is not useful “unscientific” is, in fact, an old attitude long employed by the theorists of bourgeois domination.
The war engulfing the entire world is intensifying with each passing day. What is likely the bloodiest and most brutal war in history coincides with the most savage period of monopolistic domination. What is happening in Gaza (the genocide in Gaza is the work of the entire imperialist West) is the clearest proof of this. Aiming to emerge from this war with the least possible loss is one path and stance. But it is necessary to know how to look at, and not forget, the revolutionary resistance developing beneath the surface within the unfolding and existing war. We believe that from the horizon of this sea of blood a red sun will rise. This is not only a consequence of our faith; it is also based on the scientific fact that the overthrow of this outdated, historically obsolete system is possible. The dialectical and historical materialism to which we have referred demonstrates this to us.
Naturally, no ruling power will voluntarily hand over its own authority. There is no such example in history. The bourgeoisie, the capital is the developed sibling of all ruling classes that have existed from past to present. Likewise the proletariat is the developed form of all the oppressed and resisting classes that have fought against the rulers throughout history and today this class struggle will come to the forefront even more on a global scale.
When the USSR collapsed, the capitalist camp declared the end of history. Their ideologues tirelessly repeated the refrain of “farewell to the proletariat.” Today, however, the class struggle is once again coming to the forefront across the world. The clouds of war obscure this reality. Indeed, they do. But being able to see through those clouds is possible through science and that science is Marxism-Leninism. This science is the key to seeing the future under the most difficult conditions and to carrying out the struggle against the bourgeois system, bringing the fight to its ultimate goal. Marxism-Leninism is a weapon of struggle in the hands of all the oppressed, of the working class, of everyone who fights and dreams of a world without war and exploitation.
Science finds its material weapons in the proletariat. The proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in science. And these intellectual weapons create a new social practice only when they become material, when they are transformed into an organized force. Destroying the old and decayed society and building a new world can be achieved only through this path.
