Rojava

What's the deal with Rojava, Kurdistan, the PKK, etc? Still Marxist-Leninist? Are they actually democratic? Is their system working pretty decently?

Are there any articles, books or documentaries on the topic that don't spend 75% of the runtime navel-gazing about muh feminism?

Other urls found in this thread:

kurdishquestion.com/oldarticle.php?aid=the-social-economy-in-rojava
cooperativeeconomy.info/rojava-the-economic-branches-in-detail/
cooperativeeconomy.info/personal-account-of-rojava/
rojavareport.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/communal-economy-grows-in-rojava-despite-war/
archive.is/t53nP
archive.is/j6Q5p
archive.is/77Bht
telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/18/syrian-kurds-accused-of-ethnic-cleansing-and-killing-opponents/
youtube.com/watch?v=1paEqSmpvv4
al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/syria-turkey-right-groups-accused-kurds-rojava-of-war-crimes.html
youtube.com/watch?v=RWnsc3wkKbU
youtube.com/watch?v=lKZqu61IbFI
links.org.au/fake-news-rojava-revolution
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

yes there are many resources online explaining all of that

no, nobody is going to go through the trouble of explaining it all to you when there is so much on the internet and a simple google search could do the job for you

again, I looked it up and found loads of feminism circlejerking. Try reading.
Gotta love people who actually sit down, take a bit of time to specifically tell you "I'm not going to give you an answer ha ha"

Read up on Democratic Confederalism. It still carries on quite a few elements from their ML days, and even has ML fighters, but I would not call it ML.
Everything I've seen so far suggests a strong yes. I haven't heard any evidence for the contrary beyond angry leftcoms screeching autistically and MLs saying "CIA SHILL DICTATORSHIP!!!".
Protip: Google searches are biased towards your prior searches and pages you view. If you didn't obsess over searching for feminism, this would not happen. I can tell, because if I google "rojava political system" I see absolutely nothing about feminism, but a ton of books on democratic confederalism and a couple statements on communalism.

...

bookchin was pro israel. democratic confederalism is literally "what america is". kurdistan is trying to establish an israel 2.0 ethnic state but arabs won't fight them on it because they are sunni and arabs are petty as fuck (unlike saddam's days when secularism mattered and your religion was irrelevant)

if you fell for the YPG meme you are a moron
pseudo leftist and literally doing NATO, Israel, and America's bidding. there's nothing marxist or communist about kurds no matter how hard you pretend or think there might be. You are literally on the same side as a bunch of right wing texans, trumptards, and republicans who shout "SUPPORT THE KURDS, GOD BLESS ISRAEL SYRIA AND IRAN ARE TERRORIST STATES JESUS SAVES MUSLIMS ARE ALL EVIL".


pkk is alright though, but not for the reason you think they are

wat

Rojava is Democratic Confederalist, a system based on the communal ownership of the means of production and natural resources (a form of socialism), and local governance.
Politically it bears some resemblance to Jeffersonian Democracy, and is a form of Communalism (Google Murray Bookchin). If you want to know more about that I recommend both The Ecology of Freedom and The Next Revolution.

In DemCon there is no "state". The monopoly of force has been abolished in favor of a confederation of independent cantons, that themselves are partially responsible for their own security. (Through local militias or self-defense forces, which are beginning to phase out the currently existing citizen police)
Likewise citizens are allowed - if not outright expected - to be armed. And they are expected to serve militarily. (With conscription for both men and women)

Feminism is a central part of DemCon, but it shouldn't be confused with the western liberal bourgeois conception of it. It's not about token minorities or just being able to vote every 4 years. It's about making sure that every member of society participates politically and economically. As such the people of Rojava have created parallel institutions. Women are encouraged to start their own independent initiatives, political and administrative organizations are at the very least by both a man and a woman.
I admit I had second thoughts about it as well, but in practice is has played out well. It allows them to utilize the qualities of nearly every citizen, which gives them a noticeable edge over their adversaries.
It's certainly not mere propaganda, and female fighters are not "props" as some have claimed.

The PKK still exclusively (officially) operates in Turkish Kurdistan (Bakur). The YPG operates in Syria. Both are DemCon. Now some have argued that YPG are "imperialist puppets". They're supported by both Russia and the Syrian government. (If you want more background or sources feel free to ask)
Neither are Marxist-Leninist, but obviously both DemCon and Libertarian Municipalism (Bookchin's original flavor of Communalism) take heavy inspiration from Marx.

Below are some links that should give you more info about how it plays out in practice. Suffice to say, they're highly successful:

kurdishquestion.com/oldarticle.php?aid=the-social-economy-in-rojava
cooperativeeconomy.info/rojava-the-economic-branches-in-detail/
cooperativeeconomy.info/personal-account-of-rojava/
rojavareport.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/communal-economy-grows-in-rojava-despite-war/

Friendly reminder: Both the Ba'ath government and Russia support the YPG.

archive.is/t53nP - Assad regime says it will continue to provide weaponry, money to Kurds
archive.is/j6Q5p - Rebels accuse YPG fighters of aiding Syrian forces.
archive.is/77Bht - 'Russia is to build a base and send military personnel to northern Syria to train the YPG

talk to us more about how being anti-israel is just anti-seminism and how you support israel and zionism because arabs are "anti-semetic" and have dictatorships regardless of being destabilized by that very Israeli/imperialist entity you shill for. you fake leftist jewish fascist traitor.

Why am I not surprised?

Provide a single shred of evidence for your statements

your israeli flag is missing

There's more than one YPG flag poster. Try being less autistic.

Holy fuck, are you retarded? Iraqi Kurdistan follows a completely different political system to that of the Kurds in Syria, and even refuses to cooperate with them at times.

democratic confederalism is a meme. its just straight up nationalism. it's like how americans say they are fighting for "DEMOCRACY".
it's not leftist in the slightest. YPG is shit and so are you.

Nice strawman. Care to provide sources?


Iraqi Kurdistan =/= Rojava
Peshmerga =/= YPG
KDP (Barzani's Party) =/= PYD

Educate yourself.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/18/syrian-kurds-accused-of-ethnic-cleansing-and-killing-opponents/

...

Please explain how this is relevant, how they are comparable to Israeli imperialism, and then kill yourself.

Did you know Assad personally nerve gassed every last hospital in Aleppo?
See, I can make up stuff as well.

it doesn't seem too bad honestly. I'm not so dogmatically devoted to some idea of 'leftism' that I'm unwilling to consider a slightly different system because it's missing some odds and ends from marxism (ahem)

the PKK was openly Marxist-Leninist until 2004. That change could be one in terminology only, or in practice.

The link the statement goes to is one of their articles that doesn't even mention the YPG. What a load of shit.

youtube.com/watch?v=1paEqSmpvv4

its coming from a hardcore assadist but its 100% true.

al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/syria-turkey-right-groups-accused-kurds-rojava-of-war-crimes.html

youtube.com/watch?v=RWnsc3wkKbU

youtube.com/watch?v=lKZqu61IbFI

This is kinda dumb. She has like, a cup full of syrian flags and cites breitbart at least twice
total reactionary nationalist
She does bring up some good points that I hadn't realized before though

Fuck no. Marxism-Leninism tries to establish a socialist society. Rojava doesn't bother with socialism, they even refuse to acknowledge class. Also, not a single Marxist-Leninist entity has ever received aid from imperialists.

Sure, in some vulgar way. As much as democracy is possible in underdeveloped capitalism.

It's just a mobilizing strategy. You can't really tell because they are propped up by CIA and US military. It's not hard to hold your ground with that sort of aid. If their systems as any inherent merit in itself, or if it can economically work in peace times, this remains to be seen.

T*nkies are fucking retarded holy shit

read a fucking book.

Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Well pre-1945 is a different story. My bad.

Literally fake news

links.org.au/fake-news-rojava-revolution

I hope you don't breed

WEW

>Rojava doesn't bother with socialism,


She also ignores the multi-ethnic nature of the the Federation of Northern Syria.

Do tankies hate Rojava because they are challenging their claim of being the only ones who ever managed anything? Or because they're getting more and more popular, while ML is becoming a thing of the past?

Both.

That's like saying the workers in China own the means of production through CPC, dumbfuck. So I guess if I place some voting booths in various towns and have a feminist chapter Anarkiddies will buy it up as socialism.

Yeah right, as if everybody claimed Assad and Putin are socialists. Strategically support somebody isn't the same as calling someone socialist. Dumb Zionist


ML parties are growing all over the world, you ignorant faggot.

Except Rojava actually has a majority of its economy and resources under communal, collective and/or co-op management. (See links)
Sure there are a few independent traders, and a handful of private enterprises that have no yet been (fully) collectivized, but on a percentage basis it's already a lot more socialist than the Soviet "Let's abolish the soviets!" Union ever was.

You appear to have a certain misunderstanding of communal self-management and the specifics of feminism in Rojava. I recommend reading more Bookchin and Ocalan.

ML might still be a thing in a few regions (Including the MLKP fighting in Syria), but your obnoxious brand of tankyism is sure dying.

That's leftcom all over

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Are you actually going to come up with arguments or are you just going to repeat that ad nauseam?

Finally, when the specific commodity labour-power appears on the market, its value is determined, like that of any other commodity, by the labour-time socially necessary for its production. The value form of products therefore already contains in embryo the whole capitalist form of production, the antagonism between capitalists and wage-workers, the industrial reserve army, crises. To seek to abolish the capitalist form of production by establishing "true value" {D. K. G. 78} is therefore tantamount to attempting to abolish Catholicism by establishing the "true" Pope, or to set up a society in which at last the producers control their product, by consistently carrying into life an economic category which is the most comprehensive expression of the enslavement of the producers by their own product.
t. Engels

So it's like the NEP, but actually worse than the NEP. NEP had directly worker-controlled cooperatives, in Rojava it's indirect control (basically the community decides how to allocate the fruits of a capitalist business. It's wealth redistribution, a more radical form of Social Democracy. Besides the fact a market exists. Why do you even try to shill for Rojava being socialist when they themselves don't claim to be socialist?

If I gave you a pdf about how worker control and democracy was alive and well under Stalin, would you believe it?

You wouldn't know, because you're an eurocentric Zionist liberal who LARPs as an YPG fighter. ML is growing/acquiring power in India, Phillipines, Nepal, China, Greece and many other places. Pic related

I understand where this is coming from. But you have to start somewhere. We won't just wake up one day and find communism has been achieved. Moving from a capitalist mode of production to one where the workers and local communities are in control, is one step in that direction.


Uh, no? Read the links. Workers control their cooperatives, the community helps coordinate efforts and shares machinery.
Yeah no. Not in the (Taxes and subsidies) you're implying.

It's a form of socialism. How is this even an argument?

I don't know if I'd believe it. But I'd read it.

Oh it's another "equating markets with capitalism". A market is just a way to allocate goods. Capitalism determines who owns the means of production, who owns the capital, what is produced and for what purpose.

No.
No.
Hell no.

This again? The YPG flag here doubles as a DemCon/Communalist flair because we don't have one.

I'm not contesting the continued popularity of ML, I'm saying that your insufferable cold-war tier tankyism is dying out.

Wow, I guess the Kurds are fascists. It's not like Turkey had been fighting against the PKK for decades or anything, and it's not like Turkey has ever done anything unethical like making up false allegations. Praise Erdogan! Off yourself, capitalist.

I'd be all for Democratic Confederalism/Communalism but I am pretty brocialist and don't care for feminism

I wonder if OP actually made this thread simply to watch a flame war?

sad

it is pretty damn funny that the only significant socialist revolution in the world right now is only causing a fight between two groups of people screaming "nuh-uh!"

that's literally on par with rightists going "Marx was a racist" you non-argument having t-shirt mascot.

Don't you dumb fuckin anarchists understand that you can't build socialism unless you have a single-party state and a massive military? Honestly

*ahem*

there is a difference between the liberal bourgeoisie "the feminist side of sweatshops" type feminism and socialist feminism my man

Isn't that a Mao quote?

Straight up a lie. They were accused of war crimes but the supposed war crimes (human rights watch came in, examined what happened, when "yup, military necessity those houses were mined as fuck") were non ethnic in nature even having Kurdish victim

...

MLKP is Marxist-Leninist

Arabs are the majority in the SDF

They are communalist, not ML. But check out these books, and especially the last couple on democratic confederalism if you're interested in the subject.

Bookchin and the YPG are anti-Israel