Is Democratic Conferalism/Communalism the way of the Future

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If there's not a economic revolution displacing the rich and powerful from their relation to the means of production and instead giving that control to the workers, it's not a leftist revolution. Explain to me how Rojava is abolishing class society with actual examples.

All farms being turned into coops with most craftsmen shops being the same.

There are still petty-bourgeoisie in remote areas, but these are subjected to the will of the local direct democratic assemblies that could choose to collectivize them instantly, thus rendering them a non-threat.

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Its biggest benefit is the fact it uses a name that don't offend the the common sensibility(unlike socialism or communism)

theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-libertarian-municipalism-an-overview

all private economic activity is put under control of local councils while no taxes are taken by any central institution, ownership by use for houses, collectivilisation of land and putting it under controll of the village, massive build up of coops(different claims of their total part of the economy range from 40-80%, 80% are the newer claims) which give goods to each other for free.

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compared to the social revolution we communists propose this is a petty reform.

And I'm seriously doubting your account on the role of the petit bourgeois in rojava.

the notion of socialism=workers owning the mop is such an utterly shitty simplification of what we propose that you could think of almost any "alternative" form of organization under capitalism as socialism. I guess the kibbutzim were socialist as well?
Communism is the movement for the abolition of the current state of affairs and this can only happen internationally. So unless the Rojavites are the prospect of a world wide communist revolution this whole project will become forgotten and irrelevant just like muh Zapatistas some ancoms are larping for.
and then there's the whole thing with the US's and Europe's aid for Rojavain form of love bombs on Raqqa which is fairly excellent if we think of communism and capitalism (in the form of imperialism) being deadly enemies.

forgot to post pic

fucking world filter, I meant to say prob-le-matic

no mention of the fact that the US would fund literal communists if they were the next best thing and that the kurds are the best shot the left has

Also no mention of the strategic retardation that is refusing to survive because of ideology.

As long as the bourgeoisie are not able to achieve political autonomy or even domination, it's not much of a problem.
Sure, it sorta sucks, but it can be fixed slowly by the democracies themselves.

Socialism is anything that doesn't have hierarchy and class-antagonisms.
If that isn't socialism, I don't really care that much about pie in the s- I mean, socialism at all.

No, it's not.
A Federal state with collectivist inclinations is not going to be radical enough to overthrow the bourgeois' dictatorship over money and power. Capitalism with a federal state is still capitalism, with all the ills it entails.

Except.

It litterally isn't that.
At all.

How?

Please, tell the class how capitalism stops being capitalism when you throw in some land reform?

How is it?

How is something without class antagonism capitalism?

you could say the same about the USSR.
(Nascent) capitalism doesn't need capitalists to function. Capital doesn't need capitalists to rule.

Bordiga would say that agrarian reform = capitalism

If you're implying that reformism gets rid of capitalism, I have an even better ideology for you than democratic confederalism.
It's called social democracy.
Reform does not get rid of class antagonism. It merely soothes it.

And he'd be right.

Except the bourgeosie were abolished.
They had been replaced by the state.
For this example to be equivalent, the local assemblies would have had to have absolute political authority over the state.

Which, surprise surprise, as stated in the OP, is something DemCons also aim at.

No one said anything about reformism.

The PKK and YPG even used old soviet machine guns to shoot at helicopters, they have tons of old barely usable AK's. Tell me how to keep a all out war going for several years on different fronts without getting some assistance? Tell me, please.

By this metric, eminent domain laws in the US means the bourgeoisie don't exist.

Then what do you call land reform?

so? The mop still appear as capital.
yep
the local assemblies in this example would take in the place of individual capitalists or their factions. In "normal" capitalism those factions are deciding the future of the state.

which was a fucking idiotic idea from Kerensky's point of view.
the USSR turned into a bourgeois state years before WW2.
by getting help from their capitalist friends.

Well only if the US actually siezed all that property.
Which they have yet to do.
The USSR worked much more like the Church than it worked like capitalism.

It's only "land reform" in the sense that workers siezing a factory is "workplace reform".
If that is "reformism" then indeed, call me a reformist.

Sure. But the classes did not interact with the means of production in the same way as they would under capitalism, so that would make it a new mode of production.

Yes, pefect. Like the individual would take the place of the King, and community would take the throne of God.
No problem with that at all.

You're making a mistake in thinking that a redistribution of wealth is a change of property relations.
And if Rojava has seized all property and handed it off to the workers to create a democratically planned economy, then I'd like to see some proof of that, because as far as I'm aware that hasn't happened and it isn't part of their game-plan.

I feel that Lenin's quote, "The bourgeoisie will sell us the rope we will hang them with." applies pretty well in this situation. If they want to support Rojava, then so be it. We will take their guns and money without complaint, but there is no love involved.

nope, they interact quite the same way with the mop which is the reason why they are still capital. The workers are still exploited by the individual capital they are subjected to. The fact that they are managing it is merely a concession made to the working class so they shut up or the state's attempt at making it up for the lack of actual capitalists. Nothing revolutionary about workers controlling their own exploitation.
What I tried to do is to draw a parallel from "normal" western democracy to Rojava and you basically agreed to it. You might want to reread my post.

It isn't but all agriculture is ran by coops.
That's not wellfare programmes, that is worker's ownership.

It is the goal. Any cursory reading will reveal this. They've achieved 80% percent collectivization, which is a shitload better than the 0% the marxist states had.

but there's a difference between them selling you their weapons and you begging them to bomb the cities full of proletarians you are claiming to be supporting.
and in the civil war it was everyone against the bolsheviks. Quite rightly, because the bolsheviks posed an actual threat to world capitalism.

Your definition of collectivization is exactly that of the USSR- management by the state.
So Marxist-Leninists states had much closer to 100% collectivization. According to you, anyway.

In any regard, Democratic confederalism isn't against private property. [/spoiler]peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2015/02/06/rojava-the-formation-of-an-economic-alternative-private-property-in-the-service-of-all/[/spoiler]

See, no that's the thing. In the USSR, the workers and inhabitants had become property of the state itself in all ways except for in name, meaning that if the classical chattel-slavery is a different mode of production form feudalism, then "state capitalism" is a different mode of production from capitalism.

Yes, so the people are dominating itself.
You are aware the the coops are subjected to the will of the local assemblies too, right?

The coops… Aren't managed by the state.
What?

Consider how few people that are fluent in both Kurdish and English and know the ins and out of socialist theory.
This refers to personal property. Again, a cursory glance into anything written by Apo and Bookchin will show that they oppose private property.

So how do you know that the same doesn't apply to this case?

You didn't answer my question, from your perspective, how would you deal with a bad equipped army to fight a war? Write a speech on how good you were following your snowflake ideology?

They don't got the weapons directly, the YPG still lacks a ton of equipment, they still mostly use AK's, and they only coordinate in terms of bombings for a year or so.

Could you give me a source on that? I wasn't aware of this bit of info.

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I am sure that is not what he meant. No bully comrade.

Surely you mean "The bolsheviks purged anyone who disagreed", right?

You're retarded if you think that the Soviet mode of production was chattel slavery.
You do know how the soviet union functioned, yes? It was presided over by the Communist party, a body by which decisions were made collectively by members, many of whom were workers?
Criticize its corruption and inefficiency, sure, but don't go saying it was slavery.

Earlier, you said:
We aren't talking about farming coops, because they sure as hell aren't in control of the whole economy.
Interestingly enough, you do know that there were farming cooperatives in the soviet union too, right?

No, they talking pretty clearly about private property. As in capital.

You do know that not everyone in Raqqa isn't part of or supportive of ISIS? I don't agree with Leftcom poster that the Kurds don't need help from the US, but he's referring to the bombing of cities with innocent civilians in them.

No that isn't what happened in the USSR. The people in the USSR were free wage laborers and not quasi-serfs.

It's not. Most imperialist states had a stage you could describe as state capitalism. its innate features (such as the contradiction between labor and capital, capital sucking labor in to reproduce itself) still applied. Same thing in the USSR.
A quick semantic rant: I wouldn't call it state capitalism as that implies it was something different, something "higher" on the ladder of human development than bourgeois society is which is wrong because to me at least the soviet union was just another bourgeois state.

read:
Kerensky letting some communists out of prison =/= begging imperialists to bomb the shit out of Raqqa.

I would gladly, but on what?

so every inhabitant of Raqqa and every hostage of Da'esh is a terrorist now?

communism means class terrors. The Esers and the mensheviks were in the way of the working class.

Excuse me

See, it's exactly this that makes it necessary to make sure that struggles are power-based rather than class-based otherwise being a worker turns into an identity and people like this convince themselves that we'd have socialism if only we'd crown "workers" as kings.

One statement was about the USSR the other about Rojava.
Keep up.

yes. A dead link definitely proves this.

Sorry for not being clear. Specifically about them asking for airstrikes on civilian areas.

Oh I see, anyone could just have any work they wanted and had physical freedom to do as they please. They weren't given duties and given jobs from the labour ministries.

Effectively a person in the USSR was property.

Did the PYD tell anyone to carpet bomb Raqqa?

Oh, so they strayed from the One True Path of history. Perfect.
But I thought is was wrong to purge the proles we were supposed to support :)

you could just google it it's fairly known

businessinsider.com/kurds-coordinating-airstrikes-with-google-maps-2015-8?IR=T

and pic is semi related

Again, where is anything about bombing non-military targets suggested?

Are you saying that the bourgeoisie aren't the ones with power in capitalist society? And are you denying that the workers, i.e. the masses, are in a position of servitude?
Capitalism IS a system based on power, and that power is manifested in class. If you think we can have an egalitarian system where the bourgeoisie, or some other ruling class, still exist, then you're contradicting yourself.

>peaceinkurdistancampaign.com/2015/02/06/rojava-the-formation-of-an-economic-alternative-private-property-in-the-service-of-all/

I was being hyperbolic when I said that they suggested bombing civilian targets. No serious organisation would do that, it's political suicide. But the YPG knew that civilian casualties are inevitable and made their peace with letting the people get bombed they claim to represent.

Sure, class is Power, but Power is a lot more and Power has fucked people over every time, thus why no Marxist revolution has ever worked.
Ever.

Oh wow, so when you said they were "not against private property" what you meant is that "they're against private property, but they're gradualists so they see bringing the petty bourgeoisie under direct control of the local assemblies as more attainable".

I guess we must never have a revolution then because we know it will have civilians causalties in spite of our intentions, and if we do that, then we're just killing the proles we're claiming to protect.

Wow you're fucking dumb.

it's not just any civilian casualties, it's proletarians getting bombed by imperialist forces, something communists should ALWAYS oppose. You're really grasping at straws here if you think I believe there will be no casualties during the revolution.

I don't see anything that indicates any civilian targets comrade.

Why does it matter who kills them, if they're going to die?
You think the YPG taking Raqqa on their own would mean no civilian casualties? what imperialist magic makes it much worse if the US does it for us?

Here.

Also, serious political organization suggest killing civilians all the time.
Did you notice the huge fucking army of people that does exactly that roaming around in the area?

still no answer, i guess that in a war situation you would present to your people an article on how your snowflake ideology is so rad and edgy. Nice.

Former US strategist point out that the problem in the middle east can be contained by reshaping the Sykes-Picot borders. Probably why they are helping them.

And they didn't ask to bomb the city of Raqqa, since they didn't arrive there, just places in which they are engaging in the frontline.

there are US soldiers in the ypg frontline with technology to give accurate coordinates to US bombers.

read:

the fact that they die is a tragedy but my main objection. The problem is that the US and the other western forced are doing it out of imperialist interests ie installing good willing capitalists / their own capitalists to sell the commodities for lower prices or to extract surplus value by themselves by letting their companies in. Imperialism always leads to a weaker working class which is something we must oppose due to our politics and our strategy (which presupposes a strong working class).

I was talking about organisations that are touting for the west's support which is immensely based on the popularity of the organisations within society.

wew this is some a-class apologia for imperialism we got here.

not my main objection*

Or you know, prefer rational actors who aren't going to attack the West right away for enemies over irrational actors who will.
Just because the US considers you a lesser evil does not make you anti-revolutionary.

lol yeah, the west is terribly terrified by terrorism.
So terrified, they started a war in Afghanistan and in Iraq to stop Osama Bin Laden from destroying fabric of western civilisation!

Just some ideas
-I wonder how good communication between these local committees is, I can foresee centralization occurring and a ruling class forming from all this

It seems the only reason things are working out so well from a political perspective (the political structures, council ownership) is because of decentralization which will go away as the economy develops

As this centralization occurs, the local committees will be rendered functionless and the central committees will take over

Nationalism can be used as an ideology to spur on centralization

My basic point is that communism, the real deal, can only come about from capitalism that's gone past its prime. So I expect this Kurdish project to either eventually change gears and develop along capitalist lines or collapse. I hope I'm wrong.

2002 is not 2016 terrorism is today the threat we thought it was in the 00's.
That's ignoring that you're saying that they're anti-revolutionaries now because they receive support from the US.
By the same logic, the French revolution would have been counter revolutionary from the fact that it received help from Denmark alone.
That's beyond the fact that you've completely side-stepped from the criticism of your claim that the YPG want to kill proles and don't care about individuals in general.

This is of course completely derailing a thread that is not about the YPG but democratic confederalism.

Wouldn't centralization require even better lines of communication though?

Its interesting how leftcoms never actually manage to propose a realistic viable path of action, while hating on everything that atleast makes steps in the right direction that is big enough to make any changes that can be criticised.

How can you think that Rojava is shit and unimportant while engaging in struggles that are even less important and have even less chances of bringing the leftist cause forward?

bump

Sophie, is that you?

Who the fuck is Sophie?

another cableux.