An Anarchist Perspective on Rojava’s Coops and Communes

Are they afraid that there won't be women in other councils? Kurds seemed to have quite capable qts, why treat them like inferior?

keep in mind they are still muslim majority and many people still have patriarchal attitudes that would keep woman out of such institutions otherwise. Not to mention, it makes woman more self reliant and thus better able to understand what is sexism and what is required by reality.

It's a different approach but it still works. The results are there.

I'm just skeptical that they are actually producing for need in these "communes" and not for exchange
Are they really communes? I would be overjoyed

They are in the middle of a war zone, they are going to produce as much as they can duh

The reason for this is based on the ideology of Ocalan. Ocalan believes that class, exploitation and domination began with the housewifization of women. Ocalan believes that you cannot do away with class, exploitation etc until you first deal with enabled it originally, which means taking great steps to ensure women's sovereignty and autonomy.

Yeah but is most production for exchange on a market or not? Does the community produce food collectively at least and give everyone a ration?
Would fight for rojava if they were trying to build localized socialism
If not, they're still a good movement

I believe some of it is rationed and some is sold on a market, depending on what the commune decides.

From what I understand it's a combination. There are lots of worker co-ops that trade via mutual aid and there's also some small businesses etc. It actually strikes me as more of a quasi mutualist arrangement. Another cool thing is that the schools are democratic.

Yes, there are really communes. They haven't completely moved to production based on use because they don't have the industrial capacity to do so. Currently, they're being embargoed on all sides and inhabit an area that was purposely left undeveloped by the assad regime.

I think almost everywhere in Syria but Damascus/Aleppo is more or less this

Which means ? The word is intriguing to say the least. I'm in favour of "meritocratic" schools, with a lot of possibilities for the less fortunate of course.

Hey that sounds good enough, material conditions and what not. Mutualism is based as fuck compared to capitalism

Students decide what they learn about, and teachers are more or less arbiters as opposed to authoritarian figures

Hum, I see. To me a strong curriculum and the authority of the teachers are still very important, at least until mid-college. But that's probably because I'm the son of two teachers.

Rojava is one of the few things happening on this planet that gives me hope for the future. Tankies, Ultralefts, and M-L's are just triggered by it because their shitty dogmatic ideas are fucking dead or dying. With ultra-reactionaries fucking up both the middle east and the west, the socialist, pluralist, libertarian ideas are such a breath of fresh air.

I hope these ideas spread beyond the Kurdish regions of the ME. How cool would it be to see Democratic Confederalist groups in Palestine/Israel? Veering off topic here, but I think that the sort of multi-ethnic, localized pluralist system might be the only viable solution for that cluster-fuck.

Actually tbh i shouldn't say all tankies and M-L's are triggered by it, I know there's Turkish M-L groups fighting alongside the YPG/YPJ.

Democratic confederalism

Look that shit up on wikipedia

Seems like as good a way of government as any other

Now that you say this it seems like quite an obvious solution once peace comes

No traditional state apparatus is gonna work effectively Iraq or Syria. I wonder though, big powers like Russia, America, France and Britain aren't gonna be thrilled about this proto-anarchist government once it gets rooted in the zeitgeist. If it is working will these great powers allow it to keep going? I doubt it, but if it means stability, how can they say no

Also, why aren't leftist communities more focused on this shit? Fuck American "elections", this is where change is happening

this guy gets it

They don't want stability in the middle east though, they want the conflicts in the middle east to be their never ending excuse to ramp up the police state on their own populations.

Ocalan does pretty much point that out in Democratic Confederalism.

Sophistry. Reminder that left-communism is the most inept, impotent, and irrelevant brand of leftism to have ever existed.

fuck you

naaah, Brexit's etc is getting the political power in Europe nervous

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Other than the fact socdems are shit

At least elaborate on how they're socdems

Reminder that the first few congresses of the Cominterm were leftcom, that after that the biggest factions in the russian party were close to leftcom, that the KPD was largely leftcom until they were all expelled and that when all the leftcoms formed a new party (the KAPD) it was at many points larger than the KPD, that the communist party of italy was leftcom until Moscow used tricks to put Gramsci in charge, that several other communist parties had huge leftcom factions (Bulgaria, etc.), that originally the CPUSA was leftcom, that the heads of the communist movement in England were originally leftcom, that the original organization that was going to be put in charge of Europe (The Amsterdam Bureau) was leftcom, that the proles who came closest to communist consciousness in '68 in the Cultural Revolution were almost leftcom (Sheng-wu-lien), and that the proles and situationists in the '68 french uprising were close to leftcom,

Sort of how Anarchists were the majority and were kicked out by Marx amiright? : ^ ) Still, this is a pretty sorry excuse for a history of revolutionary action. At least Anarchists and Marxist-Leninist successfully launched revolutions and revolutionary movements. Not to mention that a lot of the names you mention are "like/originally leftcoms" not explicitly left communist. The fact that you thought this history is something worth praising is pretty pitiful tbh.

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What

Bolsheviks
Anarchists
Situationalists
Can all you do is take credit for the revolutions of other ideologies? Dear god, it's more pitiful then I thought,

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Top lel. Left-Com's confirmed for having no praxis and being a completely impotent ideology

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The bolsheviks were the ones who took power during the revolution, not left-communists.
I'm just quoting your own post mang. Just accept that your ideology has accomplished nothing and will continue to do just that, nothing.

Power in Russia =/= the Second International's consistence.

You're not quoting me or anyone else for that matter, it seems (nobody except you implied May '68 was situationist, jej.

I'm not a left com nor the left com in this thread. I do share the sentiment that Rojava is little more than a meme or national liberation with a hint of social democracy at best, hower.

THE MEME KEEPS GOING

see
You can believe that, but only if you choose to be willfully ignorant of the reality of the situation. Still haven't explained either points yet.

wew lad

In revolutionary action, proles gravitate towards revolutionary theory:

And when shit hits the fan they gravitate away from left-communism. I wonder why that could be? : ^ )

Is the Russian Civil War, for example, not "when shit hits the fan"?

Only after the second congress of the cominterm did they really totally abandon leftcom positions and take up opportunist ones

I hadn't noticed that he said it was situationist. Situationism on 05/68 was an incredibly minor influence and force; it was quasi-completely unaffiliated students and labor unions, (mostly French Maoist) communist parties and anarchist organizations of all stripes doing everything.

He is absolutely correct on the Second International and left communism's influence in it, however.

Here's the reality, on account of first hand view from thirds, compiled documentations of the situation at hand and the insight of a very well-read Marxist: libcom.org/library/rojava-reality-rhetoric-gilles-dauvé-tl, and another, updated one: libcom.org/news/kurdistan-gilles-dauvé-17022015. I also co-wrote this article on Rojava which was published on our [/leftypol's] webmag, sourced below: bunkermag.org/principles-democratic-confederalism/.

Are we talking about the Russian Civil war where the bolsheviks, not a left-com party, where in power and leading the proletariat?

wew lad. roarmag.org/essays/zapatistas-rojava-anarchist-revolution/

Can you read?:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_International#Third_World_Congress

Two Dauvé articles, in fact.

I've read that response. It's pretty shallow and filled with liberal new left style concerns, such as making sure to paint Rojava as feminist when the Kurds don't even know what feminism means, nor what its definition is. Now that I check it again, I hadn't even noticed the post-colonial rhetoric used in the subtitle ('reveals a _colonial_ mentality'), which is rather rich for any serious contemporary materialist revolutionary to be concerned with in general, but also as an actually existing thing (see: youtube.com/watch?v=T6Heu5TRDB8).

Let's take a walk:

Pop-postmodernism. Tick.

Such a threat to the status quo that the USAF is fighting alongside them, ready to discard them again as things get icky with the neighboring strongarms of capital.

Which is the overthrow of Assad's regime. That they are basically allied with.

If they had large reserves of petrol they wouldn't need oil refineries. Technically as well as politically ignorant.

Good luck getting that foreign investment then (explaining why it's nowhere to be found, even on a planned post-civil war accord basis).
(1/2)

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What's the classical Western sense of proletariat then? Miners and factory workers? Only idiot savant academics think that's what the proletariat is. More pomo autism.

Petar Stanchev is finishing a degree in Latin American Studies and Human Rights at the University of Essex. He has previously lived and studied in Mexico and has been involved in the Zapatista solidarity movement for four years.
Blinded by frustration with their own marginality-aspiring academics become cheerleaders for various nationalist rackets in the hope that it will differentiate their particular ideology enough from all their competitors and secure them a career.

So lads, anyone want to go to a rally today for the socialist revolution in China? Hopefully you're not all too infected by colonial mentality to impose your classical Western notions and preconceptions on what is and isn't a socialist revolution in places where such things don't apply.

leftcom.org/en/articles/2014-10-30/in-rojava-people’s-war-is-not-class-war

Kek. Only if you think that not adhering to your dogmatic interpretation of revolution is post-modernism.
Because the US has never supported anyone that were their ideological enemies right? : ^ )
Kek. Are you so dense that you can't even see by your own post that they're playing both sides? That's some pure ideology right there.
Ultimately irrelevant to the point you're making. Seems like you're just trying to grasp at any convenient inconsistencies instead of attacking the meat of the article.
See above. Also, they do indeed get foreign investment via crowdfunding and donations.

I think mine is better tbh

In the context of dogmatic marxism, yes that's exactly what it means. Now, I disagree with that definition of proletariat entirely, but the writer is responding to a dogmatist that would have that definition.

Blinded by frustration with their own marginality-aspiring academics become cheerleaders for various nationalist rackets in the hope that it will differentiate their particular ideology enough from all their competitors and secure them a career.
Is this the best you can do? Ignore the meat of the article and attack the arthur? Pitiful, but not surprising in the least.

wew more dogmatic left communist sophistry for me to shit on : ^ )

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all it proves is that left-communists supported the bolshevik revolution. What of it?

did you read it?

Yes. All it says is that the left-communists were the buttboys of the bolsheviks and helped to spread bolshevik revolution/influence. Not something to be proud of tbh

This has nothing to do with what the proletariat is. Which is a completely material relation to production, instead of 'whatever the proletariat looks like on the coordinates of this map, and not on these coordinated', my crypto-pomo friend. A definition (not an 'interpretation'), pretty much anyone but post-modernists adhere to (because they adhere to no definitions but whatever their definitions are, but don't call them definitions). I'm an anarchist BTW.

Whenever there's money to be made, yessiree.

Haha yeah man. Officially ratified documents signed by Kurdish officials for the Assad government are just a trump card man, haha.

Okay!

Two of these things are unlike the single other, and miss the biggest actual investor (because there is investment): the White House (see the official documentation of transactions from the US and Kurdish militias below the Dauvé article).

Am I getting pranked? Where's the hidden cameras?

In case you're not trolling and are genuinely this retarded, the proletariat is wage-earners whose only possession of significant material value is their labor-power (their ability to work), which they sell to private proprietors (capitalists, the bourgeois class). This is a relation of production which persists regardless of whatever means of production one utilizes or what year after Christ we are in.

This piece also does more than enough of a job to shit all over the pomo meme of an article on Roar: libcom.org/blog/dear-cheerleaders-we-need-have-chat-about-imperialism-04042015.

I see people claim this all the time, but one thing they cannot explain away is how this fits with Öcalan's priciple of of Common Democratic Homeland shaped accordig to civic patriotism rather than ethinic nationalism (in the tradition of Rome rather than modern nation-states) and it also ignores that only about 60% of the SDF are kurds, with Assyrians, Arabs and Turkmen having their own assemblies represented within TEV-DEM.

It's almost like people are triggered that a revolution is possible in the social periphery (something that has happened many times before) just because Marx said it was would never happen.

The dream of a world revolution was abandoned after the failures of the Spartacist uprising in Germany and of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the failure of all revolutionary movements in Europe, such as in Italy, where the fascist squadristi broke the strikes and quickly assumed power following the 1922 March on Rome. This period, up to 1928, was known as the "Second Period", mirroring the shift in the USSR from war communism to the New Economic Policy

That is an idiotic strawman and you're either an incredibly dishonest actor and should feel really shitty about yourself, or you're genuinely an unintelligent person.

This isn't what I said. What I said was that the post-colonial theory that believes economic systems and relations to production are fundamentally different dependent on where you are on the globe to western first world people, but that us 'colonial minded' CIS white western scum 'just don't get it' because we are born oppressors, and only the entrenched pomo crowd of academics can see it. My post comparing it to 'socialist' China was an intended strawman meant to ridicule the absurdity of believing in post-colonial bullshit.

I've posted this above already, but I'll link it here again: youtube.com/watch?v=T6Heu5TRDB8. Watch this, as it refutes the crypto-idpol bourgeois 'post-colonial' theory.

I should say: a while ago someone said the YPG/J flag always makes the most utterly non-aware and uneducated posts. I think I'm starting to see what was meant by that. Work on it.

Learn some theory you ignorant. The Bordigists are literally the closest to the original Bolsheviks you can get. The only difference being that the former learnt for 1917-1927 experience the same way Marx learnt from the Commune or Lenin learnt from 1914, while the latter never had this chance: they were slaughtered by Stlalin's counter-revolutionaries.

*democratic socialism

'B-but their potemkin villages have WOMEN(!)'s basket weaving cooperatives!'

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Amusing how people are attacking them for secretly being allied with US imperialism AND for actually being allied with Assad

I'd like some sources for this. Because looking at official documentation on account of actual observers of the Kurdistan region the vast majority is private and public firms, with a few potemkin-style villages showing >muh cooperatives.

bulletin.ids.ac.uk/idsbo/article/view/2730/HTML
autistici.org/tridnivalka/the-grim-reality-of-the-rojava-revolution/
sange.fi/kvsolidaarisuustyo/wp-content/uploads/Dr.-Ahmad-Yousef-Social-economy-in-Rojava.pdf

It's literally participatory social democracy using empty 'revolutionary' rhetoric plus Öcalan and Bookchin symbolism, not much unlike the USSR except with Marx and Soviet figures as symbolism. At least Rojava pretends to be democratic and has a publicly influenced parliament, so I guess you can have that one.

So did the USSR. The 1936 constitution was "the most democratic in the world".

There you go then fam. 👌

>kurdishquestion.com/article/3218-rojava-revolution-on-the-hoof

first hand account of guy in Rojava

rojavaplan.com/join-3-2-personal-account.html

according to the last link you posted the democratic commune controls production and distribution. I fail to see how that is social democracy and not socialism.

>I also co-wrote this article on Rojava which was published on our [/leftypol's] webmag, sourced below: bunkermag.org/principles-democratic-confederalism/.
wew lad
This better not be the ed. of bunkermag.
You didn't even proofread my last contribution.

On top of this, most first hand reports are known to simply given tours showing Potemkin villages. Syrian white helmet reports are included above, which come uninvited or without these official Rojava state-sponsored tours, as well as travelers which did not take these tours on account of research institutes. The results do not correspond with the fairy tales you find in links like that. It's literally the same operation as tankies who say North Korea is gr8 because Great Leader gave them a sponsored tour of everything that's not shit and kept not shit for tourism.

Aaaand bingo, you didn't read further beyond the preface and are making out of context conclusions because you didn't read everything. Are you stupid or really this disingenuous that you think you need to 'win' this in a thread and use cognitive dissonance to reject reality?

Let me run it down for you: the links all preface with the intended Bookchinist model for Rojava, which is indeed largely inspired by Öcalan's interpretations and modeling for a participatist municipalist society with a small state, yes. But reality, as in what's actually going on there on account of several trusted sources, shows that practically none of it is actually put in place.

What is this photo from?

Where? I did not see such accounts anywhere in the links you posted.

I read the totality of that link, there was nothing to support your claims. If I'm wrong post screenshots. But from what I can see it pretty much confirms that while there are still some private businesses most production is done through the communes and co-ops. The same for the top link. You can critique them for not being ecological or whatever, but it's pretty clear they have far more than a social democracy.

The middle link is nothing but a short polemic with a bunch of links, some of which give you turkish propaganda.

The part I was looking at was clearly referring to the actual conditions.

I fail to see how this isn't fascism with consumerist twinges.
The UN imposes carbon tax on these people and forces them to accept Syrian refugees when?

…Rojava is already a top destination for internally displaced refugees. Because it's IN SYRIA you dense motherfucker.

The US dismantled Iraq for fun, that won't even take an afternoon.

You didn't know?

bump

What an utterly inept and grossly simplistic analysis of the situation in Syria. Didn't expect much but this is just sad
Are you dense? The forces of the YPG and the forces of the Assad regime were involved in conflict quite recently.
You're ignoring the entire meat of the article, as well as the kurdish movement in general, in favor of characterizing how they handle oil? Is this really the best you can do?
Why shouldn't they use the US? You're saying that the US is using the Kurds but the kurds are somehow incapable of using the US?
In the time of marx industrial labor was the cornerstone of the proletariat, and it was based on this group of industrial labor that most of the ideas of Marx are built around, not service industry labor or agricultural labor.

I'm terribly sorry that anarchism in your native country, wherever that may be, is doing nothing revolutionary at the moment but that does not mean you have to shit all over legitimate revolutions because you aren't able to make all your LARP dreams come true : ^)

So left communism results in revolutions that fail in either a few days or a few months or revolutions that degenerate into Authoritarian social democracy? Truly, this is the most perfect interpretation of our lord and savior marx PBUH : ^ )

Rojava, YPG, PPG, RPG other GGG's and PPPP's get fucked fucking US puppets

Long live ASSAD and SYRIA!

Much socialism, wow

go fuck yourself

Stop eating western propaganda you fuckers.

but I'm not even surprised to see a Yugo traitor around.

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I'm an Anarchist and I will oppose US imperialism and US backed puppets all the time, I don't care about their Ideals, if they are backed by the US they are fucking sell out scum, that needs to be wiped out.

Just because you're an anarchist doesn't mean that you're not an idiot : ^ )
Make an actual argument instead of spouting memes kiddo

I'm not even bothering, I know they are a US proxy, they are the same to the neo Nazi battalions in Ukraine to me, fucking Kurds are so unbearably nationalistic.

Kill yourself my man :^)

YPG PYD Rojava Zealots are fucking deaf anyway.

smh tbh famrade :^)

Nice strawman, but it won't work. Deal with it, the other user gave the correct Marxist definition of proletariat.

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