TŘÍDNÍ VÁLKA # CLASS WAR # GUERRE DE CLASSE

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The history of class struggles is teeming with a vast number of impostures; one of the most recent after the Sandinistas’ imposture in Nicaragua is that prevailing since twenty years and shaking the leftist and alter-globalization small milieu short of exoticism, we are referring to the Zapatista’s imposture in Chiapas. Our history is punctuated with other very famous impostures, which were dug into our flesh, the flesh of our revolutionary brothers and sisters who fell under the blows of the exploiters and their henchmen, impostures built on the repression of our struggle movements, of our attempts to abolish the existing state of things, the current order, the capitalist order.

They indeed were not much in the 1920s to denounce the imposture of the “socialist paradise”, the myth of the “proletariat’s homeland”, the “big lie” of “socialism in one country”, “the bright future” and “harmonious society”; there were not a lot of Otto Rühle and KAPD to denounce this whole masquerade. Whole convoys of an imposing number of delegations made of intellectuals, journalists, activists, unionists arrived in the USSR to see with their own eyes all this “beauty”, and then returned home to sing this new “revolutionary regime’s” praises.

And then it was China, Albania, Vietnam, Cuba… that served as a model for generations of useful idiots who believed that to simply restore the façade and paint it in red would be enough to remove misery and exploitation. There are none so blind or deaf as those who will not see or hear. There are none so Social Democrat and therefore being in favour of the capitalist order as those who believes that simple reforms (whether “radical” they may appear) are the essence of a revolutionary process that will in fact completely transform the society and the human being on the ruins of the old world, the world of value, commodity, wage labour and money.

If we focus on all these impostures that have emptied the subversive substance of the real movements of struggle of our class, we obviously do not want to mix the latter with the ideological structuring which speak on their behalf and which claim to represent them, but which ultimately have no other concern than to supervise, contain, hijack and thus to liquidate them. We do not confuse the social movement known as the “Paris Commune” and the government that took the same name, we do not confuse either the revolutionary process that developed during the wave of struggle of the years 1917-21 in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Hungary, etc. with the various Social Democratic parties and unions, whether they are libertarian, Bolshevik or others, in short all these bourgeois parties for the proletariat, which didn’t rest until strengthening and expanding the limits and weaknesses of our struggles. In the same way, and without considering all the struggles of our class as being of an equal and comparable importance, we do not confuse the EZLN with the struggle of agricultural proletarians in Mexico or the PKK/PYD with the struggle in Kurdistan.

We therefore present here three texts that participate in this process of rupture with the romantic vision of “solidarity campaign” towards the “Rojava Revolution”:

1. “I have seen the future and it works.” – Critical Issues for the supporters of the revolution in Rojava is a text published initially on the Libcom blog, which succinctly addresses some key issues such as the place of women, the role of the police, the wage labour relations, religion, strategic alliances, revolutionary purpose;
2. PKK, Democratic Confederalism, and Nonsense – Juraj Katalenac is a text published by militants who mainly speak Croatian and gave to their structure the name Svjetska Revolucija (“World Revolution”) – we have translated both these texts in French and Czech;
3. Kurdistan? is a text co-written by Gilles Dauvé which also addresses key issues such as armament, nationalism, daily life, social structure, women militias and role, enthusiasm of libertarian circles, critique of the State, etc. – we have also assumed the Czech translation of this text. Continue reading →

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We publish here a critical text about PKK and the “Democratic Confederalism” (which we have translated into French and Czech) from militants who mainly express themselves in Croatian and gave to their structure the name SvjetskaRevolucija (“World Revolution”). We don’t know much about this group and it is linguistically difficult for us to further deepen our knowledge of their programmatic positions.

However, in a basic document of theirs, published in Croatian, developing a series of interesting affirmations, there is one in particular that we want to briefly criticize here. It’s their position on “terrorism” when those comrades say: “Terrorism is not a method of struggle of the working class. It advocates secret action of a small clique in total contradiction with the defence of class violence, which derives from the class-conscious and organized mass action of the proletariat.” [https://www.svjetskarevolucija.org/osnovni-stavovi/]

We don’t agree at all with this position which leaves the door wide open to pacifism in the name of the “Great Night”, the revolution to come under the pretext that here and now “the masses are not ready”, as social democrats of all kinds have eructated since decades to better disarm our struggle. There is no “terrorism” in itself! Every action, every thought is essentially determined by its class content and the dominant social relations; there is therefore indeed a class terrorism which appears in a variety of forms (and essences) according to the nature of the program it contains and that carries it.

There is therefore on one hand a bourgeois, employers’, capitalist, counterrevolutionary terrorism: it’s the permanent terror of everyday nature in our forced labour, it’s the police and military (and the union one) repression to crush our strikes, our struggles, our hopes, and it’s also the terror of the murderous slaughter on fields of horror of the bourgeois wars, etc.

But, and in radical opposition to this counterrevolutionary terrorism, there is also a proletarian, revolutionary, human terrorism: it’s the permanent sabotage by our class of the tools of exploitation, alienation, oppression and domination, it’s the organization even minority one of direct action, that is to say, without intermediaries, without mediation, it’s the destruction of what destroys us for the final abolition, the total eradication of the very causes of our misery.

To conclude this short presentation and fraternal critique, we want to reaffirm the lifelong positions of the communist movement (some good old programmatic “jewels”) vis-à-vis the necessary revolutionary violence to put an end once and for all with this old world:

“The purposeless massacres […], the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
(Karl Marx, “The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna”, NeueRheinischeZeitung No. 136, November 6th, 1848)
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/11/06.htm]

“Far from opposing the so-called excesses – instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated – the workers’ party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.”
(Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”, London, March 1850)
[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm] Continue reading →

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We recommend the critical reading of the text “Kurdistan?” co-written by Gilles Dauvé and initially published in French on the blog DDT21. [https://ddt21.noblogs.org/?page_id=324]. This text addresses key issues about the “Rojava Revolution” such as armament, nationalism, daily life, social structure, women militias and role, enthusiasm of libertarian circles, critique of the State, etc.

Our only important reservation concerns the same good old weakness and confusion in not grasping the fundamental capitalist nature of democracy, beyond the various shapes it equips itself, whatever it presents itself as a “bourgeois” or a “workers” one, as a parliamentary or a direct one… Democracy is the negation in acts of class antagonism, it’s the dilution of the revolutionary class into a bourgeois entity that is the people and/or the nation, it’s ultimately always capital’s dictatorship, the dictatorship of the rate of profit, the dictatorship of the value valorising itself, no matter if this one is realized in a “protectionist”, a “free-market” or a “self-management” economic structure… Continue reading →

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Following our previous critical contribution to “solidarity campaign” towards “Rojava Revolution” entitled “In Rojava: People’s War is not Class War”, we introduce and publish here two small stands we found on the internet. Both of them go in the same direction not to end the debate but on the contrary to bring some class analysis elements in the discussion and to call thus into question the romantic apology of the struggle in Syrian Kurdistan made by different political circles.

We obviously insist on putting forward strong reservations as for weaknesses and limits that can be found in these both texts which represent neither the global positions of our group nor those of the communist movement from a historic and programmatic point of view. Nevertheless these are living expressions of revolutionary minorities that try to affirm against the current and in an “unpopular” way the necessity and pre-eminence of internationalism in all struggle of our class.

The first text is entitled “Rojava: Fantasies and Realities”; it is signed by a militant called Zafer Onat and has been published in Turkish on the blog of the “libertarian communist discussion forum” Servet Düşmanı which means “Enemy of Wealth”.

The second text is entitled “Some Comments on the ‘Rojava Revolution’”; it is anonymous and has been published on the blog Infoshop News – Anarchist and libertarian news, opinion and analysis. We introduce and publish both of these texts on our blog in their English version but we also translated them into Czech and French… Continue reading →