Clash of Civilizations – Capitalist and Democratic Modernity

Clash of Civilizations – Capitalist and Democratic Modernity

In Kurdistan we are currently witnessing a historical situation.
In the cradle of society and civilization, the region of Mezopotamia, we see today two different historical, social and cultural streams of civilization clashing, Capitalist Modernity on the one and Democratic Modernity on the other hand.

Since the evolution of human kind people had lived in a natural society in which private property, hierarchy, patriarchy or even a state did not exist.
At first living in nomadic clans and as hunter-gatherers for nearly 200.000 years humans through the developement of agriculture finally started to settle down and build up villages around 12.000-10.000 BC, thus became a bigger organized community. This beginning of the Neolithical age was the first big revolution of life and became the roots of today‘s society. The life and culture of the natural society was organised around the woman and mother, based on communalism and equality and in harmony with nature.
However we analyse a break in the history of society with the development and establishment of patriarchy, hierarchy, class and it‘s institutionalization with the first Sumerian priest state which was established between 4000 and 3000 BC years through which the people, especially the women, were subjugated and the age of slavery began.
Since then we see the history of society continuing in two different streams that contradict as well as interact with each other and that we can define as the hegemonic oppressive statist, centralistic, hierarchical, patriarchal class civilization of the empires and rulers on the one and the resisting, democratic, communal, natural, anti-patriarchal, socialist one on the other side.
The hegemonic stream represents the development from slavery to feudalism to capitalism and manifests itself in the ruling classes and the big empires of history – it‘s line starts from the Sumerian, the Akkadian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian states, goes to the Greek and the Roman Empire, the Islamic caliphates and Christian kingdoms and reaches until the European nation states and the US-American Empire of today.
The stream of resistance stands for the democratic and communal values in history – it‘s line starts from religious-revolutionary prophets and movements against the rulership of the godkings, „barbarian“ tribes which kept it‘s natural-communal way of life and resisted against the Empires, goes to women who lived after the values of the natural-matricentric society, organised themselves and got persecuted as „whitches“, alchemists/scientists who researched and taught against the dark oppressive ideology of the religious kingdoms and caliphates and reaches until the social-revolutionary peasents movement, the workers, the communist, the anarchist movements, antifascist resistance and oppressed people‘s liberation struggles.
It manifests itself in revolutions and insurrections, in communes and social movements, in libertarian ideologies, resisting ways of life, in communal-solidarity societies and in revolutionary people‘s organizations.

The line of the Democratic Civilization – that is today for example the Zapatista autonomy in Chiapas, the Standing Rock struggle in the US, the Landless Worker‘s Movement in Brazil, the social movements in Colombia, the Mapuche struggle in Chile and the Maoist Party of India.
It is the self-organisation and the anarchist movement in Greece, the struggle for independencein Catalunya, the people‘s movement on the streets of France and the ZAD, the NoTav resistance in Italy, the Hambacher Forst in Germany and the youth insurrections worldwide.
It is all people‘s self-organization, all anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist, all worker‘s, farmer‘s, student‘s, anti-fascist, all democratic, socialist, cultural, feminist and ecologic struggles over the world and it is the Freedom Movement in Kurdistan.

Today we see the Capitalist Civilization right where it‘s roots were established 5000 years ago in it‘s deepest crisis. The current chaos of wars, collapsing regimes, weak states, economical instability, social uprisings and confrontations, imperialist interventions and civil wars like in Syria is the occurrence of a system falling apart.
The Middle East has always been hard terrain for Capitalist Modernity. It‘s political-economical system and it‘s culture and ideology of nation state, imperialism, (neo)liberalism, individualism and positivism could never really deeply take root in the Middle East because it contradicts the social structure, the hegemonic mentality, the culture and values of most Middle Eastern societies.

After being nearly completly colonized and divided into different dependent nation states by the imperialist forces of France and Great Britain after the first world war the region was never really stable or easy to control.
But because it‘s very rich earth and it‘s geostrategical key position the region has always been a main object of imperial interests. After the USA became leading world power after the second world war they tried with their NATO allies Israel and Turkey more strongly to gain influence and get control over the Middle East. During the bipolar world order of the cold war the region was a locale of power struggles between the USA and the Soviet Union.
But the reality of the Middle East has never been adaptable to the Western capitalist system,
and throughout the century the region was characterized by wars, social uprisings, different ideological movements, armed organizations, coups, resistance struggles, foreign power policies, military interventions from outside, political instability and social contradictions.
With the downfall of realsocialism capitalism became a world empire and the USA it‘s vanguard.
The only not fully integrated region in the territorry of the empire was/is the Middle East.
So what we observe since 1989 is nothing less than the attempt of the USA to restructure and completly integrate the Middle East economically, politically and culturally into the empire.
The reason why nowadays all imperialist forces especially the USA and Russia are present or at least represented in the Middle East is exactly that.

Kurdistan plays a key role in all of that.
In Kurdistan a revolutionary socialist movement has been fighting for the liberation of the Kurdish people and a perspective for all peoples of the Middle East for the past 40 years.
In the Syrian Civil War, which is the middle of the current chaos of regional and global forces fighting for power interests in the Middle East for 7 years now a people‘s revolution is taking place in Western-Kurdistan.
The Revolution of Rojava and the political project of the Democratic Federation of Northern-Syria are an attempt to protect the peoples of the region, guide a way out of the apparent dead end of never ending crisis, war, destruction and oppression from several sides and builds up peaceful and dignified life for the people and society.
With a confederal-democratic self-administration of the peoples of the region, autonomous women‘s organisation in every part of life and a process towards an ecological society the libertarian principles and values of Democratic Confederalism based on diversity and equality get put into practice. The ideology and philosophy of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan are an answer to the social and ethnic questions of the region and give a solution to the cultural and political chaos and threats. His paradigm of an organized society without a state based on basic democracy, the equal representation of all religious and ethnic groups of the region, women‘s equal rights and an ecological responsibility is an alternative to the people outside of repressive nation state regimes, exploitative restructuring from outside for imperialist profits and Islamist terror and oppression.

This war which is going on in Kurdistan is a historical and very decisive one.

It is the clash of the two streams of civilization, Democratic Civilization, represented by the Kurdish Freedom Movement and Capitalist Modernity, represented by the Turkish state and all other occupying forces and perspectivly even representers of the USA, Russia or Israel.
Kurdistan is the center of the revolution of our epoch, and the ideology of Serok Apo is the seed.
This revolution and ideology are a hope for the whole of humanity. It is a real alternative to the exploitation and oppression of Capitalist Modernity for society and can be a solution to the problems and suffering to all peoples of the world.

Today for the interest of all oppressed peoples of the world it is a necessity to fight for Kurdistan.

For the victory of the revolution in Kurdistan and a dignified life in a Democratic Civilisation!

Defend Rojava, liberate Kurdistan, spread the revolution!

Biji Serok Apo!