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Öcalan as Thinker: On the Unity of Theory and Practiceas Form of Writing

by David Graeber

Öcalan’s works make many intellectuals uncomfortable because they represent a form of thought that is not only inextricable from action but that directly grapples with the knowledge that it is. Since Öcalan’s words really are, before anything else they might be, a form of political action, their ultimate meaning can only be known by what they do.

Long Histories of Democratic Civilization

Building on the work of previous movements, revolutionaries and intellectuals, Abdullah Öcalan theorizes history as the result of the constant flow of two rivers: state civilization, a five-thousand-year unity of systemic domination and exploitation, and democratic civilization, the historical stream of “moral and political society”, the basis for all human sociality.

This research commune aims to deepen our understanding of this dialectical struggle, and to seek a roughly shared vision of the organic historical unity of state civilization, in order to recover the long pasts and envision alternative futures watered by the democratic river.

Democratic Foodways: biocultural landscapes and cuisines

Autonomous food ways can show the three threads of democratic confederalism which are always intertwined: participatory governance, liberated gender relations, and respectful relationships between humans and other beings.

This research commune aims to focus on existing and past experiments in autonomous foodways. We wanr to document, study and share traditional and emerging ecological knowledges and practices that cultivate balanced relations among plants, animals, people.

Peace Concept of Abdullah Öcalan

The number of wars is increasing at an unprecedented rate, with devastating consequences such as bombings, destruction, famine, displacement, genocide, femicide, ecocide, and massive cuts to social and health services in order to finance militarization, massive arms buildup, and warfare.

Going beyond statism—where the distinction between state and society is central to the development of peace—Abdullah Öcalan has put forward a unique concept of peace. Here, peace is inextricably intertwined with democratization, gender liberation, and ecological transformation—all rooted in the political idea that all solutions must come from society, from the smallest units, the communes, and not from the state.

Exploring these ideas on peace in greater depth and examining them thoroughly is both inspiring and multifaceted. We will establish a research commune to create a space and a community dedicated to this task.

Democratic Confederalism and Prefiguration

This commune proposes that we can and must make revolutionary change, now, by changing patterns of everyday life and popular participation rather than waiting to take state power and then transform society. State-centered revolutionary change has always reproduced hierarchies of control and oppression. We can avoid this if communities use the tools for democratic transformation that they already have within their hands.

Instances where communities escaped state and capitalist control and created forms of autonomous participatory governance include the Zapatistas in Mexico and Rojava in Syria. Yet urban communities can also appropriate institutions within the system, starting at the municipal level, to resist the state system and transform it.