by Abdullah Öcalan
The democratic confederalist system is democratic modernity’s counterpart of the nation-state, the main state form of official modernity. We can define this as a form of non-state political governance.
Contrary to what one might think, democratic confederalism is not a governing system that is specific to our time; it is a system that has been significantly present throughout history. History, in this sense, is not centralized and statist but confederal.
History is not the tool of inhuman and fusty structures and warfare or the sum of power and states alone; there are far more unrecorded examples of democratic civilization: the family, tribal and aşiret systems, confederations, city democracies (as far as we know, the most striking example is Athens), democratic confederations, monasteries, dervish lodges, communes, egalitarian parties, civil societies, denominations, religious and philosophical communities that have not been absorbed by power, solidarity among women, and numerous communities and assemblies based on solidarity. Unfortunately, the history of these communities has not been systematically recorded. Nonetheless, the true history of humanity can only be the systematic expression of these groups.
In response to capitalism’s four-hundred-year ideological, administrative, military, nation-state civilization system (in the form of the monopoly of economics and power), there have been city democracies (in Italy) and confederations (in Germany), peasants’ rebellions and communes, workers’ rebellions and communes (the Paris Commune), the experiences of real socialism (in one-third of the world), the process of national liberation (their non-power and the non-state mode of being), numerous democratic parties, civil society movements, and, recently, ecological and feminist movements, democratic youth movements, arts festivals, and new religious movements that do not seek power. As can be seen, democratic civilization is based on a broad spectrum of movements and has a system — although not fully integrated — that should not be underestimated.
The Hanseatic League (c. 1250–1450) launched the German urban revolution, with its constituent towns later undergoing their own commercial revolutions. The rise of manufacturing that was set in motion marks the second period, with an intense struggle against centralization based on the confederalism of the towns. The struggle and rebellions, involving many peasants and various semi-working-class groups and craftspeople, lasted for around four hundred years. After a bloody period, for a variety of reasons (ideological, organizational, and matters of leadership) these early experiences of town and rural democratic confederalism were defeated by the centralized monarchies and the arising nation states. Had they not been defeated, the history of Europe would have been written differently.
The approach to the nation-state became even more catastrophic. This Leviathan of modernity, kneaded with the highest degree of nationalism, sexism, religionism, and scientism, was accepted as the fundamental and proper framework of struggle. In comparison to democratic confederalism, the centralist nation-state was presented as a more progressive and a better problem-solving means, rather an end. There was no analysis whatsoever of the nation-state, which is after all, the basis for a structure of power that, through nationalist generalization, social sexism, religious fanaticism and scientific positivism, creates a bloated, extremely grotesque citizenry, completely absorbs society through the state, and ultimately leads to fascism. When this instrument, which the power infiltrated into the very cells of the society, became the choice of scientific socialism, the fate of socialism became clear from the start. The official declaration of its dissolution in 1989 was only a formality.
Above all, the nation-state should be considered the maximum form of power. No other state form possesses the same power as the nation-state (it may be more correct to speak of a state nation). The most important reason for this is that the upper echelons of the middle class have been increasingly involved in the monopolization process. We must never forget that the nation-state is the most developed and complete monopoly. It turns the entire nation into the common property and a colony of the monopoly alliance.
It will not suffice for the nation-state to solely use fascism, the most terrible form of violence, to secure the fourfold monopolistic exploitation it has taken over (trade, industry, finance, and power monopolies). This requires the hegemonic use of the four eclectic ideologies at least as much as the systematic violence of the fascist regime. The fascist regime cannot be maintained without ideological hegemony.
The main reason for the disintegration of real socialism was its quick replacement of confederalism, which was high on the agenda at the beginning of the Soviet Russian experiment, with a centralized state. The reason that national liberation movements were unsuccessful and were quickly corrupted is closely linked to the fact that they did not develop democratic politics and confederalism. The lack of success of revolutionary movements over the last two hundred years is also because they considered the nation-state to be more revolutionary and regarded democratic confederalism as a backward political form, and thus opposed it.
A nation-state requires the homogeneity of citizens with a single language and single ethnicity. It binds citizens to this belief by conditioning them to carry out certain rituals. Adherence to this belief is not patriotism; rather, it is chauvinistic nationalism and religionism. The nation-state disapproves of social differences, insisting on their sameness, as fascist ideology did. By contrast, a democratic nation is multilingual, multireligious, multiethnic, and multicultural, encompassing groups and individuals with different interests.
The defining feature of the democratic nation solution is that it seeks a solution outside the state. That means neither the construction of a new state upon the detritus of the old, nor becoming an extension of the present state and dissolving within it.
Confederalism, in a way, is the democratic nation’s form of political governance. The political framework of the democratic national solution is (…) democratic confederalism. We can briefly describe the characteristics of democratic confederalism:
• Democratic confederalism is open to different multilayered political structures. The complicated structure of contemporary society requires different horizontal and vertical political structures. It holds central, local, and regional political structures together in equilibrium. Pluralistic political structures are better suited to finding the right solutions to social problems, because they respond to specific conditions. Cultures and ethnic and national identities have the natural right to express themselves in political structures — or, rather, it is a requirement of moral and political society that they do so. It is open to a principled agreement with state traditions, whether in the form of the nation-state, the republic, or bourgeois democracy. They can coexist on the basis of a principled peace.
• Democratic confederalism is based on moral and political society. Social forms that consist of capitalist, feudal, industrialist, consumerist, and other template projects based on social engineering are seen in the context of capitalist monopolies. While such societies don’t actually exist, their propaganda does. Societies are basically political and moral. Economic, political, ideological, and military monopolies are apparatuses gnawing away at the fundamental nature of society, chasing after surplus value and social tributaries. They have no intrinsic value. Even a revolution cannot create a new society. Revolutions can only play a positive role as an operation to restore the worn-out and lapsed moral and political fabric to its proper function. Everything else will be determined by the free will of moral and political society.
• Democratic confederalism is based on democratic politics. In contrast to the rigidly centralist, linear, bureaucratic understanding of the governance and administration of the nation-state, all social groups and cultural identities realize the self-governance of society in political structures that allow them to express themselves. Affairs are dealt with by leaders elected to office not appointed. The key is an ability to make decisions on the basis of discussions and at assemblies. There is no room for a leadership that acts as it wishes. From a general coordinating body (assembly, commission, congress) to local bodies, the democratic governance and supervision of social affairs are carried out by a bouquet of bodies that seek unity in diversity and are multi-structured in a way that suits the composition of all groups and cultures.
• Democratic confederalism is based on self-defense. Self-defense units are the basic force, they are not a military monopoly but are under the tight control of democratic organs in accordance with society’s internal and external security needs. Their task is to validate the will of democratic politics, i.e., moral and political society’s egalitarian decision-making structure based on freedoms and diversity, and to render harmless any internal or external force that attempts to frustrate, prevent, or otherwise undermine this will. The command structure of the units is under the dual control of both the organs of democratic politics and unit members and can easily be changed, if necessary, by motions and their democratic approval.
• Democratic confederalism favors a World Democratic Confederal Union of national societies, as opposed to the union of nation-states under the control of super-hegemonic power in the United Nations. For a safer, more peaceful, more ecological, more just, and more productive world, we need a quantitatively and qualitatively strengthened union of much broader communities based on the criteria of democratic politics in a World Democratic Confederation.
Until it is fully understood that social nature is neither homogeneous nor monolithic, it is difficult to understand democratic confederalism. The history of the last four hundred years of official modernity is the history of a kind of genocide (mostly cultural, occasionally physical) in the name of creating a homogeneous nation in opposition to multi-ethnic and multicultural society, with its diverse political entities and self-defense. Democratic confederalism, on the other hand, is the history of the insistence on self-defense, multi-ethnicity, multiculturalism, and diverse political forms that opposes this history.
For every hegemonic network (commercial, financial, industrial, and ideological monopolies, as well as monopolies of power and nation-state), democratic modernity must develop the equivalent confederal networks of democratic politics and self-defense.
Since power breeds liberal ideology, industrialism, capitalism, and the nation-state, politics must produce and build an ideology of freedom, eco-industry, communal society, and democratic confederalism. Since power is organized in every individual and unit, every city and village, at local, regional, national, continental, and global levels, politics must respond in kind. Since power enforces numerous forms of action at all these levels, including propaganda and war, politics must counter at every level with the appropriate propaganda and different forms of action.
Democratic Confederalism is a non-state, democratic nation organization. Democratic confederation is a minority organization, a cultural organization, a religious organization, even a gender organization and similar organizations as such. I call it the organization of democratic nation and culture. Confederalism is the form of in which democracy exists.
Democratic confederalism has the potential to overcome the disadvantages stemming from the nation-state system. At the same time, it is the most appropriate means for politicizing society. It is simple and easy to implement. Each community, ethnicity, culture, religious community, intellectual movement, economic unit, etc. can structure and express itself autonomously as a political unit. The notion of federal structure or autonomy, of selfhood must be evaluated within this framework and scope. Every selfhood, from local to global, has the opportunity to form a confederation. The most fundamental element of the local is the right to free discussion and decision-making. Each selfhood or federal unit is unique, because it makes the implementation of direct democracy — also known as participatory democracy possible. They draw all their strength from the practicability of direct democracy, which is another reason it will play a fundamental role.
It is important to understand that even a village or district will need confederal units, and every village and district can easily be a confederal unit. For example, numerous direct democratic units, from the ecological unit (or federal unit) to the units of free women, self defense, youth, education, folklore, health, mutual aid, and even the economic, must join together at the village level. We can simply call this new unit of units a confederal unit (the unit of federal units) or confederal union.
What I mean is the democratic organization of the whole society. The fundamental policies to overcome problems such as the environment, health, cultural industrialization, etc. should be determined democratically by the people.
Although the present-day nation-state is experiencing grave systemic problems and its cracks are multiplying daily, it still has the strongest system in the national, regional, and global arena. Nation-states, numbering over two hundred, are represented by regional unions (particularly the European Union, NAFTA, which consists of the US, Canada, and Mexico, APEC in Southeast Asia) and by the United Nations globally. The democratic civilization system is represented by loose and formless forums like the World Social Forum and by non state and non-power unions of laborers and peoples that are inadequate. Their inadequacy is ideological and structural. In order to address this inadequacy, world democratic confederalism — local and regional democratic confederations with their political parties and instruments of civil society — must be developed.
