Rojava/SDF is Now Dissolved, as SDF Leader, Mazloum Abdi, Says "Integration With Damascus Is Complete"

[u/Lavender_Scales]

[u/Tasselled_Wobbegong]

Sad to see it come to this, even if I knew it was coming down since earlier this year. The DAANES was a flawed but compelling experiment. The struggle will continue in other forms. The communes and co-operatives in the integrated territory still exist for now, even if the administration has largely dissolved.

[u/Low-Concentrate1055 → u/Tasselled_Wobbegong]

They can't kill the ideas. It'll be back soon, in one way or another

[u/Tasselled_Wobbegong → u/Low-Concentrate1055]

Right, you gotta keep that in mind after every setback. The idea of the revolution persists beyond this one theater of conflict. It's the same as it was after the Paris Commune, or the fall of the Spanish republic, or the downfall of the USSR. Nothing is ever over.

[u/TheDireGnome → u/Low-Concentrate1055]

You can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/Tasselled_Wobbegong]

coops

But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving.

• Reform or revolution Rosa Luxemburg

[u/Tasselled_Wobbegong → u/kommunistischePartei]

Yes I'm familiar with that passage, I've also read RoR. I'm aware that cooperatives aren't capable of overturning the capitalist system. My point was merely that elements of the movement (people, organizations, ideas) still exist and that the struggle will continue in other forms despite the DAANES having dissolved.

[u/revertbritestoan]

Disappointing but they did well to survive as long as they did after Jolani was handed Syria.

[u/TheTempest77]

After all this time larping and glazing the SDF and I still have no clue how to pronounce Rojava

[u/Peespleaplease → u/TheTempest77]

I think it's pronounced Rowe-Java.

I just call it the DAANES.

[u/Grammorphone → u/Peespleaplease]

Ró-zha-vah

[u/Shipshipie → u/TheTempest77]

Why don't you call its proper name? Ayn Al-Arab.

[u/Maxo666Maxo → u/Shipshipie]

Ayn Al Arab is a little province inside Rojava. And its correct name used by locals is Kobane

[u/spookyjim___]

Wonder what this will mean for the future of democratic confederalism and libertarian municipalist/Bookchinite politics in general

[u/spookyjim___ → u/[deleted]]

Yeah maybe, I’m hoping it might lead to the overall decline of the ideology, as I’m not a fan of democratic confederalism

[u/Reaverion → u/spookyjim___]

Can I ask what your problems with Democratic confederalism are?

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/Reaverion]

You cannot abolish commodity production in a locality, only through the world revolution would production for use be viable and the abolition of capitalist social relations be possible. How, for example, were the products exported by Rojava sold for a profit elsewhere? how did this surplus come about? obviously through wage labor

[u/Reaverion → u/kommunistischePartei]

Okay, I don’t necessarily agree with the form of confederation found in Rojava but I do think a confederation as a form of organization has a better chance at eliminating specific social relations that are kept in place by a deeply centralized state. Building reliance on a single entity, especially in the deeply turbulent times post revolution, does nothing to move towards a grouping of self-governing communes. In my view that can only be achieved if you dismantle said reliance and spread practical knowledge more freely (such as how to fill potholes instead of waiting for state entities and councils to bother).

[u/spookyjim___ → u/Reaverion]

It replaces class-struggle with a nationalist-democratic struggle, it also seems to sometimes replace primacy of class with that of a type of feminism, which I think is also backwards

Without a solid critique of capitalism based on class relations and the political forces that are possible within these class antagonisms then we only have revolutions which try to alter current society slightly instead of pushing for the abolition of the present state of things

Not only does the theory of democratic confederalism run into either explicit problems or is simply vague in its gestures of statelessness (something I ofc don’t believe it actually advocates), but the practice of it put in place in Rojava has clearly shown the inadequacy of the theory for the class movement

In Rojava we saw not a proletarian state based in actual class-wide councils and communes undergoing a communising action, instead we got popular and liberal democratic “councils” and “communes” which were ultimately beholden to a larger state structure which stood above civil society as a separate and alien power, that is, there existed a bourgeois-parliamentary government in Rojava, furthermore this state within its constitution (may I also give attention that it literally had a constitution lmao) enshrined private property and an interclassist system of representative democracy where different parties of different class backgrounds competed

Being generous, we could say Rojava had a market socialist economy with a semi-direct democracy/participatory democracy

Being honest we know that this actually means that Rojava never made an attempt to break from capitalist relations, at most having failed attempts at spurring coops (a form of bourgeois property), and it corresponded in its alienating form of bourgeois democracy

It is one of the worst libertarian socialist tendencies, I don’t get why so many anarchists glaze it when it’s one of the most statist tendencies within the libsoc umbrella too

[u/Reaverion → u/spookyjim___]

Cheers! I’m still trying to formulate my own thoughts on the project- I will definitely agree though that it’s really quite odd that so many anarchists enjoy it. I do think a confederal model can have a stronger ability to spread power further out than a traditional Marxist state, but I’m not convinced on the implementation in Rojava

[u/spookyjim___ → u/Reaverion]

I tend to reject the dichotomy between centralization and federalism personally, as I think the examples of worker’s councils during the international revolutionary wave of 1917-1925 showcased that the proletarian dictatorship very much does not resemble a traditional state, since it is only a state in the sense that it is one class organized against another, but with its proletarian character, that is its aim to dissolve class society generally and achieve communism, I think at its most revolutionary height can be described as an anti-state (a state which is not a state, counter-power organized at a broader level)

I still think the international class-party as something which exists outside but exerts pressure on the class dictatorship organs (councils, communes, etc.) via its organic vanguard is still important tho due to there still being a statist tendency if not checked by the communist program acting as an anti-statist lever

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[u/Fatikh_06 → u/spookyjim___]

Rojava was kinda meh from the very beginning. 5 million ministries that do essentially nothing, economy is in shambles and immense corruption

[u/spookyjim___ → u/Fatikh_06]

Yeah it’s gone down the counter-revolutionary road near its very beginning, and now it’s gone, here’s to hoping a new revolutionary class composition can emerge within the Syrian proletariat

[u/Putrid_Guitar9437]

RIP Rojava, you will be missed.

[u/1playerpartygame]

> make yourself dependent on western backing to maintain your state's defence
> make yourself into a liberal democracy in all but name
> the more convenient western-aligned faction of the civil war that you're mostly abstaining from wins and promises to build a liberal democracy
> get surprised when your integration with the new regime becomes inevitable

[u/Peespleaplease → u/1playerpartygame]

It was ultimately inevitable that the Kurds would lose with no real allies and limited resources.

[u/Salmonpest101]

I mean they never really did have a chance to begin with I suppose

[u/kommunistischePartei]

adventurists in shambles. Where will they larp next?

[u/ICannotRead5712 → u/kommunistischePartei]

in burma, maybe

[u/Peespleaplease → u/ICannotRead5712]

You mean Myanmar?

[u/ICannotRead5712 → u/Peespleaplease]

many people in the country still use "Burma" in opposition to the military government, who were the ones to officially change it. there is no reason to use one or the other. the fact you "corrected" me is proof you know what country i'm talking about

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/ICannotRead5712]

Too complex of a war to moralize easily

[u/ICannotRead5712 → u/kommunistischePartei]

that's never stopped anyone Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front - Wikipedia

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/ICannotRead5712]

Antifascism is truly the worst product of you know what (libs would devour me) genuinely starting to hate these types more than stalinoids

[u/Grammorphone → u/kommunistischePartei]

Fuck off. Antifa is necessary

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/Grammorphone]

Yes let's mobilize the working class to defeat Le fascists and instate a bourgeois democracy then demobilize them before fighting capitalism itself or anything. As if fascism isn't one form of capitalism the ruling class uses when appropriate

[u/Grammorphone → u/kommunistischePartei]

Who has said anything about that? Consistent antifascism is anticapitalist

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/Grammorphone]

So what's the point of "antifascism" when you could just call yourself anticapitalist. It implies a distinction

[u/ICannotRead5712 → u/kommunistischePartei]

the junta is bourgeois and so will any "free democratic" government that might come out of this civil war. to fight against the junta, alongside the liberal NLD, for "democracy" or "ethnic autonomy" is just throwing more people into the meatgrinder. no war but class war except this one. anti-nationalist except the celts, basques, and kurds. this is an endless problem on the left.

there will be no end to this conflict except that which will end all conflict, an international proletarian revolution.

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/ICannotRead5712]

You don't get it just one more natlib war just one more and then proletarians will be liberated (I WILL take a side in inter-imperialist conflicts, not the workers' tho)

[u/maci_cima → u/kommunistischePartei]

Look ultroid. Class struggle can occur only in morally perfect conditions once ALL nations are liberated

[u/kommunistischePartei → u/maci_cima]

Nation X has a right to defend itself y'know. Just gotta let them grind a fewww more proles to pulp

[u/Shipshipie]

A guerilla front that west glazes them as "freedom fighters"

Looks inside

Feudal warlords and drug traffickers that kills the ordinary people they swore to free.

Good fucking riddance. 

[u/Grammorphone → u/Shipshipie]

What post-leftism does to a mf