The Art of Freedom: Strategies for organising & collective resistance / Event-Film of the Conference
Over 180 people from 5 continents, 30 countries, and various organisations, movements and parties travelled to Basel from 17 to 19 November for the conference entitled “The Art of Freedom – Strategies for organising and collective resistance”, convened by the “Academy of Democratic Modernity”. In view of the growing crisis of capitalist modernity and its diverse manifestations, the main topics of discussion were ways out and potential solutions. In particular, the delegates discussed various aspects of resistance to the capitalist system and exchanged their experiences and strategies in order to think together about strengthening their practice and common struggle.
The conference focused on various issues and challenges that face anti-systemic forces internationally in the 21st century: Self-determination and autonomy; building counter-power and the trap of liberal democracy; youth autonomy; women’s liberation; ecology and radical democracy; the question of organising; and the importance of internationalism. This conference came at just the right time with its commitment to the necessity of internationalism. In their contributions, the various speakers emphasised the need to learn from the resistance practices and experiences of other movements. Political developments in recent months, such as the wars in Palestine and Kurdistan, clearly show that international networks of movements are necessary to challenge capitalist modernity and imperialism. In this sense, this conference emphasised the importance of developing a new understanding of politics that counteracts the patriarchal and nation-state structure of capitalist modernity. For example, the Kurdish thought leader Abdullah Öcalan explains in his defence writings that anti-systemic forces must not leave their political tasks to those who destroy the plurality of politics and abuse politics for their power: “Since power tries to conquer and colonise every social unit and every individual, politics must strive to win and liberate every unit and every individual.” In the various contributions at the conference, it became clear that in different parts of the world such approaches are already existing and are driving the construction of radical democracy from below.
The conference consisted not only of lectures, discussion panels and workshops in which revolutionary strategies were discussed, but also of the exchange of community and cultural solidarity. Delegates ate together and danced to traditional music. The conference room was decorated with posters of struggles from around the world. In this way, the participants were united not only in struggle, but also in the joy and mutual appreciation of each other’s cultures and ways of life, striving for a truly holistic internationalism.
Perspectives of (National) Self-determination and Autonomy in the 21st Century
In fact, the first panel was exactly about the perspectives of national self-determination and autonomy in the 21st century. Mahmut Şakar, one of the lawyers of Abdullah Öcalan, opened the debate with a speech on the importance of rethinking self-determination through the paradigm of Öcalan. Indeed, he explained that the struggle for the liberation of Kurdistan begun from a classical decolonial perspective that sought national liberation through state power before developing into the modern line of freedom and autonomy outside the state that represents the current stance of the PKK. The fundamental importance of the PKK within the Kurdish Freedom Movement lies in the fact that they have helped to transform both the perception of the Kurdish question and the potential solutions to it. When Öcalan argued in the 1970s that Kurdistan was an international colony, the young people that came from the poor, labouring, peasant, and oppressed classes of Kurdistan joined him and the PKK. In this era, the real socialist struggle, youth movements and national liberation struggles were the contexts from which the PKK drew inspiration. Öcalan says, “If it were not for real socialism, perhaps an organisation of the PKK type would not have been formed.” Nevertheless, he adds that although the PKK was influenced by real socialism, “the whole reality of the PKK cannot be explained by real socialism.” This can be understood through the mixed and eclectic coexistence of nation-state ideology and democratic socialist ideology within the party. “We lacked the capacity to fight the revisionism of real socialism. We could only successfully struggle with primitive nationalist and social chauvinist ideologies.” Öcalan describes the main problem in the formation of the PKK as being that they were “ambiguous about the nation-state ideology”. The primary focus of his writing is the 500-year hegemonic process he describes as Capitalist Modernity and the impact of this process on our thoughts and actions. Stating that one of the three pillars of capitalist modernity is the nation-state, he tries to reach a new model of the nation and a solution. Against the nation-state mentality and its religion of nationalism, Öcalan proposes the paradigm of Democratic Confederalism as an alternative to the nation-state model. So, the basic propositions of the Öcalan Paradigm for the solution of national problems and the exercise of the Right to Self-Determination can be expressed as follows: “The Democratic Nation model is a strategy for decolonisation through the creation of a free individual and society”. The Democratic Autonomy model fulfils the task of becoming a force against colonialism by creating a new people and society against the individual and society created by colonialism.
This perspective thus opened the dialogue to other national liberation experiences. First, that of the people of the Basque Country, whose story was told by two representatives of Askapena that talked about the liberation struggle in Euskal Herria. The aim of the speech was to understand the new phase in which the Basque Country is marked by political, economic and social events. After contextualizing the resistance struggle within the Spanish and French nation-state-building process that took place through different strategies – one based on military repression, the other imposed through assimilationist practices – the speakers focused on the different strategies deployed over the centuries to defend their linguistic and cultural identity and their economic and political autonomy. The resistance to the Spanish and French invasions took the form, depending on the historical phases, of different types of struggles: peasant rebellions in defense of collective ownership of communal lands (matxinadak); the battle of salt in Bizkaia; the Matalaz uprising in Zuberoa; armed uprisings to assert customary rights and self-government; mass disobedience to the obligation to enlist in the Spanish or French armies; armed resistance to the Spanish fascist uprising and resistance against the Nazis and the Francoists in the North Basque Country; and popular self-organisation for the recovery of the Basque language and culture. With the birth of ETA in the 1960s, national liberation merged with the struggle for social liberation, expressed as a fight for independence and socialism. The struggles over the past decades have gone through different phases, but the past decade specifically has seen a drastic change in strategy involving commitment to institutional politics, which has generated several rifts in the independence movement and fractured it into many different organizations following different tactics.
This picture resonated with the one painted by Endavant’s representative who told the story of the Catalan people’s independence struggle. She said that the conflict between the Catalan people and the Spanish state, like most national conflicts, is a phenomenon of our contemporaneity, situated over the last 300 years of modernity in which contemporary national identities have emerged. She explained the connections between the long-lasting resistance against the assimilation politics of the Spanish state under Franco to the post-Francoist division of Catalonia into three autonomous communities that are constitutionally prohibited from federating with each other. In Catalonia, the economic crisis of 2008 precipitated two popular responses. On the one hand was the 15M movement that opposed post-crash austerity economics and on the other was a resurgence of the desire for independence. Both emerged due to frustration with the lack of possibilities to transforming the ’78 regime that had claimed to democratise Spain. Cases of corruption, bank bailouts, privatization, violation of rights, social control, and the rejection of the new statute of autonomy were a breeding ground for these frustrations. However, state repression, the lack of popular organisation, unpreparedness for repression, as well as the will to annul the movements’ most radical elements combined to block the possibility of transformative political change. Reflection on strategy is still open, just like the reflection on the idea of Catalan nationality itself. National identities are nothing more than an expression of collective identification produced by a society at a given moment. They do not always exist, nor do they have an eternal existence and they are not a natural phenomenon. Spanish nationalism, on the other hand, does see itself in this way. As the nationalism of the oppressor nation, it has sought to naturalise and impose itself. In opposition to this, Catalan people conceptualise difference as Catalanness: it has neither a beginning, nor an end, nor is it written or codified. It is a subjective element, open to whoever wants to be Catalan.
In conclusion of the first panel, a delegate from the collective Walaboomuu talked about People Centred Pan Africanism and the Oromo Struggle. The Oromo are an agro-pastoralist people, currently settled within the Ethiopian state, with Oromo cultural and linguistic groups also settled in the Kenyan state. The Oromo are a Kushite people, part of the Afro-Asiatic language group, speaking the Afaan Oromo. Historically, the Oromo society organised under the Gadaa system, an age grade system of social democracy, also made up part of the ancient Kushite confederacy or Kingdom. The Gadaa system is said to be older than 3,500 years. The traditional spiritual belief of the Oromo is Waaqeefata – a monotheistic belief system interconnecting belief in a creator to the natural world through the principle of Safuu, the Oromo moral code and philosophy. Under the Gadaa, the Oromo were themselves a democratic confederal nation who, though they had a symbolic “head” of society, known as the Abba Muddaa, lived in distinctly and democratically governed territories across Oromia. In this time, the Oromo identified according to their clan and in relation to their moieties. The Oromo national identity and the practise of identifying the Oromo as a national unit developed in reaction to Abyssinian colonisation. The Oromo as a national identity then gained popularity throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s through popular movements and took hold through the formation of the first vanguard organization, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). But after repression, criminalization and war, the proposal to solve this situation became People Centred Pan Africanism, reviving democratic confederacy to build the future of the Oromo. Until now, the Oromo have been erased from the traditional Pan-African discourse, which rests solely on the African people’s identity being in their respective Nation States. The Oromo’s insistence to be recognised as a democratic nation rather than a province of its coloniser, Ethiopia, and their self-criticism of their previous reactionary pursuit of self-determination through a new nation state could pave the way for a revolutionary introduction of the paradigm of democratic confederalism in the region.
Between People’s Power and Liberal Democracy – Traps and Necessities in the Struggle for Liberation
The different perspectives on how to develop self-determination of nations and peoples not only show different approaches in different corners of the world, but also reveal that different struggles are confronted with the same danger of regressing into a statist or reformist perspective that cannot resolve social problems. This is why the second panel aimed to discuss the pitfalls and necessities in the struggle for liberation, taking into account the contradictions between building popular power and participating in liberal democracy. The first speech was by Potere al Popolo, a grassroots political party in Italy, that focused on their interventions in mutual aid and people’s power. The representative started with an overview of the social and political context in Italy, explaining the family as the social cell on which all welfare is based and describing the relationship between emergent social movements and new waves of populism and fascism in the political atmosphere between 2009-2011. The representative then explained Potere al Popolo’s focus on mutualism as a response to social fragmentation, with the objective of proving it is possible to organize social needs and life differently. In order to “accumulate the social power and make it become political power” PaP started in 2015 to open an “institutional space”. The elections of 2018 did not permit Potere al Popolo to enter the parliament, which precipitated self-critique that began from the fact that is impossible to imagine a revolutionary process as anything other than a transfer of legitimacy giving precedence to “socialism from below”.
Then, a representative from the Red Nacional del Comuneras gave her perspective on liberal democracy, popular power and the ways of the direct democratic communes as practiced in Venezuela. The perspective was explained very clearly: “our communes are not created in a process where they are all friends or know each other and then have the idea to create something—it is that people of all politics and backgrounds come together to create something because it is necessary. […] We have reached a point in our political work where we have decided to build a community society without a state.” This perspective of radical, autonomous, and bottom-up communalism is not without contradictions with the United Socialist Party and more generally with the state, especially now that the left is in power in the country, which nevertheless tries to impose its centralized direction on these plural experiences by, for example, establishing a ministry specifically dedicated to communes. The path is therefore still open to creative solutions, with the support of international networks and exchange of concrete experiences.
The speaker of the Sudanese Comunist Party spoke next, starting from the history of the Sudanese people’s colonization and enslavement. As the Sudanese struggled against British colonialism, the means of the national liberation movement varied and included armed resistance, tribal revolts, strikes in cities, in military and educational institutions, as well as literary, cultural and political activity which resulted in the establishment of the Graduates Club and political parties. However, the establishment of the nation state was founded on the model envisioned by the colonizer. The October Revolution of 1964 succeeded in overthrowing the government that the West, along with some regional axes, had tried to patch up, and it proved the Sudanese desire for freedom, democracy, and civil rule. The importance of the October Revolution lies in the fact that it turned into an ongoing popular battle to restore democratic civil rule in Sudan, as it was the first popular revolution in the region to overthrow military rule. Despite the conspiracy of imperialism and Arab reaction against this goal, the Sudanese, with the December 2019 revolution, raised the ceiling of their goals not only regarding democracy, but also by summarizing the strategic goal in the slogan of freedom, peace and justice. Civil rule is the people’s choice and the Revolutionary Charter for People’s Power fully affirms the necessity of radical, revolutionary change to achieve the goals of the revolution by affirming the authority of the masses to achieve justice. What distinguishes the People Power Charter is that it stems from serious and long discussions at the grassroots level with mass participation. Indeed, the document emphasises grassroots building as the necessary base for in laying the foundations of a participatory political process from the popular bases, since these communities have a real interest in achieving the goals of the revolution.
The conference also received a video message from Abahlali baseMjondolo, a socialist movement in South Africa. This movement was established in 2005 by shack dwellers who were tired of being rejected by the forces of the current system. The people of Durban in different shacks came together to discuss and form ways which they could use to fight the system back. At the time, actions were not formalized: the only way in which their voices could be heard was taking it to the street through protests or marches. Peoples power for AbM is not just about the quantity of people taking it to the streets, but about the inclusiveness of everyone regardless of their age, gender, status, or race, who wants to progressively transform society and make living conditions better. People power for AbM comes even before politics is introduced and begins with identifying the material conditions of one another in order to identify mutually beneficial resolutions. AbM has a branch council that is elected by the people, a provincial council elected by the people in the branches, as well as the national council elected by the branches. The movements believes in a bottom up system where the grassroots makes decisions and nothing is discussed without the grassroots. Hence, the movement was built by the grassroots. For them, to build people power and democracy there must be a recognition of the rights of all people and national groups to self-determination. There is a need to respect the languages and progressive traditions of all African people and their right to independent development of their culture. Their strategy proclaims a pride in being African and a recognition of the progressive elements in African nationalism and the movement of Pan African Unity. For the democratic revolution in South Africa, the people of the country are fighting for the cause of the African revolution as a whole, promoting progressivity by carrying nationalism and internationalism as our pillar. This talk was the conclusion of the first, and intensive, day of the conference.
Diverse workshops
The morning of the second day featured five workshops on different topics that aimed to deepen understandings of what is needed for a theoretical and practical renewal of system opposition. These were:
- History and Resistance: The hidden flowers of democratic modernity (Initiative Resistance and History)
- Womenʼs liberation and Democratic Socialism from the perspective of Jineolojî (Jineolojî Committee Europe)
- Transnational class struggle in the 21st century (Transnational Social Strike Platform)
- Democratic Youth Confederalism: The youth in the struggle against capitalist modernity (Youth Writing History)
- Local Democracy and More-than human governance (Vikalp Sangam, India)
Discussions ranged from problems of epistemology in the historical and social research of the democratic river that flows through human history, to the need to decolonize our view of truth and history and to overcome the patriarchal mentality of domination everywhere. The daily practices of self-governing village confederations and the struggles of indigenous workers were discussed. The topic of the origin of capital accumulation was discussed, and the validity of the analysis of the current phase of international relations as constituting a “World War III” was debated. The workshop organized by the youth brought its perspective on the need for a youth vanguard for revolutionary movements that can overcome patriarchal and gerontocratic forms of oppression and domination. In addition, there was an opportunity to discuss with a representative from Vikalp Sangam (India) an ecological perspective of the relationship between human and non-human life, focusing on how these relationships should be defined in the same democratic manner in which we want to organize our communities. In so doing, we can overcome the alienation of nature that characterizes the dominant cosmovision and forms the basis of our alienation from nature in capitalist modernity.
Building Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan – Experience and Reflections
A panel on building democratic autonomy in northern Kurdistan was held in the afternoon of the second day. The Kurdish speakers described in detail how communes, councils, academies and co-operatives were set up in northern Kurdistan and how an alternative social system was established. Today, the state has destroyed much of the process of building communes, autonomous institutions and cooperatives in northern Kurdistan. In particular, the state used the tool of commissariat. On the one hand, HDP-elected representatives were deposed and imprisoned, and on the other hand, they were replaced by state officials.
The Idea of Socialism: Towards a Renewal
The final day of the conference sought to outline theoretical and organizational perspectives for resistance and revolution in the 21st century. Therefore, following the slogan of the Free Women’s Movement of Kurdistan, “the 21st century will be the century of women’s revolution”, the first panel opened with a talk by a fellow member of the Women Weaving the Future network.
They argued that “overcoming the class society, overcoming the society based on wars, overcoming the colonialism and imperialism which are the source of this, overcoming the economic-cultural backwardness and widespread exploitation are the goals of the women’s revolution”. The past decade has been marked by huge women’s movements around the world, from Argentina to India, Kurdistan to Sudan, the transnational strike to women’s resistance in Afghanistan, and the worldwide spread of the “Jin, Jiyan Azadi” philosophy. All these examples of struggle give us the figure of the century we are living in and the perspectives we must follow, strengthening internationalist ties among women’s organizations, fighting against the mentality of domination, against hierarchies but also against fragmentation and isolation. The perspective of global women’s confederalism is the horizon on which to inscribe all the different forms of struggle and organizing that can find their unity in a rainbow of differences. “If there are deficiencies or mistakes, practicality itself imposes and brings its answers. What we are doing here is not only posing the problem in its broadest outlines but also striving to approach the fundamental solutions and tools”, said the friend, citing Öcalan. Assuming this perspective, women’s liberation is one of the pillars of the Kurdistan liberation movement’s new understanding of democratic socialism.
The Academy of Democratic Modernity has thus outlined more specifically what the movement’s understanding of socialism is. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leader of the Kurdish liberation struggle Abdullah Öcalan declared that “to insist on socialism means to insist on being human”. One of the most important criticisms of real socialism is its inability to adequately define capitalist modernity and to develop its own modernity as an alternative to it. Öcalan declared that real socialism’s analysis of capitalism was too narrow and one-sided. He stated that real socialism analysed the dimension of exploitation of capitalism only as the law of maximum profit. This revealed an important dimension of capitalist modernity. Democratic Modernity on the other hand is the modernity of democratic socialism. Capitalism and socialism remain abstract definitions and cannot materialise if they are not considered in the context of modernity. In other words, the area in which the democratic-socialist ideology takes shape is democratic modernity with its three dimensions of radical democracy, liberation of women, and ecology. So, when we speak of democratic modernity, we are not using this term in place of democratic socialism. Democratic modernity and democratic socialism are intertwined. Democratic socialism is filled with life through democratic modernity and becomes a practice through it. Democratic modernity enables the realisation of democratic socialism. In this framework, if we see revolution not as a spontaneous event, but as a change in mentality and material conditions—brought about by a conscious and organised force working in all circumstances—then all societies, all oppressed groups, especially women, young people, and workers need revolutionary organisation.
The Question of Bottom-up Organization and Internationalism
In the last panel “The question of bottom-up organization and internationalism” based on experiences from India, Colombia, Philippines and Kurdistan were shared. The representative from the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) explained that armed resistance is ongoing, in spite of 300 years of colonisation and brutal repression of revolutionary movements. Nevertheless, a considerable percentage of villages currently have organised committees, which aim to build alliances between workers and peasants. In the words of the representative: “It is a democratic revolution principally because it seeks to fulfill the peasant struggle for land against domestic feudalism and furthermore it seeks to uphold the democratic rights of the broad masses of the people against fascism.” He also emphasised the international dimension of the struggle for freedom in the Philippines with the words: “Providing support to the struggles of other peoples against imperialism is also fulfilling our internationalist duty (…). Amidst today’s crisis of imperialism and imperialist wars of aggression, I think it is imperative that a common understanding of who are our enemies and who are our friends, should be forged among revolutionaries and anti-Imperialist forces. This will serve as basis for unified action against imperialism.”
Congreso de los Pueblos shared that in Abya Yala there are 5.7 million indigenous people, belonging to 800 native peoples, as well as Afro-descendant peoples. The politics of the nation-state homogenizes societies and leads a permanent struggle against this pluri-ethnic and pluricultural society. This is why it is important to embrace and understand the cosmogonies of the communities and their forms of self-production, organization and protection. People power is based on the idea that the working class and grassroots sectors should organize and mobilize to transform society and build a more just and equitable system. Their practices aim to build self-organized economies (for example cooperatives), digital sovereignty, alternative communication networks (mainly radio), artistic and cultural networks, and political education (popular universities). The peasant-self-government territory strategy includes the constitution of unarmed guards composed of delegates from the local associations. Among other things, the speaker talked about the concept of “Poder popular”, which she defined with the following words: “At the end of the last century, some sectors of the left moved from the notion of taking power to the idea of construction of popular power. People power in the Latin American left is a central concept that refers to the active and direct participation of the people in political and social decision-making. This concept has been promoted mainly by Marxism, an ideological trend influencing several revolutionary movements in Latin America. Far from a closed-frame ideology, it’s more an open concept for movements referring to their revolutionary strategy.” The importance of dialogue between different concepts was also discussed. Even if there are different approaches, it was pointed out to focus on the commonalities in order to develop an international struggle for freedom: “Democratic confederalism and people power do not share a common analysis of the state but share common practices. They both try to open space for self-government for society to collectively take back its capacity to respond to its own needs. Beyond differences, a dialogue of practices can strengthen the global struggle toward freedom.”
The delegates from South Africa and India presented the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. This is not an organization but a process of weaving together decentralised movements. Its aims are creating spaces of collaboration, learning and exchange, giving visibility to alternatives and offering solidarity. It is endorsed by more than 75 networks, movements and organizations. “We need to both resist the current capitalist, patriarchal, racist system as well as (re)create real utopias and transformative alternatives”, the GTA representative remarked. It was also discussed in more detail what is meant by the term “alternative”. On the one hand, alternatives are those that challenge the currently dominant structures and relations of oppression and unsustainability (such as patriarchy, capitalism, anthropocentrism, racism and casteism). And on the other hand, paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. As a necessary basis for internationalism, the importance of values and ethics of transformative alternatives were pointed out. The aim of this process must be to synthesise narratives on radical alternatives, complementing but also constructively challenging each other and creating pluriversal thinking and organic growth with deep respect for the diversity of ways of knowing, being and doing. The GTA representatives explained in this context: “There is great possibility and hope around the world. People are resisting and creating at the same time.”
Conclusion
In conclusion, during the conference we learned (once again) that the struggle for freedom is worldwide and has many different faces: in Kurdistan, this is the building of democratic autonomy and the democratic nation; in other parts of the world there are other approaches, such as the concept of “national construction” in the Basque Country, “poder popular” in parts of Latin America or other approaches to radical democracy worldwide. If we realise that the crisis has a global, systemic and structural character, the way out also requires global, systemic and structural interventions. The conference, “The Art of Freedom”, was a step forward in building solidarity relationships and alliances based on social freedom, equality and democracy, overcoming local and temporal limitations. All together we look forward to fulfil the political, intellectual and moral tasks which are necessary to wage today’s struggle for freedom.
The conference has created an important collective space to identify common challenges, find answers, ask questions and facilitate an intellectual exchange on practice and concepts between different movements. The task now is to consolidate and expand this space. During these three days, the voices of social struggles for freedom were amplified and it became clear that a different world is not only possible – given the global situation, it is also urgently necessary.
As the Academy of Democratic Modernity, we look forward to publishing the conference contributions in an anthology next year.
