American anthropologist and political activist David Graeben, son of a Spanish Civil War Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran, writes about the plight of the left-wing revolutionary Kurds battling Isis. In 1937, my father volunteered to fight in the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. A would-be fascist coup had been temporarily halted by a worker’s uprising, spearheaded by anarchists and socialists, and in much of Spain a genuine social revolution ensued, leading to whole cities under directly democratic management, industries under worker control, and the radical empowerment of women. ... The Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) has declared that it no longer even seeks to create a Kurdish state. Instead, inspired in part by the vision of social ecologist and anarchist Murray Bookchin, it has adopted the vision of “libertarian municipalism”, calling for Kurds to create free, self-governing communities, based on principles of direct democracy, that would then come together across national borders – that it is hoped would over time become increasingly meaningless. In this way, they proposed, the Kurdish struggle could become a model for a wordwide movement towards genuine democracy, co-operative economy, and the gradual dissolution of the bureaucratic nation-state. Author Graeber is an active member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union and was a influential founding figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:19:16 +0000
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