🔴 Abdullah Öcalan’s May Day message from 2014: Either society or a void.#MayDay2023 | #Ocalan https://t.co/BX3LfraaT0 https://t.co/MHHwcRiPWh pic.twitter.com/ztQGuk7dQP
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“It is essential for social liberation that the moral and political struggle be conducted together with a battle for knowledge, said the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan on May Day in 2014.
On 1 May 2014, when negotiations between Turkey and the PKK to end the Kurdish conflict were still ongoing, Öcalan’s message from İmrali island prison was read out in four languages – Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic and English – at a May Day rally in the southeastern Kurdish-majority province of Diyarbakır (Amed).
The message, which includes his assessment of the working class struggle against capitalism during its dominant period, is still relevant as the attacks of today, as Öcalan points out, are directed against the whole of society, its history, its ecology and its future.
Below is the PKK leader’s May Day message written on 25 April 2014.
Although there is now an unprecedented need for socialism, the lack of a socialist ideology and practice is an expression of the crisis of socialism at least as much as of a crisis of capitalism. The crisis of socialism is not based on objective causes, but on subjective factors, a lack of a consistent awareness and organisation. Undoubtedly the ideological hegemony of capitalism is the most significant external factor, but the determining factor is the absence of socialist ideology and practice and the prevalence of an eclectic approach and practice. In the era of the hegemony of finance capital the assault is not only on labour, but on the entire society, its history, ecology and future. It has reached the stage of either socialism or barbarism, either society or a void.
Capitalism, which came into being like a gnawing rodent in the cavities of history, is a cancer that has affected the whole social structure. The monopoly of knowledge has played a leading role in this. Consequently, it is essential for social liberation that the moral and political struggle be conducted together with a battle for knowledge. We must therefore respond to the tripod on which the system is based, monopoly capital, industrialism and the nation-state, with socialism based on a communal economy, ecological industry and the democratic nation. In other words, we must be an alternative with democratic modernity opposed to capitalist modernity. The mixed order of actually-existing socialism, social democracy and national liberation, was defeated as its efforts did not go beyond economic development opposed to capitalist modernity. They transformed capitalism into a ferocious monster. The path to liberation is democratic modernity based on the democratic nation, ecological industry and a communal economy.
The Middle Eastern region is the weakest link in the present hegemonic system. Kurdistan is at the centre of this region, where a kind of third-world war is being experienced. The freedom movement is in the vanguard of the struggle of all peoples, nations and communities against this hegemony. Workers and the unemployed are in a position to provide the leadership to this struggle with their ideology and practice. They must draw lessons from the past, take possession of the history of the peoples of the region, and play a leading role, first and foremost amongst the peasantry and in the workers’ districts. While the PKK defines its historical mission thus, it expresses its internationalist solidarity with all toiling people, first and foremost the working class of Turkey, and the peoples of the region, fulfilling this in its practice.
Long Live the Solidarity of the Working Class and all Peoples!
Down with Capitalist Hegemony!Abdullah Öcalan
İmralı F Type Prison
25 April 2014
