Socialism: a Look to the Past to build our Future
- 15 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Matteo Garemi
The idea and practice of socialism today are under attack on all fronts. Discussing and learning the history of socialism is difficult. On the one hand, the liberal cultural hegemony seeks to prevent us from doing this, it portrays socialists as monsters and hides or directly attacks and removes socialist ideas and practices from public spaces. On the other hand, there is the official history of real socialism, which with great absence of self-criticism always looks to place the blame for its failings and mistakes outside itself.
“If we cannot correctly interpret the past, we cannot make sense of the present, and without making sense of the present we cannot understand the future.” 1
Understanding the context, the ideas that pushed socialism forward, without falling into the tendencies described above, is important for our present and our future.
What are the ideas and the experiences that gave birth to the organized socialist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries? What were the main contradictions that brought to divisions and splits inside this movement? What eventually brought the failure of the internationalist expressions of socialism?
When we talk about socialism we talk about the heritage of historical society and its resistance to attacks. This heritage is the expression of the life and struggle of the vast majority of human beings in history: from the first society, formed around women as a means of self-defense and survival which defined the ability of the human being to create, up to the expressions of this way of living in the last thousands of years in the women, youth, cultural, workers’ struggles. Socialism is not a concept of the last 200 years, but it flows throughout the whole history of humanity.
The National Revolutions
The year 1848 plays a pivotal role in the transformation of what were called the “old regimes”. It was a process challenged the power of the monarchies in favour of the masses of the people. Uprisings supported by wide parts of society took place in many areas around Europe on the wave of national consciousness, and led to various extents the adoption of constitutions that regulated political participation in monarchies at the time. These uprisings took the name of Springtime of the Peoples.
Even if Marx and Engels would later describe these revolutions as bourgeois revolutions, and Marxists would later see them as necessary steps for the establishment of socialism, there was a big hope that was present in these movements, it saw the rising of many organizations and revolts. It is no coincidence that it was in this time, in 1847, that the establishment of the Communist League took place, and that in February 1848 the Manifesto of the Communist Party was published. At the time the answer that was widely given to the question of why these revolutions failed was related to the organization and consciousness of oppressed people.
The Communist League, Marx and Engels
The Communist League was founded in London in 1847. The League was based on a clear principle of intention: it was the representation of the proletariat’s struggle for liberation. A class that did not always exist, but was the result of the industrial revolution of the 18th century. The League was soon infiltrated and put on trial in Cologne, and as a result it was dissolved. However, the Communist Manifesto would be a decisive text for the centuries to come, and several members of the League, including Marx and Engels, would continue to work and expand on the basis of the objectives defined in the Manifesto.
Marx focused on the study of the new English “political economy” in order to develop a critique of it, which took the form of his famous work “Capital.” Öcalan criticizes Marx and Marxism for excessive economic reductionism. It is because of the excessive and almost exclusive focus on the functioning of economical exploitation that a wider picture of the social and political problems could not be reached in analysis. This afterwards led, through interpretations of Marx’s work, to a practice of socialism that was based upon the nation-state and industrialism, which within Öcalan’s analysis are two of the pillars of capitalist modernity and cannot be the basis of socialism.
The Discussions in the Internationals
The First International, founded in 1864, was a union of movements, organizations and thinkers that were focused around the question of labor. In the internal discussions of the First International, the question of the nation-state was central. The topic of this contradiction, which started as a discussion on steps to be taken in the struggle, revolved around two different approaches. The “class against class” approach, predominantly proposed by communists, consisted of a view of history as the struggle between classes, and saw the path to socialism as the liberation of the proletariat, the oppressed class, through the conquest of power and the seizing of the means of production (primarily the factories) from the hands of the bourgeoisie, the oppressive class. The counter side of the debate was the “state against oppressed peoples” approach, supported by anarchists. This saw the path to socialism as the autonomous organization of the oppressed peoples with the refusal of and abolition of power and the state which exist only as oppressive structures.
The Second International was founded in 1889 as a coordination of organizations to develop at least coordinated strategies and tactics and common policies. It was ideologically dominated by Marxism, although with some internal differences that led to conflicts. One of the main conflicts was between Marxists and Possibilists, who pushed for a line of progressive reform of the state towards socialism, instead of the conquest of the state through revolution, as proposed by the Marxists.
The Second International dissolved with the outbreak of World War I. Although the International was an organization with the goal of overcoming the boundaries of nation states, it was also composed of national parties that based themselves on these boundaries.
Despite attempts to build an anti-war movement, with important contributions of analysis on imperialism, the climate of growing confrontation in Europe at that stage also divided the International. Sections were formed in support of the Entente (Britain, France and Russia), sections in support of the Alliance (Germany and Austria-Hungary). These depended on the position of the nation-state in question and based on the logic of “first we win the war, then we build socialism.” Some forces within the International, on the other hand, formed the Zimmerwald movement, continuing the attempts made in previous years to build a broader movement against the war. Once again, the reason behind the dissolution of the Second International is the fact that the organizations taking part to the International were ultimately structured on and heavily influenced by nation-statist values, and the issue was not addressed until it was too late.
Notable in this phase is the fact that the womens organization founded within the framework of the Second International, the “Women’s International Council of Socialist and Labour Organizations”, did not dissolve and continued to meet even during World War I, showing a different approach and a more radical foundation in the socialist women than in the general structure, and affirming the collective role of the leadership of women in the struggle.
From the soviets to the International Revolution
The experience of the Zimmerwald movement also signed the clear breaking point between Revolutionary Socialists, led by the Bolsheviks, and Reformist Socialists. It was through this contradiction, in the wake of the October Revolution and Lenin’s April Theses, that the Third International, the Comintern, was formed in 1919. The Bolsheviks developed an international perspective in the first place to break the isolation on the Soviet revolution.
In the first phase, until Lenin’s death, the goal was to bring the October Revolution to Europe, with various failed attempts, strengthening the line against socialist reformist parties. In these years different communist parties were formed in Europe from socialist party splits, for example in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium.
After the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin taking power meant the adoption of the “socialism in one country” theory. On this line the Communist Parties became the expression of the Soviet Union in different countries and concretelt tied to it, leading to a crisis as the steady disintegration of the Soviet Union took place. The Comintern was dissolved in 1943 as a compromise took place between Stalin and the Allies in Second World War: if it had not been clear before, through this act the pursuit of an international revolution was definitively abandoned. The issue of centralization, again related to state mentality, is fundamental to understand the failure of the Third International.
The fall of the Soviet Union, as well as the limited outcomes of different socialist experiences, are not due to external factors or to the historical events out of their control. The Real Socialist experience showed that anyone who wants to insist on socialism today must approach the nation-state and industrialism issues in the right way. If not, any struggle made in the name of socialism will result in an homogeneous dogmatic regime of control over society, far away from its original values. It will inevitably reproduce what it had wanted to struggle against.
Beyond the Soviet Union
The history of socialism in the 20th century was not only determined by the experiences of the Soviet Union. Many movements attempted to build a socialist perspective that would overcome problems and oppressive approaches seen in the Soviet experiences.
In the whole world new horizons were opened, like the ones opened by the resistance in Vietnam, by Che Guevara in Abya Yala or by Amílcar Cabral in Africa. On the basis of socialism the resistance against colonizers in colonized countries took a new and organized form, new attempts at national liberation movements were made. This was also true for liberation movements of different “nations”, like the black liberation movement or the womens liberation movement.
The heritage of these struggles exploded in the 1968 Youth Cultural Revolution. In the whole world, in front of the violence of the colonial, patriarchal and statist system, the youth rose up through occupations, demonstrations and new organizations. 1968 in its essence was youth, women, workers and oppressed peoples taking initiative.
The 1968 movement has represented a spark that gave life to new fires: from the Feminist and Women Freedom Movements, to the ecological movements, through the anti-war movements, a new lifeblood flowed to society.
With the Palestinian camps in Southern Lebanon as an international center, on the spirit of this Youth Revolution new movements were built. These movements struggled with divisions between them and wider society, as well as between themselves on a global level, questions such as leadership and a common strategy were left unanswered
This led in some cases to the loss of a common consciousness between expressions of socialism worldwide. In other cases it led to to dynamic attempts to overcome the theoretical and practical obstacles and continue insist on socialism. One example of this is the Zapatista movement, that since the uprising in Chiapas in 1994 has been struggling to establish free self-governed territories on the basis of communal life.
Another example of this is the Kurdistan Freedom Movement, born as a marxist-leninist national liberation movement on the wave of the 1968 Youth Revolution, it developed into the main driving force for socialism in the Middle East and the world. The Rojava Revolution and the experiences of the self-administration of North-East Syria show an example of free communal life for every society in the world.
Perspectives for the Present
Today, democratic and social forces are divided, connected by subtle and temporary, tactical ties, without a common basis or consciousness. The division is so deep that it is being passed down from generation to generation, without political discussions between different movements and contexts. Every generation we feel like we are starting from scratch.
At a time like this, the process initiated by the Call for Peace and Democratic Society, made on the 27th of February 2025 by Abdullah Öcalan, shows us a way out, an alternative. It demonstrates the ability to analyze the past in order to understand the present and build the future. It is a response to the historical problems of society and socialism, offering a different perspective on the question of the nation-state and industrialism, proposing a solution through the Commune and the Eco-Economy. It is an opening and a call to all democratic and social forces in the world to overcome the divisions imposed by power and organize democratic society.
“To insist on humanity means to insist on socialism.”
Abdullah Öcalan
Because the essence of the human being is social, the strength of each individual is in society, and the strength of society is in the participation of each individual. We need to overcome divisions, to become part of a humanity that awakens its will for communal life and therefore puts it into practice, of a society that is able to think, act and create autonomously. We need this today like we need water and the sun, to continue life and build it together. By recognizing this need for a Democratic Nation, in our history and practices, by choosing to be part of it and by consciously acting on this basis we can find paths to freedom.
Insisting on socialism does not mean dogmatically pursuing a doctrine or living in the debates of the past. It means taking on the historical responsibility that millions of people, giving their lives in the pursuit of freedom, have left us today. It means giving life back to these experiences, understanding them as alive in our struggles, today, as soil from which we grow. And it means being able to create on this basis, to change and transform ourselves, our view of the world, and reality, never getting stuck but always finding ways to overcome problems.
Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Freedom Movement are taking on this responsibility. The intellectual responsibility of bringing to light solutions to the problems of society. The moral responsibility of rebuilding social relations. The political responsibility of making collective decisions for the construction of a free life.
This process is an open call to dialogue, to build new relations on the basis of our common historical heritage and our current stances. It is a proposal for uniting struggles and lives. To get into dialogue with this proposal, to do it by adding experiences, knowledge and effort, makes hope and life flow to our societies!
[1] From Abdullah Öcalan’s perspective for the 12th PKK Congress