The key to democratic socialism is women’s freedom

Internationalist Young Women Perspective - Autumn 2025

@dwa.artist, Madagascar

To all the young women all over the world

We start this perspective by commemorating the great effort that many women throughout our history gave in order for us to live and continue the struggle for women’s liberation, freedom and social justice. The women who became martyrs in the struggle for women’s liberation dedicated their life to the socialist cause, to the building of a free and equal society for us all. We dedicate this perspective on socialism to them.

First of all, this month marks the beginning of the international conspiracy against Abdullah Öcalan. On the 9th of October, twenty-seven years ago, Öcalan, under enormous political pressure, was forced to leave Syria and traveled to Europe in order to avoid a military conflict in the region and protect the Kurdish Freedom Movement. In this way he began his long journey across Greece, Italy and Russia searching for a political alliance within the international community. At the end on the 15th of February 1999 he was captured by the secret services of Israel and USA in Kenya and was brought in isolation onto the prison island of Imrali in Turkey. This attack, in which all the imperialist powers took part, especially aimed the defeat of the resistance of the people of Middle East against imperialism and the destruction of the struggle for a new world system based on the paradigm of women’s liberation, social ecology and democracy. Since that moment until now Israel, the United States of America, Turkey, Britain and all the other members of the NATO, have continued their brutal attempts to stop the resistance of the Kurdish people and of all the other peoples that live in the region. Especially now with the genocide in Palestine, the attacks against Lebanon, the war in Iran and the violent conflict and crisis in Syria and in Kurdistan, we bring again the attention to Abdullah Öcalan and on the necessity of his physical liberation in order to stop the war and bring a political solution in Middle East.

We address this perspective to you.

It might be that while you read this perspective you are in the car listening to music, and every song is talking about women as a trophy or property, as an object to own with money and weapons, or maybe they refer to us just as sexual desires meant to fill up the deep void that the system creates in human beings. Or maybe you are walking on the street going to meet some friends or going to school and in every corner there is an advertisement with a woman, most of the time half naked, pictured together with some material for cleaning the house, food, cars or any kind of goods that can be sold in the market. Or let’s say that you are going back home after a nice night together with your friends and in every step you take you hope to not find any man on the way, so that you won’t have to change the side of the street and walk faster, or take the house keys in your hand ready to use them to defend yourself and hold your breath until he is gone. Or maybe while you read this perspective you are not in any of these situations, but you know that you will go through them tomorrow, because this is the reality in which we as women are forced to live in everyday by the sexist capitalist system. So, we address this perspective to you, whether you are at work, at school or university, or neither of these. Perhaps you are starting a new year of study, maybe economics or art, social sciences or physics. Or, on the other hand, you might have had no other choice than to work. Maybe as a waitress in a restaurant, or as a care worker, or in the logistic sector of some company that gives no job security and leaves you in precarious and uncertain conditions. Not to mention the salary, that if you are lucky enough will get you at the end of the month and either way always leaves you knowing your time and effort was worth more. Whether you live in a family that expects you to have a man by your side and wants to convince you that you just have to wait for the right one, that expects you to make an effort to love a man, to change who you are for a man. Whatever your situation is, we address this perspective to all of you; to all the young women that are resisting and fighting, in many different ways, for the liberation of us all. At this point in your life, you may ask yourself, “Who will I become?” or perhaps more importantly, “What will I do?”. We want to try to give an answer to these questions in the next few lines.

About democratic socialism.

We as young women find ourselves in a dramatic situation. In front of the systemic attacks that we receive everyday, for us the solution can be nothing less than the construction of a new world system that radically rejects sexist rules and focuses on the freedom of the whole society based on woman’s freedom. We call this system a socialist system. When we refer to socialism here we don’t refer to a system of domination or to an impossible utopian future; these has nothing to do with the reality of democratic socialism developed by Abdullah Öcalan. Democratic socialism is not a construct imposed on society from above, nor is it a concept alienated from the social nature of human beings. It is a concrete way of life based on freedom, communality, and diversity. It stands in contrast to capitalism, which is based on exploitation and violence, and also to liberalism, which focuses on individual and false freedom. In the socialist understanding, both the individual and the collective play a role in the society and are in organic balance with each other. Democratic socialism is of central importance, especially for us as young women, because it is interwoven within our history and is part of our identities.

How did we get to today?

In the mid-19th century, the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels led to the development of a new form of socialism called scientific socialism. They understood the reality of society in the present and in history in terms of the struggle between classes with opposing interests, namely the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the working class and the owning class. Their analysis and their proposals focused on the material situation of society, in particular the relations of production. These insights were groundbreaking and led to historically significant steps. But the solution based on Marx’s ideas only scratched the surface and was never able to really solve the fundamental social contradiction. In fact, the oppression of women was neither destroyed nor resolved in real socialism. Yes, under socialist experiments around the world the situation of women improved, abortion rights were introduced, but even the Russian revolutionaries themselves were aware of the problem: it was the case that relations between men and women were so sexist that they even undermined class consciousness. At that time, class consciousness was seen as the basis for the common struggle; history has shown to us that this does not touch the root of the problem.

As Alexandra Kollontai analyzed herself: “The interests of the working class demand that new, comradely, and equal relationships be established between members of the working class, male and female workers. [For example] Prostitution prevents this. A man who has bought a woman’s affection can never see her as a ‘comrade’. It follows that prostitution destroys the development and growth of solidarity among members of the working class, and therefore the new communist morality can only condemn prostitution.”[1]

Alexandra Kollontai, Clara Zetkin and Rosa Luxemburg, took important steps. They came closer to the truth of socialism. Beyond the contradiction of classes, they understood the relationship between genders as the main problem. In doing so, they always encountered resistance from the dominant male mentality. Before the October Revolution in Russia, women were seen as appendages to men, not as revolutionary personalities, even though they were the driving force of the society. For example, the strike waged by women demanding for bread on International Women’s Day in 1917 in Saint Petersburg was ultimately the starting point of the October Revolution, and it was women who became the driving force of the Russian Revolution.

The Feminist Movements of the 1960s and 1970s also made significant steps on the topic. Already at that time they were able to spread in the society the idea that “the personal is political”. Everything we experience, every injustice, every oppression and violence is not just something individual, or occasional, but the same injustice is experienced by thousands of young women every day.

How do we build democratic socialism?

Abdullah Öcalan writes in his letter for the 8th of March 2025:

“Unless the rape culture is overcome, social reality cannot be revealed in the fields of philosophy, science, aesthetics, ethics and religion. As Marxism proves, the achievement of socialism will not be possible unless the new era destroys the male-dominated culture deeply embedded in society. Socialism can be achieved through women’s liberation. One cannot be a socialist without women’s freedom. There can be no socialism. One cannot go for socialism without democracy.”[2]

The understandings that Öcalan has reached today prove what many revolutionary women tried to explain in the past centuries. The social problem that Alexandra Kollontai brought to light a century ago in relation to prostitution has today reached all levels and fields of society in the most brutal form. It is especially in the era of digital media and financial capitalism that the young women are hyper-aestheticised and hyper-sexualized the most. We are constantly led to conform to or respond to aesthetic and social norms that are based on sexism and rape culture. For this reason the first step to building democratic socialism is to build in ourselves a strong socialist personality that is able to create around itself an organized society through the building of communes, cooperatives, councils and any other form of autonomous organization that firmly reject sexism. Insisting on the moral values of humanity is at the same time creating a democratic and socialist culture and as young women, we carry these values particularly strongly within us. These principles though, do not only apply to us women, in fact, they are also of fundamental importance for men. As Öcalan says “A man can only call himself a socialist if he is able to live properly with women.”[3]

Commune is society, and sociability is socialism.

We have mentioned the commune as a form of organization of the society, but it is not just this; it plays a central role in the building of democratic socialism. In the early 1800s archaeological researches made new discoveries about the origin of democratic societies and systems. At that time Marx and Engels were not yet able to take these discoveries into account in their theories about socialism and communism. They themselves recognized this. It was only later that the insights gained from the Paris Commune of 1871 and archaeological research shedding light on communal life at the time of natural society made it clear to humanity that the commune is a central guideline for understanding democratic history. Towards the end of his life, Marx also understood this. The commune is the most natural and fundamental form of organization of the democratic socialist society. It can exist as a youth commune, or even a children commune, a women neighborhood commune or a student commune. Inside of the commune, each part of the society can become political and so develop the ability to organize autonomously, make decisions and develop a system of life based on the necessities of each group or community. Also, it can develop the capacity to defend itself from physical, psychological, economical and any kind of attacks that are waged by the state and the system.

Now it comes to us, what can we do?

Also for us young women the commune is the first structure in which we can organize ourselves. That is, in which we can become ourselves, discover our identity, build sisterhood, support each other, create the fundamentals for a democratic socialist system and most importantly, defend ourselves. If we want to become socialists and build up the way out of the world crisis, we have to think ourselves as a unity, as a commune; that means, we have to see ourselves as one. When a woman does not believe in herself, or does not see herself has valuable, it is also our responsibility to build this trust together with her. When a woman struggles with the question of whether she has enough strength or courage to be a revolutionary, we have to see ourselves in that question and together overcome any fear or obstacle. When a woman is harassed by a man on the street, or faces domestic violence in the family or in her workplace, we must feel this violence as it was against our own self. Now we know that when they attack one of us, they attack the identity of the woman as a whole and so they attack all of us. And so, the next time that we will hear a sexist song on the radio or we will see an advertisement on the street that portrays us as an object to sell on the market, we can find in ourselves and in our sisters the strength to reject this culture, reject this system; change the radio station, destroy that advertisement and organize together with other young women our own system, our own self defense.

“The revolutionary must move among the masses like a fish in water.”

Mao Ze-Dong

The world is changing, the youth is rising up everywhere and we are not alone anymore, there is a whole organization of women that has our backs and is ready to fight side by side with us for the building of a free society based on democratic socialism.

The next time that we ask “Who will I become?” we have all the tools that are necessary to give the right answer to ourselves. As Fred Hampton, revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party, once said: “if you are scared of socialism then you are scared of yourself”.

[1] Alexandra Kollontai, Letter to the Working Youth, 1922.

[2] Abdullah Öcalan, Letter on March 8, 2025.

[3] Abdullah Öcalan, Letter to the Jineolojî Academy.