Women, Commune and the New Socialism

Abdullah Öcalan

Spring 2025

The following text is a compilation of excerpts from Abdullah Öcalan’s perspectives written for the 12th PKK Congress, held from 5 to 7 May 2025 in the free mountains of Kurdistan. These perspectives represent the introduction to the ‘Manifesto for a Democratic Society’, which will soon be shared publicly and which develops in depth the topics opened here.

Statue of Innana

The woman gathers plants, the man hunts — he kills living beings. War is the killing of living beings. Killing animals is murder. The woman building social life around plant seeds is a completely different matter. The man strengthening himself by killing is a completely different matter. I will elaborate on this further. One turned into today’s massacre-driven society; the other is still trying to hold society together. Therefore, the culture of keeping society alive is based on a sociology that develops around women. A society centred on war — that is, on plunder — is a male-dominated society. His business is surplus value. Marx ties this to class formation, but that’s not even necessary. Once the possibility of surplus value begins to emerge around the woman a plant-based society and a nutritional increase arises, the man sets his sights on it. He hunts animals, yes, but then he also seizes the food the woman gathers. He takes the food and also takes the woman. That’s how the story begins. He kills two birds with one stone.

Yes, the woman has built society, has established the home. The woman feeds her offspring. There is a women’s clan, a women’s society. She has reached the status of goddess and governed humanity for 30,000 years. Then the hunter-man creates a special group, a kind of club of male brotherhood. A hunting group is formed; they kill animals first, and if successful, hold a feast. But then he sees that women are planting wheat, barley, lentils — and by establishing villages, is developing the society we call the Neolithic. She builds homes. She does, because she feeds and protects the offspring, has sisters as aunts and brothers as uncles. There are children — this is a clan. But she is producing, inventing. Inanna says to Enki: “You’ve stolen hundreds of Me.” That means there are hundreds of creative arts institutions — and she says, “I was the creator of these, and now you’re claiming ownership.” She says in the epic: “You say you created them, but you’re lying.” “I created them, you’re seizing them.” That’s the mythological expression. I said this in my own style and developed it further. That’s how I analysed the Epic of Gilgamesh. And when it comes to the core problem: the man, relying on this hunter’s club, attacks this female-centred society. That is where the problem begins. Is it true? Yes, it is true. We see it — starting with Riha (tr. Urfa), it’s widespread. Through the institution of marriage, the powerful man kills every day.

The next phase is that of property. Let us not forget — confinement in the home is a dangerous ideology. A profound issue. As I’ve said before, this is where social problems truly begin. This is the root of the emergence of class, the state. And it is the man who orchestrates all of this. Man leads the aristocratic revolution, the bourgeois revolution — but all revolve around the enslavement of women. Once the state is established, there remains no power capable of restraining man. The state expresses limitless male power. Man is marked by it.

If you lose your freedom of thought, you inevitably perish. Therefore, our new emergence — new socialism, new Kurdish identity, new Kurdish freedom — develops on this basis. It is a strong critique of civilisation, modernity, and female slavery, and it’s showing great progress in us. We can overcome the problem on an individual level, and progress collectively as well. For me, this is our greatest contribution to socialism. I said these things as an introduction under the topic of ‘women’s sociality and issues.

THE DICHOTOMY OF STATE AND COMMUNE IN HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Historical materialism should replace the concept of class struggle with the concept of the ‘commune’. Isn’t this not only a realistic approach but also the healthiest path to socialism within sociology, through freedom of thought and action? Instead of defining historical materialism and socialism based on class conflict, I believe it is more accurate to base them on the dilemma between state and commune. I find it more appropriate to revisit Marxism and implement it through this concept. In other words, history is not a history of class warfare but a conflict between state and commune. Marxism’s theory of conflict based on class division is the main reason for the collapse of real socialism. It doesn’t even require criticism. The main cause lies in its attempt to build sociology based on this class division. So, what does the dilemma between state and commune mean as a replacement for this division? It is a very valuable observation—well known, yet not systematised. What I am doing here is a systematic analysis. I want to resolve historical materialism within this conceptual framework. Furthermore, I aim to ground contemporary socialism not in a dictatorship of the proletariat but in a concept set that organises the relationship between state and communality. I have a strong impression this will yield very constructive and striking results.

I base this on the idea that society is essentially a communal phenomenon. Earlier, I defined the clan, which is a form of sociality. Sociality means commune. Primitive commune means clan. Specifically, regarding the term commune, as far as we understand, it is necessary to analyse the cultural rise in the Mesopotamian region and the origins of Sumerian society—that is, the foundations on which the state, city, property, and class emerged.

Putting the state first is accurate, but so is the commune. Where then is sociality? Society is the foundation. Because until around 4000 BCE, the dominant form of social development was the clan. You might also call it an aşîret[1] or tribe. An aşîret is actually a union of communes. The tribe is a commune. The family had not yet fully formed.

The tribe’s leader generates the state, and tribe members whose interests are harmed form the commune. This is actually the truth. It is very simple. I haven’t made a great discovery here. Marx calls this a scientific discovery, but that’s just storytelling. The formation and development of the working class did not create wonders or great science; it is a simple matter. The tribe’s oppressor becomes the state, the clan chief or whoever the leader is becomes the ruler, and ordinary members continue as commune and later as family. Those at the top become the state dynasty. Those below remain the oppressed tribe—and when there is a state, there is an oppressed tribe. That is how division begins. Marxism’s claim that the proletariat came into being this way or developed that way feels a bit forced to me.

Capitalism emerged as a form of exploitation along with its hegemony, which became dominant worldwide. Its roots go back to Sumerian society. This is a story of state formation—the slave state, the feudal state, the capitalist state. But we shouldn’t really interpret it in such a straightforward way. The important question is: where is the commune?

Towards the end of his life, Marx focused on the Paris Commune, where many people he knew died—some 17,000 communards are said to have been killed. In their memory, he produced an evaluation of the Paris Commune. He abandoned Capital because his predictions had suffered a severe blow. In my view, he experienced an internal break and turned his attention to the idea of the commune. He used the term commune more than class. Kropotkin criticises Lenin with the argument ‘Don’t destroy the Soviets’—the Soviets are essentially communes. But Lenin preferred the state, and with the NEP programme, Stalin took things to terrifying extremes.

Ultimately, my view is that this distinction was indeed valid historically: historical materialism is not a history of class war—or rather, not quite a war—but a history of the dilemma between commune and state. All history amounts to this, especially written history. It was laid down in Sumer, and now we are experiencing its peak in the West.

In fact, the commune is a great form of sociality—the clan, even the family is a commune—but it has been weakened and emptied. Municipalities have been hollowed out; remnants of tribes and clans remain, but they too have been hollowed out.

The concept of the moral political society is another way of expressing the commune—how the commune finds expression against the state. The language of the new era of peace will be political. We will defend the freedom of the commune. As the name suggests, we are abandoning nationalist statehood and its related concepts, and instead prioritising ethical and political concepts based on the commune. We called it a moral and political society, but this is the name of the liberating commune. It is ethical and political, not even legal. Of course, there are laws, which will develop, such as municipal law. We will want it to find expression in law; this will be a condition and principle for us. The more scientific term for this is communal freedom.

From now on, we will be communalists. Replacing the class concept with the commune is much more striking and scientific. Municipalities still are communes. We also have the ‘kom’. Is there no morality or ethics? Of course, there is. The commune will function more by ethics than by law. The commune is also a democracy. The ‘political’ is expressed through democratic politics. Commune is a noun; ethical and political are adjectives. Commune is ethical and political—one is a noun, the other adjectives. We call this the deepest revision of Marxism. We replace the class concept with the commune.

Kropotkin’s criticism of Lenin is correct. Bakunin’s criticism of Marx is also correct. They are incomplete but valid. Marxism must definitely undergo criticism on this point. Had Marx understood Bakunin, and Lenin understood Kropotkin, the fate of socialism would have developed very differently. Because they failed to synthesize these ideas, real socialism developed as it did.

[1] Grouping of several tribes or clans, no direct translation in English

[2] The Kurdish word “kom” can be understood as “group” or “collectivity,” and shares the same proto-indo-european root as the latin word “cum”, which is the basis for English words such as “community” or “commune”. It is often used to describe a community or a collection of people who come together or share a common identity.