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Title: Self-Defense is Existential Author: Komun Academy Date: December 6, 2018 Language: en Topics: democratic confederalism, libertarian socialism, kurdistan, community self-defense, insurrection, Komun Academy Source: Retrieved on 2019-09-13 from https://komun-academy.com/2018/12/06/self-defense-is-existential/
Self-defense is a form of self-realization of an existence, similar to
other necessary dimensions like nutrition and reproduction. In the plant
and animal world, self-defense primarily concerns the protection of the
physical realm. In the human condition however, where existence attained
a deepening and broadening quality with sociality, self-defense
transcends the physical manifestations of existence. We are human not
simply due to our biological existence, but perhaps even more so due to
the values created by our metaphysical world. These values we create
inside of our community, with sociality. That is why our self-defense
implies the protection of the values that make us human, as well as of
the community that we are a part of.
Capitalist modernity makes use of a variety of approaches when attacking
the foundations of human sociality, ideologically, economically,
politically, culturally and, when deemed necessary, militarily.
Communities around the world are fighting back against these attacks in
their quest for a free and equal life. Whether these are the indigenous
peoples in the Americas and Australia, who stand firm to protect their
ecology and way of life; black people in white supremacist countries,
who struggle against racialized policies, prisons industries and police
brutality; or communities in Africa and Asia, who have been subject to
genocide and colonization; or women, youth and workers around the world.
Capitalist modernity does not merely physically suppress, enslave and
exterminate communities and individuals. A more insidious form of
assault takes place when the nation-statist mentality and system
separate humans from the values that make them human by alienating them
to design a factory product-like monotonous individual in a monolithic
society. This constitutes an assault on the vitality, diversity,
spontaneity and creativity that lie at the essence of human life. Not
only are we as humans only one expression in the multitude of life in
nature, our many different cultures and communities express all the
languages, sounds, beliefs, shapes, and colors of human life, while
within each of these communities, our individualities create universes
of their own. When this unlimited, luscious river of life is under
threat, when the values and creations of human life and society are
endangered by authoritarian rule, a defense of life itself is at stake.
It is our sociality that makes us human. Our ethical,
democratic-communal values are essential to the assertion of our
existence. Throughout the history of statist civilization, there have
been attacks on fundamental human means of self-defense, such as
solidarity, culture, art, and the means of production and reproduction.
Under capitalist modernity, these assaults deepened and widened in
scope, which means that people are increasingly more deprived of even
the most basic means of self-defense and self-preservation. Parallel to
physical annihilation, the divorce of human beings from sociality and
community pacify their will and ability to resist. Without access to
production, care, sharing, solidarity, community and love, in a world of
isolation, individuals are condemned to a terrifyingly meaningless life.
Uprooted and alienated from themselves, people are turned into obedient
robots of modernity, who lack the ability or means to lead an autonomous
existence.
Every existence in nature has its essential means of defense and
protection against threats to its existence. Against the attacks of
statist civilization with capitalist modernity as its peak, people are
defending themselves with the values of democratic modernity. These are
ethical-political values that make society and are related to mentality
and immateriality, the areas that are under the fiercest attacks by
capitalist modernity. In fact, assaults on humans’ mental and spiritual
life-worlds are as old as statist civilization itself. A person whose
inner world has been occupied becomes vulnerable to be manipulated by
any powerful entity. The system has long ago realized its need to design
society in a certain image in order to be able to control it.
Individuals, who are separated form collective social memory, live on a
daily basis and since their emotions, senses and feelings get
increasingly more divorced from societal values, they are prone to
individualism, materiality and instinct-driven behavior. As a result,
they become persons, who do not know themselves and do not find meaning
or purpose in life. Let alone protecting their community, such a person
is unable to protect even their own self. This person lacks love, is
unable to foster love for their own self or for society and their social
reflexes and reactions are detached from the values that would enable
them to understand the importance of self-defense. Particularly the
individual under advanced capitalism is vulnerable because of a lack of
consciousness and knowledge of their own self. That is precisely what
the dominant system requires. To the extent to which individuals and
society are rendered vulnerable and unable to defend themselves, the
system will succeed in occupying, colonizing and exploiting them for
their profit-driven interests.
For this reason, against the system’s ideological attacks, defending
oneself also requires knowledge and awareness of oneself and one’s
conditions. One must be able to render meaningful one’s existence and
life in general. A person who knows themselves is someone, who can
mobilize the ability to stand against all sorts of attacks by the
system. That is why consciousness is vital. Consciousness consists of a
person’s self-realization based on values of societal freedom, as well
as their action and struggle for these values. Consciousness is a
manifestation of ideologization. This ideologization in turn is a style
of life and struggle that develops around certain thoughts. Unless such
social values find reflection in life, unless they become a driving
force for real action, we cannot speak of ideologization. At best, we
can speak of an opportunistic, individualist, materialist or corrupted
personality, a product of capitalist modernity that lost a sense for
meaning. To the extent to which I know myself, I can understand and find
meaning in society and vice versa. By ourselves we can live, but we do
not necessarily express meaning on our own, but only in community. Being
aware of our communities’ pains and joys, defending their means of life,
rising up to mobilize, are all expressions of a communal spirit that can
challenge capitalist modernity.
We become a power only through organization. Against capitalist
modernity’s attempts to infiltrate the deepest cells of individual and
social life to distort its fabric, we must organize against the system
with democratic-communal values. Democracy in this sense is the free
life-form of society. Since sociality is related to freedom, freedom can
only be lived in spheres of democracy. Radical democracy grows society’s
freedom spheres. It prevents us from being suppressed and annihilated by
statist systems that occupy, alienate, colonize and destroy us.
Moreover, it helps us become people, who can speak, discuss, decide and
act on their own behalf. Radical democracy brings out human willpower.
It enables people to be themselves. Such people can meaningfully
contribute to their societies. To the extent to which such a person
participates in society with their own different attributes, they will
create diversity and increase the freedom of that society and of
themselves.
Freedom is strongly related to taking up responsibility. Radical
democracy is the basis for this aspect to find meaning. To the extent to
which radical democracy is employed meaningfully and powerfully, freedom
will be realized. To the extent to which freedom expresses itself,
democracy will grow, consolidate and diversify. This will render people
able to administer themselves and run their own lives according to their
own visions, without reliance on the state. That is why the
democratization of society can only happen through struggle.
In today’s day and age, where people have been reduced to objects of
state that don’t have the ability or right to speak on their own behalf,
humanity can only get back in touch with itself through democracy. The
threats imposed on individuals and societies can be systematically
fought with a freedom-based notion of democracy. In this sense,
democracy is another name for the action that expresses the conscious
human. It is the name for the system that can be shared and defended if
necessary by people from all languages, cultures, backgrounds and
beliefs. Such individuals and communities develop a great sense for the
need to defend themselves; their reflexes against dangers are strong and
they are unlikely to accept any form of domination. They would rather
physically die than to surrender to a life in unfreedom. Respecting
their own existence, they live and struggle for freedom. Free
individuals and communities flourish in democracy that is based on
freedom. Such atmospheres in turn can only be created by individuals and
communities that have a strong consciousness of freedom.
Democracy means an organized society. This requires a system that
reaches from the local to the general, to meet the needs and
requirements of the smaller and larger scaled forms of organizing life.
Communes, councils and congresses, alongside educational efforts in the
academies and economic organizing in the cooperatives, will enable all
organs of organized society to function. This in turn will demonstrate
that human beings can very well live free and equally in a democratic
civilizational system outside of the power-holding, statist
civilization. They can exist and protect their existence by struggling
against statist civilization. Therefore, with a democratic
consciousness, individuals and communities will know how to life and
what to do, while being able to defend themselves against danger by
mobilizing self-defense. In such moments, there will not be a need for
anyone to say what needs to be done. Conscious and active communities
and their individuals will engage in different kinds of organization to
struggle and resist to protect their community, lands and culture. They
engage in the simplest and most complex forms of resistance. Any form of
mobilization to this end, whether civil or militant, is legitimate.
Self-defense knows no limits. Whether it is a child throwing stones at
the police or a young person joining uprisings or guerrilla ranks or an
old person praying for change – these are all ways in which people try
to defend their existence. The self-defense struggle does not just
affect violence and occupation forces that suppress people, but also
individual struggles against people and institutions that capitalize on
such vital values for their own profit. It is the most legitimate thing
for a being to act in defense of its existence. If the right to live is
not something that can be sanctioned by states or any other authority
that rules by force, but is sacred and fundamental, then the philosophy
of warfare based on legitimate self-defense is founded on the
inalienable right to live.
Under statist civilization and its era of capitalist modernity, people
can only continue their existence with a strong, principled and
organized self-defense. Just as we cannot continue to exist without
nutrition and reproduction, we cannot live without self-defense.
Self-defense is existential. That is why we must act with a
self-defending consciousness and organize our ability and means to
protect ourselves and our communities to assert our will to not only
survive, but also to live freely and meaningfully.