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Title: The No State Solution
Author: Alexander Kolokotronis
Date: February 11, 2015
Language: en
Topics: libertarian socialism, kurdistan, democratic confederalism, Rojava
Source: Retrieved on 3rd May 2021 from https://truthout.org/articles/the-no-state-solution-institutionalizing-libertarian-socialism-in-kurdistan/

Alexander Kolokotronis

The No State Solution

In what many outside of the territory are referring to as the Rojava

Revolution, a major shift in political philosophy and political

programmatics has taken place in Kurdistan. Yet, this shift is not

limited to the region of Rojava, or what many call Syrian or Western

Kurdistan – a region where the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has taken an

active part in this change. In “Turkish,” or rather Northern Kurdistan,

the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has been the foremost leader. In

Eastern Kurdistan (lying within Iranian borders) the Party for Free Life

in Kurdistan (PJAK) has taken to the change in ideological orientation

as well. It is an expanding movement towards what is internally being

described as a “democratic, ecological, gender-liberated society” – a

collection of ideas, institutions, and practices that compose the

political, economic and social outlook of Democratic Autonomy and

Democratic Confederalism.

As stated in Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan – a book written by

a group from TATORT Kurdistan (a human rights advocacy organization

based in Germany; “TATORT” translates to “crime scene”) who ventured

from Germany into Kurdistan for their research – the paradigmatic shift

to Democratic Autonomy and Democratic Confederalism has meant renouncing

the establishment of “a socialist nation-state and instead” seeking the

creation of “a society where people can live together without

instrumentalism, patriarchy, or racism – an ‘ethical and political

society’ with a base-democratic, self-managing institutional structure”

(TATORT Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan, Porsgrunn,

New Compass Press, 2013, 20). In short, “democracy without a state”.

Contrary to what many might believe, the ideological shift did not take

place in the last few months or even the last year. Rather,

approximately a decade ago it forthrightly appeared when Abdullah

Öcalan, long-time leader of the once Marxist-Leninist PKK, issued The

Declaration of Democratic Confederalism. In it Öcalan disavowed the

nation-state, deeming it an organizational entity that serves as an

obstacle to self-determination instead of as an expression of it. Öcalan

states, “Within Kurdistan democratic confederalism will establish

village, towns and city assemblies and their delegates will be entrusted

with the real decision-making.” For Öcalan this means “democratic

confederalism of Kurdistan is not a state system, but a democratic

system of the people without a state.”

This system of Democratic Autonomy and Democratic Confederalism is

composed of overlapping networks of workers’ self-managed enterprises,

entities of communal self-governance, as well as federations and

associations of groups operation according to principles of

self-organization. Most, these assemblages function according to direct

participatory democracy as well as with close-to-home delegate

structures that are accorded through a council system.

The year 2005 wasn’t only a period of theoretical or ideological shifts.

It also marked the beginning of the construction of councils. In urban

settings, this took place on concentric levels of the neighborhood,

district and city. In 2008 and 2009 these councils were reorganized so

as to include the input and power of various “civil society

organizations, women’s and environmental associations, political

parties, and occupation groups like those of journalists and lawyers”

(TATORT Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan, Porsgrunn,

New Compass Press, 2013, 26).

Yet, before venturing any further it is important to look discuss the

ideological roots of Democratic Confederalism.

Theoretical Roots of Democratic Confederalism

Much has been said about the influence of the American eco-anarchist

Murray Bookchin’s influence on Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned

since his arrest in 1999. In fact, through his lawyers, Öcalan contacted

Bookchin. Unfortunately, Bookchin was too sick to enter into serious

dialogue with Öcalan, but, Bookchin did send his wishes that the Kurds

would be able to successfully move towards a free society. Yet,

Bookchin’s influence on the wider Democratic Confederalist movement

can’t be overlooked.

Bookchin is unheard of to many outside-–and even inside-–anarchist

circles. Yet, the scale of his political involvement and writing was

immense. As Janet Biehl denotes in her article “Bookchin, Öcalan, and

the Dialectics of Democracy,” upon Bookchin’s death in 2006 the PKK went

as far to call Bookchin “one of the greatest social scientists of the

20^(th) century.”

Bookchin upheld what he called Social Ecology. Bookchin’s view, as

stated in his book Remaking Society, was that “the basic problems which

pit society against nature emerge from within social development itself”

(Bookchin, Remaking Society, Black Rose Books, 1998, 32) and that

placing society and nature into an oppositional binary was both

descriptively erroneous and prescriptively destructive. More elaborately

and succinctly put, “the domination of human by human preceded the

notion of dominating nature. Indeed, human domination of human gave rise

to the very idea of dominating nature.”

With Social Ecology Bookchin sought to broaden the scope, nuance, and

depth in the ways we look at systems of oppression and the ways in which

they are intertwined with and often serve as a production of social

hierarchy. Bookchin looked both at the roots of hierarchy and its

various mutually supporting manifestations and institutionalizations, as

well as at the conditions for its abolition and the founding of

institutions based on non-hierarchical relations.

Like many anarchists, Bookchin saw the State as the highest

manifestation of hierarchical organization. Why the opposition to the

State? In Bookchin’s own words from his book Remaking Society:

Minimally, the State is a professional system of social coercion – not

merely a system of social administration as it is still naively regarded

by the public and by many political theorists. The word ‘professional’

should be emphasized as much as the word ‘coercion.’ Coercion exists in

nature, in personal relationships, in stateless, non-hierarchical

communities. If coercion alone were used to define a State, we would

despairingly have to reduce it to a natural phenomenon –which it surely

is not. It is only when coercion is institutionalized into a

professional, systematic, and organized form of social control – that

is, when people are plucked out of their everyday lives in a community

and expected not only to ‘administer’ it but to do so with the backing

of a monopoly of violence – that we can speak properly of the State

(Bookchin, Remaking Society, Black Rose Books, 1998, 66).

In terms of identity, such coercion is utilized by the State for the

purposes of molding a given manifold of cultures and ethnicities into

what Joost Jongerden and Ahmet Hamdi Akkaya refer to in their article

“Democratic Confederalism as a Kurdish Spring: The PKK and the Quest for

Radical Democracy,” from the book The Kurdish Spring, as the attempt to

craft “a single identity population” (Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael

Gunter, The Kurdish Spring, Costa Mesa, Mazda Publishers, 2013, 170.).

More often than not, such ventures are violent ones. The Turkish State

has been no exception to this.

Turkey does not allow the Turkish language to be spoken or taught within

State-run institutions, including public schools, and raids are

frequently carried out on an array of municipalities and civil society

organizations. The treatment of Abdullah Demirbas is exemplary of

Turkey’s treatment of the entire Kurdish population. He was elected in

2004 as mayor of Sûr, a district in Amed. One of his promises was to

conduct affairs in Kurdish, however, according to TATORT Kurdistan

“three years later the Council of State removed him for using Kurdish,

Assyrian, and English in providing municipal services.” He was reelected

in March 2009 by an even wider margin, but in May he was arrested again

for supposed ties to the Union of Kurdistan Communities (KCK) as well as

for “language crimes.’” For this he was sentenced to two years in

prison.

While there are differences between Bookchin and the Kurdish people whom

Bookchin has influenced, what has been most strongly imparted from the

former to the latter are goals of building “dual power” and implementing

a system of governance that is composed of varying forms of stateless,

equalitarian, assembly-democracy.

With a strategy of building dual power one finds the goal of building,

according to Janet Biehl in her aforementioned article, “a

counterpower…against the nation state.” This means building a parallel

societal structure. Or rather, building a set of and network of

alternative and counter institutions that are decidedly different from,

and run in contradiction and opposition to, the dominant system. In this

case, the nation-state and capitalism. This notion is not original to

Bookchin, as one can find its explicit articulation in Vladimir Lenin

and Leon Trotsky, and even earlier in the writings of Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon. Öcalan himself embraces this outlook of building dual power

with his exhortation that “‘regional associations of municipal

administration’ are needed, so these local organizations and

institutions would form a network” and as such a “non-statist political

administration.”

Building a Solidarity Network

As a Democratic Society Congress (DTK) member denotes it is “not just

about autonomy – it’s about democratic autonomy.” As such, this has

meant organizing institutions outside of the State that are based and

operation according to self-organization and self-management. The

knitting together of a solidarity network is, in part, a macro-political

production of a relationship between such institutions. These

institutions are being built in numerous, and concentric, local levels.

In their article “Jongerden and Akkaya quote a chair of a neighborhood

council in one of the poorer areas of the city of Amed asserting, “Our

aim is to face the problems in our lives, in our neighborhood, and solve

them by ourselves without being dependent on or in need of the state”

(Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Spring, Costa Mesa,

Mazda Publishers, 2013, 183–184.). This best expresses the meaning of

Kurdish communities seeking to establish Democratic Autonomy. As such,

Jongerden and Akkaya define Democratic Autonomy as the “practices in

which people produce and reproduce the necessary and desire conditions

for living through direct engagement and collaboration with one another”

(Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Spring, Costa Mesa,

Mazda Publishers, 2013, 171.).

Yet, it is the combination of Democratic Autonomy and Democratic

Confederalism that constitutes “for or going beyond those of the nation

state” (Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Spring,

Costa Mesa, Mazda Publishers, 2013, 178.). This manifests “as a network

model of localized small-scale self-organization and

self-administration.” With the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) such a

network is given institutional shape and form. In 2005 the DTK was

founded, with the intention of bringing together a diversity of groups.

The DTK contains a gender quota: the continuation of its operations

contingent on meeting the requirement of at least 40% of attendees and

positions being filled by women. The organizational structure of the DTK

largely consists of the General Assembly, which meets at least twice per

year, and the Standing Committee. The General Assembly holds at least

1,000 delegates, 60% of which come from the grassroots level, and 40% of

which are elected officials such as representatives or mayors. The

General Assembly elects a Standing Committee of 101 people. There is

also a Coordinating Council, which consists of 15 people, and works in

the areas of ideology, social affairs and politics. On all levels

though, committees are frequently organized based on these three areas.

The DTK itself holds numerous committees and commissions, which range

from areas of ecology, women, youth, economy, diplomacy, culture and a

whole of others.

The building of such a model is closely aligned to Bookchin’s conception

of confederalism which he defines as “a network of administrative

councils whose members are elected from popular face-to-face democratic

alliances, in the various villages, towns and even neighborhoods of

large cities” (Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish

Spring, Costa Mesa, Mazda Publishers, 2013,177.). Such administrative

councils do not make policy, but rather are “strictly mandated,

recallable, and responsible to the assemblies that choose them for the

purpose of coordinating and administering the policies formulated by the

assemblies themselves.” Administrative councils are just that: they

administrate and do not constitute a system of representation which

accords high levels of decision-making and policy-making power to

representatives.

Thus, as Jongerden and Akkaya remark, “Democratic Confederalism can be

characterized as a bottom-up system of self-government” (Mohammed M.A.

Ahmed and Michael Gunter, The Kurdish Spring, Costa Mesa, Mazda

Publishers, 2013,172.).

The City of Amed – North Kurdistan

Amed, one of the largest cities in region and by official estimates

containing over 1.5 million residents, is part of the DTK. Similar to

other cities in Kurdistan, Amed is composed of councils and assemblies

on all levels. This includes street councils, neighborhood councils, 13

district councils, and a city council. The city council is comprised of

500 people, containing the mayor, elected officials, delegates from

women’s and youth organizations, NGOs political parties, and others.

The city council is organized along five different areas: social,

political, ideological, economic and ecological. Within these five areas

committees are formed, which all hold the aforementioned 40% gender

quota as well. The political area holds a Coordinating Committee, which

includes women’s councils (there are strictly women’s councils, which

are self-organized, and mixed gender councils) youth councils, political

parties, and others. The economic area concentrates on forming

cooperatives. The social area concentrates on things such as education

and health.

For juridical matters, committees handle conflicts and disputes. Their

goal is to engage in conflict resolution so that the disputing parties

can come to a consensus. This applies to issues ranging across a whole

range of potential conflicts. In other areas of North Kurdistan, such as

Gewer, legal committees do not purely hold lawyers, but also contain

feminist and political activists.

The Town of Heseke – Western Kurdistan

Heseke in Rojava holds a similar institutional layout to Amed. Like Amed

and the DTK carries a 40% gender quota. It contains a city council,

however, it is comprised of 101 people, as well as five representatives

each from five other organizations including the PYD, and the

Revolutionary Youth. There is also a coordinating council, which is made

up of 21 people. Heseke holds 16 district councils.

District councils hold anywhere from 15–30 people, which meet every two

months. Anywhere from 10–30 communes comprise a given district, with 20

communes approximating to 1,000 people. This means that there is often 1

delegate for every 100 people in a district, which is far more direct

than many other institutional structures across the world. It should be

kept in mind though that what is most frequent is the convening of

peoples’ assemblies, a phenomenon that also spans across Kurdistan and

serves as the base for Democratic Autonomy; many areas in Kurdistan have

weekly peoples’ assemblies.

In Heseke “communes have commissions that address all social questions,

everything from the organization of defense to justice to infrastructure

to youth to the economy and the construction of individual

cooperatives.” The commissions for ecology concern things such as

sanitation and specific ecological problems. There are also “committees

for women’s economy to help women develop economic independence” (TATORT

Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan, Porsgrunn, New

Compass Press, 2013.)

This structure also sends delegates to the general council of Rojava.

Similar to many other areas in Kurdistan, resolutions and decisions are

preferred to be made by consensus instead of simple majoritarian vote.

Embrace of Heterogeneity

In the Charter of Social Contract, a constitution formed by cantons in

Rojava, begins its document with an embrace of pluralism:

We the people’s of the democratic self-determination areas; Kurds,

Arabs, Assyrians (Assyrian Chaldeans, Arameans), Turkmen, Armenians and

Chechens, by our free will, announce this to ensure justice, freedom,

democracy, and the rights of women and children in accordance with the

principles of ecological balance, freedom of religions and beliefs and

equality without discrimination on the basis of race, religion, creed,

doctrine or gender, to achieve the political and moral fabric of a

democratic society in order to function with mutual understanding and

coexistence with diversity and respect for the principle of

self-determination and self-defense of the peoples.

This alone in the preface to the Charter contradicts the often

oversimplified depictions of the Middle East by Western media. According

to the translation of Zaher Baher of the Kurdistan Anarchist Forum (KAF)

from his eyewitness account titled “The Experiment of west Kurdistan

(Syrian Kurdistan) has Proved that People Can Make Changes” (Zaher

Baher, “The experiment of West Kurdistan…, Libcom, August 26, 2014) The

Charter goes onto state in its first page that “the areas of

self-management democracy do not accept the concepts of state

nationalism, military or religion or of centralized management and

central rule but are open to forms compatible with the tradition of

democracy and pluralism, to be open to all social groups and cultural

identities and Athenian democracy and national expression through their

organization”

Yet, if one is to truly talk about an embrace of heterogeneity, this

must involve the nonhuman just as much as it involves the human. This

means going beyond the multilingualism and cultural diversity that many

in Northern and Western Kurdistan have embraced – even institutionally –

to looking at the ways in which the question of ecology is being

tackled.

Ecology

For Aysel Dogan, an ecology activist and president of the Alevi Academy

for Belief and Culture in Dersim, “the best way to create and ecological

system is to build cooperatives” (TATORT Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy

in North Kurdistan, Porsgrunn, New Compass Press, 2013, 165.). Other

eco-minded activities include the development of seed banks, protesting

the simple notion of nuclear power plan development, and the disallowing

the entrance of mining companies.

All of these are seen as a means to foster an ecologically geared social

consciousness. Much of this also includes education, and as such is

ecological schooling is part of the explosion of academies and other

learning institutions that inhabit the region. The increase in academy

and cooperative development has interlocked with other emancipatory

efforts as well.

Education

A number of academies have opened across Kurdistan. This includes the

founding of the Mesopotamian Social Sciences Academy in late August in

Qamislo in the Cizîrê canton of Rojava, which operates according to “an

alternative education model.” According to Rojava Report, in Cizîrê

alone 670 schools with 3,000 teachers are offering Kurdish language

courses to 49,000 students (Rojava Report, August 31, 2014).

Language, cultural and historical academies oriented towards preserving

and building identity aren’t limited to Rojava. They have taken off in

North Kurdistan as well. As of July 2012 there are “thirteen of them,

with various foci, including nine general academies, two women’s

academies and two religious academies, one for Alevis and one for

Islamic beliefs.” TATORT Kurdistan reports Kurdish youth public school

students staging week-long strikes in response to the constraints placed

on their language within those spaces and other assimilation policies.

Commenting on a number of schools run outside of the auspices of the

Turkish State a representative of the Amed General Political Academy

states, “These schools want to work out the essence of Islam and connect

to the oppositional Islamic movements, which reject rulers and an

Islamic state but nonetheless are connected to Islam.” (TATORT

Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan, Porsgrunn, New

Compass Press, 2013.)

As indicated by the Amed General Political Academy, much of the

politicized Kurdish population carries an anti-capitalist, anti-State

outlook, including and especially at the grassroots level. TATORT

Kurdistan reports in the academy’s three-month course, “All participants

reflect on what they have learned and formulate a critique of state and

ruling class.” These political academies also teach things outside of

class analysis, such as histories of women and the development of

patriarchy, of which a critique of the latter is raised as well.

Also, in Amed lies a center that offers courses to women ranging from

technical and practical skills, to those teaching the Kurdish language

and literacy, as well courses in law and women’s rights. Other centers

offer health and sexuality courses. There are also seminars offered on

Democratic Autonomy.

Empowerment of Women

In multiple ways women are empowering themselves in Kurdistan, and as a

result serving as the main thrust of the movement. In a few ways this

has already been indicated, such as through the gender quota that is

institutionalized on nearly all levels of society, and through learning

sites and academies. Another great example of the latter is the Amed

Women’s Academy.

TATORT Kurdistan quotes leaders of this academy, “the liberation of

women, and of gender, is as significant as the liberation of men in

society.” They work on projects, such as transcription of oral histories

and engaging in “female writing of history.” They offer courses through

a participatory discussion-based model.

Many from these academies and the Free Democratic Women’s Movement

(DOKH) also engage women by simply striving to empower many to step

outside of their home. Some women within this movement take on a

particularly radical perspective towards the State consigning to having

a role in producing a hierarchical logic within the family unit.

Along with women’s councils, academies and centers, there are women’s

cooperatives wherein the goal is to “help women create their own

relations of production, where they can work and participate,” as TATORT

Kurdistan quotes those involved in women’s cooperative development.

Through women’s cooperative development the altering of gender relations

takes place on a number of levels: women’s relation to the workplace

(previously have very little of such, if at all), in relation to their

husbands and male relatives (breaking culturally embedded taboos and

gender roles), and in relation to the whole of society (inserting

evermore in and through the program of Democratic Autonomy). Through

these cooperatives many women have become economically independent, have

engaged in individual capacity development as well, and through both are

breaking female internalizations of patriarchy.

As Baher of the KAF specifically reports for the latter region,

throughout Northern and Western Kurdistan there is “a system called

Joint Leaders and Organizers” meaning “the head of any office,

administration, or military section must include women.” Such

organizational layouts are manifest in a number of the councils and

committees mentioned throughout this article.

In addition, to this the women have their own armed forces. “Thus,

within People’s Protection Units (YPG), there has been the formation of

Women’s Protection Units (YPJ). The YPJ, a 7,000 strong military group

have been on the frontlines against ISIS. As might be expected, the

emergence of the YPJ has significantly punctured many conceptions of

preordained gender roles, particularly ones that have filtered into

notions and systems of male domination.

Empowerment of Youth, and Workers’ Self-Management

With Democratic Autonomy, youth councils, both under-18 and over-18,

have emerged. Like the other councils, the youth councils have say and

power in the carrying out of initiatives and projects, e.g., in the

building and modifying of recreational sites and spaces. Besides this

though, some of the most radical perspectives have, with clear

articulation and vision, come from the Kurdish youth.

To TATORT Kurdistan one Kurdish youth, between 16 to 26, remarked, “We

don’t consider ourselves nationalists. We’re socialist

internationalists.” There was also the statement by the same Kurdish

youth that:

At the moment we’re moving into a new phase of the revolution through

the construction of communes, collectives and cooperatives. Popular

self-organization of the economy has the goal of laying the groundwork

for comprehensive change in prevailing social relations… the movement is

building village, youth and women’s cooperatives… The different levels

of self-management let us enter into the process of organizing more

easily.

There are varying results with the federating of cooperatives and

communes. According to a member of a women’s cooperative in Baglar,

anarchists in twenty-two communes in Gewer have gone as far as to

abolish money as a means of exchange.

The Fight Against ISIS

The largely lackluster support given by the United States government to

the Kurdish line of defense against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

(ISIS) should come as no surprise, especially when considering the close

ties between the United States and Turkey. Given Turkey’s extensive

history of repressing the over 20 million Kurds that reside within its

borders, and given that presently the Kurds are on the frontlines

fighting against ISIS, the deficient response by Turkey to ISIS should

not be a shock.

From 2009 to July 2012 over 8,000 people were arrested “for alleged

membership in the Union of Kurdistan Societies, KCK, under the

Anti-Terror Law” (TATORT Kurdistan, Democratic Autonomy in North

Kurdistan, Porsgrunn, New Compass Press, 2013.) More recent reports, as

noted by TATORT Kurdistan, have asserted that as many as 10,000 people

have been arrested in anti-KCK operations. The incarceration of Kurds is

at such scales that one finds examples of thirty-five people thrust

together in a single cell , with people being forced to sleep atop one

another. The overcrowding of prisons has come to the point that Turkish

built F-type cells, originally intended for solitary confinement, often

hold four people at a given time.

Turkey’s policy to expand its hydropower base through the building of

dams has doubly served as a means to destroy Kurdish culture. As Aysel

Dogan, the head of the Alevi Academy for Belief and Culture, states,

“Since the holy places are endangered by the dams, the state sent [a]

so-called scientist here who’s supposed to provide expert opinion. He

says that there are only stones here and no indication that it is a holy

place. But these stones are sacred for us.”

Yet, many in the mainstream trumpet their shock at Turkey’s and the

Obama administration’s hitherto low level response to ISIS. On September

22, the BBC reported that Turkey closed a number of border crossings

upon of tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees. This is consistent with

Turkey’s existing relationship with the Kurds, and so is the U.S.

government’s caution in carrying out a policy of bolstering Kurdish

defense. Only of late has the U.S. government supplied arms to Kurdish

forces in Kobane. Recent reports from Workers Solidarity Movement even

show the Kurds gaining on ISIS. Yet, one wonders how far the U.S.

government is willing to go in supporting Kurdish forces that carry

strong anti-state, anti-capitalist tendencies.

Simultaneous to all of this, Turkey allowed the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga

passage to Kobane in Rojava to take part in the fight against ISIS. At

first this may appear to be a strong policy reversal on the part of

Turkey, but amongst the four regions of Kurdistan it has by-far held the

best relationship with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq,

or what is otherwise known as South Kurdistan. The KRG, led by Massoud

Barzani, has historically been in violent tension with the PKK, with

Turkey naturally welcoming episodes of violence between the two camps.

The KRG has also indicated a level of distrust and disavowal of the

activities in Rojava, particularly with the PYD, which holds a cordial

relationship with the PKK.

Conclusions

To any libertarian socialist the developments in Kurdistan over the last

decade are strongly encouraging. Many of the Kurdish people assert that

Democratic Confederalism can be positioned as a body with transnational

capacity potential. Many within Kurdistan, including Öcalan himself,

find Democratic Confederalism to be a means to bringing peace and

emancipation in the Middle East. Proponents of Democratic Confederalism,

as indicated by their apparent openness to cultural diversity, do not

simply consider this a solution for the Kurdish population, but for the

multiplicity of the groups and ethnicities that constitute the wider

region. Öcalan has gone as far as to assert that dual power must be

built on a global scale, and that with such, a transnational body

competing with the United Nations must be formed.

Not only does Democratic Autonomy and Democratic Confederalism

constitute an ideological and institutional push away from the State and

capitalism, but it is a system that is keen on increasingly moving away

from representative political structures to those of autonomous and

performative practices. Yet, if the institutions and practices that

constitute Democratic Autonomy and Democratic Conferederalism are to

deepen inwardly and scale outwardly then a critique of all hierarchical

social frameworks must be maintained, and the concretization of an

anti-hierarchical and non-hierarchical societal outlook and vision must

continue to be applied and actualized.