On the Need of Ideological Clarity in the Ecological Movement, by Abdullah Öcalan
Compiled from the works of Abdullah Öcalan (1)
While working on this part of the book, I thought a lot about Enkidu’s identity. When I tried to understand the Enkidu of the Gilgamesh epic, the oldest known written epic and the oldest of our narratives, I noticed that he actually represents all those who long for the state and the city. When I compared the history of Enkidu with my own first contact with elementary school and the city, it did not take me long to realize that this story was actually also telling my story.
Let me recount an incident that might be of interest. I encouraged the children of our village to go to the elementary school in the neighbouring village of Cibin. Among these kids, there was a boy named Şevket, the little brother of Cumo, against whom I carried out my first “guerrilla action.” His mother was one of the poorest and most uncultivated women in the village, but what she said when Şevket was first sent to school was literally worthy of a professor. I remember it exactly; she said, in Kurdish: “Şevketê me buye hukûmet” (our Şevket has become the government). It was only after working on this court defense that I understood what she meant.
Each one of us was now an Enkidu who was coaxed into running toward the city, which is to say, the state. We were breaking away from the mother-based society. Bit by bit, we began to feel contempt for the village. Against the background of the superiority of the city, the village increasingly faded away. Our mothers were increasingly losing their importance. We began to disdain our bond to tribe and family. The city and the state hidden within it pulled on us like a magnet. Thereafter, it would not be easy to escape its influence. The city and the state in it objectively functioned as tremendous propaganda tools in their own right. Everything about the city was presented as perfect. The city exploited everything to demonstrate its superiority, and we totally lost sight of our own little village. The most ordinary state official was now our new deity. His every word and the very garments he wore constituted the new divinity. Everything was designed for effect. On top of it all, the Kurds were given the epithet “those with tails.” The formula for shedding this epithet as quickly as possible was to rapidly become urbanized, that is to become part of the state and to become Turkish. Not only did we begin to despise our village and our family but also our Kurdishness. These felt like shackles on our feet. Our whole world unfolded within this triad: the more urbanized you became, the more you became part of the state, and the more you became part of the state, the more Turkish you were, and the more Turkish you were, the greater your chances of advancement. This was our new societal custom. Religion and knowledge were only meaningful on that basis. For us, a whole new socialization took place in the context of this triad.
I conclude from this that urbanization and statization have priority over the formation of class and the nation. Contrary to popular opinion, this identification with the city and the state was the most fundamental and primeval factor of socialization. Being a proletarian or socialist are nothing more than a product of this urbanization and internalization of the state, resembling the attributes of the state-god. Sociology has yet to fully analyze the formation of the personality by the city and the state. The communal and rural personality and the urban and state-fixated personality are starkly different sociological phenomena. Without dissecting them, no analysis of class, socialism, and democracy can ever be complete or coherent. There are fundamental contradictions and differences between a society shaped by the city and the state and a rural communal society. Rural society is communal, i.e., egalitarian and democratic, which is to say, free to the same degree that the society shaped by the city and the state is statist and authoritarian. In that sense, the most important contradiction in history is between urban statist society and rural communal society, and the real struggle takes place between urban statist authoritarianism and rural communal democracy. But I only understood this much later.
The origins of the ecological crisis
It is most realistic to look for the origins of the ecological crisis, which is continuing to deepen alongside the crisis of the social system, at the beginning of civilization. We have to understand that the alienation from other humans that develops within society due to domination brings with it alienation from nature, and the two become intertwined. Society itself is, in its essence, an ecological phenomenon. By ecology, we mean the physical and biological nature on which the formation of society is based.
When they first arose, hierarchy and the state could not make their existence permanent by relying solely on force and oppression. Hypocrisy and lies were indispensable to obfuscate the truth behind events. Power requires domination, the domination of the mentality. On the other hand, to secure power, the mentality developed had to validate falsehoods. The brute side of power will always guarantee that this type of mentality lives and dominates, acting as the subtle expression of power. Shaping mentality in this way also provides the basis for alienation from nature. As it denies the communal bond that creates society and replaces it with the hierarchical state forces that initially developed as an anomaly, the mentality will become open to forgetting and trivializing the bond between nature and life. All subsequent progress based on a civilization that rests on this foundation will mirror both an increased detachment from nature and environmental destruction. The civilization forces will cease to even perceive natural necessities. After all, the underclass that feeds them provides them with everything that is already prepared.
At its heart, the Renaissance was a renewal of the mentality bond that had been broken with nature. The Renaissance developed its revolution in mentality on the basis of the vitality, creativity, and sacredness of nature. It was based on the assumption that everything that is can be found in nature. In the arts, the beauty of nature was much better depicted than had previously been the case, and its scientific approach expanded the limits of nature. With the human being as the basis, the task of science and the arts was to recognize and display the full reality of that human being. The modern age is the result of this shift in mentality. Contrary to the common view, capitalist society was not the natural result of this process but has actually functioned as a distortion and played a regressive role. The methods developed to exploit human beings were now combined with the exploitation of nature. Domination of humans coalesced with the domination of nature, launching the most intense attack of all time against nature. Capitalism grasped the exploitation of nature as its revolutionary role, without wasting a moment considering the sacredness, vitality, or equilibrium of nature. Capitalism totally discarded the perception of nature’s sacredness, which had been present in all previous mentalities, even if in a distorted form. This system arrogated to itself the right to do what it likes with the nature, without fear or anxiety.
As a result, the social crisis merged with the environmental crisis. Just as the system’s essence carried the social crisis to the chaos interval, now the environmental disasters are leading to SOS signals warning of dangers to life itself. Cities proliferating like a cancer, polluted air, a perforated ozone layer, rapidly accelerating extinction of plant and animal species, destruction of the forests, pollution and contamination of the waters, mounting piles of garbage, and unnatural population growth have driven the environment into chaos and rebellion. No calculation has been made as to how many cities, people, factories, and vehicles or how much synthetic material and polluted air and water our planet can tolerate; instead there is a reckless pursuit of maximum profit. But this negative development is not a matter of fate. It is the result of an imbalanced use of science and technology by those in power. It would be wrong to hold science and technology responsible for this process. In and of themselves, they cannot be blamed for any of this. They reflect and comply with the nature of the system’s forces. Just as they can be used to annihilate nature, they could also serve to heal and improve it. The problem is totally social.
The rationality or morality of a social system that does not integrate us into nature cannot be defended. This is why the system that most put humans in contradiction with the natural environment has been transcended rationally and morally. As is already clear from this short description, the relationship between the chaos experienced by the capitalist social system and the environmental disaster is dialectical. Fundamental contradictions with nature can only be overcome by breaking with the system. This issue cannot be resolved by environmental movements alone, due to the nature of the contradiction. On the other hand, an ecological society requires a moral transformation. The anti-morality of capitalism can only be overcome by an ecological approach. The relationship between morality and conscience demands an empathetic and sympathetic spirituality. This, however, is only meaningful if equipped with a sound ecological approach. Ecology means friendship with nature and belief in natural religion. In this respect, ecology stands for an awakened consciousness and a renewed integration into natural organic society.
Based on previous analysis, we can say that extreme population growth and urban sprawl accelerated as the city and the middle class became the center of power, creating a situation that was more than the environment could endure, nor could social nature endure these developments. Power and the state, which have grown intertwined in the process of capital accumulation, have reached a level of significance that prevents any society or environment from maintaining its equilibrium. The fact that environmental and social crises converge and become permanent is related to the monopolistic growth in both areas, both becoming crisis systems that reciprocally foster one another. All scientific data indicates that if this spiral continues for another fifty years the collapse will reach unsustainable dimensions. But because of their blind and destructive nature, capital and power monopolies cannot see or hear this; such is their nature.
Being at one with nature means to arrive at a democratic and socialist society
The practical problems of an ecological way of life are already on the agenda. One of the tasks facing us is to deepen the already existing organizations that are working to stop natural environmental disasters in all respects and make them an integral part of democratic society, as well as to build solidarity with the feminist and freedom-oriented women’s movement. Intensifying and organizing environmental consciousness is one of the most important activities of democratization. Just as we once organized intense class and national consciousness, we must now initiate impassioned campaigns to create a democratic and environmental consciousness. Whether it is animal rights, the protection of the forests, or reforestation, each is an indispensable part of any social plan of action, because the social sensitivity of those who have no biological sensitivity is necessarily deformed. The path to a real and meaningful sensitivity is to see the link between the two.
A movement for democracy and women’s freedom can be no different from any dominant male world if it is not based on something as basic as a major commitment to reforestation and to protecting the land from erosion. An ecological movement is one of the indispensable components of the new society we hope to build. Ecology cannot simply be reduced to economy. It is a mentality in its own right, the return to a lost conception of animate and sacred nature. Living a life in the absence of an awareness of nature that is animated, that talks to us, that comes into being with us, that calls us into being, instead of seeing a nature that is inanimate and has lost its sacredness. A tainted land that is as black as death amounts to a life that has largely eroded. Environmental consciousness means more than addressing water and air pollution; it means being completely at one with nature, turning back from a nature divided into plots to a nature that is a whole. This would be to arrive at a democratic and socialist society. The interconnection really is, in fact, this profound. It is, after all, respect for the chain of evolution that has brought about the human being.
The relatively new history of environmental science and environmental movements further develops with each passing day. What applies to women also applies to the environment: with the development of environmental science consciousness develops, and as consciousness develops so does the movement. It is the area where the civil society movement is broadest. It also attracts both real socialists and anarchists. It is the movement where the opposition to the system is most felt. Because it affects the whole community, participation has attained a transnational and cross-class character. Here too the impact of liberal ideological hegemony on the movement can be clearly seen. As with all social issues, liberalism ignores the structural core of the problem in the ecological area and tries to shift the responsibility onto technology, fossil fuels, and consumer society. But all these are side effects that are the product of the system (or lack thereof) of modernity. Therefore, the ecological movement, like the feminist movement, urgently needs ideological clarity. It needs to shift its organization and activism out of narrow city alleys and into the whole of society, in particular into the agrarian-village communities in the rural areas. Ecology is the fundamental guide to action for the rural areas, agrarian-village communities, all nomads, the unemployed, and women.
These factors constitute the basis of democratic modernity and show perfectly clearly the important role ecology will play in the work of reconstruction.
(1) This text is compiled from extracts of the books “Beyond State, Power and Violence” (Bir Halkı Savunmak, 2004) and “The Sociology of Freedom: Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization, Volume III” (Özgürlük Sosyolojisi, 2009) written by Abdullah Öcalan
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