“How to organize for communalism? Some reflections on communalist strategy
(2025) Rojava in Focus: Critical Dialogue — ISBN: [9781849355728], accepted/in-press
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Rethinkingrepresentationasdelegationintheframeworkofcommunalistdirectdemocracy-SixtineVanOutryve-finaldraft.pdf
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- In order to replace representative democracy and capitalism with a system in which all political and economic power is exercised by confederated communes functioning on direct democracy, organization is required. But what kind of organization? Among the many crucial questions for communalist theory tackled by Cihad Hammy and Thomas Jeffrey Miley vis-à-vis the ongoing revolution in Rojava, that of the limits and potentialities of the party form for establishing democratic confederalism is central. The main question that drives our essay could therefore be formulated as follows: how to imagine an organization working toward the establishment of a communalist society in the non war context of Western capitalist nation-states? We do not intend to present an answer to the burning question of the form to be taken by such a communalist organization. Rather, based on the political philosophical writings of Murray Bookchin, we would like to offer some reflections on this understudied topic and open up a conversation on what we believe to be a crucial aspect of communalist strategy. We will do so by exploring how this question materializes in a given context, that of a spontaneous social movement in France, the Yellow Vests, during which communalist ideas gained some tractions.
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Van Outryve d’Ydewalle, S., & et al. (2025). “How to organize for communalism? Some reflections on communalist strategy. In Cihad Hammy and Thomas Jeffrey Miley (ed.), Rojava in Focus: Critical Dialogue. AK Press. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/240103