The Sociology Of Freedom

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When scientific socialism, which for many years was implemented by Abdullah OEcalan and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), became too narrow for his purposes, OEcalan answered the call for a radical redefinition of the social sciences. Writing from his prison cell, he offered a new and astute analysis of what is happening to the Kurdish people, their freedom movement, and future prospects for humanity.The Sociology of Freedomis the third volume of a five-volume work titledThe Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization. The general aim of the earlier volumes was to clarify what power and capitalist modernity entailed. Here, OEcalan presents his thesis of the Democratic Civilization, based on his criticism of Capitalist Modernity. This volume reveals the remarkable range of one of the Left's most original thinkers with topics such as existence and freedom, nature and philosophy, anarchism and ecology. Recognizing the need for more than just a critique, he has advanced what is the most radical, far-reaching definition of democracy today and argues that a democratic civilization, as an alternative system, already exists, though systemic power and knowledge structures, along with a perverse sectarianism, do not allow it to be seen. This monumental work gives profuse evidence of his position as one of the most influential thinkers of our day.

Reviews

"calan's works make many intellectuals uncomfortable because they represent a form of thought that is not only inextricable from action, but also directly grapples with the knowledge that it is."
--David Graeber author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years

"calan's writings written in captivity are thus in the tradition of the ideology of the PKK as a left national liberation movement, which also includes the claim to change their own society. However, calan is apparently also one of those whose political thinking was sharpened by the forced abstinence from daily politics and who succeed in further developing their political thinking in captivity."
--Thomas Schmidinger, author of The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava

"calan's plea to build a strong and complex self-organized civil society without taking direct action against the state is similar to Zapatismo in Chiapas.... Finally, Karl Marx's realization should be remembered: 'An idea becomes material violence when it seizes the masses.' And Abdullah calan's message has seized the masses in Kurdistan."
--Nikolaus Brauns, historian and journalist, author of Partisanen einer neuen Welt: Eine Geschichte der Linken und Arbeiterbewegung der Trkei

"Where else would you expect to find a world-class political genius than... prison And I don't use the word 'genius' lightly."
--Peter Lamborn Wilson, author of Ploughing the Clouds and Sacred Drift

"calan is the Gramsci of our time."
--Tamir Bar-On, author of The World through Soccer and Beyond Soccer

Author Bio

Havin Guneser is an engineer, journalist, and women's rights activist who writes and speaks extensively on the topic of revolution in Rojava. She is one of the spokespersons of the International Initiative "Freedom for Abdullah calanPeace in Kurdistan" and translator of several of calan's books. Abdullah calan actively led the Kurdish liberation struggle from 1978 until his abduction in February 1999. John Holloway is a professor of sociology at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in the Benemrita Universidad Autnoma de Puebla, Mexico. He has published widely on Marxist theory, on the Zapatista movement and on the new forms of anticapitalist struggle. His book Change the World without Taking Power has been translated into eleven languages and has stirred an international debate. His later book Crack Capitalism took the argument further, suggesting that the only way in which we can think of revolution today is as the creation, expansion, multiplication, and confluence of cracks in capitalist domination. International Initiative "Freedom for Abdullah calan--Peace in Kurdistan" is a multinational peace initiative for the release of Abdullah calan and a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question. It was established immediately after his abduction from Nairobi and handing over to the Republic of Turkey on February 15, 1999, following a clandestine operation by an alliance of secret services. Part of its activity is the publication of calan's works.