The Sociology Of Freedom

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When scientific socialism, which for many years was implemented by Abdullah calan and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), became too narrow for his purposes, calan answered the call for a radical redefinition of the social sciences. Writing from his prison cell, he offered an astute new analysis of what is happening to the Kurdish people and future prospects for humanity. The Sociology of Freedom is the third volume of a five-volume work titled The Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization. The general aim of the earlier volumes was to clarify what power and capitalist modernity entailed. Here, calan presents his thesis of the Democratic Civilization, based on his criticism of Capitalist Modernity. He advances 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 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

Abdullah calan actively led the Kurdish liberation struggle from 1978 until his abduction in February 1999. John Holloway is a professor of sociology who has published widely on Marxist theory, the Zapatista movement, and new forms of anti-capitalist struggle.