honestly the democratic socialists are THIS || close to "discovering" democratic confederalism, and once they figure it out it's gonna be like "oh shit, so this is what we actually wanted", and I am tremendously impatient about when they actually get there.
I watched an interview with Mamdani yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq7DFB8jWE), and he got asked about the Socialist Thing (aka "oh so you want the state to own everything"), and like, "this would not be a gotcha if the political identity you name were the one you're actually describing".
Like he's hitting the nail on the head: It's not actually about socialism vs capitalism vs whatever the fuck. It's about centering people, empowering people, fulfilling people's needs at a livelihood level. And you don't get that by trying to move entire governments. You do that by moving people.
And that's kinda the beauty of democratic confederalism as they do it in Rojava: You don't need a revolution. You don't need a massive, overwhelming election. You just need enough power to carve out your niche, and then you grow your (nazi-less) tent by having people talk to each other
I don't think iterating ad nauseam about what kind of state we should have ruling over us is going to get any of us anywhere (except the ruling class, which always swears THEY have it right, and everyone else stays screwed).
I think we fix things from below, or we don't fix them at all, not really.
p.s. it just so happens that when you start that kind of from-below power, Capitalism just... it's going to go away. It just will. You don't need to rise up against it. You literally can just hold hands and stand firm and organize and make it a positive thing where you imagine a better future.
Some people are just very horny for their Guns and Knives Out fantasies, and I'm extremely not into that. Although of course there's always going to be a reality where communities may need to be defended. But it's no longer states being defended. It's people. And fights look very different then.
@zkat Thanks for saying it this clearly! The left's fixation on the state is pretty much a sell-out: Instead of rejecting the state and its authority, too many just want another clique to be in charge. This kind of authoritarianism is clearly incompatible with what is happening in #Rojava right now, however imperfect its reality might be. #Engels wrote about the transition to #Socialism: "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out." That is wonderfully close to what you're saying, I think.
