Since the 1980s, Abdullah Öcalan has used the international day of working class-struggle as an opportunity to analyse the situation of the world socialist movement and to derive perspectives for the struggle for self-determination and socialism in Kurdistan and the Middle East. After his abduction and imprisonment on 15 February 1999, his opportunities to make himself known to the outside world were limited to short messages that only managed to get past the prison walls via his lawyers. Nevertheless, he never missed an opportunity to address his movement and the public with messages of greeting on the occasion of the working women’s day of struggle on 8 March, the Kurdish New Year – Newroz – on 21 March, and on 1 May.
This text is a message from Abdullah Öcalan that was read out on the occasion of the 1 May demonstration in Amed (Diyarbakir) in 2014. It is Abdullah Öcalan’s last May Day message before he was subjected to a stricter detention regime and total isolation in April 2015.
Long live the solidarity of the working class and all peoples!
Socialism is more necessary than ever, but, at the same time, the distance between socialist ideology and practice is an expression of both the crisis of socialism and that of capitalism. The crisis of socialism is not due to objective causes. The crisis is due to subjective factors, namely the lack of a consistent consciousness, a coherent organisation, and coherent action. There is no doubt that the ideological hegemony of capitalism is the most important external factor here; but what is decisive is the lack of a socialist ideology and practice. Instead, there is an eclectic approach and an eclectic practice.
Either society or nothingness
In this era of hegemonic finance capitalism, the attack is directed not only against labour, but against society as a whole, its history, ecology, and future. This means socialism or barbarism, society or nothingness.
The gene of capitalism, which has emerged like a gnawing rat in the depths of history, has infected the entire social body of our time like cancer. There is no doubt that the monopoly of information has played an important role in this. For social liberation, it is therefore essential to wage the information war in unity with the struggle for the moral-political society.