Core Argument

Against The Stream · 2026-02-12

The central thesis of this episode is that the collapse of the Rojava experiment in northeastern Syria is not merely a tactical defeat but the logical outcome of a strategic error: the Kurdish leadership's decision to tie its movement to US imperialism rather than to the working class of the region. The argument is that the Kurdish movement, at the height of its influence and popular appeal, chose pragmatism over principle, allying with an imperialist power that used it as a disposable asset against ISIS and then abandoned it once the geopolitical calculus shifted. This is presented as a concrete demonstration of the Leninist proposition that without a correct understanding of the nature of the state, revolution cannot be completed — and that reformist or pragmatic strategies that leave capitalist state power and private property untouched inevitably lead to defeat.

The episode also argues that the Epstein scandal serves a parallel function: it reveals the moral degeneracy and class impunity of the ruling class at a moment when the system can no longer deliver even a tolerable existence for working people, thereby accelerating the breakdown of the "rules-based order" that previously stabilised class relations.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws on several core Marxist concepts:

The nature of the state: The episode explicitly invokes Lenin's State and Revolution to argue that the Kurdish leadership's failure to understand the state as an instrument of class rule — rather than a neutral arbiter that can be coexisted with — led them to pursue the utopian project of "democratic confederalism" within existing capitalist states. The argument is that Öcalan's theoretical framework, influenced by Bookchin's anarchism, represents an abandonment of Marxism precisely on this question: it seeks to minimise capital accumulation rather than abolish it, and to coexist with bourgeois states rather than smash them.

Class consciousness and its material basis: The discussion of the Epstein scandal grounds ruling-class morality in the material relations of production — the capitalist sees the worker as "an appendage to the machine" — while arguing that working-class consciousness is not fixed but elastic, changing through experience. The episode rejects both abistorical morality and arbitrary relativism, insisting on a class basis for ethics.

The limits of pragmatism: The central political lesson — that the only reliable allies of the oppressed are other workers and oppressed peoples, not imperialist powers — is presented not as moralising but as a strategic conclusion drawn from a century of Kurdish betrayals by successive imperialist powers.

The analysis sits within the Marxist tradition that emphasises the impossibility of a "third way" between revolution and accommodation with capital. It is critical of both the Stalinist tradition (which Öcalan's early Marxism is said to have been a version of) and the anarchist-influenced "democratic confederalism" that replaced it.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode connects to several specific features of the current moment:

The collapse of Rojava: The episode details the rapid military collapse in January, with Kurdish forces losing 80% of their territory, including Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour, and being reduced to enclaves around Kobani, Qamishli, and Hasaka. The US abandonment is explicit — Tom Barre, the US official responsible, stated that "the rationale for the US-SDF partnership has largely expired" — while the West has thrown its support behind Ahmed al-Shara (formerly al-Jolani), a former al-Qaeda leader now heading the Damascus regime.

The Epstein files as a class document: The episode treats the Epstein scandal not as a story of individual depravity but as a window into how the ruling class actually operates — through networks of billionaires, politicians, and fixers who negotiate the real decisions behind the back of parliament. The FT article quoted — which warns that the scandal "will further corrode faith in US democracy" — is read as a ruling-class anxiety about the breakdown of the legitimacy that previously stabilised class relations.

The crisis of the "rules-based order": The episode argues that this order applied not just between states but between classes, and required the ruling class to provide a minimum decent existence. With that no longer possible — as cost-of-living crises, decaying services, and war become the norm — the exposure of ruling-class degeneracy becomes politically explosive.

The broader regional context: The episode situates the Kurdish defeat within the longer arc of the 2011 Arab uprisings, the imperialist hijacking of those movements, the deliberate unleashing of Islamist forces (documented by the 2012 DIA report), and the subsequent need to use the Kurds to contain ISIS once it had served its destabilising purpose.

Where the Argument Continues

The episode deliberately leaves open several threads:

The future of the Kurdish struggle: The episode acknowledges this is not the end, but insists that the lesson must be learned — that only an internationalist strategy uniting Kurdish and Turkish workers, and connecting with the working masses of the whole region, offers a way forward. This connects to the broader RCI analysis of the need for revolutionary parties in the region.

The Epstein scandal's political trajectory: The episode notes that the released files are heavily redacted and that only a fraction have been released, and promises to return to the story as it develops.

The question of revolutionary consciousness: The final segment on whether "people are too stupid to make revolutions" opens onto a broader discussion of how consciousness develops through experience, and the missing element of a revolutionary party that can give conscious expression to what millions already feel. This connects to other Against the Stream episodes on the need for communist organisation.

The episode references a previous podcast on the psychology of the ruling class, and a 2018 talk on the Kurdish movement's influence, which will be linked in the description. The broader RCI corpus — including Spectre of Communism episodes — develops the theoretical critique of democratic confederalism and the analysis of the state in more depth.

Connections

Lenin, State and Revolution: The central theoretical reference point. The episode argues that Öcalan's democratic confederalism represents a denial of Lenin's basic argument about the nature of the state.

Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom and related works: The source of Öcalan's "democratic confederalism," which the episode critiques as semi-anarchist and utopian.

The 2012 DIA report: Cited as evidence that the US and its allies deliberately fostered Islamist insurgency in Syria, with full knowledge that this would lead to the rise of ISIS.

The FT article "The Epstein rot goes deep": Quoted for its ruling-class anxiety about the political consequences of the scandal.

Previous Against the Stream episodes: On the psychology of the ruling class, and on the Kurdish movement's influence in 2018.

The broader Marxist tradition on the state: The episode's argument that the capitalist state will always crush autonomous forces that threaten private property connects to the classical Marxist analysis from Marx through Lenin to contemporary revolutionary theory.

Key Quotes

1. "Just when they had the most influence and most appeal to all those who wanted to fight the ruling classes in the region, the leaders of the Kurdish movement tied the movement to those leaders. And so they were stained and they were discredited."

2. "Lenin wrote State and Revolution for a reason. He wrote it in the heat of the revolution itself. And the reason for it was unless you have a clear understanding of the nature of the state, you cannot complete the revolution."

3. "The only allies that the working class and the poor have is the rest of the working class, the workers of other countries, the poor and the oppressed."

4. "This is the end result of thinking you can be pragmatic and you can lean on an imperialist power for help. You cannot."

5. "What's missing is not the intelligence of people. What's missing is a party that can bring all this together that can give a conscious expression to what millions of ordinary people already feel and think."