In order to develop the mass movement in a revolutionary way, the labor left movement should further strengthen formation of a revolutionary mass movement and action. It must do this in opposition to the bourgeois and fascist parties’ practice of creating and organizing mass movements. Today, the only way to achieve this in Turkey and North Kurdistan is to raise a mass movement that isolates the CHP and to grow and develop it towards social hegemony.
The formation and development of mass movements are conditioned and prepared by the sharpening of class and political contradictions. Mass actions and movements arising on a class background are formed and shaped under the influence of many political and social factors. They gain a political quality and direction in the political class struggle. Mass movements, as direct product of the conjecture in which they are born, occur to interact with subjects – political parties, unions etc – which are active in the conjecture in which these mass movements arise and develop.
The spread and continuation of spontaneous mass actions is the most basic example of social discontent moving from mass actions to the level of a mass movement
Making the development of today’s mass movements a subject of meticulous political analysis and comprehension and responding to the leading revolutionary needs of the mass movement is a critical task for revolutionary pioneers that cannot be neglected . So, when we look at today’s political class struggle, what does a panoramic view of the concrete development of mass movements tell us?
In order to understand the formation and development dynamics of mass movements, we can either look at it from the perspective of the latest election results in Europe or from the political analysis of the course of development of mass movements in Turkey and North Kurdistan. From this we can see that mass movements develop on two basic axes; the first of is the spontaneous mass movement. The second is the political mass movement organized and led by political parties and subjects. Political mass movements built and driven by political subjects are themselves fundamentally divided into opposing sides. Due to the nature of the political class struggle, the bourgeois and fascist mass movements and the democratic-revolutionary mass movements of the working class and the people align at opposite poles. As two opposing mass movements, they show different directions and dynamics of development. The political mass actions and movements organized and led by the DEM Party (left-wing, democratic and pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey/North Kurdistan) and our labor left movement against the trustee coup, as well as the mass actions led by the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi — Republican People’s Party; Kemalist party in Turkey/North Kurdistan, main bourgeois opppsition party), document the reality of these mass movements.
CHP is building a mass movement for the purpose of gaining broad social support for its conquest of political power. Just looking at the situation since the local elections, it can be seen that the CHP has been carrying out a “mass movement politics” in its interaction with the demands of the widest dissatisfied social segments. The CHP is proactively making its policy towards the working poor classes more effective and obvious. By keeping the center of the bourgeois opposition, it aims to be a political pole for all social categories that are dissatisfied with the palace junta and want to get rid of it. It organizes this on two levels and in two forms. As the first level in organizing the mass movement, CHP interacts with mass actions developing outside itself. It is trying to build ideological influence and hegemony over such developing movements and attract them to its own magnetism.
We need to see that the bourgeois left CHP has moved into a “new strategy phase” both politically, and by expanding the area in which it operates. We need to note this as the most crucial problem of hegemony for revolutionary politics. The CHP is spreading its strategy of gaining social power for political power to all oppressed, exploited and poor social layers. Here we are faced with the reality of the mass movement politics of the CHP. The CHP intervenes in all politicized social problems. It tries to take this role through practices of leadership and spokespersonship. May 1st around Taksim and Saraçhane and the action of the Saturday Mothers in their thousandth week, the Kobanê conspiracy case, the Suruç case, the practical position taken against the trustee coups in North Kurdistan embody this new strategy of political development.
On the other hand, CHP mobilizes the producers, laborers and the poor who are inclined to take action against the fascist palace junta. It reveals this tendency of the masses through the conventional forms of bourgeois political action organizes a movement and executing a strategy of “bourgeois mass movement construction”. By quickly entering into resonance with the emerging socio-political events, it bends the social mass movement towards itself and attempts to determine itsdirection. For example, it channels the popular anger and energy of recent political events such as the Wan serhildan[LG4] (Kurdish for ‘uprising’), which exploded against the trustee coup, and the broad political legitimacy and action energy of the Kobanê conspiracy case, into its own political power strategy with the call for early elections. In order to control the mass movement and tie it to its own political axis, it constantly ties the expectations of the oppressed and exploited masses into the CHP program by announcing early elections at the most critical “moments”.
Of course, CHP, as a party of the bourgeois order, acts with the principles of political stability and with the survival of the established order in mind. It organizes a political line in accordance with its historical right to existence. After the local elections, CHP’s policy towards the working class and poor people is developing more effectively and clearly towards winning the broad masses politically. It organizes rallies together with different unions, such as the retirees’ rally. Likewise, the tea producers’ rally also embodies the CHP’s new strategy of mass movement formation and mobilization . In this way, the CHP, on the one hand, cooperates with Erdo?an , and on the other undertakes a political mission to calm the anger of the masses for the sake of political stability and the survival of the state. Filled with the explosive substances of social discontent, it drowns the anger of the oppressed and the poor in the moderate waters of bourgeois politics.
The rise of new fascist movements, strikingly demonstrated by the election results in Europe; the mass movement building practice of the bourgeois left CHP; and the mass movement building phenomena we see in many parts of the world, remind us of this truth: parties of the bourgeois order organize themselves by politically revealing the discontent and tendencies of the working and poor masses as a mass movement.
In particular, new fascist movements are gaining power by organizing the anger and desires of the working, poor and dispossessed classes in the form of a mass movement on this new terrain of political class struggle. We see very clearly that the new fascist movements do not wait for the “moment” of spontaneous mass movements and reactions. They organize the tendency in the masses through a process and in line with a certain political strategy. They transform inclination into action and movement. These reactionary movements apply exactly the revolutionary and socialist movement’s procedure for creating and organizing a mass movement.
In order to develop the mass movement in a revolutionary way, the labor left movement should more strongly put and develop the revolutionary mass movement construction and action line in opposition to the bourgeois and fascist parties’ practice of creating and organizing a mass movement. The only way to achieve this today in Turkey and North Kurdistan is to raise a mass movement that isolates the CHP and to grow and develop it towards social hegemony.
For our labor left movement, today there are more favorable conditions for mass movements than in recent years. The working class and the oppressed millions see with their deep intuition that the AKP-MHP fascist bloc and the palace junta are weakening. They are beginning to grasp the truth that the exploitation, fascist oppression and terror, economic plunder and ecological destruction that the fascist palace junta has inflicted on the working class and the oppressed can only be prevented through struggle.
As we move beyond the recent elections and working people realise that their expectations were in vain, more widespread mass actions are developing and becoming increasingly militant. Moreover, these actions are turning into a new mass movement. The Wan serhildan, the May 1 clash, the street protests that flared up and spread again against the appointment of a trustee to the Colemêrg (Tr. Hakkari) Municipality, holding space and ensuring the continuity of action with protests for freedom and justice, and rallies against the trustees are the manifestations of a new mass movement. Social dissatisfaction, which grows every day against the political Islamist fascist chief regime, is increasingly turning into mass actions.
The tendency of the working and poor masses to take action against the fascist palace junta and to fight at the level of active defense is getting stronger day by day. The increasing scale of actual legitimate actions very concretely reflects this developing trend among our people. We can safely say that our labor left movement shows the power and ingenuity to reveal a mass tendency. The tendency to unite against the fascist palace junta and develop general political resistance is growing stronger. At this moment, our labor left movement should focus on increasing its political assertion, self-confidence and determination and growing the mass actions and movements in the direction of an anti-fascist united front. It must prepare a new revolutionary rise by organizing creative and daring vanguard practices that will pave a revolutionary path for mass movements to follow.
*Editorial of the 171st issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated June 13.