From an even greater distance, we are now returning to this question with some supplementary notes centred on the lessons of the insurrection and articulated principally around three axes: the contradictory development of workers' associationism in the appearance of the shoras, the strengths and limits of the insurrectionary actions of the proletariat, new inter-bourgeois wars in the region and the tasks of the proletariat. These notes have been taken from our central review in Spanish (Comunismo No.35) which appeared in October 1994. Since then, other information has reached us about the development of nationalism and Islamism as means put in place by the local bourgeoisie to dissolve the proletariat and to lead even those who fought side by side in the insurrection to turn their guns against each other. This information has been assembled in a text which follows "Additional Notes..." that we have entitled "Nationalism and Islam against the Proletariat".
We want to draw our readers' attention in particular to the lessons arising from the insurrection in Sulaymaniyah. What was at stake - as in all insurrections of our class throughout history - was how to develop the revolution in all aspects of social life once the insurrection had been accomplished and how to avoid the confiscation of the social revolution by its transformation into a simple political "revolution", a simple change of government.
What happened in Iraq does not only show the reality of the contradiction capitalism/communism, but also its future. Capitalist inhumanity is developing everywhere. Everywhere war presents itself as an alternative to the real capitalist crisis. And everywhere the outline of a communist response to this and to all capital's barbarism is beginning to appear. This point is aimed at all those who think that "civilised" Europe will be forever spared the barbarism of war which swept across this part of the world only fifty years ago. It is useful to point out that the alternative "war or revolution" is the same everywhere and that the threat of Europe being transformed into a huge battlefield is just as real as that hanging over other parts of the world so far spared by military conflicts. "Here" too, the war waged by capital on the proletariat must develop to the destructive intensity with which it was conducted "over there" in Iraq. "Here" too, the only possible way to break the chains of this deathly system, which drags us ineluctably to war, remains the struggle for revolution.
Discussion of the lessons from the insurrection in Iraq are situated within this urgency. We appeal to our readers to share their opinions and critiques with us on this particular question, to enable us to develop together a community of struggle against war, the prefiguration of a real human community where Capital, the State, classes and social relations based on exchange and money have finally disappeared.