./english/36.txt:5:1. The success of the Athens ESF exceeded all hopes. Even the most optimists among us didn’t expect to have about 35.000 people in the Forum and about 100.000 demonstrators on May 6 (Police said that the number of demonstrators was 25.000, independent journalists estimated that there were about 70.000 people in the streets of Athens). This unexpected success showed the strength of no global movement and its potentiality to become even bigger. This international movement has opened a new space for social struggles that cannot be cancelled. Social competition has an international aspect which becomes more and more important.
./english/36.txt:26:12. Although the weather didn’t help us this time (unbelievable cold!), I strongly believe that we should continue working on the idea of thematic spaces. Such spaces contribute in the enlargement of the ESF by making easier the introduction of groups who were skeptical in the past. At the same time thematic spaces give visibility to movements and struggles that sometimes are marginalized by the mass media.
./english/41.txt:40:4. We agreed to stand up against fascism, militarism (the planned war against Iran), to struggle in common against neoliberalism, not to let our perspective and solidarity get taken away from us. A poor person’s misery in Poland, for instance, makes me just as miserable as my own.
./english/42.txt:49:We were about 10 Germans (mostly women, some of them attending more the conventions at the Polytechneinon and only some of the ESF seminars), one Basque, one Irish and about 10 or 12 Greeks. We had the chance to speak with the defendants for about 15 min. Four of the accused went into the discussion while the others just listened. We addressed our solidarity with their struggle against these special conditions and expressed our support for their aim to be acknowledged as political prisoners.
./english/42.txt:103:We call on everybody inside and outside the ESF to include the struggle for the freedom of political prisoners, against torture, against the “antiterrorist” laws and the migrants’ detention camps in all our political and social struggles. The right to have rights is on the agenda of the day.
./english/44.txt:90:The 4th ESF places a strong emphasis on European and transnational migration in terms of struggles, analyses and demands. We decided to propose a European day of action and mobilisation on 7th October 2006, not only because it commemorates the events in Ceuta and Melilla, the southern European border, but also because it will connect the European action with the international mobilisation proposed in Bamako, in the run up to the world social forum in Nairobi. We want to connect our initiative with the one promoted by the American migrants’ movement in September, in order to stress the global dimension of migrant struggles today.
./english/44.txt:96:The ESF in Athens was an opportunity to strengthen the presence of movements of the Have Not, precarious persons and the struggles against poverty. This solidarity support should continue.
./english/44.txt:101:In this ESF, more than 40 organisations shared their struggles against the commodification of common goods and the privatisation of public services, against the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and the Bolkestein Directive and against the neoliberal policies of the EU, national and local governments. From here with the “Athens statement” we launch the European Network for Public Services. We will meet on 27th October 2006 in Geneva in order to launch a European Day of mobilization to defend and relaunch Public Services in Europe aiming at building the first European Forum of Social movements for Public Services in 2007.
./english/44.txt:134:We call on everybody inside and outside the ESF to include the struggle for the freedom of political prisoners, against torture, against the “antiterrorist” laws and the migrants’ detention camps in all our political and social struggles. The right to have rights is on the agenda of the day.
./english/44.txt:148:Egypt today is one of the most important supporters of imperialist policies in the Arab region, while the Regime continuously oppresses its opponents in the movement for democracy. We express our full solidarity with the demands of this movement and demand the immediate release of all those involved in the struggle who are in jail.
./english/44.txt:237:On that day at a meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sheth haji Habib, an Indian and South African Muslim declared his commitment to refuse non-violently, at any cost, the new laws of repression passed by the British colonial empire against coloured people in South Africa. Mohatmas Gandhi attended the meeting which became a historic step forward for people’s non-violent power in its modern form. Since then, this same force has brought down imperial rule in India and elsewhere, achieved civil rights in the USA, contributed to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa and inspired people’s struggles for justice and dignity across the planet.
./english/44.txt:239:We therefore call upon all people to join us on 9/11 2006 to commemorate the suffering of innocent victims of terror, wars and injustice and to celebrate, recreate and renew the force of non-violent struggle for our times. Let us use that occasion worldwide to demand democracy at all levels and to express our condemnation of war, particularly those in Iraq and Palestine, our solidarity with all oppressed people and our commitment to a habitable planet for human beings and other species.
./english/44.txt:247:San Salvador Atenco is an area near Mexico City, which is well known for the struggles of the peasants. Recently, the Mexican Federal Police attacked a flower-seller, who claimed the right of selling in a public area, which is due for the construction of a wall.
./english/44.txt:270:A European-wide day of Solidarity with the people of Nepal to take place throughout Europe on 2 September 2006 under the slogan “Support the people’s struggle. Hands off Nepal”.
./english/46.txt:10:Considering the present challenges facing the Social Forums, the Women's Assembly wishes to stress once again that women should not serve as an alibi for any kind of manipulations. We reject political alliances that are concluded to the detriment of women and which establish priorities for our struggles, putting feminist demands behind anti-racist and anti-war demands. Such processes divide the anti-liberal forces and undermine the strength of the Social Forums. Because women's rights are universal, feminists are equally involved in the fight against racism and against war/
./english/47.txt:43:WOMEN IN STRUGGLE against GENDER VIOLENCE
./english/47.txt:83:• Elaboration of a founding document on European secularism, on the basis of which we will launch a coordinated struggle in all countries in order to promote and enrich our conception of a feminist, egalitarian and secular Europe.
./english/47.txt:85:• We should struggle actively, in the same way as against racism and homophobia, against sexism and the depreciation of women in religious ideologies, against the instigation to hatred and the submission of women, against propaganda against contraception and abortion. These attitudes should be penalized in appropriate legislation.
./english/47.txt:100:• Proposal to continue the struggle against the Lisbon agenda, economic liberalization and deregularisation.
./english/54.txt:13:struggle across the continent over the last year including a seafarers¹
./english/54.txt:16:ongoing struggles. There were activists in abundance from Turkey, the
./english/54.txt:74:Europe and the various struggles against privatisation and deteriorating
./english/54.txt:114:of the anti-CPE movement, the struggle of youth and workers against
./english/54.txt:117:Arab participants from France described their struggles in the seminars and
./english/54.txt:162:struggles against neoliberalism in Europe.
./english/54.txt:188:its leadership), and the fact that the class struggle from Nepal to
./english/54.txt:271:services, and for social rights, co-ordinating our struggles throughout
./english/54.txt:281:general convergence of our struggles.²
./english/54.txt:293:ESF must turn itself into a permanent organising centre of struggle against
./english/54.txt:312:the ESF, which can respond to urgent tasks arising from the class struggle
./english/54.txt:317:the rank and file activists arising from the ongoing struggles, who do not
./english/54.txt:319:class, should press ahead with creating such a forum of struggle.
./english/54.txt:368:who are not afraid to draw revolutionary conclusions from the struggles that
./english/54.txt:371:want to learn from the struggles of others.
./english/54.txt:378:The rising tempo of the European class struggle, plus the revolutionary
./english/62.txt:39:Social movement scholarship constitutes a specific area of academic study of social movements usually undertaken in the disciplines of sociology and political science. In American sociology, the early movement theorists tended to view social movements as an irrational form of collective behavior, which could be explained by reference to the mobilizers’ ‘social strains’ or ‘grievances’ (LeBon, Kornhauser etc.). Much of the work after the 1970s sought to challenge this kind of thinking, in which social movements were seen in terms of ‘mob psychology’ or as an expression of social breakdown and anomie. Thus, the new dominant paradigm in the study of social movements was focusing on such concepts as ‘resource mobilization,’ ‘political opportunities,’ ‘networks of mobilization,’ ‘framing’ and ‘political contention’ (Jenkins, Zald, McAdam, Tilly, Tarrow, Snow, Benford etc.). As a critical reaction to this structuralistic way of theorizing social movements, some analysts turned to the study of ‘emotions,’ ‘biographies’ and ‘culture’ (Goodwin, Jasper etc.) with the mainstream approach of Tilly, Tarrow, McAdam and their collaborators eventually accepting to incorporate culture as one of the determinants of their structural effects. However, even from the 1960s, European scholars (Habermas, Touraine, Melucci etc.) were elaborating an alternative paradigm, that of the ‘new social movements,’ critically reflecting on the legacy of Marxism and motivated directly from the social struggles of that period (feminism, environmentalism, May 1968 etc.).
./english/62.txt:41:On the other side, activism refers to an actual engagement with social movement participation that it entails concrete contentious activities, organizing and leadership, claims, questions, discussion and reflection on goals, strategy, tactics, means and ends, ideological corroboration, enduring commitment to the struggles of the movement and conscious concern about the followed directions (Flacks). All these are practical activities and they involve a great deal of theory, which cannot be monopolized by social movements scholars. In fact, activists produce theory too – at various levels of abstraction and sophistication – in processes of practical activities, in which they are committed and engaged. This activist merger of practice and theory is what Eyerman & Jamison used to call ‘cognitive praxis.’ According to them, cognitive praxis develops in a threefold frame composed of a cosmological, a technological and an organizational dimension. However, not everybody finds convincing this analytical scheme of Eyerman & Jamison: for instance, Barker & Cox contend that it reifies existing distinctions as given. Rather than that, they posit that activist theory is dialogical and developmental in the sense that activists strive to answer the question of ‘what is to be done?’ in situations throughout their struggles that they do not fully control. For Barker & Cox, activist theorizing exhibits certain situational and pragmatic features stamping the distinctive character of forms of knowledge produced by activists in such a way that activist knowledge cannot be divorced from the struggles of the process of movement activity. In fact, it was Gramsci in his discussion of knowledge and the labor process who was distinguishing the official forms of knowledge – produced in and by an authoritative institutional context – from the unofficial forms of knowledge – generated inside the struggles of the disadvantageous classes when they aim to resolve their practical problems without really knowing what needs are driving them but only being determined to find out through their struggle and solidarity (cf., Wainwright).
./english/62.txt:80:2) Doing that, I think it is useful to look at the world we are leaving in as inhabited by many ambivalences. I can’t here to develop this discourse, but I mean for example that it is important to recognize that this world of separations and crisis of institutions we are facing is ALSO the result of the social struggles we had in the past: i.e. the rejection of hierarchical and over-structured institutions in the 60s and 70s. It doesn’t mean at all we are leaving in a world shaped by these conflicts. But it means that to recover such a memory would help us to understand the unresolved contradictions the system is engaged to manage and to recognize that there are many more ambivalences and spaces of action we usually recognize.
./english/62.txt:81:3) Third, in this work of re-connection we are engaged with, I think we have to develop a sort of struggle in different directions, included a work on ourselves. What I mean here is that it is easy (and right) to criticize the academy, for example, for its impermeability and self-reference. But we should also focus on a kind of resistance we express in our attitudes toward the integration of more complex and elaborated tools and connections in our own actions. Yesterday I was with a media activist who expressed me a pessimistic evaluation about social movements attitude: “it is like a kid who doesn’t want to grow”, he said. I am not pessimistic like him, but I think that there a problem exists and we should explicit it.
./english/62.txt:90:2. In fact, researchers are employees, employers and/or something in between. Most of those researchers dealing with social movements also are activists and/or activist researchers. Therefore the boundaries make no sense if to construct some kind of teacher-pupil relationship regarding research and social movements. Social movements, protest and other kinds of demanding a better world from below are crossing the academic/public education sector since ever. This means that we all must remind that the political struggle also takes place in the academic area. Researchers can not exclude themselfes from their "objects" social movements believing that they are not part of the problem. Spoken for the german case this means too, that doing social movement research in times of privatization and neoliberal restructuring of the academic sector somehow should mean too that we must struggle that social movements and their causes remain on the academic agenda. I think young researchers should be aware about their own precarity, we should be more critical towards our place. Universities and the academic institutions get more and more places for the production of elites, they get more and more a mixture of bureaucratic nightmares, neoliberal thinking and precarious working conditions.
./english/147.txt:30:Social disobedience, claim the protagonists of this movement, is not only a political struggle, but also a cultural one. To be a Zapatista in Europe means to “fight on the side of all victims of the neo-liberal monster through a “networking of the world,” which, for the activists of Ya Basta!, means “grassroots diplomacy and international horizontal correlation,” in their striving for a world “where many worlds fit, a world without borders.”
./english/147.txt:38:Another movement inspired by the ideas of Italian Marxism, movimento antagonista, is more conservative. This movement, centered around unions and social centers, represents a continuity of the Marxist movement of the 1970s, “Autonomia Operaia.”Aantagonists promote the widening of social conflict, working in unions, struggle for the right of workers, anti-fascist campaigns, solidarity with Intifada, and anti-capitalist campaigns.
./english/147.txt:84:Led by charismatic speakers, they occupied two Paris churches. Soon after that, they formulated a model of resistance and struggle that has spread through Europe. In Germany, the initiative “no one is illegal” was decisively influenced by the events in Paris.
./english/147.txt:104:A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance that maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism
./english/150.txt:1:Euromarch - the struggle for a Social Europe
./english/150.txt:6:Neo-liberalism is widely seen as the dominant strategy underpinning the development of policies which have been adopted by national governments and regional and global institutions alike. The austerity measures associated with neo-liberal policies have been the catalyst for many of the social struggles which have contributed to the development of organisations like Euromarch. In this sense, the Euromarch campaign has been born in a situation in Europe where over 20 million people are unemployed and 50 million live at or below the poverty line. [1]
./english/150.txt:12:A Euro-wide paper, »Marches-Europeenes-News« is produced regularly and this is supplemented by nationally based publications. Much communication takes place via e-mail and use of the internet as continent wide meetings are costly to arrange and incur sizeable travel expenses. However, the »Assizes« are well attended with 500 participants from many countries. These gatherings, together with the counter-summits, provide opportunities for the exchange of information, experiences of struggles and for debate over policies, demands, actions and ways of organising the movement. Although debate can become heated, there is a spirit of cooperation which is just as well with the large number of languages being spoken. The organisation of summer camps in Thessalonika (1998) and Cologne (1999) provides another forum of debate for activists from diverse movements.
./english/150.txt:18:As is the watchword of progressive movements, after the debate is over all actions need to have the unified activity of all participants. However it is the diversity of activities which has come to characterise the struggles of groups which come under the Euromarch umbrella. Action at a European level has also had a catalytic effect on national activities, for example the Amsterdam demonstration provided the impetus for the campaigns of the French unemployed movement in the winter of 1997, and this activity then fed back into the Euromarch organisation which has a strong French presence. The large number of occupations of unemployment offices played a central role in the French campaign and challenged the Labour Minister, Martine Aubry, who ridiculed the movement and claimed that the occupations were the actions of a tiny minority. In Germany there were fewer occupations but more regional and local demonstrations which coincided with the monthly publication of unemployment figures. This served to keep the issue of unemployment a prominent one, especially in the run up to the national elections. In Spain, the unemployed also took to the streets but this time to form blockades to draw attention to their situation and to the increasingly casualised nature of work where 90% of all new contracts are temporary. In Italy the unemployed and other people living in precarious situations, who have become known as the »Invisibles«, have asserted their right to free transport. In the run up to the 1997 demonstration this took the form of an occupation of trains and the successful demand to be taken to Amsterdam. Euromarch has also played a part in linking struggles and this was highlighted at the Cardiff summit where the demonstration was followed by a street party protest organised with the assistance of the »Reclaim the Streets« organisation.
./english/150.txt:19:A significant aspect of the protests has been their cross-national dimension. Activists from across the continent have been present at the nationally based actions and they have been able to draw attention to the commonality of the diverse struggles. Resistance to the introduction of »Workfare« style programmes has received an echo in the actions from across the continent and it is this common resistance that has enabled bridges to built between the various groups and struggles both within and across national boundaries. This bridge building was symbolised by the joint activity of unemployed activists to span the bridge at Strasbourg in May 1998. [2]
./english/150.txt:22:In its opposition to the extension and broadening of neo-liberal style policies, Euromarch can be seen as part of a growing extra-parliamentary opposition to governments of any political persuasion which pursue these types of policies and to their adoption by the European Union. This opposition encompasses campaigns and struggles in a movement which spans highly organised political and pressure group type organisations which plan their actions carefully to display their opposition, and more spontaneous struggles which are more sporadically organised and focus around everyday resistance to neo-liberal policies. The differing perspectives of participants are not so easily identified but a contrast can be made between those who see such a movement as a source of social democratic renewal and those whose aim is to develop a more fundamental challenge to the existing order by building an explicitly anti-capitalist movement. In this sense key Euromarch demands like that for a minimum income can be viewed as the basis of a »Social Europe«, but the meaning of the word »Social« is itself subject to debate and its content will be an object of struggle.
./english/150.txt:23:With the election of social democratic governments in several key countries a situation has arisen in which social democratic parties are in office in the majority of EU countries, but these parties are generally carrying out neo-liberal policies. Euromarch could be seen as a way of exerting pressure on these parties to alter the course of their policies at the national and EU level. Alternatively, Euromarch could be viewed as a way of linking and coordinating struggles with a view to developing an anti-capitalist strategy to challenge not just government policies but also the whole dynamic of capitalist restructuring. In this sense the debates which are occuring are debates about the orientation of the labour movement and what Christophe Aguiton (Euromarch Secretary) calls a redefinition and reconstruction of the working class and its relationship to social movements.
./english/150.txt:25:In this wider struggle, building international, as well as European wide, links are seen as central to the development of Euromarch. Strong links have already been made with unemployed organisations in South Korea and with the land rights movement in Brazil. Euromarch will be raising money to bring over representatives of such movements to take part in the activities and demonstration in Cologne. Moreover the understanding of the global dimension of struggles has led to an extension of the actions surrounding the EU summit in Cologne in late May to include the G8 summit in June. Contact has been made with many organisations worldwide to ensure that joint actions can be organised to bridge the three weeks which separate the two summits. These three weeks will provide the opportunity for debate and action which will be truly global in character and will represent global resistance to the policies of neo-liberalism.
./english/161.txt:153:and struggles. In the UK, for example, a radical perspective on legal support dates
./english/162.txt:29:One can begin to do so by pointing to the different kinds of social struggles that have intensified over the last ten years. Ecological struggles, against resource waste, polluting industry, invasive infrastructures. Workers' struggles, against falling wages, worsening labor conditions, insufficient health coverage or unemployment benefits. Struggles against the privatization of medical and scientific knowledge, against the control of the university and of cultural production by business. And finally, struggles against the preponderance of the financial sphere in the taking of democratic decisions. This list of different fields of struggle refers us, in a more abstract way, to four "fictive commodities": land, labor, knowledge and money itself. That is, four major articulations of social life which capitalism claims to treat as things to be sold, confiding their destiny to the operations of a self-regulating market. (8) The problem being that the basic conditions under which these "things" are produced do not all have a price tag, and so escape any monetary regulation. These four major articulations of society exist at least partially outside the market: they are "externalities."9 And the maintenance of their fictive status as commodities implies a perpetually deferred cost, which in the long run can only manifest itself in a phenomenon outside any imaginable accounting. This is the phenomenon of systemic crisis. Its looming shadow has motivated the increasing levels of social struggle.
./english/162.txt:43:Just one more thing. I do not want to accord any privilege, in what follows, to that supposedly more "advanced" fraction of the world population which is so deeply involved with electronic networks. I think the opposition between the "Net" and "Self" – between a modernizing process that enforces our abstraction from historical ad cultural traditions, or failing that, determines a desperate and regressive retreat to the fixations of local identity – is simply false. (12) More interesting is the divide between the possessive individualism of the flexible personality, and a concern for human coexistence. As we saw above, the movement of movements found one of its beginnings in a concept of solidarity arising from the Zapatista struggles, which have fundamentally to do with questions of land. But the meaning of these survival struggles of the Mayan peoples could only reach the subjects of the developed world through the Internet, where the commodification of cultural and scientific knowledge is at stake. Here the essential struggle is to overtake and dissolve the language of ¥ € $, not through a return to the closed, bureaucratic frameworks of the Keynesian state, but instead through the political development of new principles of exchange and reciprocity. Thus this fourth field of resistance, with touches closely on human language but also on technical development, seems destined to furnish elements of articulation for other struggles, in a shared search for alternatives to the systemic crisis.
./english/162.txt:70:Artistic practice has been one of the keys to the emergence of these "global social facts" – not least because artistic practice has also been one of the ways to hold off group violence, to open up a theatrical space that doesn't immediately become a war zone. This is obviously something that contemporary society risks forgetting, and that particular risk is reason enough in itself to go beyond the specialized, disciplinary definition of art, to try to relocate art within a much broader political economy. Before I do that, however, I want to draw one last group of ideas from Yochai Benkler. His paper closes with the problem of what he calls "threats to motivation." One of these comes from the failure to integrate the results of commons-based peer production into usable wholes which can make a project successful. Translated into political terms, this would mean the failure of the networked movements to change any tangible aspect of social life. That is a real threat to motivation; and I think it's vitally important to keep offering practical ideas and proposals about possible changes on all the scales of governance and existence, from the neighborhood to the world level, at every new demonstration. Benkler points to different strategies for putting together the results of common effort. These strategies range from self-organization of the integration process, to the delegation of this tricky point to a hierarchical structure or a commercial enterprise. Again the translation into our terms is obvious, and has become increasingly visible at events such as the European Social Forum, held in Florence in November of 2002. Just when the networked struggles get big enough to succeed, there is an enormous temptation to hand them over, in the name of efficiency, to a traditional politburo supported by professional media people. The problem with such expedient strategies is that they risk giving participants the impression that the voluntary production of political culture with their peers is being confiscated by somebody in a directive position. A fantastic example of this is the 30-thousand member ATTAC association in France, which, to the discontent of many members, is in fact a strictly controlled hierarchical organization at the national level. However, for ATTAC to have the social power it does, it has also had to produce a decentralized network of local committees, which operate very differently from the national bureau and regularly criticize or contradict its decisions. The tension you can see there in a very real situation, between collective process and effective decision, is at the heart of the democratic experiment today. You might even say that working though that kind of tension is the art of politics.
./english/162.txt:74:These admissions of defeat are well known. (21) But in recent publications, another history of conceptual art has been coming back to light. It is a history that unfolds in Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, in the cities of Buenos Aires and Rosario. It would seem that here, in the context of an authoritarian government and under the pressure of American cultural imperialism, conceptual art could only be received – or invented – as an invitation to act antagonistically within the mass-media sphere. Certain Argentine pop artists considered that the commercial news media could actually be appropriated as an artistic medium, like a canvas or a gallery space. To do this, Roberto Jacoby and Eduardo Costa created an artificial happening, one that never really happened, and they stimulated the media with information about it, so as to achieve specific fictional effects. (22) But this attempt was only a first step towards a fully political appropriation of the communications media by artists. The most characteristic project was Tucumán Arde, or "Tucumán is Burning," realized in 1968. (23) The military government was attempting to "modernize" the sugar-cane industry in the province of Tucumán, with a shift from small, locally owned businesses to larger factories owned by foreign capital; at the same time, the official media painted an idyllic picture of a region which in reality was wracked by impoverishment and intense labor struggles. So a group of some thirty artists and intellectuals from Buenos Aires and Rosario researched the social and economic conditions in the province, carrying out an analysis of all the mass-media coverage of the region, and going out themselves to gather first-hand information and to document the situation using photography and film. They then staged an exhibition that was explicitly designed to feed their work back into the national debate, so as to counter the media picture. Yet the project, although it did not shy away from advertising techniques, could not be reduced to counter-propaganda. As Andrea Giunta writes: "In many of its characteristic traits – such as the exploration of the interaction between languages, the centrality of the activity required from the spectator, the unfinished character, the importance of the documentation, the dissolution of the idea of the author, and the questioning of the art system and the ideas that legitimate it – Tucumán Arde maintains a relation with the repertory of conceptual art. But not with the tautological and self-referential form of conceptualism, in which, from a certain viewpoint, one finds a reconfirmation of the modernist paradigm. Language does not refer back to language, to the specificity of the artistic fact; instead, the contextual relations are so strong that in this case, reality ceases being understood as a space of reflection and comes to be conceived as a possible field of action oriented toward the transformation of society." (24)
./english/162.txt:79:The examples of this revenge could be as numerous as the experiences of those involved in it. That is why I want to talk about an event in which I personally took part: the carnivalesque performance and riot in the City of London on June 18, 1999. Before it took place, this day was intensely dreamed by a multiplicity of actors, sometimes connected in constant dialogue and exchange, sometimes affected at a distance by signs that promised to break their isolation and unleash their agency. The inspiration first emerged, at least in certain versions of the story, during the summer of 1998 in conversations between members of London Reclaim the Streets and the anarchist group London Greenpeace (not the famous NGO).26 It spread through the networks of Peoples' Global Action, drawing on the suggestive potency of two key ideas. One was the "street party," as a way to refuse the domination of the city by the automobile – and of democracy by traditional party politics. The other was the phrase "Our resistance is as transnational as capital": a return of twentieth-century internationalism in red, black, and green, after a long trip through the jungles of Chiapas where the Zapatista uprising began on January 1, 1994 (the day NAFTA came into being). A complex circulation through time and space, where solidarity means respect for local autonomy and differing motivations for struggle, was encapsulated in these two key ideas. A call to action, distributed widely through the Internet, put it like this:
./english/162.txt:84:J18 in London was the most exquisitely planned and spontaneously realized artistic performance in which I have taken part, an awakening to new possibilities of political struggle that would be echoed throughout the world. Thousands converged in the morning at the Liverpool tube station in the City, receiving carnival masks in four different colors that encouraged the crowd to split into groups, outwitting the police by following different paths through the medieval street plan of Europe's largest financial district, then coming together again in front of the LIFFE building, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, which was the symbolic and real target of this protest against the global domination of speculative exchange. The choice of site was essential. Long years of effort by far-flung organizers and intellectuals had been required to understand and describe the ways in which capital had escaped its former national bounds, in order to redeploy itself transnationally in new oppressive systems; yet until the late 1990s, that knowledge remained largely abstract, floating in a deterritorialized space like the financial sphere itself. Here it was translated into tangible forms of embodied expression: transgressive dancing, defiant music, a verbal and visual poetics of resistance. For once, individual pleasure once did not appear as the negation, but rather as the accentuation of collective struggle, confronting financial abstractions which could be understood by the participants through the immediate experience of the stone-and-glass architecture, while the significance of each of their acts was multiplied by the knowledge that other, similar events were occurring all over the planet. Spontaneous invitations for passing traders to come join the party were combined with sudden attacks on private property, generating an unexpected, threatening, sympathetic and immensely confident image of revolt – a way to finally start answering the decades-old pleas for help from oppressed peoples in the South, while also responding to the unbearable social divisions that transnational capitalism imposes on countries like Britain. Of course this carnivalesque outburst was just one moment in a longer process of struggle, prepared by untold numbers of people under far harsher conditions. But the language of protest that emerged here nonetheless marked a turning point. It was the immediate inspiration for the larger and more complex confrontation in Seattle, six months later, which finally forced the messages of the global resistance movements through the frosty screens of the traditional media, opening the political crisis of global capitalism's legitimacy. A crisis which has not ceased to morph and mutate into the increasingly violent forms that it is taking today.
./english/162.txt:85:From my point of view there can be no mistake. The revenge of the concept is the reappearance, in broad daylight, of the global class struggle: a political struggle over to right to share in the fruits of technological development, and to guard against its many poisons. But if this re-embodiment of class struggle can also be an artistic experience – and an experiment that reverses and transforms the concept of art – it is because the articulation of the old divides has radically changed. In the face of an all-dominating capitalist class which has imposed a global division of labor, and extended its ideological grip over core populations through the devices of popular stockholding, speculative pension funds, and the seductive traps of consumer credit, the focus of struggle is no longer so much the rate of the industrial wage, as the very existence and production of that which lies outside the cash nexus: land in the sense of a viable ecology; labor as the energy of life from its beginnings in travails of birth; knowledge not as fragmented commodities but as an overarching question about meaning; trade and exchange as an institution of human coexistence. Arising within these fields of struggle are new desires and political designs, irreducible to the organizing schemes of capital and state. In the best of cases, opposition becomes a prelude to radical invention.
./english/162.txt:89:Still the tensions have increased dramatically in all these domains, under the advancing pressure of systemic crisis. As the techniques of mass-mediated control ratchet up toward overt fascism, in the wake both of September 11 and of the stock market failures, the improbable meeting of teamsters and turtles in Seattle and the naked life dancing in front of the LIFFE building in London might seem to recede into some distant past. It is certain that the power of surprise was soon lost, as every international summit became an overwhelming protest, and the ruling oligarchies found new courage to ignore the democratic expressions of the citizens. Broader and deeper revolts must now be invented. But these were among the early experiments in a rearticulation of struggles, whose destiny is to cross all the borders. For the artists of another world, wherever they live and however they understand themselves, let these moments be counted among the seeds of the future.
./english/172.txt:5:This year has been significant in that a number of social struggles and campaigns have been successful in stopping neoliberal projects suck as the proposed European Constitution Treaty, the EU Ports Directive, and the CPE in France.
./english/172.txt:34:- We will mobilize against the casualization and the dismanting of public services and for the social rights coordinating our struggles in the whole Europe in the next months.
./english/172.txt:38:In June 2007, there will be a meeting of the European Union Council and a meeting of the G8 at Rostock in Germany after the one in St Petersburg in July this year. We will seize the opportunity of these occasions for a general convergence of our struggles.
./english/180.txt:99:global movement, in the sense that the struggle for a social Europe if
./english/187.txt:18:Seattle, Prague, Genoa... these are already symbols of the growing worldwide struggle being waged by social movements against multinational organizations and economic liberalism. On the way we have learned to recognize the strength of coordinated action on the part of these movements and the vulnerability of the “untouchable” organizations of capitalism. This is why we have proclaimed that “Another World is Possible.”
./english/187.txt:22:The process of convergence among the multitude of Social Movements that are fighting for Another World: In a very short time span mass mobilizations have made possible the convergence of groups and networks working in a dispersed manner. In these newly created spaces of gathering, we have become aware of the importance and the complentarity of our social struggles, we have visualized common causes and enemies and we have discovered the system’s fragility, we have become aware of our strength.
./english/187.txt:23:The necessity of creating a Common Space for sustained coordination: Given the growing capacity of our calls to action and mobilization, the system is creating the most favorable conditions to fight against us: new economic resources, police impunity, restriction of our liberties, intimidating the population and manipulation information. One vital strategy in this new situation, which was already vital before, is deepening our contact and communication with society, decentralizing our struggle and working intensely in local and regional contexts in a coordinated way and with common objectives. In order to do this, we need to provide ourselves with strategic, long-term projects. There is no better path for moving forward than from an informed social debate, from collective participation and mobilization, from the cohesion of our groups and social movements. In order to advance in the construction of responses and in the coordination of actions in local and global contexts, we need to create a common meeting space from which to begin elaborating common proposals and projects as the basis for this other possible world.
./english/187.txt:36:Strengthen and widen the European social fabric that is critical of the system. The European Social Consulta will allow us to reinforce the work of local grouops and networks, and to connect these groups and networks with struggles at the global level. The connection between the different European social movements requires a project like the European Social Consulta, which will crytalize in a network-based organizing system, shaped by the grassroots and operating in a participatory, horizontal and decentralized fashion, as much in the taking of decisions as in the realization of actions.
./english/193.txt:14:John Holloway’s book Change the World without taking Power has deeply influenced parts of the alter-globalisation movement. His question is whether the left should concentrate its struggle on the state, to influence it, even to take state power – or to reject the state? Holloway treats the state as an entity separate from society, its alienated form of organisation. He identifies parties as parts of the state, reproducing the alienated form, working ‘in the name’ of us, this way excluding us from decisions. The outcome is betrayal. As the state they exclude us and separate us from each other as state citizens. Moreover the state is the form of negative movement to repress social self-determination and self-organisation. So we have to stop reproducing these forms of social relations dominated by capital and state: ‘if we stop tomorrow, capitalism will no longer exist’. That means turning the back to the state, creating autonomous spaces, burning holes into capitalism. As the negation of capitalism is part of everyone’s everyday experience we could build on that to create our own spaces. In Holloway’s understanding the state is just an instrument for repression of disobedience and rebellion – some kind of Leninist approach to the state (or an unconscious anarchism). But what about the partial victories and achievements of the left, like the regulation of the working day, the welfare state and so on, as contradictory as they are? In the whole history of left defeats, it seems that small victories were assured by some kind of state politics too. It is obvious that this alone is not enough but it makes clear, in the sense Poulantzas offered, that the state is not a closed entity but a materialisation of changeable relations of social forces, therefore a redefinition of institutions might be possible.
./english/193.txt:18:Wainwright remembers the Greater London Council ended by Thatcher because of its socialist position and what followed from that. With this experience in the background, struggles against privatisation today combine a call for reinventing the state with the creation of new forms of democracy: one example is the participatory budget. And there is still a need for some kind of party, she thinks. The problem with the old parties was not that they were acting within the state but without a movement behind. So the relation between movements and party is crucial. Parties have to give up the monopoly of decision making, of programme making, of centralised representation, and their national limitations.
./english/193.txt:25:There is a ‘desire for self-determination’, John Holloway continues.3 Self-determination starts as a movement out of the ruling social relations rooted in everyday experience (otherwise the struggle for communism would be meaningless). State and self-determination are incompatible, because the former is the negation of the last. The state is ‘a process of decision making in place of’. There is no room for a dialectical ‘as well however’, for saying we must construct a form of self-determination, however it is important to struggle within the state as well. Both forms of struggle cannot be pursued peacefully side by side, because they move in different directions. The state is the permanent and active intervention against self-determination. But there might be some room for a ‘but nevertheless’: while creating forms of autonomy, in ‘specific situations the struggle through the state could give us access to means for strengthening our struggle for self-determination’. But the desire for self-determination is a movement against and beyond representation, state and labour. This desire can not wait until a party reaches power, it can not wait, because capitalism is destroying us, undermining the conditions of reproduction: ‘ya basta’ and ‘que se vayan todos’. Self-determination has to start immediately, nevertheless this is a slow process – ‘we will walk not hurry, because we will have to go far’ – this understanding of politics breaks with linear temporalities.4 Therefore the communist revolution starts now but like an utopian star it remains an urgent (but hardly achievable) need.
./english/193.txt:27:The creation of autonomous spaces is absolutely necessary, but is it enough when it is not done in a perspective of making the whole social structure available for transformation? Holloway’s concept of power and anti-power is closely linked to a dichotomy of the state and an (autonomous) civil society burning holes into the structure of capitalist-state rule. But if we take Gramsci seriously civil society or any autonomous space is not something apart from the state, but the primary and very contradictory field of struggles about hegemony. The capitalist rule is not only based in the relations of production but a cultural hegemony that goes through each one of us. How to deal with real contradictions in and between us? Giving the ‘we’ of the movements such an emphasis Holloway obscures other forms of domination, reproduced by ourselves. Moreover movements as networks are themselves building informal hierarchies (Spehr 2004), structured by power relations, with its own avant-garde, different levels of savoir-puvoir. But this construction of ‘we’ as one movement in all its diversity produces a myth like Hardt and Negri’s ‘multitude’ – which might explain the success of both books.
./english/193.txt:29:In contrast to post-structuralism, Holloway reformulates an essential notion of subjectivity outside of concrete social relations, assumes Joachim Hirsch, a prominent author writing on critical state theory.5 Instrumental power in Holloway’s understanding alienates the subject from its immediate subjectivity, ‘dehumanises’. He therefore misses Marx’s cognition that the ‘essence’ of human beings in reality is the ‘ensemble of social relations’. Moreover in contrasting instrumental and creative power Holloway on the one hand denounces all forms of intermediate institutions and representations, and on the other hand offers creativity as a possibility free of contradictions. That is bound to a romantic notion of original communism, of a nonalienated community. But it might be necessary in a complex society to develop some objectified forms of institutions for mediation (Versachlichung und Vermittlung) – not all forms of objectification necessarily lead to fetishism, although there is a danger. Without intermediation it is doubtful if such a society would be a free one. Developing creative anti-power in itself is a contradictory process: there is a need for alternatives beyond fragmented local struggles, for an understanding about theoretical, social and political concepts, goals and strategies. Such conflicts in the movement are also conflicts about power that could not be negated. But it is of great importance, Hirsch tells us, that Holloway has formulated a clear critique of all political concepts trying to fight the existing power relations with their own weapons. And he has brought back the notion of revolution into our thinking and acting.
./english/193.txt:37:This link to concrete situations of resistance in time and space on the ESF is sometimes difficult to achieve. In many seminars and workshops you just get flat, already known analyses, simple propaganda and wishful thinking. Again and again the common enemy (neoliberalism, transnational corporations, the US, the WTO etc.) is condemned – in this sense the perspective on the ESF seems too unified; the few times debates became concrete consensus was melting away – the different approaches and goals were too diverse: a necessary result emerging from the contradiction of the ESF (and WSF) process itself as open space for discussion and self-education, without a real attempt to develop some applicable and visible alternatives. Therefore the Forum is no movement in itself (in contrast to Thomas Ponniah’s view8), but maybe a space for a new political consciousness and sovereignty, the modern form of articulation and association of structurally fragmented groups, classes and movements. However, because there is no alternative social project formed, the actual representative crisis of neoliberalism does not lead to a weakening of its hegemonic position. Pierre Khalfa supposes that diversity paralyses. 9 But its not diversity as such – which might enrich the movements – but a lack of deep analysis, including the production of neoliberal hegemony from below, in combination with non-committal plurality. This undermines a generalization of experiences, views and understandings (without closed unification under one primary force) preventing us from achieving coherent approaches and strategies. On the one hand there are more or less successful local social movements, creating autonomous spaces and transforming subjectivities, sometimes re-appropriating the essential means of reproduction from below, but hardly touching the relations of power on national or even transnational level. On the other there are global events for the altermondialist, national and transnational NGOs, some national parties, getting some media presence, shaping the public discourse, but far away from the everyday experience of the people, acting in some kind of representative vacuum without really questioning the ruling political form (Brand 2004). There is a need for intermediate political forms. At the heart of the problem lies the relation between representation and participation. A permanent movement (in the strict sense of the word) is difficult to sustain, movements are fragile forms with periods of higher or lesser activity, they develop out of concrete situations of dissent with the ruling mode of production and living, with a perspective of (molecular) social transformation, while the struggle for this transformation has to be a very long-standing one. Out of this results a need for institutionalisation to bridge times of less activity, disintegration, defensive situations and to overcome defeats, save experience and knowledge for the next generation of activists etc. A renewed concept for left political parties could be one possibility to create intermediate institutionalised political forms.
./english/193.txt:39:What is a party? A party does not simply represent a group or class; it is always a result of inner struggles between different interests and struggles with other parties or social forces. It only represents a group or class when it is able to intervene into the culture and politics of other groups and classes, reorganising the whole class and social structure (including the groups and classes it wants to represent). The bourgeois understanding of political representation as passive element therefore is only part of the reality. The opposition between representation and participation is not that hard when the mutual organising and transformative aspects between representatives and represented, between social movements and parties come to the fore. If we take this seriously representation on both sides is an active one, directed to convergence between the two sides while never achieving it, because they represent two different cultural/political forms. Parties are the fields of struggle between self- and foreign (or alienated) social association (Selbst- und Fremdvereinigung) virulent in every society.
./english/193.txt:49:One problem is that the existing radical left parties are representatives of a completely undermined social basis, while the trans-nationally restructured social groups and classes have not jet created their own political institutions. The altered conditions of struggle in a new mode of production and living are not yet reflected, leading to sectarian particularities. Sometimes old forms of the welfare state are the orienting measure (or even older concepts of world revolution of a unified world proletariat), sometimes the complete rejection of these structures throwing their progressive elements over board. The idea of a rifundazione comunista (see Haug 2003, 292ff) in its broadest sense therefore is a very reliable one (although the Italian formation is still quarrelling with its hierarchical constitution).10
./english/195.txt:5:We cannot evaluate the recent London ESF without frame it within the story of the process that led to its production. This is the story of the contrast between two broad camps that have emerged in the course of the process itself. On one hand, those coming from many networks and organisations to make the ESF a temporary space-time common that would prefigure alternative practices and multiple non-exploitative doings in a "global city" like London. On the other, those whose efforts followed the Socialist Worker Party and Socialist Action lines, the mentalities of union bureaucracies and the directives of Ken Livingstone's office to monopolize and centralize the event. This became to be known as the struggle between “horizontals” and “verticals”.
./english/197.txt:23:Now let me combine the notions of PRogramme and PRiorities. In my view, if we are to take the global justice movement forward, it's time to define a minimum, common programme every activist in the world (or, when relevant, in Europe or another region) can agree on and in whose service political campaigning can be undertaken and pressure applied, right now. We need agreed-upon targets in the power structures both at European and world levels. Many activists already recognise the need for such a common programme whereas others claim it would condemn us to uniformity and consequent sterility. I disagree. Different people in different places would quite naturally continue to carry out their local and national struggles. But so long as our movement is about fighting neo-liberal globalisation and its destructive effects, it's almost tautological to state that we must determine what kind of globalisation we want instead and make clear what we are going to fight against and fight for. Otherwise, why should anyone bother listening to us, much less joining us?
./english/197.txt:27:I'm quite willing to discuss other priorities. Global ills require global remedies and only international campaigning led by the international movement can provide the power to impose them. Our adversaries are all too often global in scope too and, once more, they act coherently, whereas we generally do not. The World Bank, the IMF and the WTO have a universal strategy; so do transnational corporations and banks (at least taken individually); even the Davos World Economic Forum, though made up of many disparate individuals, marches to the beat of the same neo-liberal drummer. How can the movement possibly score points off such powerful institutions if it remains dispersed, working on a thousand different issues, never really uniting in a single struggle around any of them?
./english/199.txt:9:Before making too much of this situation, it is important to take a step back and reflect on the London ESF experience and the broader politics of autonomous space. Although perhaps more exaggerated this time around because of the nature of London's political culture- most notably the presence of SWP and Socialist Action- the tension between grassroots network-based movements and their more traditional organizational counterparts has been a constant since the beginning of the forums, and was present within earlier mass direct action mobilizations, including Seattle, as well. Intense struggles over political vision, tactics, and organizational form are not cause for alarm; indeed, they are constitutive of the convergence process that characterizes the forums and the broader movement from which they emerged. The important question is thus how to best manage such conflicts, rather than erase them entirely. And this is precisely where the politics of autonomous space has the most to offer.
./english/199.txt:23:That same evening I joined several hundred others from Beyond ESF for a Yo Mango Tube Party. We tried to maintain a low profile until arriving at the Circle Line, but the authorities caught on at Victoria Station. We were forced outside and reorganized into an impromptu Reclaim the Streets. Unfortunately, we were herded toward a nearby police station, where many were registered and eventually let free. I then went over to the Camden Center to check out the Indymedia Space. Unlike previous actions and gatherings where Indymedia was only a tool for reporting about other events, this year media activists organized their own schedule of activities, including a four day conference on Communication Rights. I was lucky enough to catch the end of a roundtable presentation in the main theater by activists from local struggles around the world, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America . There was also food, music, and dancing. In addition to the several hundred people gathered in the theater, hundreds more were drinking beer and sending e-mails in the bar, uploading news stories and videos upstairs, or chatting informally in the halls. Incredibly, there were just as many, or perhaps even more people than at Beyond ESF. The autonomous spaces were not only exciting and lively, they were simply overflowing, one into the other.
./english/199.txt:35:What I am ultimately suggesting is that we renew our vision of the forum itself, recognizing that our movements are too diverse, even contradictory, to be contained within a single space, however open it may be. This does not mean abandoning the process, but rather building on the London experience to recast the forum as a network of interconnected, yet autonomous spaces converging across a single urban terrain at a particular point in time. Some spaces may be larger, and thus generate more gravity than others, while the boundaries are always blurry, diffuse, and permeable. Moreover, there will necessarily be contradiction and struggle, even within and between our networks. Such conflict should not be feared, but rather recognized as an integral part of the forum itself. In places like Prague and Genoa urban space was divided among diverse forms of direct action practice. In London we finally began to incorporate a similar logic on our own terms, without reacting to an enemy. As for we critics, rather than return to our bunkers to recreate an imagined state of pure horizontality, we would do better to recognize that mass movements are always conflictual and contradictory, that horizontalism is about learning to manage conflict without reintroducing formal centers of command. This is the lesson I learned in London , and why I support the politics of autonomous space.
./english/202.txt:9:The available means at the London ESF featured especially the numerous autonomous spaces, which attracted approx. 5000 people, many overlapping with those who registered for the official ESF. Many events and spaces encompassed broad themes which linked apparently ‘single’ issues, thus spanning the foci of existing political campaigns and coalitions. Perhaps the most notable example was the Assemby of the Precariat (and its declaration), situating precarity within an entire exploitative system which potentially threatens everyone but likewise which potentially links their struggles, depending upon the shape of capitalist strategies and our counter-strategies.
./english/202.txt:25:• European assemblies as a political process. These events should include an opportunity for exchanging experiences of struggles, discussing strategic implications and building networks which could act together. Perhaps plan these as a mini-ESF, back-to-back with the organisational meeting. For activists unable to attend, the internet could provide opportunities to participate.
./english/205.txt:46:The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination in particular explored interesting tactics and approaches to direct actions. For example, the attempt (frustrated by the police) to organize a free public transport party in the underground – where Yomango were ‘responsible' for the foods and drinks, while Planka brought their experience in coordinating the struggle of migrants and unemployed workers in resisting the privatisation of public transport in Sweden. The emphasis here was not on the spectacular media impact, but on the direct contact with the users of one of the world's most expensive public transport systems. Another interesting idea is the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, whose workshop at Beyond the ESF was packed: tactically versatile, it can be an alternative for large demos (where it has the merit of escaping the dichotomies that lead to escalation), small direct actions and popular theatre and education. Popular education is, in fact, one of the staples of the preparation for the G8 2005 meeting in Scotland carried out by the Dissent network by means of their roadshow.
./english/205.txt:48:This new-fangled interest in popular education not only shows a realization of the need to go beyond the achievements of the period of the global days of action – raising awareness, expressing the dissent that was ignored by the hegemonic discourse, all of which, as ‘representations' of ‘the struggle', fall easily into the category of ‘propaganda by the deed' –, but especially a perhaps yet tentative move beyond the comfortable identity of ‘activist culture', with all its risks of self-referentiality. (It must be said that, as far the usual criticisms go, the autonomous spaces were mostly a young, white, university-educated affair.)
./english/205.txt:50:A criticism that has been made (for a while in the so-called ‘global South', more recently in the ‘North') is that despite its principles of horizontality and refusal of representation, the period of the great demos belied a return of representational politics: they took place in the ‘North', amidst a young, white majority that claimed that ‘resistance is everywhere', but in the end of the day dealt with problems that were not close to their protagonists. This is, on the one hand, an oversight of the specificities of the European context – things like squats and social centres are not simply demands of ‘spoiled white brats', but a struggle of a youth that has been made precarious by the structural transformation of capitalism and the welfare reforms, and a struggle that (at least potentially) opens up to those of migrants, sans papiers and the unemployed. On the other hand, it does have an element of truth: the emphasis of these demos seemed always to be on struggles elsewhere, where the dark side of capital was more immediately visible, and they lacked a clearer definition of what the lines of conflict ‘at home' were. The resistance to capital is indeed everywhere, even in its core areas (and it's never enough to repeat that the core-periphery dynamic is repeated like a fractal all across the globe, also in those areas generically thought of as peripheral); one of the subjectivities formed in that period, however, is especially concerned with grassroots organizing processes in places like Asia and Latin America, in which structures such as the PGA European support group, for obvious material reasons, have been playing a relevant role in helping establish links, opening up discussions and helping with fundraising.
./english/205.txt:52:A third subjectivity, however, turns itself precisely towards the question of the ‘struggle at home', and starts to concentrate on the immediate issues of the European context. This can be seen, for instance, among the groups who are mobilizing against the European Constitution. Other transversal, but immediately local, struggles that were highly visible were the ones around copyleft and intellectual property, something that (contrary to what some might think) is relevant not only for geeks developing softwares but for everyone insofar as it faces the immanent tendency of knowledge to become a common under its new forms of production, which bears obvious importance for any discussion on the future of knowledge – from the university to the pharmaceutical industry – and labour itself.
./english/205.txt:56:The most remarkable thing about it is how it clearly is about capturing subjectivities made diffuse and disjointed by the transformations of the last years and provide them with a new class subjectivity. While the concept of the ‘multitude' was too abstract for any immediate political use, what we saw this year was a rise of the ‘precariat': precisely the new ‘class' created by the regime of flexible accumulation, the ‘flexible', ‘flexploited' workers of the world. With no fixed job, no access to welfare, the precariat is the anomalous contradiction within the historical trend of capitalism towards the decrease of the labour journey: they work more for less. More than that, the concept makes possible a transversal analysis of contemporary society, in the sense that the precarious condition is extended to issues like housing and legal status, thus incorporating struggles such as those of the sans papiers and migrants, which were also very visible in the autonomous spaces.
./english/205.txt:58:It's no exaggeration to say that this debate was one of the most successful at the ESF, resulting in a call out for the European-wide organization of a Mayday parade of the precariat in 2005 like the ones in Milan and Barcelona this year. It's also clear, however, that some problems remain: for example, the lack of a theoretical solution for the evident differences between immaterial and material precarious labour; or the question of how this new European movement identity relates to other struggles elsewhere (which is a central problem for a truly ‘global' resistance that goes beyond mere ‘international solidarity'). It also remains to be seen what the paths this transformation might take are – many possibilities, including neo-trade unionism, are open. One thing is certain, though: the intensity of the debate and attention doesn't mean per se the guarantee of the existence, or creation, of this new subjectivity; it should be observed that a few of the groups that signed the ‘Middlesex Declaration' have had little contact with the idea, let alone done any work on the area; therefore, for those who left London celebrating the victory of their position, the lesson of Bologna '77 should be applied to movement building as well: lavorare con lentezza.
./english/205.txt:80:The so-called ‘Social Forum process' doesn't exist in the ether; it can only be as productive as the existing social processes, but it can also be a lot less powerful, and even destructive to previously existing relations and connections. It can only become what it' supposed to be if it functions as a feedback loop between political processes in progress and the organization itself; in other words, it can only be the open space it set out to be if its organization is diffuse in ongoing political struggles, not an invariant that comes to movements ‘from the outside', pre-structured by the efforts (however well-intentioned they may be) of a few actors. As long as it tries to produce a movement that is bigger and more united than it actually is, it's more likely to breed disaffection.
./english/205.txt:82:It could be the case that the transformations in the European context, plus the general feeling of dissatisfaction spawned by this year's edition, might create the conditions for transformations in this direction. On the one hand, we see the trade unions and political parties that have been involved so far with their social bases stabilized, with few possibilities of growing; on the other, the turn of the new movements towards struggles ‘at home' and specifically European questions opens up the possibility – necessity indeed – of dialogue, which can create not consensus nor mediations, but protocols that make for less tense and more productive contacts in the future.
./english/210.txt:13:Today we see a crisis that is first of all a crisis due to the under-representation of the social elements and social struggle in the movement. Especially the most organized ones -that is the political parties- see this crisis continuing on for more than 10 years but still want to represent the new movement.
./english/212.txt:10:The first European Social Forums (ESF) set the stage for the construction of the European alterglobalisation movement and successfully centred political debate on neoliberal globalisation. Since the first World Social Forum (WSF) held in Porto Alegre in January 2001, the Social Forums, and the ESF in particular, have become the most visible public expression of the alterglobalisation movement. Basing themselves on the Charter of Porto Alegre, which has become an indispensable reference, the Forums have become quasi-permanent processes of crystallization of new forces and struggles that were previously rather disparate. Prior to the Forums the latter acted in dispersed fashion, promoting alterglobalisation in a precocious albeit strategically unfocused way. Today, critical movements benefit from a wide array of tools of struggle and common objectives. This crystallization has been accompanied by geographic expansion. The first three WSFs in Brazil created the conditions for the incorporation into the alterglobalisation movement of powerful social forces from South America, notably the peasant and indigenous people’s movements. The Bombay WSF in 2004 likewise integrated Indian social movements into the global struggle. The geopolitics of alterglobalisation thus mirrors the process of neoliberal globalisation, though its scope is still less all encompassing. It is to be hoped that the WSF planned for 2007 in Africa will play a similar role to the 2004 WSF in India. The global movement still needs to expand its reach to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. China remains outside of this process, for an undetermined period of time. Completing this geopolitical expansion of alterglobalisation will require the promotion and development of Local Social Forums in a number of countries. LSFs are prominent organising tools favouring the embedding of the Forum process. The same can be said of the National Social Forums that have emerged in a number of countries. This process constitutes a major step forward in the struggle against neoliberal globalisation. Nonetheless, its future development depends on moving forward to new stages, thereby avoiding the threat of exhaustion, immobility and lack of creativity. In this respect, self-criticism and criticism are indispensable components of the dynamic of the Forums. We have to be lucid about the state of the process. ATTAC, acting as a movement on an international level, has been committed since its inception to the construction of the Social Forums. As such, it has a double obligation. Firstly, to reflect lucidly and uncompromisingly on the insufficiencies and some of the recently witnessed drifts of the movement. Secondly, to stimulate new thinking and propose new forms of action designed to strengthen and amplify the global movement. The WSF has already undertaken to reinvent its formula in 2005. The success of this reshaping will be judged in January. The same kind of effort must occur on a European level.
./english/216.txt:10:1. We consider the ESF process a major step forward in building our struggles against neoliberal globalisation. It gives a visible expression to the diversity of the movements, and points the way towards the construction of a new kind of common political space in Europe.
./english/216.txt:12:2. Although the first three fora have permitted us to achieve many successes, the limitations of our work so far must also be acknowledged. In our view, the themes in focus must better reflect the breadth of struggles that people are experiencing in Europe. This would necessarily entail a different kind of balance between different issue areas, making social issues a key consideration of the process. For example, we consider it out of tune with political realities that the last ESF had so few seminars on themes such as unemployment and the struggle against pension reforms.
./english/219.txt:37:At a time when the new European Commission shamelessly boasts a high profile of laissez-faire politics, we must start a process of mobilisation in all European countries in order to impose the recognition of both collective and individual social, political, economic, cultural and ecological rights for men and women alike. To enable all the peoples of Europe to join this process, we must build a movement that overrides our differences and groups all the forces of the peoples of Europe ready to be involved in the struggle against European neo-liberalism.
./english/229.txt:21:A new link is emerging between plenary meetings, workshops and theme discussions, that are organized by networks, and there is also a more explicit relationship between the Forum seen as a great “space for learning” and a place of discussion and organization of networks and struggles. The social Forums, inlcuding the first held in Porto Alegre, were born as public spaces for the creation of alternatives: this is a process, of course, but this role must be strongly renewed as the necessary result from the link between the “space for learning” and the “organization of networks, campaigns, struggles”; between social movements and politics; between the experiences and capabilities of activists and intellectuals, who want a different world.
./english/229.txt:26:The approach to workshops and plenary sessions has to be focused on the “things to do”, the organized campaigns, the thematic networks; so a third level in the forums is then required: the level of the united “thematic meetings” (education, HS, temporary workers, migrants, public services, jobs etc.) from which manifestos and struggle initiatives might come out;
./english/229.txt:28:A balance between Forum’s function of “space for learning” and place of networks and struggle organizations is needed, so that the very meeting of social movements can become the final place where speakers are principally, though not exclusively, the representatives of meetings and workshops. The meeting of the social movements can be no longer a “separate world”, but the final place of the Forum, where people decide on the proposals (also thematic proposals), which have come out from the plenary meetings, seminars and workshops: this would enable us to write the final document and agenda, not as a result of an exhausting mediation, but as an expression of public discussions and efforts of mobilization that would have already gained the support of the networks.
./english/233.txt:11:• The pre-selection of 5 or 6 themes for the content of meetings was restrictive. Some proposals spanned two or more themes - naturally, since linking issues and struggles is one purpose of the ESF. It would have been better to see the range of proposals without attempting to bend them to a limited range of themes, then decide the balance of the programme and links to be made between proposals once they are on the table. In some cases the pre-selection of themes led to unhappy ‘mergers' of meetings which failed to make the cross-issue links some proposers wanted. For example the civil liberties organisations were thrown together when they actually sought networking between them and migrants' groups.
./english/234.txt:5:The third European Social Forum has shown the necessity of a change in the organizing formula and process of the forum itself. After Paris-Saint Denis, the European global-movement entered into a new phase. We have to report, on one side, the still positive presence of the constitutive elements of its "birth act" - the crisis of the consensus on the war and liberal politics, the tendency towards the coordination of initiatives on an European scale, criticism of the political representation of social struggles – but also, on the other side, that we did not reflect enough on the social composition of the movement and on the motivations of practice.
./english/234.txt:9:Even if the Forum's "formula" and the thematic axis which characterize it is still significant, the building process is also important, and the interlace between these two aspects has become crucial. It is necessary to reconsider, during the Forum, the relationship between plenaries/seminars/thematic assemblies/social movements assembly, assigning a greater relief to the moments of aggregation and constitution of European networks around the different initiatives; it is also crucial the way in which the thematic merging process is qualified. The process which brought to the call for a second day of action of the migrants' movement - subscribed by tens of actors involved in their struggles, who met inside but also outside the ESF, in the autonomous spaces - is the best example of the way in which it should be possible to build up a political process on a European scale not only merging "similar issues", but around the assumption of common political contents and passwords.
./english/237.txt:11:That admirable optimism was short-lived, however. Those of us who saw our struggles not merely as a three day event but as part of a wider social change through the rejection of domination and control by questioning the legitimacy of existing power structures; those of us who celebrate autonomy and define our processes though our actions and networks of exchange and diversity, were soon to discover that the door painted in the global colours of the ESF would very soon be closed in our faces and bolted from the inside.
./english/237.txt:34:Although highly critical of the organising process, many saw the ESF as a space to network with people and then take their dialogues to open, non-fee-paying spaces. In contrast, others saw the ESF as fundamentally flawed, merely representing a space for the co-option of real struggles. Defining our group territories in this broad landscape and shaping our boundaries without creating borders took time. It was not an easy process and should not be idealised, but it was at least open and honest. Over the summer we carved out our association through sharing resources, time and energy. We collectively imagined a world, not an event, that went beyond the ESF, in life without capitalism sharing our commons, refusing a ‘pay to say’ mentality, and freeing, in all manner, our messages.
./english/237.txt:51:Ultimately in whatever form, the AS’s strove for a horizontal social dialogue amongst all participants in the ESF. People that spent time at, or came specifically to the AS’s, shared their struggles and resistance strategies. How to create free transport, liberate goods and services, mobilise for campaigns, use free software and dissections of radical theory. They found actions to support the border crossing of ‘stateless peoples’, questioned consumption, the sterile, styrofoam environs of Alexandra Palace and clowned about in parody at the March for Capitalism.
./english/238.txt:71:Because of this, and a number of serious problems over accommodation and reimbursement for volunteers, Babels issued a number of critical public statements and nearly pulled out of the London ESF on several occasions. That fact that Babels stepped back from the brink each time was partly due to the fact that reaching a consensus to walk away is far harder than agreeing to get involved, especially in a a network bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Moreover, the UK coordinators of Babels who agreed to participate in this year's ESF did so with their political eyes wide open. The reality is that the Social Forums – and especially the ESF – are not politically ‘pure' spaces where everyone works together in mutual respect and harmony. They are instead political battlegrounds where self-interested factions fight for leadership and control and are met with resistance from those opposed to vanguardism. Babels thus currently accepts that the innovations and alternatives being generated by projects like itself and and Nomad come not only through the annual process of organising the ESF and WSF, but also in struggle against those within them. And whatever the shortcomings of the organisation of this year's ESF, we still managed to gain an enormous amount of knowledge and experience that we will now share with future processes, particularly through adding value to the Lexicon and Sitprep projects. Most importantly, pulling out would have stopped the ESF from taking place – this was not a decision that Babels alone should have the power or right to make.
./english/240.txt:23:According to an activist from No Vox, the decision to hold the ESF 2004 in London was a disaster for undocumented migrants and refugees in Europe. He said: “It has lead to their disenfranchisement in the emerging social movement. British migrants and refugees need to know about struggles going on in Europe and to learn from them. The excluded self-organised migrants organisations in Europe can have gained nothing from this year ESF, indeed it may be difficult for them to see why they should participate in the Forums again whereas we know that this is a serious movement about global justice. We know that their full involvement is key."
./english/243.txt:15:There is no fixed definition of popular education. Rather it is seen as a concept that is based on the struggle of people and related to their history. Last but not least, it is used to keep people in the room despite their previous experiences with education.
./english/243.txt:17:Popular education originally emerged and is emerging again and again in oppressed groups, but it is also closely related with the name of Paulo Freire. He conceptualised it, and while it stems from many different parts of the world and many different movements, Freire was the one who described it first. Besides, he wrote his best-known book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) after staying in exile for seventeen years. During these years he had the chance to get to know many different realities, struggles and ways of doing popular education. This accumulation of experiences makes his contribution even more valuable.
./english/245.txt:41:One positive development during the ESF 2004 preparatory process was the agreement at a European Assembly meeting to set up an ongoing European working group on web technologies, to try and ensure some continuity from one year to the next, to develop appropriate tools to support the ESF process, and to offer advice within these areas. It’s certainly true that there have been many problems in continuity, for example the handing over of the fse-esf website from one country to another. Related to this is the area of intellectual property and concept of ownership of information gathered, from email addresses to written reports and audio and video material. Problems have already been encountered with such data since there are laws and different frameworks to govern their usage. While attempts were made in London to avoid similar problems occurring again, for example with opt in permission for email addresses to be used in the future for ESF related contacts, this was a result of dealing with specific problems as they arose and not of a political recognition that these issues are part of our struggle for another world. This is an area that campaigners are working on globally to develop alternatives, both in practice and at a government and international institutional lobbying level, and certainly should be an area embraced by the ESF.
./english/246.txt:19:During the preparations for 2003, both the Youth Camp and the WSF working groups had already fallen into the pattern of diagnosis-negative evaluation, and were again asking themselves the question of how to bring culture centre stage. Their papers essentially covered the same ground – the forum was a privileged space for cultural exchange and creation; ‘culture’ should be understood not as art or spectacle, but as the whole of symbolic and material production of different societies; the commoditisation and homogenisation brought about by capitalist globalisation were the main enemies to be practically opposed; the cultural question was transversal to all discussions in the forum. The Youth Camp project, inspired by the language of the Zapatistas, spoke of a transnational ‘community’ of all the groups and people who resisted and struggled, whose symbolic and material production should be affirmed in their diversity.
./english/246.txt:39:Since the first WSF one has heard many cries about culture being left out of the discussions, about it not being transversal to the debates etc. While this is certainly true in the sense of the previous paragraph, it is also a bit nonsensical: if we understand culture in the broader sense used above, how could it be outside? This normally means that the people making these demands want more discussion on the specificities of culture in a globalised capitalist world – which ends meaning equalling culture and art or the industry of entertainment, and this can be as much a part of the problem as it is a part of the solution. All the debates I remember at the first three WSFs which were ‘on culture’ had to do with protections for the national audiovisual industries against Hollywood, or politics of national exception, or politics of national protection to endangered cultural heritage, particularly that of minorities. Although these may of course still be useful instruments in a struggle of resistance against homogenisation, they do not tackle the problem of commodification as such, nor do they tackle the ‘lateral’ importance given to cultural debates in the left. By treating culture as art, they assume without question distinctions we have shown to be very characteristic of the society we want to transform. By placing culture as an exception that can only be adequately dealt with by the nation-state, they not only close more questions than they open, but also compartmentalise ‘culture’ as a subject for specialists, as one of the many issues – and not a particularly vital one – to be debated at a forum. This is mirrored by the way, for instance, free software is also ‘a bit on the side’, something for those who use or develop it to discuss; while in some other corner some people talk about digital inclusion, and yet another group somewhere else talks about the persecution and criminalisation of social movements by the mass media, or the monopoly of information held by big transnational conglomerates.
./english/251.txt:68:While I have seen genuine good will on the part of most people participating in organising the ESF, there is not a commitment by everyone to put the group first or to consensus, despite it being one of the guiding principles of the ESF. And what commitment there is diminishes day by day. In Paris we witnessed a struggle to use consensus decision-making without a very good sense of how it worked, but with a genuine commitment to making it work. Since then, even the way the word ‘consensus’ is treated has shifted greatly. Whereas in Paris ‘consensus’ was used as a powerful word to invoke shared values, in London it was perceived by many of the key organisers as a problematic word used mostly by trouble-makers. If the EPA wants to decide not to use consensus as a decision-making process and to place value instead on another type of meeting or structure, then we should do so, but it must be clear.
./english/253.txt:14:To avoid the Forums becoming simply an annual event and to put concerted energy into creating a process that strengthens struggles and the development of alternatives in a cumulative way.
./english/253.txt:17:To find ways of ensuring that the Forum treats divergencies as a source of strength and enrichment so that it does not simply represent moments of convergence on particularly struggles but enables a process of testing of different ideas in a process of continuing debate.
./english/266.txt:98:LaborNet: Information on labor struggles and labor issues world-wide.
./english/269.txt:9:Synopsis: we are precarious. Which is to say some good things (accumulation of diverse knowledges, skills and abilities through work and life experiences in permanent construction), and a lot of bad ones (vulnerability, insecurity, poverty, social exposure). But our situations are so diverse, so singular, that it is difficult for us to find common denominators from which to depart or clear differences with which to mutually enrich ourselves. It is complicated for us to express ourselves, to define ourselves from the common ground of precariousness: a precariousness which can do without a clear collective identity in which to simplify and defend itself, but in which some kind of coming together is urgent. We need to communicate the lack and the excess of our work and life situations in order to escape the neoliberal fragmentation that separates, debilitates and turns us into victims of fear, exploitation, or the egotism of ‘each one for herself.’ Above all, we want to enable the collective construction of other life possibilities through the construction of a shared and creative struggle.
./english/272.txt:18:1.Stressed the importance of the knowledge arising from experience; knowledge that might be tacit, ephemeral, not necessarily possible to codify and yet an important clue to understanding how society worked. In their ways of organising – whether feminist `consciousness raising’ groups or networks of workers across factories – they attempted to share and to `socialise’ this practical knowledge, combining it with more systematic forms of knowledge as a basis for understanding both how the power structures work and their own policies and strategies. In this way the movements paid close attention to practical knowledge and at the same time sought to go `behind’ immediate experience, to understand what produced the injustice against which they struggled and how it could be overcome. Hence their interest in critical theory: creative Marxist traditions in particular but also in the case of feminism psychoanalytic theory too. In this way the movements understood knowledge as differentiated. (An understanding paralleled by new developments in philosophy of science)
./english/272.txt:30:There are wider implications of this approach to the politics of knowledge and of the movements becoming aware of the importance of the knowledge they produce for the efficacy of their power to transform. First is the importance of organised moments of reflection, on what movements have learnt in the course of their resistance, on studying the reaction of the power structures, on the insights of those at the frontline, ensuring that the new knowledge sheds light for the working out of their next strategic steps. There is also the importance for movements (and for innovative, `movement – oriented parties) of surveys, investigations, consulta, that could ensure that strategic discussions are rooted in the practical knowledge and insights of those engaged in resistance; including those involved in struggles and networks beneath the surface, without a public, political expression.
./english/272.txt:32:These could be understood as two of the functions of the World Social Forum and Social Forums more generally. Certainly, this is the direction in which the developing methodology of the WSF – and hopefully the ESF – is moving. There is growing self awareness of Social Forums as useful contexts in which practical and theoretical knowledge can be shared in order to identify the next action to be taken. Enhancement of the movements’ role as producers of emancipatory knowledge – knowledge integral to the work of social transformation - provides a useful criteria for the workings of the methodology. For it implies a mobilisation process that reaches out to all those involved in struggles for social justice, grass roots movements – not simply co-ordinating groups and NGO’s; it implies open, democratic and empowering discussions through which there can be a real exchange of different kinds of knowledge, from different sources – not simply speeches to a more or less passive audience; it implies ways of organising the event which reveals connections, commonalities and differences between movements so that knowledge of power structures and strategies of transformation from different angles are debated and compared – not simply parallel, separate themes; it implies a tough mutual interrogation and debate of each others knowledge, imbued as it is by values and politics – not simply the co-existence of different perspectives. Only these kinds of activities will move the dialectic of knowledge and action on.
./english/272.txt:37:It became self-consciously part of their/our work. Mayo Fuster’s paper maps out very well, the different forms this takes. The implication, however, of my stress on the interactive connection between knowledge and action this would imply a special emphasis on the various forms of co-research in which I would include the organisations like State Research, European Corporate Observatory, many of the researchers connected to the TNI and many small research centres working closely with different social and trade union movements, following their struggles and working with them to research the power structures their actions reveal and resisting and collaborating on the development of strategy and alternatives.
./english/274.txt:27: To this there will be many objections: Isn’t utopian thinking just a frivolous waste of time better used with pragmatic forms of organizing and action? Isn’t there a danger that one could recreate the same class based structures of power and domination in one’s vision that exist now, as Foucault was fond of constantly objecting with an almost defeatist tone? Isn’t it classist to be engaged in this kind of visionary thinking? These are objections with varying degrees of validity. It would be silly to say that one should be spending time coming up with utopian visions instead of engaging the day to day struggles to alleviate the wretched conditions which face large segments of the world’s population. But it also equally true that even when there exists a period where revolutionary change becomes possible unless one has some idea of what sort of arrangement one wants to create, it is all the more easier for such situations to recreate the same oppressive structures or become dominated by the most malicious “liberators.” The Russian, Cuban, and Chinese experiences should be sufficient examples of such.
./english/274.txt:38:alternatives from a position separated from social struggle and their experiences. From such a position radical social change is itself an abstraction.
./english/274.txt:57:their breakfast programs, community clinics, and other programs the Black Panthers started creating an infrastructure that showed that those communities didn’t need the state to take care of them – they could do it for themselves. The threat of a workable alternative cannot be underestimated. The task of radical vision is not of the “great thinker” or learned sage, but of the ability to listen attentively to the desires and experience of those who struggle for their liberation – and to learn from them. This is the task not an of an elite vanguard, but a role that we all can take part in, as diplomats of struggle, pagans, prophets, and dreamers bringing utopia into our lives every day.
./english/274.txt:59: Secondly, from that position it becomes possible to conceive of anarchism not as a philosophy that was invented by a specific set of 18th century patriarchal bearded white guys, but as the struggle and practice for the creation of freedom and liberated experience that has existed through out
./english/274.txt:62: Utopian theory is not then abstractions and ideals that are designed to be imposed upon the world, dreams that will come into existence after the revolution, but is the collected experience of cooperative structures that can be generalized into a broader vision. This broader vision, however, is not an imperial vision or one that exists in some abstract universal space. It is a utopian theory that is more a process of coordinating, collecting, and connecting the experience and knowledge created through experience in a way that can be adapted and applied in varying situations and contexts in pluralistic fashion. The task of the utopian theorist is that of acting as a diplomat between struggles, sharing wisdom and experiences, connecting and synthesizing ideas created through everyday experience, and offer such back to the community.
./english/274.txt:69: What this gets to is reformulating one's approach to the task of utopian thinking and vision. The challenge is not to contemplate and brood in some library until one is finally structure with a grand vision of truth and wisdom that will enable the creation of a vision to lead and direct the masses in the radical struggle for freedom. The task of utopian vision is to examine the already existing liberatory practices, structures, and forms which exist and have existed through the course of
./english/274.txt:70:human history, and to draw from them a broader vision of how particular forms of freedom might be generalized into an overall social vision. The task is to network and connect multiple and divergent struggles and practices in a mutually complementary and beneficial manner. The goal is not to lead the masses, to create a new human nature or state of being, but to identify existing forms of freedom, and to draw out the underlying logic and generalize them into a pluralistic reconstructive vision. It is
./english/274.txt:75: The struggle for liberation isn’t about creating unrealizable plans or visions, but about bringing ideas about cooperation and non-hierarchal organizing into our daily lives. Utopian thinking becomes looking at forms of liberatory social relations, extending their logic, and beginning to implement such notions and ideals within the way which we live our lives now. We create the space for revolutionary thought and action by creating those spaces where community grows, where our lives
./english/274.txt:76:and political and struggles can be sustain in an ongoing fashion. It is the task of bringing what Durruti called “the new world we carry in our hearts” into existence as a tangible reality, even if only in a piecemeal fashion. The reformulation of utopian thought is not finding a better way to imagine a future revolution, but drawing from human experience in finding way to live liberation now.
./english/275.txt:15:For some, though not all, activists, this learning process continues, as we find that the system2 is itself part of the problem, and that its resistance to our struggles for change is not accidental or contingent but, at some level, fundamental to its nature. Thus we come to see ourselves as connecting our own issues with those of others, and of creating solidarity in opposition to given power structures. (For some activists this learning process is part of the bitter experience of defeat after having acted ‘by the book’; for others it is part of an intellectual conviction that the problem goes deeper than at first perceived; for others again it is the fruit of a conscious choice not to settle for concessions on our own issue at the expense of other, equally significant, issues.
./english/275.txt:17:This experience, of finding that we have to face off against a system, and that that system is both powerful and fundamentally opposed to us, raises some very large questions. The first, and most obvious, kind of theoretical question that arises out of this existential situation is simply ‘what should we do?’3 Secondly, as we come to understand the agency of the various parts of the system, we ask ‘how will the system react?’ Thirdly, we have to ask ourselves, as struggle deepens and success does not seem easily within our grasp, ‘what will work and how can we win?’
./english/275.txt:27:Experience, in this perspective, is understood as the practical and tacit knowledge that we as human beings generate about the material (social and non-human) world, through our encounters with and interaction with this material world. This practical-tacit knowledge is thus ‘an attribute of individuals by reason of their social character, their participation, active or passive, in relations with others within inherited structures’.12 It is also, as William Blake knew, an attribute of our experience of ourselves, as beings with needs, engaging in struggles, etc.13
./english/275.txt:70:Lastly, we could ask how far people are able to connect to and learn from other people’s struggles and learning processes: theory as generalized consciousness. This is obviously particularly relevant at the moment in the context of the ‘movement of movements’, but it is also a more general issue, of solidarity and internationalism versus particularism.
./english/275.txt:75:Hence the value of theory is that we can transfer what we’ve learned in one situation over to another, to free ourselves from having to reinvent the wheel. Similarly, we can learn from other people’s struggles without having to go through them ourselves.
./english/275.txt:112:The point of departure for insurgent architecture is the emergence of movement struggles in the form of militant particularisms – that is as struggles over specific issues in specific locales – and the interest or ambition to move beyond this particularism:
./english/275.txt:114:The theory of ‘militant particularism’ argues that all broad-based political movements have their origins in particular struggles in particular places and times … Many struggles are defensive … But some forms of militant particularism are pro-active. Under capitalism this typically means struggles for specific group rights that are universally declared but only partially conferred …
./english/275.txt:115:The critical problem for this vast array of struggles is to shift gears, transcend particularities, and arrive at some conception of a universal alternative to that social system which is the source of their difficulties … The oppositional movements of socialism, communism, environmentalism, feminism and even humanism and multiculturalism have all constructed some sort of universalistic politics out of militant particularist origins51
./english/275.txt:121:The possibility of exercising violence upon actual, local movement practices arises especially where abstraction is a project pursued ‘from above’ (eg. by a centralized organization existing prior to and beyond specific struggles), rather than as the result of an internal process of self-development ‘from below’ – or where a project initially developed ‘from below’ in one context is transplanted to another without real awareness of the need for effective and appropriate translation. This latter will be a constant challenge in terms of our engagement with insurgent architecture, whose validity depends on its appropriateness not just in general but also in specific instances:
./english/275.txt:129:The unique and extraordinary character of working class self-organisation has been that it has tried to connect particular struggles to a general struggle in one quite special way. It has set out, as a movement, to make real what is at first sight the extraordinary claim that the defence and advancement of certain particular interests, properly brought together, are in fact the general interest56
./english/275.txt:131:Massimo de Angelis identifies a similar process in the emergence of a ‘new internationalism’ through the activities of the alter-globalization movement: that is, he identifies a process of ‘formation of social subjects, interconnected individuals who are in the process of developing shared visions of social transformation’ due to ‘practical necessity by different movements in their reciprocal interaction within the context of the global economy and their struggles’.57 He develops the comparative notion of ‘old and new internationalism’ according to two criteria: ‘the relation between national and international dimensions of struggle; the relation between labour and other movements’.58 The old internationalism is characterized as follows:
./english/275.txt:133:In most of the practice of ‘old internationalism’, the international dimension of struggle was subordinated to the strategic objectives of the national dimension … the immediate objective of the struggle was primarily national and the related internationalism was instrumental to it … This internationalism reflected the conditions of the time, in which the global character of capital was limited to trade and, for most cases, did not include production59 … Another important characteristics [sic] of ‘old internationalism’ was the relative separation between different issues and movements, separation that was reflected in the centrality of the labour movement and the subordination of other movements to it … [T]he ground for unity was generally formulated as instrumental to a goal. The goal was generally defined outside the process of unification60
./english/275.txt:137:The social practice of today’s new movements is forcing us to think about the process of unification, its forms, its objectives, its mechanisms, rather than only its results measured against the yardstick of an abstract idea or a given ideology … An international process of recomposition of radical claims and social subjects has been under way, a process which is forcing every movement not only to seek alliances with others, but also to make struggles of other movements their own, without first the need to submit the demands of other movements to an ideological test … [T]oday the ideological frame of reference seems to be the ongoing result of the process of recomposition is the multidimensional reality of exploitative and oppressive relations as it is manifested in the lives and experiences of the many social subjects within the global economy … [T]he interaction among these social subjects in various opportunities of struggle[,] creates an alternative mode of thinking which is increasingly able to root the multi-dimensionality of human needs and aspirations in the universality of the human condition.61
./english/275.txt:139:Perhaps as interesting for our purposes as the distinction de Angelis draws between these two internationalisms is their similarities. Both arise from an opposition between human needs as understood, experienced and struggled for locally, and the global capitalist system in a particular phase of development, imposing similar experiences on a broad range of subjects across the world.
./english/275.txt:144:This process can be seen in two ways. One, ‘bottom-up’ approach is to explore the dialectic of universalism and particularity in the movements of the last four decades. In so doing, of course, we are questioning the uniqueness implied by de Angelis for the alter-globalization movement – but simultaneously placing it within a sphere of human practice which can be argued over, struggled for, and won or lost.
./english/275.txt:165:Abramsky, Kolya 2001 Restructuring and resistance: diverse voices of struggle in western Europe. No place of publication: self-published.
./english/276.txt:17:Local rationality refers to the various oppositional ways of being and doing that people develop in their attempt to cope with experiences of frustrations, constraints and threats of and to their needs3. Militant particularisms are those forms of struggle that erupt when local rationalities are made more unitary and coherent as subaltern social groups deploy specific skills and knowledges in open confrontation with a dominant social group, in a particular place and at a particular time, in a particular conflict over a particular issue4. Campaigns are those forms of movement activity that emerge as militant particularisms communicate with and form links with each other, develop common strategies and identities across socio-spatial boundaries – i.e. the organization of a range of local responses to specific situations in ways that connect people across multiple such situations so as to challenge the construction of those situations. Social movement projects emerge from the development of a politics which connects single-issue campaigns to an ‘anti-systemic’5 politics. Social movement projects are thus defined by the following features: (a) they pose challenges to the social totality which (b) aim to control the self-production of society and (c) possess or are striving to develop the capacity for the kind of hegemony – i.e. giving direction to the skilled activity of different subaltern social groups – that would render (b) and thus (a) possible6.
./english/276.txt:41:The compulsion towards insurgent architecture, I submit, could also be a central aspiration and a fundamental knowledge interest in social movement research. As Barker and Cox (2002: 7) have pointed out, there is a schism dividing academic theorizing about social movements and activist theorizing for and within social movements. The former is dominated by a drive towards providing “explanations” of the “normal”, “scientific” type, and the debates within the discipline centre around the type of explanations required, and the theory it generates, is thus of a contemplative nature. Social movements are defined as objects of study to be subjected to observation, description and explanation; they are not conceived of as active processes with which people, engage, experience and transform (ibid.: 4, 5). The latter centres not on providing general scientific explanations, but on generating ‘case propositions of a very definite and practical nature’ (ibid.: 4), that is, movement theorizing produces practical and concrete proposals for action in a given, conflictual setting. Social movement practice is thus characterised by a form of knowledge produced in an attempt to answer questions emanating from an active engagement with a particular context, be it other movements or more generally the social world ‘within which those movements move’ (ibid.: 6). By positing insurgent architecture as a knowledge interest in social movement research this schism might be transcended. For social movement research this would entail putting the focus of attention of the movement process and thus on activists’ attempts to “join the dots” between the particular struggles they are directly involved in and the totality in which these struggles are embedded, and the development of practices and ideas that can match the joining of the dots. In short, social movement research as insurgent architecture would seek to develop theoretical knowledge that can enhance activists’ capacity for transcending militant particularisms, build campaigns, and develop social movement projects9.
./english/276.txt:88:My argument for the relevance of critical realism for social movement research in the form of insurgent architecture basically consists of a two-pronged proposition: there is a homologous relationship between the knowledge that activists engender as they seek to “go beyond” their immediate experience and the knowledge that critical realism seeks to advance through the construction of transcendental arguments that interrogate the causal interrelationship between the empirical, the actual, and the real; the knowledge created through “going beyond” experience and interrogating how the empirical and the actual are rooted in the real are forms of knowledge that can underpin social movement projects and struggles over historicity.
./english/276.txt:104:This contention can be elaborated by drawing on Touraine (1981: 216), who argues as follows: ’… In analyzing the nature of a struggle, intervention reveals to the actors their utmost capacity for historical action, thus helping them to raise the project level of the movement. Such is its function: knowledge and action associated’. For Touraine, the task of social movement research revolves around bringing about a realisation of the role social movements can play in terms of generating historical development and social change through a fundamental rearrangement of the social organisation of human practice. As Cox (ibid.: 8) notes, a critical realist methodology which assumes that ‘there are underlying patterns to the immediately discoverable empirical world, and that these are at least indirectly knowable’ is a necessary condition for such a project.
./english/277.txt:26:A first glimpse of what this might mean can be offered by the first section of the Communist Manifesto, with its dramatic claim that “The history of all human society, past and present, has been the history of class struggles” (cited from the Ryazanoff edition in Mills 1962: 47). This claim is developed into an analysis of the revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie in the destruction of feudalism and the creation of a new world order, transforming economics and technology, national and international politics, communications and cognition; following this, by the analysis of the development of the workers’ movement from the experience of misery to the struggle against oppression, aided by growing concentration and communication, into a complex learning process of increasing political self-confidence and clarity towards another and final revolution. It would be more than possible to distil from these few pages the presuppositions of a general Marxist theory of social movements which was not other than the Marxist theory of history - but paying perhaps more attention to the discussion of the nature of movement activity, its preconditions and the context of its development towards the reshaping of society than has sometimes been the case.
./english/277.txt:68:“The active mass human being acts practically, but does not have a clear theoretical consciousness of this activity, which is however a knowledge of the world, in that it transforms it. In fact, their theoretical consciousness can be historically in contrast with their practical activity. It can almost be said that they have two theoretical consciousnesses (or one contradictory consciousness): one implicit in their activity and which truly unites them with all their collaborators in the practical transformation of reality; and one which is superficially explicit or verbal, which they have inherited from the past and have accepted without criticism. Nevertheless, this ‘verbal’ consciousness is not without consequences: it connects them to a given social group and influences them in their moral conduct and in the direction of their will, in more or less energetic ways, which can lead to a point in which the contradictory nature of their consciousness does not permit any action, any decision or any choice, and produces a situation of moral and political passivity. Critical self-understanding thus comes about via a struggle of political ‘hegemonies’, of opposing forms of direction, first in the field of ethics, then in that of politics, to arrive at a superior elaboration of their own conception of the real.” (Gramsci 1991: 13)
./english/277.txt:76:(C) This points to the third element of the analysis, which is to see human activity as practical learning activity. If skill can be lost, it can also be developed; whether practically, in direct interaction with the natural and social world, or indirectly, for example by transmission of particular modes of organising social movements and of thinking about politics. The point of Marxist theory, and socialist organisations, within the workers’ movement is arguably precisely to enable such indirect learning, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. Social movements are a privileged case of such learning, as Vester’s (1975) analysis of Thompson’s The making of the English working class seeks to establish. Vester argues that social movements represent “collective learning processes”, in which the elements Marx analyses as key to class conflict - an increasingly clearer self-understanding, a fuller grasp of social structure and historical process, and an increasingly adequate mode of organisation and struggle - are generated in the conflict with a movement’s opponents. The history of recent decades suggests that skill can be lost as well as developed. Hilary Wainwright’s (1994) analysis of the “politics of knowledge” of social movements also points, I think, in this direction, as does, from an earlier age, Banks’ analysis of social movements as a form of “social technology” (1972). As we shall shortly see, this is not all social movements are; but these points should be enough to establish an internal link from the bases of skilled activity to the articulation of social movements.
./english/277.txt:135:One, very obvious value is that there is no better way to improve your thinking than to have it criticised by people who know the situation you are talking about - and those are often few and far between in academia. Secondly, and perhaps less crudely, there is the issue of how we formulate and communicate our understanding. It is well known that examples, illustrations, quotes, metaphors and so on can make a text much more readable, but why? In this case at least, I think it is because this kind of struggle to communicate our meaning to the widest possible spectrum of viewpoints is effectively a “hegemonising” skill.
./english/278.txt:43:In dealing with the possibility of socialist revolution in the present however, whether Marx's present or our own, it is not enough to treat people as embodiments of social-economic functions. As much as this helps us understand their conditions, the pressures they are under, and their options and opportunities, the people involved must still respond to these influences in ways that make what is possible actual. In Marxist terminology, they must become class conscious. To study whether this can actually occur here and now, or at least soon, we must add a subjective, people-oriented, more directly and narrowly human element and focus to the objective, system-oriented view of class that has been presented so far. In short, in analyzing history and political economy, Marx could operate with an essentially functionalist conception of class derived from the place of a function within the system. Class here is something to which recognizable individuals are attached. In this way, incidentally, it is possible for an individual who serves more than one function (managers and wage-earning professionals, for example) to belong to more than one class. But in analyzing the present state of the class struggle and in developing political strategy, this view has to be supplemented, not replaced, by a conception of class that gives priority to the actual people who occupy this place and perform this function. Sharing a social space and functions, they also tend to acquire over time other common characteristics as regards income, life-style, political consciousness, and organization that become, in turn, further evidence for membership in their class and subsidiary criteria for determining when to use the class label. Here, class is a quality that is attached to people, who posses other qualities—such as nationality, race or sex, for example—that reduce and may even nullify the influence on thinking and action that comes from their membership in the class. Conceived as a complex social relation, in line with Marx's dialectical outlook on the world, class invites analysis as both a function and a group, that is to say, from different sides of this relation.
./english/278.txt:53:Having defined "class" and "class interests" as both objective and subjective, we are now in a position to approach class-consciousness. First, as regards its content, its main elements include one's identity and interests (subjective and objective) as members of a class, something of the dynamics of capitalism uncovered by Marx (at least enough to grasp objective interests), the broad outlines of the class struggle and where one fits into it, feelings of solidarity toward one's own class and of rational hostility toward opposition classes (in contrast to the feelings of mutual indifference and inner-class competition that accompany alienation), and the vision of a more democratic and egalitarian society that is not only possible but that one can help bring about. These are the main things that a class conscious working class is conscious of. Studying workers' class-consciousness, then, is looking for what is not there, not yet present in the thinking of real workers, as well as for what is. How can this be?
./english/278.txt:71:Finally, and possibly what distinguishes it most from individual consciousness as ordinarily understood, class consciousness is elastic and changing, and encompasses all the stages in the process of becoming what it potentially is along with the time it takes for this is occur. As such, class consciousness cannot be captured in any instant, nor can it be expressed in any simple, straightforward description. The time frame is stretched to cover the whole journey, but it is a journey with an end, a goal established by the situation of the class as such and evoked by all the conditions and pressures that constitute that situation, though most members of the class may not recognize this until very late. One of the most puzzling features in Marx's use of "class" is how he could claim that class is "the product of the bourgeoisie" while maintaining that "All history is the history of class struggle," and refer to various pre-capitalist groups as "classes" (Marx and Engels, 1942, 77; 1945, 12). In fact, class (in all of its aspects), class struggle, and class-consciousness all develop, mature, become over time, and only in late capitalist society do they realize their full potential. It is in this sense that each may be said to be a product of capitalism. In so far as many of their elements are present earlier, however, class, class struggle, and class consciousness can be said—if this limited sense is kept in mind—to have existed before. Moreover, viewed as historical processes, the mature form of each can be taken as present as a germ in its earlier stages and vice versa. Such is the nature of becoming as a dialectical category. As regards class-consciousness at the present time, rather than what any single person thinks, class-consciousness refers to how, when, from and towards what a whole class of people are changing their minds.
./english/278.txt:81:Does understanding imputed class consciousness as future class consciousness imply that socialism is inevitable? No, because class conscious workers are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for a successful socialist transformation of society. How effectively these class conscious workers are organized, what political action they take, the character of the then opposition, and even luck will help determine the final outcome of the class struggle. Marx himself offered barbarism—the disintegration of advanced civilization—as one alternative to socialism, but living one hundred years ago, he did not give it the attention that it would receive today. The Cold War has led to the recognition that another all too realistic alternative to socialism is the death of humanity brought about by nuclear holocaust. Still another awful possibility is ecocide, or the destruction of our species through the rapidly escalating destruction of our natural environment. Many rate this last as the most likely outcome of our species' relatively brief sojourn on this planet. While occasionally sympathetic (if this is the right word) to this view, it should be clear that the factors effecting this outcome are, at least to a large degree, of a different order than those that influence the progress of class consciousness. Consequently, the possibility of ecocide, like the possibility of barbarism and nuclear holocaust, does not prevent us from treating imputed class consciousness as future class consciousness within a notion of present class consciousness viewed in the process of becoming.
./english/278.txt:89:What is the alternative? Until now, I have been constructing a dialectical conception of class consciousness that could be studied directly and not only as a dependent aspect of class structure or class struggle. In what follows, I sketch what such a study would look like, its advantages and problems, and its relation to political practice. The dialectical alternative to examining class consciousness in the attitudes of individual workers, then, is to study the objective aspects of class consciousness in the situation of the class, and its subjective aspects in the thinking and activity of the group of people who make up the class, and both of these over time. On the objective side, what we have called the situation of the class must be studied on two different levels of historical specificity. First, we must clearly establish the place and function of the working class together with its objective interests in capitalism as such, that is in capitalism as it has existed for the past three to four hundred years, in order to derive the class consciousness that is appropriate. Reconstructing this situation not only provides the goal or finished form of class consciousness but puts us in touch with social and economic pressures arising out of the most basic relations of capitalism that move the actual consciousness of living workers in the direction of this goal. Given our concern with class consciousness, the focus is on the workers and hence the rest of capitalist society comes into view chiefly as part of the necessary conditions and/or results of the workers appearing and functioning as they do. In reconstructing how capitalism looks and works from the vantage point of the working class, there are some tendencies that deserve special attention. Among these are the accumulation and centralization of capital, the falling rate of profit, the increasing rate of exploitation, and the immiseration of the working class (that is relative to capitalists and viewed on a world scale). Though sometimes referred to as "laws," Marx's tendencies all admit—indeed often require—counter-tendencies, and should be understood and investigated with this in mind.
./english/278.txt:97:How these contradictory tendencies (promoting class consciousness and undermining it - whose main parts I have only been able to list) are related to each other in each modern capitalism and capitalism overall, and how the sum of the tendencies in the former facilitate, give expression to, or inhibit all the tendencies in the latter constitute the core of a Marxist study of the objective side of class consciousness. One way to bring out the objective character of these heterogeneous elements is to subsume them under the notion of class struggle. The class struggle is not, as most commentators left and right would have it, a subjective, consciously chosen form of class behavior. Rather, it is "the form of motion of classes." It is what a class—grasped as a place/function in the system, as the group of people who embody this function and who as a result tend to develop other common characteristics, and as the common element in their alienated social relations—becomes in and through its complex interaction with other classes, particularly over class interests and the conditions and possibilities for their realization. All that a class does, or what happens to it, that directly or indirectly affects its power vis-à-vis other classes is class struggle. Viewed in this way, class struggle encompasses what Gramsci calls the war of position, the adding and subtracting of advantages and disadvantages, as well as what he calls the war of movement, or those occasions when all that has been acquired (and lost) serves to fuel more direct forms of confrontation; and both of these "wars" rage throughout all sectors of society (1971, 108-110, 229-235, 238f., 243). The contradictory tendencies within class consciousness that we referred to above are recast here as internally related causes, expressions, and effects of the interaction of classes.
./english/278.txt:99:To be sure, when a class, in the sense of group, is conscious of itself as a class together with its interests, its involvement in class struggle is more purposeful and usually more effective than when it is not. What makes the interaction of classes a "struggle," however, is not the consciousness of the actors, nor even the intensity or undisguised nature of the clash, but the incompatibility of their objective interests and paths of development, both of which are inherent in the structure of capitalism itself. And it is this that makes it possible to organize the key contradictions of capitalism as a class struggle and to treat class struggle as the over-arching expression for the objective forms of class-consciousness.
./english/278.txt:101:In most Marxist accounts of this subject the opposite occurs, which is to say class struggle is the main object of study, and class consciousness, to the extent it is addressed at all, is treated as a minor and dependent aspect, as a mere reflection of the class struggle ("For workers to have arrived at this degree of struggle, their consciousness must be such and such"). We have also seen that Marx could conceptualize class consciousness as an aspect of class as such, as something that develops as a class realizes its full potential as a class. While such approaches to class consciousness are adequate for treating the past, where the evidence of what happened is in (so that we know roughly what the level of class consciousness must have been for classes or class struggle to have progressed so far), it is my view that a serious Marxist study of how the present is opening onto the future requires as a complementary focus, one that makes class struggle a subordinate aspect of class consciousness. (A similar point was made earlier in this essay about the limitations of understanding class simply as the embodiment of an economic function). This, then, is not an attempt to deny the material basis of Marxism or the priority it gives to activity, political as well as economic, for analyzing capitalism. It is only that the dialectical method allows us to approach capitalist social relations from the vantage point of class consciousness - a vantage point neither Marx or his followers have made much use of - and that for understanding our present moment as well as for affecting it there are certain advantages in doing so.
./english/278.txt:103:In investigating the different objective aspects of class consciousness, now conceptualized as class struggle, care must also be taken not to prejudge the particular combination of factors that will carry the wave to its breaking point, or, conversely, will ensure that it not get there, at least not now anyway. As we said earlier, any complex organism, and none is more complex than capitalism, has many compensating mechanisms for what is missing or not working as expected. Consequently, no social feature, either through its presence or absence, exercises an absolute veto on the development of class consciousness. No doubt the way in which consciousness develops has an important influence on the pace and form of the revolution. It does not follow, however, that there is only one road, a royal road, to socialism, and that socialists who are not on it are doomed to failure. Given the changing though still highly structured context provided by the process of capital accumulation, the class struggle allows for enormous flexibility and variety in how workers become class conscious. Yet, it remains the case that some paths of development are more likely—indeed far more likely—to be taken than others, and studying the objective aspects of class consciousness for each time and place is the surest means of uncovering what these are.
./english/281.txt:5:3) What is your assessment of the current status of capitalism and the class struggle? BARBARA BIGLIA: I am not a political theorist and I feel uncomfortable dishing out a general ‘prescription’ on this issue. So the best I can do is to give an impressionistic account. Firstly, I believe that ethnographic differences are really important. Even if oppression is globalized, it does not hurt people in the same manner. We live within different zones of capitalism, which subjects us to a differentiated system of domination. In some areas there still exists a certain class-consciousness that seems to have died out elsewhere. The presence or absence of social networks underline cultural differences. Today the class struggle represents an interesting and potentially subversive factor in certain areas of the planet. However, in other areas we need to take onboard non-class issues in order to fight oppression imaginatively. Finally, I am pessimistic about the anti-globalization movement, which in my view is rapidly becoming a reformist project with a radical mask.
./english/281.txt:13:The first big set of doubts arose when I read the expression ‘class struggle’. My political engagement started years ago with the end of the strong working struggle movement in Italy. We found ourselves, in the second part of the 1980s, without the class (consciousness) that, in theory at least, is meant to be related somehow to struggle; the factories around us where closing and consciousness was almost non-existent. Most of the old activists had disappeared; some were in prison, others in exile, most dropped out of public life; almost all the ones still visible became completely institutionalised. So, as young activists, we moved from the class referent to a more complex set of references including the oppressed and marginalised- subjects more similar to us. For this reason I find it odd to talk about the ‘class struggle’ in the here and now even if it may be possible elsewhere. If Social Movements do not entirely consist of middle and upper class ‘activists’ then neither are they a genuine expression of the working classes in the ‘Marxist’ sense of the term3. The second set of doubts arose when I tried to think about Critical Psychology. What exactly is it? Does a critical psychology exist? Is it not better to talk about Critical Psychologies? Am I a critical psychologist? I can’t really give an answer to these questions because it seems to me that many people, influenced by different ideologies and practices, describe themselves as critical psychologists. Before writing this article I looked through the library database and came to the conclusion that the only thing these critical psychologists had in common was that they are not yet part of mainstream psychology. Burman4 writes, ‘Critical psychology is what people do in challenging the oppressive and disingenuous actions done by psychologists or in the name of psychology’. But in reality, being ‘critical’ is becoming fashionable and not all the people calling themselves critical have the ethical or political principles expressed by Erica. At the same time, I have the impression that sometimes tools and instruments used by critical psychologists acquire an unwarranted radical status. As Gordo-Lopez suggests,
./english/281.txt:17:Viewpoints that arise from potential subversive situations [...] are incorporated, neutralised and redefined within the discipline as methodological innovations or merely as qualitative investigative techniques (Gordo-Lopez, 2001). In other words deconstruction and qualitative methods can be used to justify reactionary practice. Deconstruction and relativism, for example, have been used by some to posit the notion that the Holocaust was an invention and to propagate their historical revisionist point of view. Has a similar process aided the reabsorption5 of critical psychology? I feel myself closest to the standpoint of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in the sense expressed by Bucalo (1997, 54), anti-psychiatry is not a theory but a practice…it is an everyday practice with which we confront other people’s experience and at the same time define our own...regarding interpersonal relations, anti-psychiatry does not limit itself to the negation of internment or the coercion of people’s subjectivities; it is furthermore an acknowledgment of those experiences/abilities within human beings. In other words being anti-psychiatry should be read as a way of being in relation to the world and the subjectivities within it. This is primarily a personal anti-psychiatry. Finally, the third set of doubts that the questionnaire evokes in me: What is the anti-capitalist movement? Is it really possible to talk about one anti-capitalist movement? For example, are the Mapuche movement, Tute Bianche or Attac part of the same struggle? Is there a lot of commonality between the anarchist perspective and NGOs’ politics? Do we fight for the same goals? Is there a common struggle? The definition of Social Movements (SM) is extremely varied and includes many groups with different styles and political positions and the attempt to find a common theory to explain them will result in homogenisation and simplification6. Even when we try to limit analysis to self-professed anti-capitalist movements we are still left with an enormous range of different groups and political options. What is the common ground? Do they work as friends or antagonists? Bearing in mind such heterogeneity, if we want to
./english/281.txt:33:spokespersons of the movement and dismiss the rest as ‘too radical’. I don't think it is necessary here to analyse the effects of these dynamics on the movement. Although it is important to note that declarations from alleged progressive intellectuals is intended to divide the movement and undermine alternative groupings. All this raises considerable doubts in me regarding the possible contributions of disciplines such as critical psychology (especially in English speaking countries), that are becoming academically acceptable. Moreover, we have to recognise that many intellectuals and academics jump on the radical bandwagon and try to take advantage of it, especially since there are so few specialists in this field. As an Italian militant involved with academia reports,13 Spring 1998 [...] explosion of the squatting phenomenon [...] many university barons show a sudden interest in ‘understanding’ squatters and I am called as a possible advisor [...] If I put myself forward as a squatting expert I will surely enhance my career prospects. Intellectual contribution to division and reabsorption In analysing the achievements and failures of Radical Social Movements we have to consider the tools, which the System employs to undermine the subversive power of activities and imagination. In my opinion two of the more successful strategies adopted by the System are reabsorption and splitting; in both, the part played by intellectuals and more specifically, academics, is determinant. Here I wish to examine these processes in more detail. When struggles gain public support the System puts into practice various strategies to re-colonize some of the more explicit demands. They take the demand, turn it upside down, empty it of meaning and use it as a slogan to shut up ‘popular protest’. Even some of the ‘human resources’ of the Movement, that is some of the activists, are reabsorbed into the body politic. This probably occurs for different reasons: some militants enter the movement not because they are completely disenchanted with formal politics but because they are not able
./english/281.txt:40:In this sense activist critics of academia are still relevant; for example, Cecilia17, criticises academic Italian feminists who did not come out against the reformists who wanted to forbid abortion. The second painful example comes from the Italian anti-psychiatry movement. Law 18018 which in theory aimed for a more open model of psychic pain, left three enormous legislative holes: First, it retained the TSO19; second, it didn’t close the criminal ‘madhouses’ (Barbieri, 1995); and, finally, it supported the inabilitazione20 (Biglia, 1999). The government passed these laws with the approval of society since they were seen as liberating. The supposed empowerment either didn’t materialise or was pushed through in a reformist manner (Telefono Viola21). In this way the government boycotted all the genuinely alternative approaches. First, subsidies were eliminated and later on draconian laws were employed to shut down individual and collective radical projects. Ironically, the Italian psychiatric laws are still deemed ‘progressive’ by some. These were two examples from the past but I believe the germ of a very similar process can be seen in various sectors of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Academic writings have often favoured reabsorption of critics by recolonising collective knowledge within the borders of ‘scientific space’. The second phenomenon, which needs discussing, is the ‘divide-and-rule’ tactics of the state. Within autonomous groupings the development of a collective identity has always been a necessary component of recognising a common struggle and the fight against oppression. We need a group consciousness in order to be subversive, since ‘any group that leads an autonomous existence [...] constitutes a constant danger for the dominant group’ (Apfelbaum, 1999, p 269). Obviously if the identity becomes homogenising it could suffocate the group and the subjectivity within it (Biglia, 2003). As I explained before, various occasions are used to
./english/281.txt:43:instigate difference amongst groups (the banal discourse on violence is one of them, see Lopez-Adan, 1996). However, I firmly believe that the division between ‘physical’22 and theoretical activists is the most significant factor. This is a division that academics actively encourage. This is because the intellectuals tend to reproduce exclusive jargons that continue the very technical and social divisions of labor they purport to want to deconstruct. Fearing academic manipulation, groups then tend to either evolve around identities devoid of theoretical elements, or exalt theories. Both alternatives when not destroying the subversive power of the collective imaginary at least limit its scope. An additional problem is that the ‘anti-capitalist movement’ still contains figures who consciously or otherwise wish to resurrect Marxist-Leninism’s desire to ‘educate the people’. Its more intellectual dimension tends to normalise certain positions and by default exclude other struggles as secondary. For example, women have frequently been asked to subordinate their struggles against discrimination to those of the class (Charles, 2000, Diaz, 1983, Sardella, 2001, Schuman, 1998, Vázquez et al., 1996). All this causes a separation between the alleged intellectuals and those who practice politics from within their own skin. In this context the comments of some Chilean activists that I interviewed in 2001 are of relevance23. These pobladoras24 have been fighting for years firstly against the dictatorship and today against the falsehood of the democracy and the various discriminations (class, ethnic and gender ones) that persist. They may not possess academic knowledge but if you stop and listen to their words an entire world of wisdom unfolds before your eyes. They have recounted several experiences to me when they felt excluded by professional feminist activists: They don’t look at you badly, but the discourse they use is not pluralist … it is not a discourse that involves pobladoras women…there are just a few professional women who ‘come down’ to
./english/281.txt:61:Plows, A. J. (1998) ‘Colective identity through Collective Action-Enviromental Direct Action in Britain’. Paper given in M.A. University of Wales Bangor: UK, photocopies. Sardella, P. (2001) ‘Donna e bello’ in Brilli F.(eds) Gli anni della rivolta. 1960-1980: prima, durante e dopo il '68. Milano: Punto Rosso. Schumann, G. (1998) Mujeres en kurdistan. Hondarribia: HIRU. Subbuswamy K., Patel R. (2001) Cultures of domination: Race and gender in radical movements. En Abramsky K. (Eds.) Restructuring and Resistance. Diverse voices of struggle in Western Europe Self-published. Pp 541-543 Telefono Viola Manicomio. La chiusura dei manicomi prevista per la fine del '96 e' un bluff. En http://www.ecn.org/telviola/MANICOMI.HTM Traful M. (2002) Por una politica nocturna, Madrid: Debate Ussher J. (2000) Critical psychology in the mainstream: a struggle for survival, in Sloan T. (Eds.) Critical psychology. voices for change, London: Macmillan, p: 6-20 Valcárcel A. (1994) Sexo y filosofía. Sobre ‘mujer’ y ‘poder’, Barcelona: Anthropos Vázquez, N. and Ibáñez, C. and Murguialday, C. (1996) Mujeres montaña, vivencia de guerrilleras y collaboradoras del FMLN. Madrid: Horas y Horas. Wall, D. (1999) Earth First! and the Anti-Roads Movement Radical Environmentalism & Comparative Social Movements. London: Routledge.
./english/282.txt:12:However, more problematic questions arise in relation to a specific area of academic study, signaled by the title of the new journal: Social Movement Studies. Over the last few decades, a whole institutional academic apparatus - even including this conference! - has arisen, whose central focus is the theorization of movements and popular struggles. In North America, the Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section of the ASA has, reportedly, some 500 paid-up members. There are several journals devoted to this kind of work, and many other professional sociology and political science journals regularly carry articles in the field. Here there occur ongoing debates about how to theorize the (possibly changing) experience of movements, their ideas, their activities, their forms of organization, and their contests with the powerful. This is the area we want to ask questions about.
./english/282.txt:79:The activist, by contrast, qua organic intellectual, carries out directive and theoretical activity on behalf of subordinate classes and groups. These classes do not control institutions, resources and symbols in the same way as dominant groups. Though they are constantly creating such forms of self-expression and struggle, these forms are constantly being combated and colonized by the dominant. Organic intellectuals therefore find themselves constantly creating - not ex nihilo, but from social materials typically controlled or contested from above. Since the primary purpose is to create what is not yet in existence (hence, once again, movement), their modes of theorizing are those geared to engagement, conflict, and (importantly) discovery.
./english/282.txt:157:The 'new social movements' debate offers another illustration of this transformation of theory. In the 1960s and the 1970s, movement activists on the left struggled to engage with and understand a range of apparently connected phenomena: most obviously the rise of a 'new Left' which was critical both of Stalinism and of Social Democracy from a variety of anti-authoritarian standpoints; the increasingly obvious co-optation of the latter within the institutions of Cold War politics and their practical opposition to revolutionary movements (at least within the West); the growing significance of 'new social actors' - rural blacks in the United States, migrant workers in Italy, students in most Western countries; and the development of a range of movements and campaigns that were not easily captured by the institutional and intellectual frameworks of the Old Left - notably movements against nuclear power, women's movements, urban squatters and movements against nuclear weapons.
./english/282.txt:169:In the process, the banal but nevertheless significant point that by the 1970s the PCF was increasingly isolated within Marxism was conveniently forgotten. When teaching students, it is of course far easier to say 'Marxists said this, but new social movements theorists (or post-structuralists) said that', providing the illusion of an intellectual debate, than to recognize that what was originally at stake was initially a debate between Marxists over practical questions. For example: did 1968 represent a revolutionary moment in Paris or Prague? was it important to be present in student movements or should all energies should go into factory work? were movements against nuclear power a diversion from real issues or a significant new form of struggle? and did green parties represent a worthwhile strategy for expressing and radicalizing a range of struggles or a means for their co-optation.
./english/282.txt:171:To recognize this history would mean not only going into far greater depth in the history of ideas than one could expect of undergraduates - or political scientists! - it would also mean dethroning of purely cognitive analysis and recognizing that these theoretical struggles were organized not in terms of the clash of generic propositions but of conflicts over practical choices facing activists and movements.
./english/282.txt:223:The boundaries between Eyerman and Jamison's 'dimensions of cognitive praxis', then, are themselves as 'ahistorical and transcendental' as Habermas, albeit attractive from a particular 'contemplative', 'traditional' position which is interested in categorizing movement behaviour. Real-life thought, however, is a complex process of struggle which does not always sit neatly within these separate boxes.
./english/282.txt:228:Similarly, Irish working-class community organizers may refuse the term 'activist' as referring to something alien to the everyday life and culture of the communities they see themselves as part of - while nevertheless being involved in processes of discussion, disagreement, conflict and education within those communities. In these cases, people are involved in a struggle over the meaning of everyday culture, and may set limits on the extent to which movement discourses are allowed to develop independently.
./english/282.txt:245:Firstly, there is a very explicit original purpose; according to the intro the document mushroomed from the need to argue that 'anarcho-capitalists' ('libertarians' in the American sense of the word) are not true anarchists at all, and that anarchism necessarily involves a rejection of capitalism. Here is then a struggle over movement boundaries, located primarily on the Internet, where these two kinds of 'anarchists' are most likely to conflict (since anarcho-capitalists are unlikely to be found in the same struggles as anti-capitalist anarchists).
./english/282.txt:247:A second kind of purpose is evidently to distinguish anarchists from Marxists, in particular Trotskyists, who in Britain and Ireland at least are often the closest 'competitors' for anarchist activists - both sharing an orientation towards radical struggle, but competing for members and the attention of other activists, conflicting over the direction of campaigns (in e.g. arguments over the role of the state and violence), and so on. These, then, are conflicts which are in a sense internal to movements (and the FAQ argues that both Marxism and anarchism are to be understood in the context of working-class opposition to capitalism).
./english/284.txt:96:A similar sense of being translocal and internationally-connected is shared by global justice movements. Part of the strength of this global network of local struggles comes from highlighting spatial thinking and developing global consciousness amongst diverse communities. Popular slogans that stress this linking are, for example: “we are everywhere” or “our resistance is as global as capital”. Gupta and Ferguson make reference to a transnational public sphere and the creation of forms of solidarity and identity based on this reconceptualization of space, and a more connected reterritorialized experience (1997: 68). The complex interrelations between the ‘globals’ and ‘locals’ has become not only an interesting intellectual exercise but a key project in developing effective political praxis. How exchanges might flow (of information, experiences, ‘technology’, etc.) along multiple axes between ‘historically inteconnected’ places, is then an important point of reflexivity for the ‘globalized and globalizing’ anthropologist.
./english/291.txt:41:The social context that we live in today is the network-society. The factory has overflowed and has invaded the social, changing it into the principal lever of production. The wave of struggles in the 1960s and 1970s, on one hand, and the saturation of markets, along with the high levels of competition that introduced the process of globalization, on the other, obligated firms to develop techniques and technologies to make themselves more mobile and flexible and also more resistant to conflictivity and crisis: their survival depended, on one hand, on their capacity to detext (and take advantage of) the politico-institutional and social conditions and of the supply of most optimum raw materials, software, and machinery and work force; on the other hand firms' survival depended on their ability to respond within very brief time spans to oscilations of demand, thus in order to create (with a whole set of identification of needs/desires/forms of life and production of signs) the demand for a product even before manufacturing it. The key thus was in the multiplication of contacts and in a flexible and network organization that allowed a maximum fluidification of the circulation of information about local and international markets and an immediate production response to this information. In this manner, externalization, dislocalization and flexibilization became the slogan and communicative and relational work became the essential pivot, the active interface, of this ever more networked production.
./english/291.txt:59:The borders are among the principal enemies of any struggle against the precarization of existence, because they generate veritable local laboral and social apartheids that enclose and precarize the social bond and impregnate it with fear of the other. Creating spaces of mixture, of alliance between precarious with and without papers, from here and from there, is to challenge these borders, subtract their command from them, to produce the common. The European action day of 2April of this year for freedom movement and right of residence is an example of this sense: see madiaq.indymedia.org, www.globalproject.info, and pajol.eu.org.
./english/291.txt:75:In general, in the laboral terrain, more useful typologies attempt to think from the point of view of expressions of unrest and rebellioning the distinct positions. Thus, we can see that, in jobs with a repetitive content (telemarking, cleaning, textile workshops), the subjective implication with the task performed is zero and this leads to forms of conflict of pure refusal: generalized absenteeism, dropout-ism, sabotage... In telemarketing, for example, absenteeism is the number one problem for the departments of human resources, which rack their brains in search of strategies to deal with it: from the relocation to the old colonies of the mother firm (Marruecos and Argentina in the case of Spanish firms) to the contracting of more blackmailed subjects (women heads of household between 40 and 50 years of age) or the attempt to inculcate loyalty among the workforce, changing telemarketing to one of the branches of professional education. On the other hand, in jobs where the content is of the vocational/professional type (from nursing to informatics, to social work to research) and, as such, the subjective implication with the task performed is high, conflict is expressed as critique: of the organization of labor, of the logic that articulates it, of the ends toward which it is structured... This can be seen very clearly in the mobilizations of nurses in France in the 90s, in the present struggles of the intermittents in the media also in France or in the free software impelled by programmers all over the world in the face of the logic of proprietary software of the big corporations. Finally, in those jobs where the content is directly invisibilized and/or stigmatized (the most paradigmatic examples are cleaning work, home care, and sexual work, especially - but not only - street prostitution), conflict manifests as a demand for dignity and the recognition of the social value of what is done. "Fucking, fucking it's a service to the community" chant the whores of Montera street in their demonstrations against the constant police harrassment and the criminalizing plans of the mayor of the city of Madrid.
./english/291.txt:89:Since 1886 the first of May has been the international day of commemoration (except in the US) of the "Chicago Martyrs" (worker leaders condemned to the gallows in the context of the general strikes for the eight hour day in the US) and of expression of the demands and struggles of that great historical and strongly identitarian subject, the proletariat, inexorably united in a period of capitalism, industrial capitalism, to some modes of organization, the great strikes and the mass unions, and to some places of mobilization, the factories. But to the degree that capitalism has been changing its forms of exploitation in order to dodge the workers conflicts and reappropriate their demands, passing from industrial capitalism to fordism and, from this, to the present postfordist mode of production, this date has been losing meaning until it became of holiday (for some) and completely devoid of content for almost everyone.
./english/291.txt:93:Because today that monolithic antagonistic subject has been replaced by a diffuse multiplicity of singularities that some dare to call the precariat. In the year 2001, a Milanese colelletive of precarious of the large service sector chains, the Chainworkers (www.chainworkers.org), issued a call for May first what was baptized the Mayday Parade. Its protagonists were atypical workers, remunerated and non-remunerated, with and without papers: these professionals of geographic and vital flights, fixers of temporality, experts in metamorphis who, linked by multiplicity, sought, in the difficult times of existential precarization, to celebrate and visibilize our struggles and dreams. The initiative caught on and was repeated year after year with increasing numbers and increasing expressiveness. Three years later, it was put on in the city of Barcelona as well, and this year anticipates these Maydays in no less than 16 cities European cities (see www.euromayday.org).
./english/291.txt:107:Biosindicalism has nothing to do with bifidus. It is an attempt to name a series of recent practical and everyday experiments that are happening in the terrain of precarity, in a provisional, provocative, and extremely pragmatic manner. Biosindicalism is a contraction of life and sindicalism, where life crawls toward that tradition of struggle that has been sindicalism and deprives it of its most corporative and economistic elements. But: why insert into this medium? 1) Because life is productive. We are not among those who say, "Life has been put into production." It always produced: cooperation, affective territories, worlds... but now it also produces profit. The capitalist axiomatic has subsumed it. 2) Because precarity cannot be understood only from the laboral context, from the concrete conditions of work of this or that individual. A much more rich and illuminating position results from understanding precarity as a generalized tendency toward the precarization of life that affects society as a whole. And 3) because the labor has ceased to be a place that organizes (individual and collective) identity), a place of spontaneous encounter and aggregation and a place that nourishes the utopia of a better world. The reasons? The failure of the worker movement and the process of capitalist restructuration that accompanied it, as much as the push of the desire of singularity (of the feminist movement, the black movement, the anticolonial movements and other movements linked to the spirit of '68) that made the worker movement stall from the inside.
./english/291.txt:111:But, look, this does not mean that the laboral can no longer be a place (among others) of conflict, nor that the teachings of the worker movement cannot be useful. It means only that the battle inside and against precarization cannot be restricted to the laboral. It means that it is necessary to invent forms of alliance, of organization, and everyday struggle in the passage between labor and non-labor, which is the passage that we inhabit.
./english/292.txt:121: If the body struggles, with the help of a whole gamut of products and
./english/292.txt:125:social body struggles in the same way against that other threat that
./english/293.txt:29:Precarias a la deriva (Precarious women workers adrift) is a collective project of investigation and action. The concerns of the participants in this open project converged the 20th of June 2002, the day of the general strike called by the major unions in Spain. Some of us had already initiated a trajectory of reflection and intervention in questions of the transformations of labor (in groups such as ‘ZeroWork’ and Sex, Lies and Precariousness, or individually), others wished to begin to think through these themes. In the days before the strike we came together to brainstorm an intervention which would reflect our times, aware that the labor strike, as the culminating expression of a process of struggle, was unsatisfactory for us for three reasons: (1) for not taking up –and this is no novelty- the experience and the unjust division of domestic work and care, almost entirely done by women in the ‘non-productive’ sphere, (2) for the marginalization to which both the forms of action and the proposals of the strike condemn those in types of work –ever more common- which are generally lumped together as ‘precarious’[1] and (3) for not taking into consideration precarious, flexible, invisible or undervalued work, specifically that of women and/or migrants (sexual, domestic, assistance, etc.). As a friend recently pointed out in the context of the more recent ‘political’ strike against the war (April 10, 2003), “How do we invent new forms of striking when production fragments and dislocates itself, when it is organized in such a way that to stop working for a few hours (or even 24) does not necessarily effect the production process, and when our contract situation is so fragile that striking today means risking the possibility of working tomorrow?”
./english/293.txt:33:We saw that many of these jobs in the margins: the invisible, unregulated, unmoored jobs were in no way interrupted or altered by a strike of this type, and that the precarization of the labor market had extended to such an extent that the majority of working people were not even effected by the new reforms against which the strike was directed. Therefore we tried to think of new forms of living this day of struggle by approaching and confronting these new realities. We decided to transform the classic shut-down picket into a survey-picket. Frankly, we didn’t feel up to upbraiding a precarious worker contracted by the hour in a supermarket or to closing down the little convenience store run by an immigrant because, in the end, despite the many reasons to shut down and protest, who had called this strike? Who were they thinking of? Was there even a minimal interest on the part of the unions for the situation of precarious workers, immigrants, housewives? Did the shut-down stop the productive process of domestic workers, translators, designers, programmers, all those autonomous workers for whom stopping this day would do nothing but duplicate their work the next day? It seemed more interesting to us, considering the gap between the experience of work and the practice of struggle, to open a space of exchange between some of the women who were working or consuming during that day and with those who were moving in the streets. This small, discreet sketch of an investigation was the starting point for what became the project of the ‘drifts’.
./english/293.txt:93:Our situations are so diverse, so partial, that it is very difficult to find common denominators from which to elaborate alliances and irreducible differences with which to mutually enrich ourselves. It is complicated for us to express ourselves, to define ourselves from the common place of precariousness; a precariousness capable of bypassing a clear collective identity through which to simplify and defend itself, but one which demands discussion. We need to communicate the lacks and the excesses of our working and living situations in order to escape from the neoliberal fragmentation which separates and debilitates us, turning us into victims of fear, of exploitation or of the individualism of ‘each one for herself.’ But, above all, we want to make possible the collective construction of other lives through a shared creative struggle. Our insistence upon singularity we owe to our desire to not produce, once again, false homogeneities, without permitting that this insistence prevents us from saying anything at all. We thought, in relation to this, of the specific situation of some companions who are migrants working in domestic service and in the consequences of a link which demands other forms of commitment than those to which some of us are accustomed.
./english/293.txt:184:We dedicated several meetings to defining the axes of our approach, which later, in the course of the drifts, would take more shape. The axes which came out of our debates were informed by our experiences of time (stress, excess, saturation, the impossibility of planning, instability…), of space (mobility, life territories, borders, displacements, sedentarism…), of income (badly paid work, lack of resources, loans from friends and families with guaranteed work, limited access to public services and misappropriation of various cards…), of care and relations (communities of work, affect, sociability), of conflict (possibilities and processes of struggle…), of hierarchies (in many cases diffuse and painful), of risk (insecurity, vulnerability) and of the body (discipline, abuse, sporadic care, compulsive sexuality…). After various drifts, the axes took shape and meaning beyond our own initial intuitions.
./english/293.txt:202:In the past people struggled against the reification of daily life, primarily incarnated in work but also in the family and mass consumption, and this determined a change in business policies, particularly in the management of human resources.[13] Today security and continuity have become, in name at least, increasingly precious, although the price that must be paid for them is often too high and one ends up accepting mobility and unrestricted availability in an attempt to compose a destiny which at least is not totally prescribed. The only stable element is being in perpetual transit, the “habit of the unaccustomed”[14] which characterizes work paid by the hour, by the job, or until something better is found. Which, as our guides through the mysterious world of telemarketing commented, never really happens, such that one returns again and again to bounce off different campaigns which the virtual enterprises in the sector contract with the big communication multinationals under ever more competitive conditions.
./english/293.txt:343:The fact that sociability exceeds and escapes from the the more rigid structures of work is a well known reality, the most interesting concretion of which we find in parks, where fellow migrants meet and work out all kinds of contacts. The fragmentation of the houses where they work, the invisibility of residency papers and the anonymity of being foreign are recomposed in a public space which resists the postmodern phenomenon of the “no place.” And we think: if a particular space should exist for the struggle against precariousness, this would be the city in its full extension; this park, that bar, the stairway of the building, the whole block, the metro, the crosswalks, the doorways, the empty lots… This gives us important clues for thinking about conflict from a spatial continuum which unfolds itself in daily life, not limited to work (how, for example, to create conflict from within the isolation of the domestic worker? Can we follow up on this? Meet in other spaces? Meddle?), and in the figures and positions which incarnate these situated flows (the occasional companions in the call-center? The fellow users of the internet café, the discount supermarket, the bus number 36?).
./english/293.txt:425:The primary objective of the Laboratorio de Trabajadoras was to create a space of permanent communication which would not be restricted by work-place nor limited to the strictly work-related -as if this could be separated from other aspects of life- and that would not be restricted to the singularity of this or that company, this or that specific conflict, some particular demand, but that could be reinvented as a practice, contaminating and provoking chain reactions. A laboratory which would permit us to be on top of events and improvise coordinated movements of support and of rebellion (to intervene in the firing or the abuse of a live-in domestic worker, to participate in the strikes and struggles of health workers, telemarketers…).
./english/293.txt:429:As much in the course of the drifts as afterwards in the two workshops of Globalized Care, we have only just begun to go over some of the memorable recent experiences of struggle: the janitor’s strike in Ramón y Cajal Hospital, the struggle of the Qualytel telephone operators, and other gestures, bursts, protests and budding processes of uprising. For some the encounter with the janitors in our brief visit to the hospital was strange, alien: alien to us because we saw them in a localized conflict, still influenced by unions like CCOO[37] (with which the workers of the Eurolimp-Ferrovial contract in Ramon y Cajal had had such confrontations in order to maintain their autonomy and their grassroots structure), in a conflict in which the question of precariousness resides basically in the increasing loss of rights, in the disappearance of the workers’ functions in order to intensify their activity, and in the absolute repression of any and all burst of protest.[38] But we immediately recognized the intimacy of the relationship they sought with the patients and their families and with other social groups outside of the realm of the unions, and we identified with their discourse about care as something related to citizenship and their criticism of the privatization of health care.
./english/298.txt:126:MB: But for you it’s more a question of reinventing the terms of the struggle itself.
./english/298.txt:128:TT: Autonomist work started with trade-union sponsored social research into the reasons for declining union membership. The result of that theoretical, empirical and political inquiry was a foregrounding of the alchemical dynamics of class composition. Union membership was declining because neither the structure of the union nor its culture could cope with a shifting class composition (such as an increasing number of young, male, unskilled immigrant workers and their refusal of the unionist work ethic). This was not simply a new contingent coming to join the old generation, but also implied a new set of social needs and desires which not only the union but factory work as such could not satisfy. The figure of this first transformation was the ‘mass worker’ – unskilled, mass factory work that challenged the industrial production machine through the rigidity of its escalating demands and its simultaneous social mobility. The mass worker demanded and caused a reinvention of politics, rather than simply joining the class struggle as a new contingent would – it gave new impetus to the struggle for life time against the ‘time-measure’ of the wage/work relation. An implication is that class is not simply about the reproduction of dialectical domination, but it is also endowed with its own historicity – a kind of dynamic potential, a surplus of value that antagonistically produces new forms of life and demands new modes of political and cultural expression.
./english/299.txt:193:The discussion, as always, got good and complicated because it is true that there are just too many things: (1) the history of the sexual division of labor and its present configuration; (2) the feminization of migratory flows and the åpassing along of inequalityπ, (3) the legal framework which fixes the status of domestic work as subemployment and that of women as subalterns, (4) the content of this work: its temporal, spatial, subjective and other limits and (5) the fronts open for struggle.
./english/299.txt:283:On the other hand, talking about affect necessarily implies getting past the framework of employment or even of work and entering into the realm of relation, something inseparable from any activity but particularly essential in the activities we are talking about. We are caretakers, all of us, but moreover we need to be cared for, we like it and we have a right to it. But the affect that we seek should not be a question of minimums, of obligation and guilt, of dependence. Rather it should be a free affect, although (today) this might be linked to a salary, and for it to be free it must be just. Affect, as we well know, is not a panacea, and it is not good enough to talk about it in general terms. Love has qualities, and it is a part of social relations which must be constructed and deconstructed: love, service, work, solidarity, etc. For this reason the struggles that are related to affect, such as those in the fields of nursing or education, are not strictly labor struggles but citizen as well as personal struggles. They are struggles against daily wars. And the challenge which we confront in these workshops is just that: to transform care into a social claim which modifies affect and converts it into an abundant common good. Something which has been a constant challenge for feminism, and which the neoliberal offensive of recent years has converted into an emergency.
./english/299.txt:287:The struggles of caretakers ≠ of housewives in impoverished countries, immigrants, social workers ≠ are still just beginning, and the burgeoning experiences point to an aggregation that could interrupt the atomization and precarization of personal services, the degradation of the public and the anguish and juggling-acts required by family commitments.[43] The struggles of (under)cared-for people, which have been significantly organized in some countries of the Third World (and have barely existed in Europe, with the possible exception of France), represent the other side of the same problems: resources, quality and cooperation. In this sense, the conflicts produced by migrants and those who work in questions of care, conflicts grounded in work but above all in citizenship, in the imaginary and in lifestyle, demand a greater degree of elaboration and confluence.
./english/300.txt:20:The tradition, or movement as some would prefer to call it (see Blaut 1979), of radical geography in the Anglo-American countries appeared and coalesced in the late 1960’s. It emerged largely as the response and engagement on the part of geographers with the series of social struggles and processes of social transformation occurring throughout the time period. Movements against the war in Vietnam, anti-colonial struggles in countries of the Global South, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, what seemed to be the string of international revolts in ’68, provoked a reaction. As Peet states: “radical science in general and radical geography in particular are, at least in North America, of fairly recent origin. They are largely the product of the events of the 1960’s,” (Peet 1977; p. 7). Geographers were “forced by events to question the conceptual bases and practices of their discipline,” (Harvey and Smith 1984; p. 102).
./english/300.txt:24:The convulsions and mobilization sweeping through entire societies did not pass over geographers of course. “Inevitably, a number of geographers were drawn into the struggle, and we brought our scientific tool bags with us,” (Blaut 1979). A call for the ‘relevancy’ of geographical work towards addressing social problems began to be circulated (Peet 1977; p. 11). Localized responses to and experiences with these social struggles on the part of geographers, especially in the US and Canada, began to seriously connect and network after the 1969 meeting off the AAG. “It was at the Ann Arbor meeting of the A.A.G., in 1969, that most of these local movements- including the Detroit Geographical Expedition and the Antipode group at Clark University- suddenly became aware of one another’s existence, and it was at these meetings that the radical movement congealed and the radical tradition was born,” (Blaut 1979; p. 160).
./english/300.txt:61:Feminist geography has thus been able to provide very profound critiques of the process of research and the dynamics between observer and observed, the academic institution, and the audiences that receive academic knowledge. These critiques develop in a more profound way some of the same issues that came up during the experiments with participatory action research that emerged during the late sixties. Yet issues of direct community participation (much less control) in the research process have still been a problem in terms of meeting some of the ideals stated above by some feminist geographers. In another symposium on feminist participatory research by Farrow, Moss and Shaw these geographers mentions some of the problems and constraints of their own work in terms of how participatory it was or could be. Issues such as that of paratrooping into a community or struggle without a clear mutual relationship with those being researched, predefining research questions and methods without much ‘community’/‘researched’ input, issues of who the research is produced ‘for’ and whose needs does it meet (even if it is participatory is it addressing the community’s concerns or only the researcher’s?). Limitations in doing this sort of participatory research were also brought up by the authors for example: the difficulty of doing profoundly participatory research in order to meet degree requirements, and the issue of needing to predefine issues and questions to a funding agency and being constrained if those same questions need to be changed due to community needs. Feminist geography has provided many theoretical tools for dealing with issues of participatory action research thus contributing to the production of ‘contact zones’. However, the attempts at concretely ‘deconstructing the barrier’ often surrounding the academy are continuing to struggle to find bridges.
./english/300.txt:67:What is interesting to note about this discussion is that it’s emerging and multiplying itself at a time when we are seeing increased social mobilization and conflictuality. Issues such as globalizing capitalism, trade agreements, failed development, neoliberalism, and the war on terrorism are met by opposed dynamics whether they be Chiapas and the multiplication of indigenous movements, global resistance counter-summits and social forums or the independent organizing of the unemployed in numerous countries. Different struggles in distant places are articulating themselves through a similar discourse and already the term ‘movement of movements’ is one in common usage amongst activists. While in no way trying to say that this is a repeat of the sixties dynamic, it is interesting to see how similar discussions in geography begin to re-emerge with the increase of social conflictuality.
./english/300.txt:69:Responses to these dynamics and the discussions within geography have already begun to emerge. One notable effort is the People’s Geography project organized out of Buffalo and its effort at making research and geographical concepts relevant to social struggles (see www.peoplesgeography.org). Other initial responses come from critical development work. This work is marked by efforts to construct venues for community or organizational input on development and planning work being done by geographers. One example of this is Howitt’s work in Australia on participatory social impact assessment by aboriginal communities as an empowerment tool vis-à-vis the mining and other resource extraction industries. He specifically sees his work as responding to the ‘applied people’s geography’ called for by Harvey in 1984 (Howitt 1993). More recently, the International Association for Participatory Development has promoted or collected many studies on issues dealing with community empowerment and spatial thinking in development. Some of the issues deal with participatory GIS and participatory 3-D modeling (www.iapad.org). Even more surprising was a collaborative study between two anthropologists and a Hawai`in indigenous sovereignty group on the possible uses of GIS for indigenous self-determination and even the creation of a specifically Hawai`in GIS (Cogswell and Schiotz 1996).
./english/303.txt:25:Scheper-Hughes refers to such ethically grounded and politically committed research as “militant anthropology,” which effectively captures the active and engaged style of ethnographic practice outlined here. At the same time, her subsequent call for a “barefoot anthropology” veers perilously close to paternalism, while her emphasis on “witnessing” differs from the kind of active struggle together with the women of Bom Jesus chronicled in the passage above. I thus refer to ethnographic research that is politically engaged and collaborative in nature as “militant ethnography,” which recognizes the influence of Scheper-Hughes, while distinguishing it from her somewhat differing conception. Moreover, the broader emphasis on ethnography also moves it beyond the exclusive realm of anthropology.
./english/306.txt:37:But we shortcircuit, we move the currents into our own bodies; we have situated ourselves. In the same way we situate ourselves in urban space. We situate ourselves and we begin to speak about precarious work, about the wild ones and the dangerous ones, the housewives and the agitators, the frigid ones, the lesbians, the transexuals, the married ones and the single ones, those that come and go, the whores and the queers and the feminists assaulting the global display-market in open revolt, subverting normalized ‘life-styles.’ We situate ourselves because the personal is political. Because we want to launch ourselves into the open insurrection of our lives. Social centers and public spaces are indespensable for the expression and the constant experimentation of a new way of ‘doing city’ which is not considered in the diplomatic agenda of the scenic capital. Because we are part of these territories we daily struggle to construct them and reorganize them. Plastic designs of the world we want. Brutal expansion of constrained desires. Legitimate reappropriation of our own living space, our city, our world…
./english/306.txt:53:The Karakola has housed projects investigating the working conditions and urban experience of migrant women, debates about the transformations of the LGBT movement, lesbian marriage and the ‘pink market’, discussions about the feminist grounding for antimilitarist interventions. We have introduced the workshop ‘Tools against Racism’ into local social movements, encouraging ourselves to constantly investigate our own discourses. We have initiated an ongoing campaign against violence against women which insists upon looking at the many and complex ways in which ‘violence’ and ‘security’ are constructed. We participate in a neighborhood network proposing socially inclusive urbanistic alternatives to the ‘rehabilitation’ currently under way. We have participated actively and critically in the lock-ins of ‘sin papeles’ in Madrid. These and hundreds of other investigations, mobilizations, discussions and publications have arisen from the crucible that is the Karakola. We insist that all these apparently diverse concerns are intimately related, and we attempt to trace the lines of their relationship, articulating them within the feminist and the global resistance movements, refusing to separate the academic from the activist, the local struggle from the global context.
./english/306.txt:57:Urban space hides itself in an opaque neutrality. We move through it so naturally that it is difficult for us to see that this space is not neutral at all, but rather the product of decisions and policies, struggles and demands, an accumulation of history and an incarnation of power. It forms us and transforms us; we are molded by the spaces through which we move, which structure our daily life, which determine whom we encounter and in what terms. Thus the space we live in is something intimate which constitutes our subjectivities at the same time that urban space –the streets, the squares– are “the public” par excellance, precisely that which is recognized as political.
./english/306.txt:59:To make explicit this unity, this non-differentiation, between “the public” and “the personal” and to insist that it is in this complex environment that ‘politics’ is done, is, like so many feminist struggles, a matter of making visible the invisible, of denaturalizing what passes for ‘natural,’ just as is revealing the hidden economy of domestic work or the concealed anguish of sexual violence. To speak about space as a feminist is a question of valuing and politicizing the quotidian; recognizing that that which each one of us experiences --instability, violence, little annoyances, isolation– is that from which the productive and reproductive order is created, and also that from which resistance arises. Creating our own spaces is a matter of insisting that citizenship is a daily practice collectively built through the active and conscientious habitation of space.
./english/306.txt:63:Living life as political is a potent challenge, taking up the spirit of so many feminist, anti-racist and anti-homophobic struggles which have insisted in NOT accepting violence, exclusion or annoyances as “normal.” If these struggles have achieved important changes in society it is thanks to many years of fighting and wagering on the collective. But lets not fool ourselves; much remains to be done, it is not time to rest on our laurels.
./english/306.txt:65:We find ourselves facing innumerable problems, among them employment which is less and less secure, life which is more and more expensive, the privatization of social services and of public spaces. Well we know that women suffer disproportionately the effects of these ills, overburdened with multiple part-time employment and the domestic and caretaking tasks which, after decades of feminist struggle, are still almost exclusively women’s turf. Women, precarious people and immigrants bear the weight of each social cut-back. Housing, thanks to wide-spread speculation, is expensive. Employment is scarce and precarious and requires special training which is also expensive. Health care is minimal and its purveyors are overwhelmed. There are barely any daycare services much less services for the elderly. And for those who have time for such things, leisure activity is limited, for lack of public spaces, to consumerism, which is also expensive not to mention boring and condescending. Institutions and advertising invite us to think of this whole situation as a series of problems for each individual to manage as she can.
./english/306.txt:97:we move. That is why the streets we walk around, the town squares we fill, the market, the pavement, the trees, the houses we live in, are the result of certain politics, of the replies or acceptance they get, of private interests or neighbourhood and social struggle, of new techniques of
./english/306.txt:205:military logic, to take back the living spaces that have been sold away from us: the pink way, we said, walks freely around our cities, recognizes no borders and asks to be appropriated. It gets out of the imposed normalized circuits and places itself directly above the bodies that struggle to make other logics real.
./english/306.txt:295:This leaves us in a difficult and slippery ground where our very identity can be kidnapped and turned into something unrecognizable, ejecting us out onto even more dangerous and difficult landscapes. Such are the threats of normalization when the struggle is to explode the very figures of normality and must arise from its fissures.
./english/307.txt:4:What is and isn’t PUSM? PUSM is not a school for training cadres or leaders of NGOs and social movements. Although PUSM is clearly oriented towards action for social transformation, its aim is not to offer the kinds of skills and training that are usually provided by such schools. Nor is PUSM a think tank of NGOs and Social Movements. Although it highly values strategic research and reflection, PUSM rejects the distance that one and the other usually keep vis-à-vis collective action. The major objective of PUSM is to help make knowledge of alternative globalization as global as globalization itself, and, at the same time, to render actions for social transformation better known and more efficient, and its protagonists more competent and reflective. To meet its goals PUSM will have to be more international and intercultural than similar existent initiatives. Rationale The movement for an alternative globalization is a new political fact focused on the idea that the current phase of global capitalism, known as neoliberal globalization, requires new forms of resistance and new directions for social emancipation. From within this movement, made up of a large number of social movements and NGOs, new social agents and practices are emerging. They operate in an equally new framework, networking local, national, and global struggles. Present theories of social change cannot adequately deal with this political and cultural novelty. This gap between theory and practice has negative consequences both for genuinely progressive social movements and NGOs, and the universities, where theories have traditionally been produced. Both leaders and activists of social movements and NGOs feel the lack of
./english/307.txt:8:between teacher and pupil – thus creating contexts and moments for reciprocal learning. Recognition of reciprocal ignorance is its starting point. Its final point is the shared production of knowledges as global and diverse as the globalization processes themselves. Beyond the gap between theory and practice, PUSM intends to tackle two problems that currently permeate all movements for an alternative globalization. First, the scarcity of reciprocal knowledge that still exists between movements and organizations active in the same thematic area and operating in different parts of the globe. Social forums have been powerful instruments in arousing this need and showing the importance of reciprocal knowledge. However, given their sporadic nature and short duration, they have been unable to fulfill this need. Without this reciprocal knowledge, it is impossible to increase the density and complexity of movement networks. Without this expansion it is not possible to augment significantly the efficacy and consistency of transformational actions beyond what has been achieved so far. The other problem is the lack of shared knowledge among movements and organizations active in different thematic areas and their respective struggles. This gap is even wider than the previous one, and bridging it is equally important. Because it is impossible and undesirable to have a general theory globally encompassing all movements and practices in all thematic areas, we need to create conditions for reciprocal intelligibility among movements through methodologies akin to translation. Methodologies, that is, capable of detecting what is common and what is different among different themes, movements, and practices, in order to identify the points and modes of articulation where links can be made – without any of these movements and practices losing their identity or autonomy. What is at stake, in a word, is to find out what is common and what is different between the indigenous and the ecological
./english/312.txt:10:The last few months have seen the rise of a new collective actor in Italian universities: the movement of ‘precarious’ researchers. Mobilisations and struggles of the precarious/temporary researchers have followed in the wake of the presentation to the Italian Parliament of a law project aiming to revise the status of university teaching and research personnel. The law has been presented by the currently ruling centre-right coalition, but has also been (covertly) sustained by moderate sectors within the centre-left parties. Its main purpose, in brief, is to abolish permanent positions at the level of university researcher/lecturer and to replace them with fixed-term tenures (based on a four-year contract renewable only one time). Furthermore, it advances a number of typically neo-liberal reforms including the cancellation of any distinction between full-time and part-time professors (which allows academic staff to pursue their own private interests without this will afflict their public salary) and the strengthening of the role played by private capitals in financing the higher education system.
./english/319.txt:29:Second, the formulation of concrete alternatives and strategies. The forum can not of course act as a representative legislative body or decide on a political programme. What it can act as, though, is a bright platform on which the very diverse analytical work that has already been done on specific issues and strategies can be brought together, debated upon and synthesised when possible. The point is not to come to a consensus; that is neither possible nor even necessary. What’s important is that ideas are analysed and contrasted, their advantages and drawbacks clearly elaborated, their starting and finishing points thoroughly mapped out. It will then be the task of the forum to publicise and champion this process and its outcomes as widely as possible, to put them out there as serious and concrete points of reference for the movement to draw on in present and future struggles. In practical terms, this could take the form of choosing a couple of issues each time and then having an opening plenary that will map out the process, a sufficient number of seminars that will tackle their different dimensions and a final plenary where the various approaches and ideas will be presented and debated upon.
./english/320.txt:13:This essay engages with the collective political agency of dominant and subaltern groups in the era of global neoliberal capitalism from three different angles. The first part of the essay outlines the basic framework of a Marxist theory of social movements, which proposes that the collective political agency of dominant and subaltern groups be conceptualized in terms of social movements from above and below. Moreover, the argument is made that the making and unmaking of historically specific social organizations of human practice are fundamentally animated by the dialectical relationship of conflictual process between the two. The second part of the essay applies this framework in a prolegomenon to an analysis of, on the one hand, the implementation, consolidation and globalization of neoliberal restructuring since the 1970s, and, on the other hand, the transition from defensive to offensive struggles against neoliberalism and the emergent crystallization of a new political subject in the form of the movement of movements. The third part discusses the role and relevance of normative ideals of rights and justice for the movement of movements, and argues for the development of an ethics of praxis through which new universalisms can be articulated. The essay concludes with some reflections on the role of activist research vis-à-vis these processes.
./english/320.txt:29:This perspective in turn leads to a significant element of the theoretical framework, namely that I conceive of social movements not only as the collective agency of subaltern social groups, but also the collective agency of dominant social groups. Ahmad has argued about the tendency towards one-sided understandings of class struggle:
./english/320.txt:31:We tend to think of class struggle only in relation to the proletariat, as revolutionary struggle. Marx’s point is that the possessing class itself wages a brutal and permanent struggle in defence of its own class interests, through violence and threats of violence, through exploitations both extensive and intensive, by maintaining a permanent army of the unemployed, and through thousand other means in the social, political, ideological and cultural arena. Class struggle has, in other words, not one side but two (1998: 34). Hence I propose a logical analytical distinction between social movements from above and social movements from below. In what follows, I shall elaborate briefly on the specific forms of movements from above and below respectively, and then chart their dialectical interrelationship in the making and unmaking of social organizations of human practice2.
./english/320.txt:36:An investigation of the collective agency of dominant social groups can help activists in avoiding the reification of exploitative and oppressive social structures. Hegemony is not a given or the result of “conformity”; it is the (temporary) outcome of political projects to establish and maintain a certain way of socially organizing human practice through leading, organising and articulating other people’s practice. Similarly, activists are not as alone in their struggles against hegemony as they may feel. Hegemonic projects from above invariably meet with resistance from below (albeit often fragmented and isolated), from subaltern social groups struggling against exploitation and oppression:
./english/320.txt:39:[T]he relations between ruling and subaltern groups are characterized by contention, struggle and argument (Roseberry, 1996: 80).
./english/320.txt:49:In the second case – an offensive movement from above – we are dealing withpolitical projects that seek to attack the truce lines left by past movement struggles,particularly through undermining or reversing victories won by or concessions granted tomovements from below. Through such attacks, offensive movements from below seek to extend ways of socially organizing human practice that consolidate social dominance. Privatization, for instance, can be understood as one such project, where the logic of commodification is extended into more and more spheres of people's lifeworlds, thus expanding and consolidating the power of capital over labour (see Harvey, 2004). These offensive movements from above often emerge at conjunctures where an extant social organization of human practice, in whole or in part, starts to show signs of breaking down. Such tendencies towards crisis open up a space for a contestation of the existent, and in this space, movements from above will tend to clash with movements from below and their projects for social change. An example of this would be the space of contestation that emerged with the onset of the crisis of organized capitalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the New Right emerged as an offensive social movement from above to
./english/320.txt:63:At times, local rationalities may erupt in the form of overt acts of defiance and opposition to the dominant social organizations of human practice. What I want to consider is the nature of the struggles that might emerge when localrationalities are made more unitary and coherent. I propose the concept militant particularism as a tool for grappling with the forms of struggle that may emerge if such a process of extraction and development takes place. That is, militant particularisms are what emerge when local rationalities move from existing as tacit potentialities (latent within common sense) to becoming embodied in explicit practices (and good sense), through conflictual encounters
./english/320.txt:64:with hegemonic forces. The concept 'militant particularism' was coined by Raymond Williams (1989: 249) and has later been developed by David Harvey (1996, 2000) to refer to the particularist origins of movement struggles. The concept refers to how 'politics is always embedded in 'ways of life' and 'structures of feeling' peculiar to places and communities' (Harvey, 2000: 55) and hence also bears the imprint of this specificity and situatedness, both in terms of the issues that are struggles over, and the practices, skills, idioms, and imaginaries that are deployed in the struggle. A militant particularism, then, can be defined as that those forms of struggle that emerge when a subaltern group deploys specific knowledges and skills in open confrontation with a dominant social group, in a particular place and at a particular time, in a particular conflict over a particular issue.
./english/320.txt:67:skills, idioms, and imaginaries of which they are made up can be generalized; these can then transcend the particular locale in which they have emerged and thus be applied across a spectrum of specific situations and singular struggles. This is one reason for speaking of local rationalities, as something which can firstly be derived from experience and hidden transcripts and articulated in public ways. This process of practices, skills, idioms, and imaginaries specific to a given site of conflict and struggle transcending the boundaries of this site is fundamental to the process of abstraction and translation through which activists go beyond the immediate parameters of the local of resistance in which they are situated.
./english/320.txt:70:While the development of campaigns entails the transcendence of theboundaries of militant particularism, the generalization of and abstraction from local struggles,and the development of collective identities that cut across socio-spatial divides, theyare still limited forms of movement activity in that they do not address the issue of the social totality. Campaigns typically construct themselves as field specific in the sense that the organization of local struggles against waste incinerators or hospital closures, for example, limits itself to a questioning of a particular kind of environmental or health policy. They do not automatically, or for all their participants, bring into question the larger question
./english/320.txt:73:However, they do contain – in the local rationality that spawns them – a germ of transcendence. As activists “join the dots”, connecting different issues, linking up with different groups, and criticising the structures that cause their problems or frustrate their campaigns, they are starting to move beyond this field at the same time as they find their place within it. (Those who have already reached this point nevertheless have to argue their case with those who haven’t: Barker and Cox 2002). Such movement processes emerge when activists take the process of abstraction one step further and relate the particular issues around which local struggles and field-specific campaigns emerged to the logic of a social totality and articulate a politics which seeks to rupture and go beyond this totality, towards the constitution of a political project for an alternative social organization of human practice.
./english/320.txt:78:Drawing on Touraine (1981, 1985) one might argue that a social movement project stands out from other forms of collective agency from below by virtue of its capacity to identify (i) its actors socially; name iits central opponent (o), and recognizing that the social totality (t) is the product and object of such struggles. In other words, there is a return “up” the sequence from opposing routines to opposing the structures which generate them, and finally to directly confronting the movements from above which have constructed the whole
./english/320.txt:84:What follows from the approach to social movements as coming both from above and from below is a notion of social structure as the sediment of social movement struggles. An extant social organization of human practice – a society – can be conceived of as a "truce line" between collective actors from above and below, with inherent antagonisms and contradictions that may give rise to new rounds of contestation and struggle that may engender new processes of change in this social organization. In this section I outline very briefly some concepts that allow us to grapple with these processes of change.
./english/320.txt:88:Such rounds of contestation and struggle will tend to take place between movements from above and below in the context of what Gramsci (1998) called 'organic crisis'. What I suggest is that organic crises be thought of as catalytic moments where an extant social organization of human practice - itself an outcome of past struggles over historicity - moves from relative stability to thoroughgoing volatility where new struggles for control over historicity unfold. The truce lines of the past give way to open articulation of the antagonisms and contradictions that they once held in check; spaces of contention and terrains of struggle emerge where social movements from above and below clash over the
./english/320.txt:90:These are ultimately struggles between hegemonic projects for the future development of the social organization of human practice.
./english/320.txt:95:In each of these periods, global upheavals were spontaneously generated. In achain reaction of insurrections and revolts, new forms of power emerged in oppositionto the established order, and new visions of the meaning of freedom were formulatedin the actions of millions of people. Even when these movements were unsuccessful inseizing power, immense adjustments were necessitated both within and between nation states, and the defeated movements offered revealing glimpses of the newly developed nature of society and the new kinds of class struggles which were to follow (ibid.: 6).
./english/320.txt:100:One last point need to be made. Organic crises are contingent conjunctures; the outcome of the struggles cannot be foretold. Rather, what emerges from the space of contention that has been created depends on the dynamic of the struggles as such. As a particular movement project gradually attains hegemony - i.e. wins partial and/or total victories - this space is constrained and narrowed down. The attainment of a greater or lesser extent of hegemony creates a greater or lesser extent of 'path dependency', in that a certain kind of direction is given to the changes in the social organization of human practice which in turn excludes alternative possibilities. In the next part of the essay I present a prolegomenon to an analysis of the current conjuncture in capitalist development according to this framework.
./english/320.txt:130:Whereas the transnational capitalist class was able to implement and consolidate neoliberal restructuring as a hegemonic project of global reach from the late 1970s to the 1990s, this does not mean that subaltern social groups merely acquiesced to this process. Throughout much of the postcolonial world, structural adjustment programmes were met by protests since their very inception in the mid-1970s: During the decade or so from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, a veritable wave of more-or- less spontaneous popular protests engulfed those countries, mainly in the Second and Third Worlds, in which austerity measures had been adopted as part of structural adjustment and economic reform programmes – often under pressure from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – which forced rapid economic liberalisation and the dismantling of many forms of state control, state intervention and state subsidy. The characteristic form of protest was the ‘bread riot’, although this combined in many instances with other forms of protest and struggle (Seddon and Dwyer 2002: 1).
./english/323.txt:68:indicative of the transformations feminist struggles made in academia, bringing about the
./english/323.txt:76:theoretical activity emerging out of the feminist struggles in the 1970s. This multiplication
./english/323.txt:102:struggles and to make tactically use of this knowledge today.
./english/323.txt:142:have to struggle for their knowledge to be recognized as theory in the first place. The
./english/323.txt:201:possibilities for different forms of political struggle. Another point that increasingly informs
./english/323.txt:217:and differentiated embodied struggles are marginalized. This is where our search starts for
./english/323.txt:219:struggle against being reduced simply to the notion of gender or sexual difference.
./english/323.txt:225:to knowledges coming out of the struggles of multiple, but differentiated, subject positions
./english/323.txt:228:forgets which embodied struggles generated crucial tools such as “the personal is the
./english/325.txt:12:Two years ago in an article about the Dutch conference ‘Feminism and Multiculturalism’, I criticized the restricted meaning multiculturalism and feminism most of the time has in western countries (Poldervaart 2002). In dominant western debates multiculturalism is limited to the integration of non-white and Islamic people into the dominant male, white, heterosexual and middle class culture, as if multiculturalism isn’t more than differences in colour and religion. In this way the cultures of gay/queer and of protest groups criticizing dominant culture, disappear from the picture of multiculturalism. Feminism was defined by the conference-organisation as ‘striving for recognition of equality, of equal opportunities and equal rights’. This is, however, a very limited definition: most feminists want more! Moreover, such ‘equal-rights’-feminism stimulate in practice the idea that only non-white people have to struggle for feminism because ‘we, women in the west’ have equal rights already. Both restricted meanings (of feminism and multiculturalism) strengthen the difference between ‘we’ (white, supposed to be progressive) people against the ‘other’ (coloured or Islamic), make affiliation-politics between both groups very difficult, forget all other diversities between people and don’t criticize the dominance of neo-liberal politics.
./english/325.txt:22:At the end of the 1980’s when the squatters movement was declared death by the media, another important change occurred: activists in ‘the’ movement explicitly rejected the idea of one shared ideal with one common political program, one shared utopia. Yet, like Lyotard has pleaded for, the desire to create something different here and now (White, 1991) still remains. There is an ongoing discussion about the necessity of creating an alternative economy, how life can be de-economized, how you can help other people and have a good life yourself, how the street can be used for more than just traffic, also for fun, dance, laughter, social contacts and love. Using the Do-it-Yourself (DiY)-culture of the punk movement, ‘the’ movement shows that everyone can make music, records, make ‘zines. Just do it. There are enough places to live in; you only have to occupy them. Today’s movement is relatively open and because of that it also lacks the pressure for uniformity what was characteristic of the squatters movement (also of the women’s and gay movements) before. In their network of friendships the contemporary squatters undermine the prevailing relations of production, society, politics, family, the body and sex. You can’t locate ‘the’ movement permanently, but it manifests itself in the occupation of public spaces that they temporarily give the meaning of non-commercialized meeting places. Lacking a single clear goal or program, we see a multitude of struggles.
./english/325.txt:24:As said, in the eighties the squatters’ movement not only became ‘the’ movement by the involvement of all kinds of networks, also a fierce feminist struggle took place. ‘In no other movement feminism has played such a big role as in the squatters movement’ (Huijsman, 1989, p. 221). Feminist activists organised themselves in autonomous women’s groups within the squatters’ movement; at the same time they criticized the male squatters continuously for their attitude and behaviour. ‘In the squatters’ movement the men in particular are changed by the feminist women’ (ibid, p. 250). In the journals of the squatters’ movement much was written about feminism, but the regular media didn’t give attention to this aspect of the movement. Therefore only a few people know that half of the squatters have been and are women. Like in feminism, in the squatters’ movement the slogan ‘the personal is political’ became central and also the notion ‘politics start in daily life’ (Kallenberg 2001, Van Tricht 1995). In this way the alternative, but mostly male squatters’ culture changed in a culture that was more open for other experiences in daily life.
./english/325.txt:25:In the eighties the squatters’ movement had some active lesbian and gay groups too. Because the unconventional way of life and dressing of the squatters, in the movement to dress in all kinds of gender bending clothes was never a problem, or boys with make-up and girls with bold heads. In the 1990’s these gay groups seemed to have disappeared, replaced by queers. But this didn’t happen before the end of the 1990s. One interviewed squatter-queer told the researcher Van Ree (2004): ‘For a long time sexuality wasn’t a hot discussed item in the squatters’ movement, but nowadays it is. (..) We queers are the needed colour for the scene. Now the word queer is on the lips of everybody, but in the years before sexuality was considered in a more conservative way. Last year I was involved in radicalizing Dutch sexual minorities by organizing special parties. Othes have the idea that this isn’t political enough and organize something for people on a more philosophical queer levell’. And another squatter told: ‘Queer is an effort to make the struggle more playful’ (ibid).
./english/325.txt:37:Yet, nowadays a big international queer movement exists (just as the feminist movement hasn’t died when it criticized the fixed female identity). However, it took years before the gay and lesbian movement could accept transsexuals, transgenders and drag queens etc. in their movement; they were largely treated as embarrassments in their “legitimate” fight for tolerance, acceptance and equal rights. Aaron Devor and Nicholas Matte (2004) give a clear description of this struggle in the United States from the 1970s till the 2000s. In particular in the lesbian and feminist movement hotly contested battles have taken place over the question of whether or not male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals are women for the purposes of inclusion in women-only organizations. ‘Transgendered and transsexed people have posed the greatest challenges to gender definitions at a historical moment when women in general, and lesbians in particular, have begun only recently to feel that they exist as political players in their own right’ (Devor/Matte, 2004: 181). Many lesbian-feminist organizations insisted on a definition of womanhood that leaves no room for women who were born male. For example at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a five-day women-only event run every year since 1976, from 1991 on till 2003 trans-women tried to be allowed into the festival and set up an informational and protest ‘Camp Trans’ outside the gates of the festival. Eventually the organizers of the festival bowed to the pressure and said that anyone self-defined as a ‘womyn-born-womyn’ would be allowed into the festival.
./english/325.txt:39:Also the combined gay and lesbian movement has proved resistant to aligning itself with transgendered and transsexual people. Not before 1997 more consistent progress toward unity had been made, with various gay and lesbian organizations expanding their mandate to include transgender perspectives. In September 1997 the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. The same happened in 1998 with the ‘Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays’ and in April 2000 trangendered activists were allowed to speak at the Millennium March for Equality in Washington, DC. In March 2001 the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself ‘America’s largest gay and lesbian organization’ amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. In their article Devor and Matte try to explain the important contributions of transgendered and transsexual people to the queer movement by showing the historical relationships between transgender and homosexual groups in the U.S. According to them much of the recent growth of gay and lesbian pride was built on an ethnic-like gay identity that necessarily defined inclusion by the exclusion of others. This pride has been created at least partly to counteract a society that taught gays and lesbians to be ashamed of who they are. But as they have found their pride, many have retreated in shame from the transgendered and transsexual people who had always been among them. Their idea of ‘You’re Strange and We’re Wonderful’ remains a dark corner in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Transgendered and transsexual people have understood the need for alliances and have made many important contributions to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights (Devor/Matte, 2004: 202).
./english/325.txt:41:However, although the struggle for rights remains important, I think the importance of queer theory and -movement is that it wants more. Like Foucault states: ‘Human rights regarding sexuality .. are not solved now, still I think we have to go a step further: the creation of new forms of life, relationships, friendships in society, art, culture and so on, through our sexual, ethical and political choices. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, not only affirm ourselves as an identity but as a creative force’ (Foucault 1989/1996: 383). You can see this ‘more’ already in the slogan on T-shirts of queers: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’. Perhaps you can say, as Gwen van Husen does (2004:13) that the aim of queer theory is to queer (the whole) culture. She concludes after her small research of the people visiting the Queeruption festival in Amsterdam (June 1-7, 2004), however, that the queer scene limits itself to (their own) queer culture and is unwilling to queer mainstream society. I will elaborate on this.
./english/325.txt:43:In April 1990 Queer Nation was set up by four gay men in New York, born out the radical action group ACT UP directed for the struggle against AIDS (Seidman 1997: 192). Their slogan was: ’We’re queer. We’re here. Get used to it’. In a leaflet Queer Nation states: ‘Queer means to fuck with gender. There are straight queers, bi queers, tranny queers, lez queers, fag queers, SM queers, fisting queers in every single street in this apathetic country of ours’ (Whittle 1996: 196). Within a short time many people became active in Queer Nation. They distribute leaflets in shopping centres with the slogan: ‘We’re here, we’re Queer, and we like to say hello’ and went to heterobars for kiss-ins.iii
./english/325.txt:46:Besides Queer Nation similar organizations were set up. Most of them disappeared within some years. However, while most of these organizations are gone ‘it represented an important change in LGBT [lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender] activist politics and continues to influence how we organize and think about our struggles and communities’ (http://www.4edu.info/LGBT/ESL_16.1_queer.htm, 25-5-2004).
./english/325.txt:75:In November 1999, after the big struggles in Seattle, a social movement came into the limelight that in the media was quickly labelled as the anti-globalisation movement and was described as something totally new. But it is a myth to think this movement suddenly descended from the sky in Seattle, just as it is a myth that the activists had suddenly discovered a new theme, that the movement only consists of people from the rich Western countries and that the activists are against globalisation (Van Stokrom 2002: 37). Before Seattle all kinds of action groups, started in the ‘developing’ world of the South (Kingsnorth 2003: 172-173; 312) and connected with movements in the North, were fighting against the global powers of the World Bank (Berlin 1988, Madrid 1994), the IMF, the European Union (1989-1992, 1997) etc. Older activists, particularly those mobilized around “Jubilee 2000” or affiliated with peace movement organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, traced their opposition back to the 1980s mobilizations around third-world debt and its relations to conflict and economic justice in Central America and other developing regions (Smith, 2001: 4).
./english/325.txt:95:-Their emphasis on fun and the ‘struggle against the theft of the public by the private. (Kingsnorth 2003: 319). The importance of fun you can recognize in their language, their cloths (during actions mostly pink and silver, see Evans 2003) and their music playing. Tactival frivolity is considered by them as an important strategy. The importance of the public sphere you can already see in the actions of the adbusters who protested against the pollution of the public places by billboards and in those of the ‘Reclaim-the-Street’-activists who want to show that the street can be used for all kinds of activities. You can describe the alterglobalization movement as ‘a struggle to reclaim space’ (Kingsnorth, 2002: 319).-- In this way the alterglobalists plea for the same as Hekma (2004) does for the sexual culture: a public sexual culture would be pleasant and good for the safety of the citizens and for the integration of different groups.--
./english/325.txt:100:In this paper I have described how the squatters movement in Holland became ‘the’ movement in the eighties when they broadened their squat actions to other initiatives and experimental ways of life and when they rejected the idea of one shared ideal. It became a multitude of struggles in which the desire to create something different remained. In their network of friendships (affinity-politics) and their actions they show that the street can be used for more than just traffic, also for fun, dance, laughter, social contacts and love; with this they undermine the prevailing ideas of politics, family, the body and sex.
./english/325.txt:101:Yet the relationships between ‘the’ (squatters) movement and movements involved with sexuality for a long time was a rather diffuse one. After a fierce struggle with feminists and after some active lesbian and gay groups in ‘the’ movement, in the 1990s these gay groups seemed to have disappeared. Sexuality for a long time was not a hot topic in the movement, but in the end of the 1990s the queer movement arose, for a big part within ‘the’ movement themselves or (at least in Holland) with clear connections with the anarchist movement.
./english/325.txt:105:In the publications of the DiY-part of the alterglobalization movement only recently much attention is given to the queer movement. Yet in their criticizing collective identities, in their emphasis of imagination, their struggle to reclaim public places for fun, the deepening of relationships between people, their pink and silver clothes during actions, their tactical frivolity and emphasis on personal politics, the alterglobalization movement shows all kinds of connections with the aims of the queer movement. And also the other way around, like the queer slogan: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’ and the description of Jackson (2003: 70): ‘Queer are those who knowingly occupy a marginal location’. The close connection is also expressed in the announcement of the international Queeruption festivals: queeruption is climbing over the artificial boundaries of sexuality, gender, nation, class, against racism, capitalism, patriarchy and binary gender repression; queeruption is non-commercial, is Do-it-Yourself!
./english/332.txt:3:The EPA takes place in the midst of an important period of sharpening class struggle. The forces of resistance to the coalition waging the “war on terror” have inflicted significant defeats on it. The effectiveness of resistance in Lebanon forced withdrawal of the Israeli invaders, the occupation in Iraq has entered its final stage – where withdrawal is being openly debated and the Afghan occupation has become a major war.
./english/332.txt:7:But despite this, the ESF failed once again to set up an international co-ordination, which could unify the struggles against the imperialist and capitalist offensive. It failed in a situation, where not only the imperialist offensive is likely to become more brutal, aggressive and barbaric in order to resolve its difficulties – but also where the chances for a successful, victorious fight back on a global scale are increasing.
./english/332.txt:9:So why has the ESF failed to create a fighting body, a trans-European co-ordination, to bring together the struggles and encourage the setting up organs of struggle – locally and nationally - throughout Europe? Why has it failed to make itself into a consciously anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist assembly?
./english/332.txt:22:Of course they recognize the crisis of the ESF – who could deny it? But what do they propose to resolve this? The SWP thinks that the ESF was “too ambitious”, set itself targets that were too big. No, it was not ambitious enough. The ESF either has to become relevant to the struggles of ordinary people, to become an organising and networking centre for activists across the continent or stay as it is, organising occasional days of action but failing to connect them to the unions and mass organisations.
./english/332.txt:37:In order create this united struggle, the EPA has to take the initiative to bring together a co-ordination of the already existing struggles and initiatives. It has to invite them for a European assembly early in 2007 and make this a central focus of the counter summit in Rostock against the G8.
./english/337.txt:47:Before and during the ESF in Athens we also saw some developments in the preparation process that were quite alarming and need to be addressed, in order to improve the ESF process as a platform for our common struggles.
./english/343.txt:40:2. At the same time it wants to put forward concrete proposals for the idea 'A different world is possible' by proposing alternatives that reflect development and living models that are different and based on the needs and aspirations of the people and on the respect for natural resources. What sort of trade do we want? What sort of individual and collective relationship between men and women do we want? Between peoples even? We have to develop concrete ideas to answer these questions starting from the primacy of rights for all, public goods for all and the experience gained from the social struggles themselves... The Assembly is not the only initiative and the movements concerned do not represent the entirety of their geographic regions nor all areas of struggle, not even all of the interested parties, but the fact that it exists is an achievement in our desire to rally people and expand.
./english/343.txt:42:3. Bringing together actors is a process designed to end the isolation many struggles face, to build forces and to better coordinate. This allows us to identify a common enemy and enumerate the different mechanisms it uses to exploit and subject. In real terms the Assembly is also a space for debate and exchanging views on the international situation, on relations with political parties and left-wing governments, on the nature of and dialogue with the various resistance movements. By doing so we can define joint working approaches, agreements, agendas, calendars and joint campaigns, while at the same time respecting movements' independence. This type of process has to respect the rhythm of the various collective actors, for fear of paralysis and the alienation of grassroots militants. It is also necessary to draw up our own agenda separate from the agenda of capitalist institutions.
./english/344.txt:27:All too often, official trade union practice seems implicitly to accept that internationalism is an elite concern, that it is safer if the membership does not learn too much of policies which they might perhaps oppose. In some unions, certainly, international issues are given reasonable prominence in internal communications and education; I fear that this is far >from typical, though openness may be increasing as unions struggle to find a response to ‘globalization’. In any event, since effective international solidarity is impossible without a ‘willingness to act’ on the part of grassroots trade unionists, it is unattainable without an active strategy by union leaders and activists to enhance knowledge, understanding and identification of common interests cross-nationally. This means engaging in what might be termed an ‘internal social dialogue’. (Hyman 2005)
./english/344.txt:41:[…] One of the great victories we have achieved in the continent was the non-implementation of the [Free Trade Area of the Americas]. This agreement, nefarious for all workers, particularly those of Latin America and the Caribbean, was only possible thanks to the united struggle of union centres of all the countries, from Canada to Argentina, through the mediation of the ORIT and the Continental Social Alliance (CSA). This alliance, in addition to being of the North with the South – even if for different motives – also incorporated a series of social movements and NGOs, and was a great victory we cannot lose. (Jakobsen 2005:66-7)
./english/344.txt:57:[W]hat is the politics of the new International supposed to be? No one knows...but I fear it might be a divorce from any sort of explicit ideology, although I guess they won't be able to escape from the subliminal, immanent ideology of the trade union movement which is obliged to wage the class struggle whether it wants it or not, or even knows it or not. It will probably be couched in human rights terms.
./english/347.txt:22:Most of the organisations at the ESF saw the main problems of the ESF as “lack of efficiency and transparency”. Of course, we are far from denying this. But behind these criticisms lies a political struggle, as a speaker of the L5I pointed out.
./english/347.txt:24:Whilst there has been a real increase in struggles over the past year or so, the ESF and the EPA have failed to either fully reflect this or have an impact back upon these struggles. It is not a question whether or not political parties are welcome as such, but what they stand for – for resistance to the attacks on workers and the oppressed or for carrying out neoliberal austerity measures and imperialist interventions. How can we ignore the fact that parties like RC in Italy are now actively pursuing the latter course? Nor can we ignore the fact that parties like PCF in France or the PDS –Left Party in Germany are heading in this direction. To be silent on these issues is the biggest “lack of transparency imaginable. The problem of the ESF therefore is not that it is “too radical” as Attac had claimed, but because it was and is not “radical, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist” enough.
./english/347.txt:26:Speakers from the “European Confederation of Oppressed Immigrants” or the Turkish newspaper “Revolutionary Proletariat” also argued that the ESF (and the EPA) had to become organs to co-ordinate struggles and take them forward rather than remain just talking shops.
./english/347.txt:32:Its aim is better to co-ordinate those who want to turn the ESF into a body to mobilise for the struggles of workers, the immigrants, the youth, the nationally and racially oppressed and fight the reformist parties and NGOs who are blocking of these steps.
./english/347.txt:49:On the other had there were more radical organisations, including various more militant unions, worker activists, youth organisation, migrant organisation, national liberation struggles, left wing organisations from a Trotskyist, Maoist or Stalinist origin.
./english/347.txt:52:This is particularly so in period of intensifying class struggle.
./english/347.txt:56:That is what we see in the ESF today. Unity in the ESF is only meaningful as unity of struggle against the capitalists and imperialists’ attacks. If the ESF is to become a body forging this unity, drawing in real struggles - like the one in the banlieus in France or the fighters against imperialist occupation in the Middle East - all those seeking this have to unite. That is why the League for the Fifth International has joined the Anti-imperialist Network and strongly advises left forces across Europe to do likewise.
./english/348.txt:3:At the network meeting were present 12 participants from England, Greece, Germany, Turkey and the Basque Country. The first thing that discussed was about the aims of the network. It was agreed that the aims must be two. First, to fill the gap that exists at the ESF about the study of the role of imperialism in the modern world, at all levels and with all its forms, military, economical, and cultural in order to have concrete proposals. Second, to contribute in the better coordination between different organizations, platforms, associations, cultural centers etc that struggle with different ways against imperialism in order to have concrete actions.
./english/348.txt:7:From 4 to 7 May 2006, the 4th ESF proved to be a pole of debate and struggle with mass participation. It was a space that expressed the radical anti-US, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization sentiments of the big majority of the participants. Particularly the mass and combative demonstration of Saturday 6 May confirmed, from political point of view, that the Athens 4th ESF had the most radical character compared to the previous ones except maybe Florence.
./english/348.txt:9:spaces. The experience of Athens shows that such spaces contribute in the enlargement of the ESF by making easier the introduction of groups who were sceptical in the past. At the same time thematic spaces give visibility to movements and struggles that sometimes are marginalized by the mass media.
./english/356.txt:59:with the global struggles or too far losing the connection with everyday
./english/361.txt:22:It shouldn't be necessary to even discuss the above addressed "bad trajectory" of anarchism and its anti political, anti-institutional, anti-technology, and anti-reform confusions. It is perfectly natural and understandable for folks first becoming sensitized to the ills of political forms, or institutions, or technologies, or first encountering reform struggles to momentarily go awry and blame the entire category of each for the ills of the worst instances of each. But if this confusion were to thereafter be addressed naturally, it would be a very temporary one. After all, without political structures, without institutions per se, and/or without technology, not to mention without progressive reforms, humanity would barely survive much less prosper and fulfill its many capacities. But, of course media and elites will take any negative trajectory of anarchism and will prop it up, portraying it as the whole of anarchism, elevating the confused and unworthy to crowd out the valuable and discredit the whole. In this context, some of the most extreme (but colorful) advocates of these counter productive viewpoints will be highlighted by media. The whole unsustainable and objectionable approach will thereby gain far more visibility than warranted by its numbers, much less by its logic or values, and, thereafter, also a certain tenacity.
./english/361.txt:24:What about the good trajectory of contemporary anarchism, less visible in the media? This seems to me to be far more uplifting and inspiring. It is the widely awakening impetus to fight on the side of the oppressed in every domain of life, from family, to culture, to state, to economy, to the now very visible international arena of "globalization," and to do so in creative and courageous ways conceived to win improvements in people's lives now even while leading toward winning new institutions in the future. The good anarchism nowadays transcends a narrowness that has often in the past befallen the approach. Instead of being solely politically anti-authoritarian, as often in the old days, nowadays being an anarchist more and more implies having a gender, cultural, and an economic, as well as a politically-rooted orientation, with each aspect taken on a par with and also informing the rest. This is new, at least in my experience of anarchism, and it is useful to recall that many anarchists as little as a decade back, perhaps even more recently, would have said that anarchism addresses everything, yes, of course, but via an anti-authoritarian focus rather than by simultaneously elevating other concepts in their own right. Such past anarchists thought, whether implicitly or explicitly, that analysis from an overwhelmingly anti-authoritarian angle could explain the nuclear family better than an analysis rooted as well in kinship concepts, and could explain race or religion better than an analysis rooted as well in cultural concepts, and could explain production, consumption, and allocation better than an analysis rooted as well in economic concepts. They were wrong, and it is a great advance that many modern anarchists know this and are broadening their intellectual approach in accord so that anarchism now highlights not only the state, but also gender relations, and not only the economy but also cultural relations and ecology, sexuality, and freedom in every form it can be sought, and each not only through the sole prism of authority relations, but also informed by richer and more diverse concepts. And of course this desirable anarchism not only doesn't decry technology per se, but it becomes familiar with and employs diverse types of technology as appropriate. It not only doesn't decry institutions per se, or political forms per se, it tries to conceive new institutions and new political forms for activism and for a new society, including new ways of meeting, new ways of decision making, new ways of coordinating, and so on, most recently including revitalized affinity groups and original spokes structures. And it not only doesn’t decry reforms per se, but it struggles to define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people’s immediate needs and bettering people’s lives now as well as moving toward further gains, and eventually transformative gains, in the future.
./english/362.txt:16:For struggles, global and national
./english/362.txt:27:The antecedents of the World Social Forum (WSF) can be traced to January 2000 when a small group of about 50 activists, representing trade unions, intellectuals, peasant organisations and other social groups, gathered in Davos. Samir Amin, an intellectual who is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers on the changing dynamics of capitalism, was among those assembled at the "Anti-Davos in Davos". Since then he has been actively associated with not only the WSF but also the regional forums that have evolved as a challenge to imperialist globalisation. He is director, Third World Forum (TWF), located in Dakar (Senegal) and Cairo and in Belgium, a network of social scientists and intellectuals from developing countries. Amin has also played a key role in the formation of the World Forum for Alternatives, which was launched in 1997. The WFA aims to service the needs of social movements that are engaged in challenging the dominant discourse on globalisation. It is also involved in the search for alternatives by developing the tools for "the globalisation of resistance and struggles".
./english/363.txt:34:In Empire, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri (2000) argue that capitalism's creativity is largely parasitic: it takes, and feeds on, the creative acts of ordinary people as they struggle with their everyday lives. In their hands, following the Italian autonomist tradition more generally (Cuninghame 1999), this analysis is used in a sense to refuse the helpfulness of structural arguments tout court and to argue for spontaneity (see Cox forthcoming for a more detailed critique). And yet structure, as Durkheim put it (1973), is how the world confronts us.
./english/363.txt:138:This relationship is particularly important in terms of relationships with the state, in particular the structures of partnership with the "voluntary and community sector". It is not in itself remarkable that a small state like the Irish seeks a level of partnership which allows it to play Standortpolitik much like a big city might on the continent, nor that a particular kind of organisational elite finds the proposal attractive. It is remarkable, though, that (despite widespread cynicism about the motives involved and the actual gains to be made) there is so little support or interest in the kind of anti-partnership struggles we have seen in the unions. One part of the explanation must surely be the sense that the state is, or should be, or could be, in some way "ours" - a sense which working-class activists in Britain or Germany, for example, would find it hard to swallow.
./english/363.txt:208:One way of thinking about the new movement is as a kind of prefigurative politics - prefiguring not so much "the new society" as a new way of doing politics, and in particular new alliances. One aspect I have found particularly interesting is a sense of a move away from comparing "cookbooks for the future" and "red / green" debates on theology - characteristic both of periods of defeat and of elitist approaches which start from where a popular movement might finish - and towards discussions of strategy and "red / black" debates (7) which are about "what do we do?". This suggests at least the possibility of allowing people to learn from and through practice, and that agreement on where to go might emerge out of the process of struggle - which is, after all, where movement intellectuals derive their understandings from in the first place, albeit sometimes through circuitous routes.
./english/363.txt:231:Secondly, groundedness matters. An Italian saying has it that "we should act according to what we think, or we will wind up thinking according to what we do". There is something in this - in the sense that across our lives, what we do (not "who we are") ultimately tends to win out over what we think. In the long run, then, we tend to be grounded one way or another, even though at any given point in time there may be immense contradictions. Given this, it is important to struggle towards a groundedness - a way of living our lives - which is consistent with our understanding of the world. In doing this, that understanding may even change.
./english/365.txt:72:Ideological and identity thinning may also operate in single organizations that adopt open network designs to promote member equality or minimize bureaucracy. Le Grignou and Patou (forthcoming) note this potential for open networks to diminish organizational identity in their analysis of the French organization ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens). ATTAC (www.attac.org) is an interesting case because it began with a very specific organizational goal of creating a tax on global financial transactions and using the funds for sustainable development. ATTAC even formed a Scientific Council to guide the production of high quality information. However, the organization also promoted the autonomy of local chapters through an open communication network that resulted in the posting of diverse concerns from the ATTAC activist membership. Le Grignou and Patou conclude that the easy communication of local interests quickly diversified the organizational agenda to include Commander Marcos, “Mad Cow disease”, human rights in Tunisia, and the labor struggles of Danone employees. Le Grignou and Patou explain that the “click here” logic of the open network at once makes connections between such disparate ideas possible, and at the same time creates an intellectual dilemma for the
./english/367.txt:13:The left in India developed out of the freedom movement. Militant nationalists who were in favor of armed struggle to overthrow British rule were enthused by the Russian revolution. The Communist Party of India (CPI), first “founded: in Tashkent in 1920, but in reality in 1925, when a number of Communist groups united at a conference in India, was virtually smashed by the Meerut Conspiracy Case of 1929. By the time the party was rebuilt, the grip of Stalinism on the international Communist movement was almost absolute. From then on, Indian Communism knew few of the debates and uncertainties that Communist parties experienced elsewhere.
./english/367.txt:21:The split in the CPI resulted in the formation of the “right” CPI, which openly advocated an alliance with the progressive national bourgeoisie, but which also had a more democratic (or at least less autocratic) inner party regime. The left split-off, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), was to become the world’s most unreconstructed Stalinist party. But it incorporated in an uneasy alliance two wings — those who wanted accommodation within the capitalist state under somewhat different theoretical premises than the CPI, and those who wanted an armed struggle to overthrow the “comprador-ruled, semi-feudal, semi-colonial state,” as they characterized India. Within a few years, this wing started accusing the other wing of the CPI(M) of being equally revisionist and opportunist, and eventually it split off to form the CPI(ML) and a few other Maoist parties. The spark which led to the split was a peasant uprising in Naxalbari, from which came the name “Naxalites” [a term often used in the press for the Maoists]. The CPI(ML) and the other Maoist groups splintered, united, splintered, and in the process, the original radicalism was lost. Before looking at that history, however, we need to look at a few other sectors of the left.
./english/367.txt:29:Every time someone made a bid to argue that there should be more systematic mass work, that there should be trade union activities, or that in a country where elections are so deep-rooted the radical left cannot simply ignore elections, they were denounced as “neo-revisionists” and on occasion murdered. Eventually, by the mid-1990s, there were a few distinct currents. The biggest moderate Maoist group was the CPI(ML) Liberation. In the late 1970s, it had grown in Bihar through organizing armed struggle and by fighting for the rights of agricultural laborers, poor peasants, and dalits (those of the lowest castes, the “untouchables”).
./english/367.txt:31:When the CPI(ML) Liberation tried to spread to other provinces, it realized that more sophisticated politics were needed in places where the ruling class was not obliging it by blatant caste violence, etc. In particular, it also realized, after years of denouncing others, that elections could not be simply ignored, nor was it always useful to call for a boycott of elections. But when it made the turn, it took over many of the typical habits of Stalinism in India. Thus, instead of fighting within existing unions for class struggle orientations, it quickly floated its own “Central” Union, the All India Coordinating Committee of Trade Unions (AICCTU). This of course provides certain advantages — e.g., getting invited to meetings at the all-India level, getting access to ILO contacts, and so on, in a way that radical forces inside a different central union might not get.
./english/367.txt:37:Another major Maoist pole that developed was the threesome — CPI(ML) People’s War Group, or PWG; CPI(ML) Party Unity, or PU; and the Maoist Communist Center (MCC). These are the three main forces still insisting on the original armed struggle line, annihilation of the class enemy, and so on. Despite internecine turf wars among themselves, two of them, the PWG and the PU, united to form the CPI(ML) PW. These forces are extremely opportunistic. Since, according to their analysis, all other parties are bourgeois parties in the service of one or another fraction of a comprador bourgeoisie, they feel free to make any short-term alliance with any party against any other. So they make short-term alliances with various bourgeois parties in order to get footholds in different areas. In West Bengal, for example, where the CPI(M) is in power, at one stage they allied with the CPI(M), and at another stage with the right-wing regional party, the Trinamool Congress, which is a part of the BJP-led central government regime. They also use murderous violence in order to establish their control over different areas. The fact that there are extensive areas in India where even the twentieth century has hardly penetrated till now, however, gives their line of armed resistance and “protection” a seeming attraction to oppressed poor peasants and ethnic groups.
./english/367.txt:42:Many Maoist cadres, for their part, found that in order to gain the confidence of the people, it was necessary to do something other than simply preach armed struggle — except in pockets where the level of oppression was such that armed struggle was the only road to even the faintest of reforms. Finally, from the 1970s, a series of new social movements were developing: feminism; the dalit movement (a renewed movement among the lowest castes against caste oppression); struggles of tribal peoples where tribal survival rights and environmental issues were inextricably mixed (for example, whether the tiger should be saved simply by driving out tribal populations from their long-standing areas and occupations, or whether in the name of development forests should be cut down with effects on both the ecology and the tribal way of life, as in the Chipco movement); a significant anti-nuclear movement; a growing health movement involving both radicals in medical jobs and ordinary people who felt they had a right to know what was being done to them as well as a right to a minimum of decent health care, and so on. What was common to these movements was a deep suspicion of the purely electoralist orientation of all parties, including the mainstream left parties.
./english/367.txt:44:New movements called forth new organizations, or breathed life into old ones. And there were inevitable conflicts, some common the world over, some specific to the Indian situation, between old mass organizations and parties, on the one hand, and the new organizations. This was to result in the formation of a new type of radical milieu. The movements stressed autonomy, identity, and participatory democracy. By autonomy they meant that the movement must be independent of state control as well as control by any other external force — including political parties. The stress on identity was a response to all overarching claims that sought to subsume distinct struggles under a hegemonic banner. This included nationalism as well as the claim that the resolution of the class struggle would solve all other issues in passing.
./english/367.txt:46:At the same time, since many of the activists were members of the radical parties, this created a contradiction. They seemed to be living in two worlds. As a leading Trotskyist and feminist activist of the 1970s and 1980s, Vibhuti Patel, once told me, “I spend time telling my comrades in the party that feminism cannot be treated as a separatist movement and that the struggle for women’s liberation cannot be postponed till the socialist revolution is achieved; and I keep telling my friends in the women’s movement that the struggle for women’s liberation cannot be won unless we link it to the class struggle.” This was from a Trotskyist, a member of an organization that had more than a formal commitment to women’s liberation.
./english/367.txt:50:Every new form of struggle of the oppressed faced this problem. In some cases there were breakaway parties, like the Satya Shodhak Communist Party, a breakaway group from the CPI(M) which stressed that there was a need to link caste and class struggles in India. In many more cases, however, individual cadres of left parties, whether the mainstream or more often the Maoist left, as well as youth influenced by Lohiaite views about caste oppression [that is, those who followed the views of the late Ram Manohar Lohia, a socialist leader who stressed caste struggles], plus Jay Prakash Narayan’s ideas about partyless democracy, turned to forming new types of organizations, either after dropping their party memberships, or retaining that membership, but keeping two distinct identities.
./english/367.txt:52:A whole series of voluntary organizations were formed at that time. Initially, these were formed by radicals who thought they would be carrying on the class struggle, the caste liberation struggle, the women’s liberation struggle, etc., through these means. So these were open and democratic organizations. However, many of these groups soon found that there was a need to organize services, to work in such a manner within civil society that some self-help could be arranged, and so on. This meant the transformation of the structure of the organization. Willy-nilly, it was now working within civil society while accepting the existing social and political framework, especially the state. It was now making demands upon the state for reforms. This did not make the movement, or those sectors of the movement, automatically reformist. But this did pose serious questions before the Marxists working within those organizations or in those movements about what they should do in order to raise within every partial movement the historic, long-term goals of struggle, and what the appropriate ways of doing that should be.
./english/367.txt:61:Much of this is probably duplicated elsewhere. But the Indian left milieu is also marked by a considerable insularity. Relatively little about India gets reported in the West, and Indians in turn often get to know only about some few movements and struggles abroad. In part this is because the ex-Stalinist left in India, now half settled into a social democratic mold, albeit with organizational patterns that serve as reminders of their origins, retains a few set priorities. The Palestinian cause, for example, gets fairly strong coverage, as does Cuba solidarity. But the whole implication of the rise of the PT (the Workers Party, in Brazil), its subsequent turn to the right, with Lula accepting IMF terms, along with the complicated dynamics of Lula getting elected, and so on, has had no resonance in India. (Parenthetically, the present author found this out recently while trying to get signatures for a petition supporting the left wing of the PT.)
./english/367.txt:65:The degree of insularity is best understood by looking at the early stages of the anti-globalization struggles. At the time of Seattle, there were very few public demonstrations on the day in India. During the Prague events in 2000, in Calcutta, Protest Initiative, a left regroupment effort involving the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (West Bengal State Committee) (the ICS is the Indian Section of the Fourth International), the Majdoor Mukti Committee, the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women), the Sramajeevi Mahila Samity (Women Workers’ Association), the Indian Rationalist Association, and others organized a daylong program. But the mainstream left did not mobilize; nor did the CPI(ML) Liberation, which claims to be the real pole for an alternative left but which in fact is shifting simply to occupy the left reformist spot vacated by the CPI(M) as it becomes a servant of capitalist neoliberalism.
./english/367.txt:71:So the imposition of this artificial unity had the effect of stifling voices of protest. Many trade unions accepted this, because their leaders, themselves often CPI or CPI(M) activists, argued that imperialism is the principal contradiction, so all other issues should be subordinated to the anti-imperialist struggle.
./english/367.txt:75:As for the CPI(M)-led initiative, it observed a big “Day” and a big weeklong program, and then fizzled out, because it had not been interested in allowing the development of popular initiatives but of channeling them into a rigid bureaucratic structure. Outside West Bengal, with the CPI(M) lacking the twin forces of governmental power and the huge size of its West Bengal party apparatus, such dominant roles have not been played by any force. But while all forces have sought to mobilize against the war, the splits have been repeated. Basically, three loose poles have developed — the mainstream left (and sometimes the CPI(ML) Liberation along with it); the armed struggle camp and other sectarians who tag along with them; and a more mixed bag, including non-Stalinist left forces, some NGOs, some independent trade unions, and others (the NAPM West Bengal State unit’s action did not reflect the general politics of the NAPM, as I commented earlier).
./english/367.txt:83:In hospitals, free services have been drastically cut, and the quality of the remaining free services have become such that they can lead to the demise of the recipient. Though the population of Calcutta has grown massively, in 25 years of Left Front rule no new government hospital has been opened. The government has also been moving slowly but definitely toward curbing dissent. It has freely used the terrorist tag against its opponents. And it has displayed its commitment to globalization by turning against even reformist trade union struggles for concessions for the workers, even while at the all-India level the CPI(M) continues to mouth platitudes about the rights of workers. Government efforts on environmental protection show the same upper class orientation. Several thousand people were driven out of their “illegal” shantytown dwellings, and in one case the entire massive shantytown was “accidentally” set on fire. Activists of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, as well as other organizations like those fighting for the ousted residents, were arrested. In rural West Bengal, in the name of combating Maoism and “separatism,” a horrifying level of violence has been unleashed, justified before the bourgeois media, and thereby substantially hushed up.
./english/367.txt:85:Nonetheless, the CPI(M) despite its rightward-moving trajectory, cannot simply turn its back on the working class. Its main electoral and social base remains the working class and the rural poor. So it has adapted to the anti-globalization struggles. It was one of the key players in organizing the Asian Social Forum at Hyderabad. Formally the party was absent. But with a plethora of party-controlled mass fronts packing the arrangements, there was no problem with CPI(M) leaders getting ample space at the Forum. At the same time, by taking a stand supporting the exclusion of parties, they made sure that smaller left parties did not get much space.
./english/367.txt:89:The NGO sector is of course well represented, even overrepresented at the WSF. And many of the NGOs do not even realize that their agenda turns them into safety nets for capitalism, not instruments of struggle. But at the same time, there are plenty of NGOs that take a different, and more radical, stand. But the mainstream left and the bulk of the radical left are dead set against all NGOs. Two recent attacks on the WSF display this. During the Asian Social Forum, the CPI(ML) PW called for a boycott and a counter-program. This time too, they have been trying to set up an alternative called Mumbai Resistance.
./english/367.txt:93:An ideological think tank connected to some Maoist groups in India has come out with a publication asserting that the WSF is a creation of imperialism. In a nutshell, the following is a summary of the points made by the publication entitled “The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle against ‘Globalization’” by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE):
./english/367.txt:109:“Globalization,” a misleading word for the current onslaught by imperialism, can be resisted, and even defeated, by a combination of struggles at various levels, in various countries, in various forms; and forces fighting “globalization” will need to join hands in struggle against it. However, a careful analysis reveals that the World Social Forum is not an instrument of such struggle. It is a diversion from it.
./english/367.txt:117:There are two souls of the NGOs, as we discussed earlier. On one hand they represent a desire to break out of the entirely party-dominated political culture, a desire to find or create space within civil society. On the other hand they also reveal major weaknesses — not merely because they are funded organizations, but also because, as single issue organizations, overall social transformation as an idea gets diluted, and struggle for a very specific aim takes such precedence that as long as that specific goal will be advanced, they are often willing to settle happily for lobbying bourgeois politicians and capitalists. The 65,000 whom I witnessed at the European Social Forum were mostly young, mostly committed to radical social transformation. The over 20,000 who thronged to Hyderabad likewise contained many who desire real social change. The way forward consists of trying to seriously link up with their concerns and, to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, of raising within these struggles the historic goals of the toiling people.
./english/367.txt:121:The attack on the PT is also a sleight of hand. It is particularly easy in India, where few have any idea about the kind of party the PT is, or of the tendency struggles in it. For Indian readers mainly, let me therefore summarize briefly the complexities of the PT, as well as the meaning of its participation in the WSF. The PT is a new working class party. By new, I mean it was founded in 1980. It was the result of class struggle proletarian currents deciding in Brazil that the old left was not good enough, and that they needed a new party of the working class, looking neither to the Moscow bureaucrats nor the Peking bureaucrats, nor to national capitalism. Radical forces, particularly Trotskyists, played an important role inside the PT. They included the Brazilian section of the Fourth International, the current known as the Socialist Democracy Tendency (SDT). There were also others, like the International Workers League, whose comrades are no longer inside the PT, but have a fairly strong radical left party named PSTU outside the PT. The SDT, by contrast, decided to continue working within the PT and played an important role in shaping the structure of the PT, including its internal democracy, the right of organized tendencies to exist, their right to be represented in leadership bodies in accordance with the proportion of votes received at the national Congresses of the PT, and so on.
./english/367.txt:151:By flattening out the differences in the PT, by pretending that the authors of the participatory budget and the authors of the current course of the Brazilian regime are one and the same, the RUPE article does not provide a really serious basis for understanding the PT experience. To recapitulate, the key positive aspects of the PT experience are: the rise of the PT on the basis of class struggle [at a time of mass strikes, led by Lula’s union, against the Brazilian military dictatorship in the late 1970s]; the construction of the PT as a democratic working class party, clearly committed, at least in its early period, to socialism; and the important role of the radical left within it. That radical left might prove to be a hybrid left-centrist current, if we use a now not very much understood jargon, which means forces straddling revolutionary socialist and reformist politics, taking one step left and the next one right. The PT participation in the WSF, till Lula’s election, did not represent a reformist attempt at cooptation of radicalizing tendencies, but a democratic attempt at creating space for radicalism beyond Brazilian boundaries as well.
./english/367.txt:157:The leaflet of the Baroda ICS is different. It represents the kind of flag-waving sectarianism that has no positive content. The PW, while opposing the WSF, has been trying to mobilize forces. The leaflet under discussion simply lectures activists about how central to social change a revolutionary party is. This kind of sterile and abstract lecture is useless. Unless radical parties or would-be radical parties can play serious roles as builders of mass struggles, of feminist struggles, of environmentalist struggles, in the Indian context of anti-communalist and dalit-liberation struggles, and unless they can rework their concepts of class struggle and revolutionary party to ensure that these dimensions are properly represented, they will remain armchair revolutionaries. The Baroda group that has issued the leaflet has been doing its best to push out the most important trade union activists, environmental activists, feminist activists, etc., from its fold because these activists refuse to allow “Marxist” experts who have no experience of the actual struggles to dictate to them how they should function in the mass movements.
./english/367.txt:159:If we expect the WSF itself to become the focal point for anti-imperialist struggles, we would be suffering from illusions. But if we think that we can ignore this, one of the world’s major anti-imperialist gatherings, we would simply be handing the thing over to reformist politicians. They come in droves. They come as CPI(M) leaders, and as European Social Democrats. And by the way, it is not quite correct that parties can have no role. One of the key debates around the European Social Forum was over whether and how to build a party of the European left, and the temperature suddenly mounted in Florence when the representatives of the French Communist Party and of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French Section of the Fourth International, crossed swords. The WSF is a real event. Revolutionaries have to go in there, be a part of the real movement, and thereby seek to influence others in the movement. Forces like the NAPM, and others, have clearly taken a dual-track approach, building the movement and at the same time criticizing the NGO dependence. This alone shows the way ahead. Will the Indian left grasp this unique opportunity?
./english/368.txt:1:The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle
./english/368.txt:11:In the narrow terms of traditional military conflict, the Zapatista uprising has been confined to a limited zone in Chiapas. However, through their ability to extend their political reach via modern computer networks the Zapatistas have woven a new electronic fabric of struggle to carry their revolution throughout Mexico and around the world.
./english/368.txt:12:Initially the Mexican state tried to restrict the uprising to the jungles of Chiapas, through both military repression and the limitation of press coverage (most Mexicans get their news from the state controlled TV network, Televisa). Those efforts failed. First through written communiques and personal interviews with independent journalists which were flashed around the world by fax and electronic mail, then through more detailed reports by Mexican and foreign observers circulated in the same manner, the Zapatistas were able to break out of the state's attempted isolation and reach others with their ideas and their program for economic and political revolution. As vast numbers of Mexicans responded with sympathy and mobilized in support, the Chiapas uprising kindled a more generalized pro-democracy movement against the centralized and corrupt Mexican economic and political system. Inspiring many others outside of Mexico, the Zapatista uprising set in motion a new wave of hope and energy among those engaged in the struggle for freedom all over the world.
./english/368.txt:16:Vital to this continuing struggle has been the pro-Zapatista use of computer communications.(1) While the state has all too effectively limited mass media coverage and serious discussion of Zapatista ideas, their supporters have been able, to an astonishing degree, to circumvent and offset this blockage through the use of electronic networks in conjunction with the more familiar tactics of solidarity movements: teach-ins, articles in the alternative press, demonstrations, the occupation of Mexican government consulates and so on. Over time the state and its strategists have become acutely aware of the effectiveness of this new form of struggle and have begun to take steps to counteract it. Both sides are now active in the cyberspacial dimension of a war which has raged out of Chiapas across Mexico and the world. The ways in which these networks have been effectively used within the larger framework of struggle deserve the closest attention by all those fighting for a democratic and freer society. The measures now being taken by the Mexican state to counter them also need to be understood in order to be dealt with effectively. The description and analysis of this new dimension of revolution and counterrevolution are the objects of this chapter.
./english/368.txt:18:Networks and Struggles
./english/368.txt:19:Properly understood, the working relationship that has developed between the indigenous and peasant struggles in what most people think of as "primitive" or "backward" Chiapas and the "modern, high-tech" world of computer communications systems is not as surprising as many seem to think. Well before the uprising, Chiapas and its people were already connected to the rest of the world and had developed forms of grassroots organization which made such symbiosis an extension of pre-existing forms.
./english/368.txt:22:Being at the bottom of the national and international wage and income hierarchy does not make the people of Chiapas either primitive or backward, only oppressed and exploited. Being part of that hierarchy --no matter which part-- means that their work and their struggles can only be understood properly within larger contexts, as the Zapatistas have so properly insisted.
./english/368.txt:24:Moreover, as part of their struggles to resist exploitation and oppression and to develop their own ways of life and community structures, they have developed their own forms of self-organization which turned out to be complementary to the computer systems with which they would link up. In efforts that have been renewed throughout their history, long before the beginnings of Zapatista organizing, they have drawn on old communal customs and invented new ones as alternatives to co-optation by the Mexican party-state, e.g., the conversion of local leaders into caciques working for the long governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Within the dynamics of such dramatic changes as hydroelectric development and jungle colonization, the workers of Chiapas have also organized sectorially in ways independent of particular communities.(3) As the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s with its vicious state policies of austerity has deepened, such local and sectoral efforts have reached out to each other and developed networks of communication and mutual aid. This "networking" spread not only within Chiapas but linked to wider national and international efforts, especially those of campesinos and the indigenous. The Zapatistas must, therefore, be seen as one visible moment of a more general struggle which was already deeply involved in networking before the uprising in January 1994.(4)
./english/368.txt:26:On the other side of the symbiosis, the cyberspace world of computer communication networks was itself already the terrain of manifold struggles and thus open to appropriation by those whose own forms of organization were pre-disposed to building strength through linkages with others. While this is not the place to delve too deeply into the antagonisms and class conflicts of the computer industry, it is important to recognize and remember that, like all other capitalist industries, it has developed as an integral part of the changing international division of labor power. Its workers --from semiconductor engineers through hardware assemblers to programmers-- can be found in both North and South. Within this context there has been a complex set of ongoing struggles between those who do the work and those who make the profits.
./english/368.txt:28:While the public relations managers of the industry have celebrated the workaholic entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley, they have glossed over the continuing struggle between management and its labor force --not only the line workers who produce and assemble the hardware and multiply the software, but also many of those who work primarily with their minds, inventing and designing new hardware, solving new puzzles, writing new software, and so on. While business apologists may pretend that "commerce is the engine of technology change",(5) its managers know that the real, material source of change is the creative power of those fascinated with and dedicated to the development of computers in all their aspects.
./english/368.txt:36:What has been true in the computer industry of the struggle between free activity and the subordination of that activity to profit-producing work, has also been true in the sub-space of computer networks. The same dynamics of struggle between self-activity and work for outside authority have multiplied through both public and private sectors of cyberspace. The state and private corporations are constantly chasing after the new electronic frontiers being created by imaginative pioneers. They seek to enclose the frontiers for purposes of power and profit, e.g., restricting access to "classified" information or industrial secrets, commercializing as much of the informational and communicative flow as possible as well as the infrastructure through which it flows.(8)
./english/368.txt:38:This enclosure resembles that of other capitalists who have fenced off agricultural land or industrial space in order to control it. In cyberspace just as in the geographical frontiers of the Americas (the North American West, the South American Pampas or Rainforests) there has been a dynamic struggle between the pioneers and the profiteers. Just as mountain men, gauchos and poor farmers have sought independence through the flight to and colonization of new lands, so cyberspace pioneers have carved out new spaces and filled them with their own activity. Just as big capital (agribusiness, railroads, etc.) has come hard on the heels of homesteaders, seeking to take over their lands, forcing them out or reducing them to waged labor, so too has business chased after the new electronic frontiers with the object of buy-out or take-over. Those threatened with enclosure, of course, have always fought back. As a result, just as the campesinos of Morelia under the leadership of Zapata cut barbed wire to liberate the land in 1910, electronic hackers have chopped down electronic barriers and liberated information, creating a pirate underground of free activity constantly slipping beyond corporate and state control. So too have the colonists of cyberspace defended their own spaces against monopolization in other ways, including public campaigns both legal and political against big business and state control.(9)
./english/368.txt:44:ARPANET, for example, was conceived as a military weapon and a political tool of the Cold War. It was supposed to link government-paid researchers to shared computers. It was, however, soon transformed by its "users" into an interactive electronic post-office linking them to each other. The machines ceased to be the focal point and were demoted to the means for human-to-human connections. ARPANET's major traffic ceased to be defense-related long distance computation and became whatever its individual "users" created: from personal correspondence to science-fiction discussion groups. "In no time at all, the ARPANET developed into a free-swinging intellectual community in which nearly anything could be said and often was."(11) The struggle over the content, and thus the nature, of cyberspace emerged at the moment of its birth and has continued ever since.
./english/368.txt:52:Alternatively, participants in social conflicts in society have extended their struggles from other zones of human space into cyberspace. Groups of individuals who have already organized discussion and action outside of cyberspace --such as the indigenous and campesino groups in Chiapas and their supporters-- can reach others through it. Reaching others may involve drawing individuals into their organizing efforts and it may involve creating new connections with other groups for collaborative efforts. Those groups whose members generally have individual access to The Net can use it to enhance their own internal communications. Such "networking", as we have seen, predates cyberspace, but The Net (like mail, telephone and fax before it) has dramatically extended and speeded up the process.
./english/368.txt:54:Just as important has been the internationalization of cyberspace and the networking it facilitates. On the one hand, business has had increasing recourse to computer communications to co-ordinate its multinational operations of production, finance and sales. This has made it easier to move operations out of areas of high wages and militant environmental or consumer groups into areas of low wages and weak regulations. On the other hand, given access to computers and electronic networks, activists located physically in different countries can link up more easily than ever before. They can share their own experiences, ask for and receive information, compare and contrast struggles, discuss alternative tactics and coordinate strategies as easily as those in the same country.
./english/368.txt:60:Moreover, even accessible computer communications don't magically produce collaboration --all the usual obstacles to mutual understanding and solidarity must still be faced by those involved in struggle, e.g., differences in language, politics, background knowledge, experience, national identity and relative position in the global wage/income hierarchy. The Net provides new spaces for new political discussions about democracy, revolution and self- determination but it does not provide solutions to the differences that exist; it is merely a means to accelerate the search for such solutions.
./english/368.txt:62:The most directly relevant struggle in which the power of such international linkages began to become apparent in the period before January 1994 was in the organization of resistance to the North American Free Trade Agreement.(18) Coalitions of dozens of groups of workers, farmers, women, students, environmentalists, and the indigenous concerned with the threats posed by the neo-liberal strategy of "free trade" were able to establish working relationships --periodically through meetings and regularly through The Net.(19) The need to form a common front provided a great incentive to confront and wrestle not only with the interrelationships among a diverse array of issues (e.g., runaway shops, international environmental standards, ethnic autonomy and so on) but also with the different perspectives of the North and the South (e.g., those of workers laid off by runaway shops and those of workers offered jobs by those shops' arrival in their communities). Given the urgency of the collectively perceived threat, discussion of such interrelationships and differences developed faster and more productively than ever before in the history of North America. The cyberspacial connections that were forged and strengthened during that struggle were still in place and functioning when the Zapatistas declared NAFTA a "death sentence" for the indigenous and campesinos.
./english/368.txt:66:The Zapatistas and the electronic fabric of struggle When the Zapatistas suddenly appeared in San Cristobal de las Casas and several other cities of Chiapas in the early hours of January 1, 1994, they brought with them a printed declaration of war against the Mexican state and for the liberation of the people of Chiapas and Mexico. News of that declaration went out through a student's telephone call to CNN, and then as journalists arrived to investigate, stories went out via the wire services, newspaper reports and radio and television broadcasts all over the world. For the most part, however, readers and viewers of that reporting saw and heard only excerpts from the Zapatista declaration of war. They never saw the whole declaration, with all of its arguments and explanations for what were obviously dramatically surprising and audacious actions. Except for the rare exception, such as the Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada, they only got what the editors wanted them to get, according to their own biases.
./english/368.txt:74:As the number of people involved in these processes of uploading, re-posting, translating, etc. has grown, so has their self organization. What began as, and to a degree still is, an interlinked set of spontaneous actions has become more organized. On some lists, for example, a cooperative division of labor has emerged so that a dozen or more people take individual responsibility for tapping and reposting relevant material from particular sources to a single site in cyberspace.(27) In this way the skills and resources of many separate individuals and computer systems are connected in ways that benefit everyone tapping the pooled information. In another case, the best material from a few such poolings is reposted to those who need the information but don't have time to search out even a reduced number of sites.(28) As a result of such co-operation, the work of culling The Net has been drastically reduced for the vast majority of those needing and using information about the struggles in Mexico for purposes of mobilization and solidarity.
./english/368.txt:80:On the contrary, given the obvious bias and incompleteness in such reporting, those circulating material on The Net informally adopted the practice of posting everything available. As a result, those who have tapped The Net for their organizing around the issues of the Zapatista struggle, and the movement for democracy in Mexico more generally, have been far better informed and far more able to shape critical assessments of any given event than the consumers of a limited sampling of mass media. Where casual readers may have access to one story in a local newspaper (often bought from the New York Times or the Washington Post), those subscribed to the relevant conferences or lists will receive anywhere from two or three to more than a dozen, both from the media and from unpublished sources. Good stories by independent reporters, e.g., those written by John Ross for the small circulation Anderson Valley Advertiser, have been made as assessable as those of New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Anthony DePalma. Otherwise totally obscure reports from Human Rights groups both local (e.g., the Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartelome de las Casas ) and international (e.g., Human Rights Watch) have been made as available as Mexican and U.S. government propaganda.
./english/368.txt:96:In less public view, researchers in universities and think tanks have been paying much closer attention and have seen serious threats to the current political order. Even before the role of the Internet in the Zapatista struggle was recognized, analysts were beginning to call the attention of policy makers to grassroots uses of electronic communications. One widely quoted report was Sheldon Annis' 1991 "Giving Voice to the Poor" published in Foreign Policy, an influential American journal in that field. Annis provided details of how grassroots utilization of The Net was "empowering" and "emboldening" the poor by undermining elite control of information. Generously, if somewhat naively perhaps, he recommended that state institutions such as local governments and the World Bank shift expenditures toward increasing flows of information which can assist the "political empowerment" of the poor and "processes of democratization".(37)
./english/368.txt:138:The State of the Struggle in Cyberspace and Beyond Despite scattered attacks by governments in various countries, the initiative in this area still lies almost entirely on the side of those using The Net for the circulation of struggle. So far, those attacks have been rather crude --police raids and censorship-- and caused little disruption to the myriad flows of information and mobilization that continue to criss-cross the globe. The most effective capitalist initiatives in cyberspace have been the commercialization of the Internet and the use of electronic communications for organizing transnational corporate operations. These efforts, however, have not directly impeded the kinds of struggles I have been describing. Indeed, if anything they have provoked greater international organizing to offset the power of multinational capital. Similarly, efforts to introduce legislation in the U.S. to regulate and control information flows have provoked widespread counter-organization and mobilization.
./english/368.txt:142:Nevertheless, it would be dangerous to become complacent in this situation. Just because the state has not found effective ways of countering these struggles does not mean that it will not be able to come up with better tactics in the future. We have seen that our struggles are being observed and studied by the analysts and strategists of the state and of capital more generally. We must continue to monitor their monitoring to see where it leads them. We have seen that Arquilla and Ronfeldt have suggested that the U.S. government "may want to design new kinds of military units and capabilities for engaging in network warfare". ARE such new kinds of units and capabilities being created? Will the U.S. military go beyond wargame scenarios to develop the means to "penetrate, monitor, disrupt, deceive and dominate any computer or any communications system for any length of time, ideally without being detected", as one CIA veteran has suggested?(61) Obviously, it is in our interest to attempt to keep track of efforts to create such capacities.
./english/368.txt:144:At the same time, such analysts see that "netwar" is quite different from traditional forms of either guerrilla warfare or intelligence and counterintelligence warfare. Arquilla and Ronfeldt clearly understand that the broadbased, grassroots struggles being carried on in cyberspace (such as the pro-Zapatista efforts) primarily involve the open circulation and open discussion of political ideas, news about events and detailed reports about on-going situations. Clearly any kind of politically effective state response would have to go beyond covert disruption to sophisticated overt intervention. While this has yet to happen --to all appearances-- it would hardly be without precedence.
./english/368.txt:146:Indeed the epoch of the Cold War provided ample experience of how a sophisticated propaganda apparatus could be formed and wielded against ideological enemies, both real and imagined. The covert operations of military or intelligence agents were complemented by very overt and much larger scale anti-communist, counter-revolutionary intellectual warfare. Fighting the wave of revolutionary energy that boiled up in anti-colonial movements and continued in anti-NEOcolonial, pro-national liberation struggles required the new Post-W.W.II American empire to create a whole new body of foreign policy elites and a research apparatus to support them with information and ideas.(62) It also required the creation of a sophisticated propaganda machine, both public (e.g., USIA) and private (e.g., think tanks and the mass media).(63) Similarly, in Mexico, the PRI has, over the last decades, built its own apparatuses of ideological warfare and information control.
./english/368.txt:152:At this point the reform movement itself is probably the key terrain of struggle between the Zapatistas and capital. Those forces within the movement pushing for the Zapatistas to convert themselves from a revolutionary force into one more traditional political party can be seen as the embodiment of the Mexican state's traditional strategy of co-optation (repression via assimilation).(64) As Ronfeldt and Thorup's joint work suggests, the conversion of the Zapatistas into a political party might not even be required for their neutralization. It might be enough to merely convert them into one more "independent" organization among others in a domesticated and neutralized civil society.
./english/368.txt:154:To some degree, the forces pushing for such non-revolutionary solutions are already present on the terrain of cyberspace. For the most part they have not yet become active participants but their voices are regularly heard through articles taken from the political battles in the written Mexican press. With the PRI and its official government increasingly discredited, it would seem that the main threat to the development of the Zapatista struggle and to the elaboration of its ideas of real change will come from the ranks of such reformers.
./english/368.txt:156:What all of this means is that as the struggles on The Net have moved from mobilization against military repression to the circulation of Zapatista ideas and the discussion of their political visions and programs, the conflicts in this electronic fabric of connections will increasingly take on all the complexity of the more general political, economic and social crises in Mexico.
./english/369.txt:19:The conference decided to coordinate its work better, particularly in the struggle against any new war waged by US imperialism and its allies, in solidarity with immigrants and in the struggle for "European-wide social rights". It will take this opportunity to adopt a common logo in order to underscore its political identity as a European anti-capitalist current.
./english/369.txt:35:Fascist and far right demagogues are exploiting this reactionary terrain. Traditional bourgeois parties are using it as well for their political manoeuvres. For the moment, it is not the advent of fascism which is on the agenda but "class struggle" bourgeois governments, whose main difference with "left" governments is that they will have their hands free to launch a new "European neo-liberal" offensive: ongoing privatisations and antisocial measures; EU involvement in the international arena ("the war on terrorism" and eastwards enlargement); and putting in place the coherent, efficient core of a European proto-state apparatus.
./english/369.txt:37:But for the first time in twenty years, the ruling classes' political offensive is running up against a significant new social movement, borne by a new generation of youth, which is global, offensive, internationalist and against the system from the start. Defensive social battles, which have never ceased, are losing their "rearguard" aspect, because the movement against capitalist globalisation has provided them with a new political framework, an offensive spirit, a perspective and an alternative. The centre of gravity for political initiatives and mass mobilisation is located at the moment outside the traditional labour movement. Although weakened, the European trade union movement still brings together, according to national statistics, millions of workers and thousands of activists. As long as the wage-earning class, which is a majority social force, does not become active, as long as it does not struggle massively for its own immediate demands and broad aspirations, as long as it does not organise itself on an ever widening scale, neither the ongoing globalisation of the market nor neo-liberal and pro-war policies will be stopped. The general strikes and gigantic citizens' mobilisations in Italy, the Spanish general strike, the recurrent social struggles in Greece and the renewal of sectoral strikes in Germany (particularly among metal and construction workers) clearly herald a stronger resistance to the bosses and governments' ongoing offensive.
./english/369.txt:61:b) The EU "is not full"! It has never been so rich! What "prevents" the equal social and democratic integration of the immigrant population is the shameless enrichment of a tiny minority of big capitalists—at the expense of the EU's native populations (working classes)—which refuses to organise society on the basis of the social needs of the great majority of the population here and abroad. This is a compelling reason to struggle together, unite the working class and eliminate this double injustice.
./english/369.txt:75:We fight against any form of xenophobia or racism, whether of state or popular origin. We extend our solidarity to all the victims of the bosses' and governments' discriminatory policies. We demand immediate equality, and full social and political rights for all men and women who live in our countries. But we are conscious that it is necessary to deal with the roots of the problem: we have to fight and organise for solidarity and unity within the world of labour. To do this the labour movement must take a radical turn and stop setting native-born workers against those who are newly arriving and male workers against female. This means making organising newly arriving workers a moral and social priority, so that they share the same struggles, the same demands, the same organisations, and the same program that puts "people before profits".
./english/369.txt:77:d) The market annexation of the eastern European countries, which is a genuine "periphery" dominated by the imperialist EU, will reinforce these developments even more. This absorption will not occur without a major crisis in the countryside and a considerable social regression in the cities, with a massive rise in inequality in each of these countries—all the more so because the EU will impose its neo-liberal prescriptions without ensuring the promised transfers that are indispensable to relaunching these economies (the EU's agricultural policy, structural funds and grants). It is up to the eastern countries' own peoples to decide whether they want to join the EU under these conditions. We will struggle inside the EU to ensure that they get the same social, environmental, political and democratic rights and norms that we have. We propose to the world of labour, women and youth to join in a single struggle for a different Europe. We will struggle for a trade unionism that unites male and female workers as well as all the emancipatory social movements throughout the European continent. The anti-capitalist left commits itself to developing the best possible contacts and collaboration with the east European left, which is active in social, political, trade unionist, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, pro-peace and anti-war and citizens' movements.
./english/369.txt:79:As for Turkey, its laws, rights and policies at the level of political democracy are incompatible with those of EU member states. We support all the progressive forces in this country, still dominated by the military caste, in their struggle for a radical change on these issues. In particular, we are in solidarity with the Kurdish people, which is struggling for its national-democratic, political and cultural rights.
./english/369.txt:119:For the first time in many years, a political polarisation is taking place in Europe, clearly and visibly, in struggles, in the various social movements and trade unions and in elections. This anti-capitalist polarisation is developing, not on the basis of abstract ideological debates, but on the basis of big, earth-shaking events and the lived experience of the popular masses.
./english/369.txt:121:The struggle against the ("anti-terrorist") war and neo-liberal policies, linked to capitalist globalisation, of which the EU is an essential piece; the central place of the "movement of movements" and its indispensable link with the trade union movement; the search for radical answers and for an anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, ecological and internationalist alternative—all these elements are pushing forward political clarification and convergence among organisations of this "new" anti-capitalist political current in gestation.
./english/371.txt:26:Some women and men in Porto Alegre believe that Lula is the Nasser of Brazil. But others disagree. They still consider him the hero of the left wing groups fighting against globalisation and imperialism. Brazil’s new left is more radical, younger. They describe the old left who dominate the World Social Forum as dogmatic, rigid, undemocratic, linked to the new liberals who are playing a role in isolating the forum from ordinary women and men, from the daily struggle of people.
./english/371.txt:48:Right now we need to struggle against the WSF being hijacked by certain left wing groups in France, Europe, the US or elsewhere. Left-wing groups in Europe are stronger than they are in Africa and they try to dominate. A French man, a leader of a group called ATTAC in Paris tried to control some of the groups from Africa. An American man in a group called Habitat tried to control some groups from the Arab countries.
./english/371.txt:52:Revolutionary groups in Europe and the US should know that we the women (and men) of the so-called “Third World” are not backward, not in need of their leadership. We can lead ourselves. We do not need leaders from abroad to show us the way. We appreciate the ability of these revolutionary groups to transcend their nationality, religion, gender, colour, class, creed, language and other divisions inherited from the slave period. We appreciate their socialist leanings in the struggle against capitalist globalisation. But they must overcome their remaining prejudices. We refuse to submit to their domination under the guise of freeing us from local or global oppressors. We can fight our own battles just as they fought theirs. We want to cooperate, but on equal grounds. We want an equal exchange of ideas and experiences.
./english/372.txt:23:I don't think this is just because the academy is behind the times. Marxism has always had an affinity with the academy that anarchism never will. It was, after all was invented by a Ph.D.; and there's always been something about its spirit which fits that of the academy. Anarchism on the other hand was never really invented by anyone. True, historians usually treat it as if it were, constructing the history of anarchism as if it's basically a creature identical in its nature to Marxism: it was created by specific 19th century thinkers, perhaps Godwin or Stirner, but definitely Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, it inspired working-class organizations, became enmeshed in political struggles... But in fact the analogy is rather strained. First of all, the 19th century generally credited with inventing anarchism didn't think of themselves as having invented anything particularly new. The basic principles of anarchism--self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid--are as old as humanity Similarly, the rejection of the state and of all forms of structural violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means "without rulers"), even the assumption that all these forms are somehow related and reinforce each other, was hardly some startlingly new 19th century doctrine. One can find evidence of people making similar arguments throughout history, despite the fact there is every reason to believe that such opinions were the ones least likely to be written down. We are talking less about a body of theory than about an attitude, or perhaps a faith: a rejection of certain types of social relation, a confidence that certain others are a much better ones on which to build a decent or humane society, a faith that it would be possible to do so.
./english/372.txt:55:The historical relations between political and artistic avant gardes have been explored at length by others. For me though the really intriguing questions is: why is it that artists have so often been so drawn to revolutionary politics to begin with? Because it does seem to be the case that, even in times and places when there is next to no other constituency for revolutionary change, the one place on is most likely to find one is among artists, authors, and musicians; even more so, in fact, that among professional intellectuals. It seems to me the answer must have something to do with alienation. There would appear to be a direct link between the experience of first imagining things and then bringing them into being (individually or collectively)--that is, the experience of certain forms of unalienated production--and the ability to imagine social alternatives; particularly, the possibility of a society itself premised on less alienated forms of creativity. Which would allow us to see the historical shift between seeing the vanguard as the relatively unalienated artists (or perhaps intellectuals) to seeing them as the representatives of the "most oppressed" in a new light. In fact, I would suggest, revolutionary coalitions always tend to consist of an alliance between a society's least alienated and its most oppressed. And this is less elitist a formulation than it might sound, because it also seems to be the case that actual revolutions tend to occur when these two categories come to overlap. That would at any rate explain why it almost always seems to be peasants and craftspeople - or alternately, newly proletarianized former peasants and craftspeople - who actually rise up and overthrow capitalist regimes, and not those inured to generations of wage labor. Finally, I suspect this would also help explain the extraordinary importance of indigenous people's struggles in that planetary uprising usually referred to as the "anti-globalization" movement: such people tend to be simultaneously the very least alienated and most oppressed people on earth, and once it is technologically possible to include them in revolutionary coalitions, it is almost inevitable that they should take a leading role.
./english/373.txt:20:I do not agree with Naomi Klein’s point of view that the forum has been hijacked, because it actually has never been "ours"; or it might have been hijacked, but in a slightly different manner. It is not that the forum has been hijacked, but that the anti-authoritarian spirit that has inspired it has been abused. The very slogan "another world is possible" comes from the Zapatistas. The cake that landed on the face of the Brazilian PT president is becoming a metaphor, in the context of South America, for the opposition of two quite different spirits and two quite different feelings regarding politics. The one which implies yet another attempt at the change in the area of conventional politics, and the one which reveals the striving for something new, for something that can be found on the other side of voting and lobbying: the collective giving up of party politics and collective struggle for the "politics without power". Is it possible and is it necessary to sustain both of these views in equilibrium?
./english/373.txt:32:Does this mean that the forum should be abandoned? Are we to say: abandon the forums? No. Actually, not yet. The idea of forums is a good one. If there is a chance, and I believe there is, to organize these forums in another way: "For the anti-capitalist movement to achieve real change, it will have to do so through a confrontational approach to liberal democracy. This could involve the setting up of social forums throughout Europe, at local levels, creating direct links with local communities in struggle. These, organized in a federal structure – but respecting local autonomy – would undermine and ultimately make obsolete the earth-destroying, authoritarian and oppressive governmental structures that currently control the planet". (L. Ferer)
./english/373.txt:34:The lack of democratic approach and of "transparency" (the term favourite with the "civil society" theoreticians) permeates the institution of a forum, the way it is today, at all levels. An appropriate question can be posed here, which even the members of the so-called International Council have no answer to: Who actually organizes these forums? Reading of the list of organizations participating in the IC is like getting through the woods of names of anonymous non-governmental organizations. The IC, as it seems, is a kind of honoured body that only approves the already brought decisions, agreed on probably somewhere along the Paris-Sao Paolo path, that are brought by the OC. What is the OC? I have no idea. Probably the same people who have established the Orwellian Secretariat for Call of the Social Movements which is to be found somewhere in Sao Paolo. The same is valid for the ESF. I was the witness of the preparatory meetings of the ESF, in which the bureaucratic and old left, owing to the experience they had had in such a kind of political struggle, pushed out without difficulty the grassroots initiatives. Thus we bump into an unusual paradox: those who have made this movement interesting and distinctive and who, in a way, are the most deserving for its success, are not adequately represented in its "institutions", in the forums.
./english/373.txt:36:It is therefore necessary to replace the formula "abandon or contaminate" by the formula "participate or abandon". The "contamination" is not a sincere one, the very expression is an entristic one: furthermore, it is not even productive. Closed in a suburban building of the forum, we are doomed to marginalisation and dissipation of energy. It is necessary to enter into dialogue with other participants in the movement, to organize ourselves so as to be able to reclaim the movement. To say that another forum is possible. In any case, it is necessary for us to turn to building of our own network, PGA, the optics of which would include reflection on the vision and strategy, options, on details of a different world we wish to create. Why dissipate the energy of the new radicalism, is the question that imposes itself, on endless projects? Why don’t we formulate a unique, coherent anti-authoritarian politics within the Peoples Global Action network? It would be the politics based on the bottom-up organizing, open and transparent methods, broad participation, anti-authoritarianism, multi-tactical approaches, innovation and spontaneity. We have to abandon sectarianism and " marginalization pleasure", but also avoid the trap of accepting the traditionalistic and bureaucratic rules of the game and the struggle for power, which we are not accustomed to, bearing always in mind that the goal of anti-authoritarianism is not to be small and isolated. Our goal should be the movement building. Not "summit -hopping": we should try to connect our local work and networking, instead of getting lost in "networks of networks" and "process of processes", hoping from one place to another.
./english/374.txt:24:In Vietnam, the patriotic forces of that country have carried on an almost uninterrupted war against three imperialist powers: Japan, whose might suffered an almost vertical collapse after the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; France, who recovered from that defeated country its Indo-China colonies and ignored the promises it had made in harder times; and the United States, in this last phase of the struggle.
./english/374.txt:26:There were limited confrontations in every continent although in our America, for a long time, there were only incipient liberation struggles and military coups d'etat until the Cuban revolution resounded the alert, signaling the importance of this region. This action attracted the wrath of the imperialists and Cuba was finally obliged to defend its coasts, first in Playa Giron, and again during the Missile Crisis.
./english/374.txt:52:And what great people these are! What stoicism and courage! And what a lesson for the world is contained in this struggle! Not for a long time shall we be able to know if President Johnson ever seriously thought of bringing about some of the reforms needed by his people - to iron out the barbed class contradictions that grow each day with explosive power. The truth is that the improvements announced under the pompous title of the "Great Society" have dropped into the cesspool of Vietnam.
./english/374.txt:62:The world panorama is of great complexity. The struggle for liberation has not yet been undertaken by some countries of ancient Europe, sufficiently developed to realize the contradictions of capitalism, but weak to such a degree that they are unable either to follow imperialism or even to start on its own road. Their contradictions will reach an explosive stage during the forthcoming years-but their problems and, consequently, their own solutions are different from those of our dependent and economically underdeveloped countries.
./english/374.txt:70:Asia is a continent with many different characteristics. The struggle for liberation waged against a series of European colonial powers resulted in the establishment of more or less progressive governments, whose ulterior evolution have brought about, in some cases, the deepening of the primary objectives of national liberation and in others, a setback towards the adoption of pro-imperialist positions.
./english/374.txt:72:From the economic point of view, the United States had very little to lose and much to gain from Asia. These changes benefited its interests; the struggle for the overthrow of other neocolonial powers and the penetration of new spheres of action in the economic field is carried out sometimes directly, occasionally through Japan.
./english/374.txt:90:If we stop to analyze Africa we shall observe that in the Portuguese colonies of Guinea, Mozambique and Angola the struggle is waged with relative intensity, with a concrete success in the first one and with variable success in the other two. We still witness in the Congo the dispute between Lumumba's successors and the old accomplices of Tshombe, a dispute which at the present time seems to favor the latter: those who have "pacified" a large area of the country for their own benefit -- though the war is still latent.
./english/374.txt:96:The social and political evolution of Africa does not lead us to expect a continental revolution. The liberation struggle against the Portuguese should end victoriously, but Portugal does not mean anything in the imperialist field. The confrontations of revolutionary importance are those which place at bay all the imperialist apparatus; this does not mean, however, that we should stop fighting for the liberation of the three Portuguese colonies and for the deepening of their revolutions.
./english/374.txt:98:When the black masses of South Africa or Rhodesia start their authentic revolutionary struggle, a new era will dawn in Africa. Or when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.
./english/374.txt:104:In Latin America the armed struggle is going on in Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Bolivia; the first uprisings are cropping up in Brazil [sic]. There are also some resistance focuses which appear and then are extinguished. But almost all the countries of this continent are ripe for a type of struggle that, in order to achieve victory, can not be content with anything less than establishing a government of socialist tendencies.
./english/374.txt:108:We may ask ourselves: how shall this rebellion flourish? What type will it be? We have maintained for quite some time now that, owing to the similarity of their characteristics, the struggle in Our America will achieve in due course, continental proportions. It shall be the scene of many great battles fought for the liberation of humanity.
./english/374.txt:110:Within the frame of this struggle of continental scale, the battles which are now taking place are only episodes -- but they have already furnished their martyrs, they shall figure in the history of Our America as having given their necessary blood in this last stage of the fight for the total freedom of man. These names will include Comandante Turcios Lima, padre Camilo Torres, Comandante Fabricio Ojeda, Comandantes Lobaton and Luis de la Puente Uceda, all outstanding figures in the revolutionary movements of Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela and Peru.
./english/374.txt:114:New uprisings shall take place in these and other countries of Our America, as it has already happened in Bolivia, and they shall continue to grow in the midst of all the hardships inherent to this dangerous profession of being modern revolutionaries. Many shall perish, victims of their errors, others shall fall in the touch battle that approaches; new fighters and new leaders shall appear in the warmth of the revolutionary struggle. The people shall create their warriors and leaders in the selective framework of the war itself - and Yankee agents of repression shall increase. Today there are military aids in all the countries where armed struggle is growing; the Peruvian army apparently carried out a successful action against the revolutionaries in that country, an army also trained and advised by the Yankees. But if the focuses of war grow with sufficient political and military insight, they shall become practically invincible and shall force the Yankees to send reinforcements. In Peru itself many new figures, practically unknown, are now reorganizing the guerrilla. Little by little, the obsolete weapons, which are sufficient for the repression of small armed bands, will be exchanged for modern armaments and the U.S. military aids will be substituted by actual fighters until, at a given moment, they are forced to send increasingly greater number of regular troops to ensure the relative stability of a government whose national puppet army is desintegrating before the impetuous attacks of the guerrillas. It is the road of Vietnam it is the road that should be followed by the people; it is the road that will be followed in Our America, with the advantage that the armed groups could create Coordinating Councils to embarrass the repressive forces of Yankee imperialism and accelerate the revolutionary triumph.
./english/374.txt:116:America, a forgotten continent in the last liberation struggles, is now beginning to make itself heard through the Tricontinental and, in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, the Cuban Revolution, will today have a task of much greater relevance: creating a Second or a Third Vietnam, or the Second and Third Vietnam of the world.
./english/374.txt:118:We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism -- and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capitals, raw materials, technicians and cheap labor, and to which they export new capitals -- instruments of domination -- arms and all kinds of articles; thus submerging us in an absolute dependance [sic].
./english/374.txt:120:The fundamental element of this strategic end shall be the real liberation of all people, a liberation that will be brought about through armed struggle in most cases and which shall be, in Our America, almost indefectibly, a Socialist Revolution.
./english/374.txt:128:It is probable, of course, that the last liberated country shall accomplish this without an armed struggle and the sufferings of a long and cruel war against the imperialists -- this they might avoid. But perhaps it will be impossible to avoid this struggle or its effects in a global conflagration; the suffering would be the same, or perhaps even greater. We cannot foresee the future, but we should never give in to the defeatist temptation of being the vanguard of a nation which yearns for freedom, but abhors the struggle it entails and awaits its freedom as a crumb of victory.
./english/374.txt:130:It is absolutely just to avoid all useless sacrifices. Therefore, it is so important to clear up the real possibilities that dependent America may have of liberating itself through pacific means. For us, the solution to this question is quite clear: the present moment may or may not be the proper one for starting the struggle, but we cannot harbor any illusions, and we have no right to do so, that freedom can be obtained without fighting. And these battles shall not be mere street fights with stones against tear-gas bombs, or of pacific general strikes; neither shall it be the battle of a furious people destroying in two or three days the repressive scaffolds of the ruling oligarchies; the struggle shall be long, harsh, and its front shall be in the guerrilla's refuge, in the cities, in the homes of the fighters - where the repressive forces shall go seeking easy victims among their families -- in the massacred rural population, in the villages or cities destroyed by the bombardments of the enemy.
./english/374.txt:132:They are pushing us into this struggle; there is no alternative: we must prepare it and we must decide to undertake it.
./english/374.txt:134:The beginnings will not be easy; they shall be extremely difficult. All the oligarchies' powers of repression, all their capacity for brutality and demagoguery will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the first hour, shall be to survive; later, we shall follow the perennial example of the guerrilla, carrying out armed propaganda (in the Vietnamese sense, that is, the bullets of propaganda, of the battles won or lost -- but fought -- against the enemy). The great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas taking root in the dispossessed masses. The galvanizing of the national spirit, the preparation for harder tasks, for resisting even more violent repressions. Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.
./english/374.txt:138:And let us develop a true proletarian internationalism; with international proletarian armies; the flag under which we fight would be the sacred cause of redeeming humanity. To die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil -- to name only a few scenes of today's armed struggle -- would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.
./english/374.txt:140:Each spilt drop of blood, in any country under whose flag one has not been born, is an experience passed on to those who survive, to be added later to the liberation struggle of his own country. And each nation liberated is a phase won in the battle for the liberation of one's own country.
./english/374.txt:142:The time has come to settle our discrepancies and place everything at the service of our struggle.
./english/374.txt:148:In our struggling world every discrepancy regarding tactics, the methods of action for the attainment of limited objectives should be analyzed with due respect to another man's opinions. Regarding our great strategic objective, the total destruction of imperialism by armed struggle, we should be uncompromising.
./english/374.txt:152:This means a long war. And, once more we repeat it, a cruel war. Let no one fool himself at the outstart and let no one hesitate to start out for fear of the consequences it may bring to his people. It is almost our sole hope for victory. We cannot elude the call of this hour. Vietnam is pointing it out with its endless lesson of heroism, its tragic and everyday lesson of struggle and death for the attainment of final victory.
./english/374.txt:154:There, the imperialist soldiers endure the discomforts [sic] of those who, used to enjoying the U.S. standard of living, have to live in a hostile land with the insecurity of being unable to move without being aware of walking on enemy territory: death to those who dare take a step out of their fortified encampment. The permanent hostility of the entire population. All this has internal repercussion in the United States; propitiates the resurgence of an element which is being minimized in spite of its vigor by all imperialist forces: class struggle even within its own territory.
./english/374.txt:160:If we, in a small point of the world map, are able to fulfill our duty and place at the disposal of this struggle whatever little of ourselves we are permitted to give: our lives, our sacrifice, and if some day we have to breathe our last breath on any land, already ours, sprinkled with our blood let it be known that we have measured the scope of our actions and that we only consider ourselves elements in the great army of the proletariat but that we are proud of having learned from the Cuban Revolution, and from its maximum leader, the great lesson emanating from his attitude in this part of the world: "What do the dangers or the sacrifices of a man or of a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake."
./english/375.txt:19:Against this, whenever we have been through periods of defeats of struggles, theorists have arisen who have said it is not the working class that is at the centre, but some other force. In the late 1970s and the 1980s world wide we went through a defeat for the working class struggles – the defeat in Chile, the formation in Europe of various social democratic governments that brought back the market, that began to break up welfare systems, the bloody dictatorship in Argentina, a whole period of defeats for the working class movement. In any period of defeats the workers’ organisations fragment, workers turn upon each other, people see individual solutions, in that situation theories arise which say the working class is no longer central and that there is some other agency we can turn to.
./english/375.txt:22:As far as I am concerned we are not in a new period of struggle internationally. In some countries is it more advanced than in others. In some the crisis of the system is much greater than in others. But we are talking about a new wave of struggles of which the anti-capitalist movement and the anti-war movement are part. In this new wave of struggles people are beginning to look for new answers.
./english/375.txt:28:They go on to claim that everyone under capitalism is part of the system and that therefore everyone under capitalism is equally central to the struggle against it.
./english/375.txt:56:Let’s go back to the centre of Marx’s conception. It is that workers who are concentrated together in large workplaces, under the thumb of managers, subject to time keeping, subject to the pressures continually to be disciplined by the system, at the same time have the potential when they struggle to shake the system, but not only to shake the system. They have the potential to organise themselves, because they are concentrated together. The culture capitalism itself forces on them let alone the culture of understand, creates the potential for becoming a force that can change the system. When they move, the move collectively.
./english/375.txt:59:When we talk about the picture of the world today, we have to say there are all sorts of movements that break out in the world today. The crisis of capitalism creates all sorts f pressures for revolts and rebellions. But it is not true that all these are collective struggles and they all lead to struggles in the same direction.
./english/375.txt:60:The notion of the multitude that Hardt and Negri put across implies that any struggle anywhere has the same weight and the same importance.
./english/375.txt:61:We have to say two things. Firstly, the whole history of revolts by peasants or by the urban poor who are not in workplaces is that they explode on to the streets and then they are driven back into their hovels or their farms and the revolt collapses. The history of the workers struggle is that when workers struggle and gain victories, they create collective organisations that persist over time and they begin to create to possibility of a counter-hegemony, a weapon against the system as a whole.
./english/375.txt:64:In 1983, a massive textile strike shook Bombay. It probably the biggest strike the world has ever known and it lasted for 12 months with a million workers on strike. For that period collective ideas dominated the mass of poor people in and out of jobs in the Bombay area. That strike was defeated. In the aftermath of it what came to dominate in Bombay, rooted among the poor, the self employed and so forth, was what one might call a fascist organisation called the Shiv Sena, which directed the hatred of the middle castes against the lowest, the Dalits (untouchables), the hatred of Hindus against Muslims. In the same city, the same multitude of people subjugated to capital, their lives being ruined by the system, could turn in tow directions. One to collective struggle, one to individualistic struggle. The collective struggle is beaten, the individualist struggle comes to the fore.
./english/375.txt:66:I’ll give another example. Argentina. Thirteen months ago we saw the fantastic eruption of the population of Buenos Aires on the streets. We saw the multitude bring down the government. What the multitude was not capable of doing was framing some sort of alternative that was capable of stopping Argentine capitalism continuing to go into crisis. The central focus in Argentina, the working class organised in the workplaces was held back from entering into the struggle by the trade union bureaucracy. But unless you talk about the organised working class, those in workplaces with traditions of collective struggle, coming onto the stage in Argentina, you are talking about continuing paralysis of the struggle.
./english/375.txt:84:Who’s excluded by that? Certainly unwaged labour is excluded from that. Unwaged domestic labour carried out by women is not part of the working class under this definition. They are excluded. According to what Chris says, there struggles are not important, or rather there struggles are unrecognisable, they cannot be used, they have to unite under the industrial working class.
./english/375.txt:89:What Chris said, and there is a tradition of this, but it is a tradition I want to argue against, is that the struggles of those who are excluded from the working class must be subordinated to the struggles of the working class. There is a long tradition of this.
./english/375.txt:99:It is not that there are two ways of thinking about it: either there is one class of labour or there is a plurality in a liberal sense. It is not that there is one struggle or there are many struggles. Rather, and this is what the term multitude is trying to deal with, we have to understand the potential commonality of various classes of labour and also the potential commonality of struggles. They remain different, but they recognise their commonality.
./english/375.txt:123:First , all struggles of the working class were related around struggles of industrial workers.
./english/375.txt:125:I want to know if the immaterial working class is hegemonic in the same sense. Do the struggles of the multiplicity articulate themselves around the struggles of the immaterial working class? Does the immaterial working class and the multiplicity gathered around it have the capacity to inaugurate a new mode of production?
./english/375.txt:131:What I wanted to say was that what unites multitudes in struggle essentially is the desire for autonomy and the ability to effect a change without the mediation of a centralised state body, or a centralised body at all. People are very interested in taking the reins into their own hands and intelligent enough to be given the power to do things without some kind of authority, and especially without an authoritarian authority telling what and when they can do something
./english/375.txt:132:The other point I wanted to bring up was about Argentina. When Chris Harman spoke about Argentina I really didn’t understand what was going on, because right now in Argentina factories are being seized by the workers. So if the working class is supposedly not engaged in the struggle, I don’t see how that can be.
./english/375.txt:133:The fact of the matter is that things are going wrong in Argentina because there’s a military imperialistic dictatorship. It’s a military struggle rather than the fact that the working class is not involved. All classes are involved, well maybe not the elites, but all segments of society are participating, and the problem is how to overcome the repression, not whether or not we have the banner of the working class flying. Everyone taking part, that is what is so amazing about Argentina.
./english/375.txt:163:I sense almost a sense of nostalgia for what capitalism built in its development, and also a forgetfulness about the brutality of that process of development. I don’t know if work is better or worse than it was a hundred years ago. It is almost certainly better in someway, worse in others. What we have to remember is the centrality of struggle, history of struggle is part of that history to, and we must not just talk about the achievements of capitalism. So I want to ask you to develop more this idea of multitude, where the concept of multitude belong within the system of exploitation and domination.
./english/375.txt:170:The question then is who will lead, how will we organise? What sort of strategy is adequate these days? My tendency is first of all to refuse toe answer the question directly. I do not think that I as a philosopher ought to answer such a question. My tendency rather is to learn from what has been done. So the first contributor sort of suggested the Indymedia should function as form of linking, the coming together in struggle and separating in struggle, that’s important.. The Zapatista comrade also suggested a way. Forms of struggle that are linked up – I’d prefer to learn form them rather than say what I think we should do. Recognising the incredible creativity of Zapatismo as a form, the incredible creativity of the piqueteros movements in Argentina, to try to read them and see what’s happening, rather than saying what should happen.
./english/375.txt:171:I don’t mean when I am talking about the working class, the comrade who was talking about labour struggles, industrial struggles in Argentina, said the working class does struggle and does lead certain sorts of struggles. I think that is true and I support them. I don’t ignore the fact that certain groups in certain times take a hegemonic position, and when they do people listen to them more. And there are certain groups that people listen to more. Think of the effect that the Zapatistas have had across the world. In a way they have had a hegemonic position. But this is a variable, not a permanent situation.
./english/375.txt:175:I have not been arguing at all that we have to despise, ignore or spit on any struggle other than that of the working class. I have written a history of the world in terms of a history of struggle for the last 5000 years of class society.
./english/375.txt:179:The question of the Zapatistas. I’m sorry. I was in Mexico six years ago at the time when the Mexican army massacred people in Chiapas and I went on a demonstration of 10,000 people in Mexico City, and I asked, Why weren’t there half a million people demonstrating in Mexico City? What is to be done to bring forces to help these struggles? We are faced with the likelihood – I feel like saying the near certainty – I hope it’s not a near certainty – that in the next four or six weeks bombs will be falling on Baghdad. What is to be done?
./english/375.txt:194:There have been discussions on what are the definitions of the oppressed classes, the working class, and whatnot. I believe there are not several classes. There is only one class – the oppressed. I believe the struggle must be for the freedom of all peoples, I do not think we must restrict that struggle. When you see people with hunger, you do not ask what class they are. You want to help those people.
./english/375.txt:210:I am from South Africa. I would like to express disappointment about the way this discussion has been conducted. A sharp contrast has been drawn between something called class struggle and something called the multitude. I think both Michael and Chris are to blame for that dichotomy being created. In South Africa what we called the class struggle was a political struggle that involved the race question, the question of nationality, of gender, of land,. of every conceivable kind of issue. What united us was a common sense of what oppressed us.
./english/375.txt:211:At the same time, however, there were weaknesses in our struggle that have left us with a situation today where we have a neoliberal regime brought to power by popular struggles.
./english/375.txt:213:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 23And may therein lies something to be reflected on in this false dichotomy between class struggle and the multitude.
./english/375.txt:214:If you take the word hegemonic that has been used over and over again, I think the word has a useful genealogy within Marxism. It was about how the ruling class rules by having everybody in society conceiving themselves as individuals , as not part of a collective that constitutes the majority and therefore can overthrow the rulers. On the other hand, the other part of the classical understanding of hegemony was how the working class acts as a unify of all other forms of struggles. And that was not an organisational question be instruction – and the legacy of Stalinism over the last 70 years meant that was precisely was did happen. I think that Marxism cannot be used for such an understanding by decree, that you can make people follow the working class, whatever that might mean. That is why I am making some critique of Michael’s position. One the other hand if we have the understanding that all forms of opposed groupings and struggles, if we do not se
./english/377.txt:14:But for those who were in it for the first time, and given visibility and voice in large tents holding thousands of people, sprinkled with delegates from other countries, it was a resounding moment of self-empowerment, of celebrating their particular experience, whether as victims, or part of collectivities like dalits or displaced persons. It was also an eye-opener to them that they were part of diverse struggles – one ocean of several streams.
./english/377.txt:20:Whether it was Medha Patkar of the NBA or Thomas Kocherry of the fisher people’s struggles or Aruna Roy of the MKSS or Ravivarma Kumar, dalit advocate and Ruth Manorama of the dalit struggles, or Thelma and Ravi Narayan struggling to argue for the primacy of health over other services for the poor; or Jean Dreze for food, or Samy of the National Centre for Labour for protecting the dignity of work – at the ASF they were recharging their batteries. Kocherry to defend the fisher people on the island in West Bengal, Medha to work for a development mode which did not displace, in other words against the style in which the large infrastructure projects are put on the ground, Aruna for accountability, and a host of persons for rebuilding the collective united Asian front against war and violence of other kinds, against the international labour protocols, and a host of other areas.
./english/379.txt:28:As to whether globalization renders revolution in the classical Marxian tradition obsolete, I would argue that much significant political struggle today, especially resistance to globalization, is mediated by technopolitics. The use of computer and information technology is becoming a normalized aspect of politics, just as the broadcasting media were some decades ago. Deploying computer-mediated technology for technopolitics, however, opens new terrains of political struggle for voices and groups excluded from the mainstream media and thus increases potential for resistance and intervention by oppositional groups. Hence, if revolution is to have a future in the contemporary era it must incorporate technopolitics as part of its strategy, conceiving of technopolitics, however, as an arm of struggle and not an end in and of itself.
./english/379.txt:32:Consequently, in this paper, I focus on the ways that an oppositional politics can use new technologies to intervene within the global restructuring of capitalism to promote democratic and anti-capitalist social movements aiming at radical structural transformation. I would argue that globalization and technological revolution are in some ways inevitable -- barring an apocalyptic collapse of the global economy -- but the forms that they take are not. That is, I think that the trends toward a more global economy and culture, a networked society, and the continued flow of commodities, images, cultural forms, technology and people across the globe will continue apace, as will intense technological revolution. Both take the form of what Schumpeter called åcreative destructionπ and guarantee that the next decades will be highly turbulent, contested and full of struggle and conflict. But the forms that globalization and technological revolution will take are neither fixed nor determined. Hence, I would argue that it is perfectly reasonable to oppose corporate capitalist globalization and its market model of society, its neoliberal laissez-faire ideology and its putting profit, competition and market logic before all other aspects of life. I will accordingly focus on the ways that technopolitics can and are being used for anti-capitalist contestation, while noting the limitations of this conception.
./english/379.txt:38:Significant political struggles today against globalization are mediated by technopolitics, that is the use of new technologies such as computers and the internet to advance political goals. To some extent, politics in the modern era have always been mediated by technology, with the printing press, photography, film, radio and television playing crucial roles in politics and all realms of social life, as McLuhan, Innis, Mumford and others have long argued and documented. In representative democracies participation is mediated by technology, as the disastrous failure of voting machines and the voting-counting process in the US 2000 presidential election dramatized (see Kellner forthcoming).
./english/379.txt:42:What is new about computer and information technology mediated politics is that information can be instantly communicated to large numbers of individuals throughout the world who are connected via computer networks. The internet is also potentially interactive, allowing discussion, debate and on-line and archived discussion. The internet is increasingly multimedia in scope, allowing the dissemination of images, sounds, video and other cultural forms. Moreover, the use of computer technology and networks is becoming a normalized aspect of politics, just as the broadcasting media were some decades ago. The use of computer-mediated technology for technopolitics, however, opens new terrains of political struggle for voices and groups excluded from the mainstream media and thus increases potential for intervention by oppositional groups, potentially expanding the scope of democratization.
./english/379.txt:58:However widespread and common computers and new technologies become, it is clear that they are of essential importance already for labour, politics, education and social life, and that people who want to participate in the public and cultural life of the future will need to have computer access and literacy. Although there is a real threat that the computerization of society will intensify the current inequalities in relations of class, race and gender power, there is also the possibility that a democratized and computerized public sphere might provide opportunities to overcome these injustices. Cyberdemocracy and the internet should be seen therefore as a contested terrain. Radical democratic activists should look to its possibilities for resistance and the advancement of political education, action and organization, while engaging in struggles over the digital divide. Dominant corporate and state powers, as well as conservative and rightist groups, have been making sustained use of new technologies to advance their agendas. If forces struggling for democratization and social justice want to become players in the cultural and political battles of the future, they must devise ways to use new technologies to advance a radical democratic and ecological agenda and the interests of the oppressed.
./english/379.txt:70:Seeing the progressive potential of advanced communication technologies in revolutionary struggle, Frantz Fanon (1967) described the central role of the radio in the Algerian revolution, and Lenin stressed the importance of film in spreading communist ideology after the Bolshevik revolution. Audiotapes were used to advance the insurrection in Iran and to disseminate alternative information by political movements throughout the world (see Downing 1984 and 2000). The Tienanman Square democracy movement in China and various groups struggling against the remnants of Stalinism in the former communist bloc used computer bulletin boards and networks, as well as a variety of forms of communications, to promote their movements. Anti-NAFTA groups made extensive use of the new communications technology (see Brenner 1994 and Fredericks 1994). Such multinational networking and distribution of information failed to stop NAFTA, but created alliances useful for the politics of the future. As Nick Dyer-Witheford notes:
./english/379.txt:78:Thus, using new technologies to link information and practice and to advance oppositional politics is neither extraneous to political battles nor merely utopian. Even if immediate gains are not won, often the information circulated or the alliances formed can have material effects. There are, moreover, striking examples of how internet-centred organizing campaigns effectively worked against the institutions and corporations of capitalist globalization. Successful struggles against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1995-1998 involved websites and e-mail campaigns against the US-supported effort to develop binding rules on how states treat foreign investors and list-serves linking the groups struggling against the åagreementπ. Obviously, the internet alone did not defeat this initiative for capitalist globalization, but it enabled the non-government organizations fighting against it to circulate information, share resources and link their struggles (see Smith and Smythe 2000).
./english/379.txt:90:Anti-Nike, McDonalds and other websites critical of global capitalist corporations have disseminated a tremendous amount of information. Many labour organizations are also beginning to make use of the new technologies. The Clean Clothes Campaign, a movement started by Dutch women in 1990 in support of Filipino garment workers, has supported strikes throughout the world, exposing exploitative working conditions (see www.cleanclothes.org/1/index.html). In 1997, activists involved in Korean workers strikes and the Merseyside dock strike in England used websites to promote international solidarity (for the latter see www.gn.apc.org/ labournet/docks/). Jesse Drew (1998) has extensively interviewed representatives of major US labour organizations to see how they were making use of new communication technologies and how these instruments helped them with their struggles; many of his union activists indicated how useful email, faxes, websites and the internet have been to their struggles and, in particular, indicated how such technopolitics helped organize demonstrations or strikes in favour of striking English or Australian dockworkers, as when US longshoremen organized strikes to boycott ships carrying material loaded by scab workers. Technopolitics thus helps labour create global alliances in order to combat increasingly transnational corporations.[8]
./english/379.txt:94:On the whole, labour organizations, such as the North South Dignity of Labor group, note that computer networks are useful for organizing and distributing information, but cannot replace print media, which are more accessible to many of their members, face-to-face meetings and traditional forms of political action. Thus, the challenge is to articulate one's communications politics with actual movements and struggles so that cyberpolitics is an arm of real battles rather than their replacement or substitute. The most efficacious internet projects have indeed intersected with activist movements encompassing campaigns to free political prisoners, boycotts of corporate projects, and various labour and even revolutionary struggles, as noted above.
./english/379.txt:100:One of the more instructive examples of the use of the internet to foster global struggles against the excesses of corporate capitalism occurred in the protests in Seattle and throughout the world against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in December 1999, and the subsequent emergence of a worldwide anti-globalization movement in 2000-2001. Behind these actions was a global protest movement using the internet to organize resistance to the institutions of capitalist globalization, while championing democratization. In the build-up to the 1999 Seattle demonstrations, many websites generated anti-WTO material and numerous mailing lists used the internet to distribute critical material and to organize the protest. The result was the mobilization of caravans from throughout the United States to take protestors to Seattle, as well as contingents of activists throughout the world. Many of the protestors had never met and were recruited through the internet. For the first time ever, labour, environmentalist, feminist, anticapitalist, animal rights, anarchist and other groups organized to protest aspects of globalization and to form new alliances and solidarities for future struggles. In addition, demonstrations took place throughout the world, and a proliferation of anti-WTO material against the extremely secret group spread throughout the internet.[9]
./english/379.txt:112:More important, many activists were energized by the new alliances, solidarities and militancy, and continued to cultivate an anti-globalization movement. The Seattle demonstrations were followed by April 2000 struggles in Washington, D.C., to protest the World Bank and IMF, and later in the year against capitalist globalization in Prague and Melbourne; in April 2001, an extremely large and militant protest erupted against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec City. It was apparent that a new worldwide movement was in the making capable of uniting diverse opponents of capitalist globalization throughout the world. The anticorporate globalization movement favoured globalization from below, which would protect the environment, labour rights, national cultures, democratization and other goods from the ravages of an uncontrolled capitalist globalization (see Falk 1999 and Brecher, Costello and Smith 2000).
./english/379.txt:130:A key to developing a robust technopolitics is articulation, the mediation of technopolitics with real problems and struggles, rather than self-contained reflections on the internal politics of the internet.[10] The Zapatista movement in Chiapas is addressing problems of survival and transforming social, cultural, political and economic conditions, using new technologies as an instrument of political struggle. Likewise, the campaigns against major capitalist corporations and the institutions of capitalist globalization are attempting to advance progressive political agendas and to engage key issues of the day.
./english/379.txt:142:A recent twist in the saga of technopolitics, in fact, seems to be that allegedly återroristπ groups are now increasingly using the internet and websites to promote their causes. An article in the Los Angeles Times (8 February 2001) reports that groups like Hamas use their website to post reports of acts of terror against Israel, rather than calling newspapers or broadcasting outlets. A wide range of groups labeled as återroristπ reportedly use e-mail, list-serves and websites to further their struggles, causes including Hezbollah and Hamas, the Maoist group Shining Path in Peru and a variety of other groups throughout Asia and elsewhere. The Tamil Tigers, for instance, a liberation movement in Sri Lanka, offers position papers, daily news and free e-mail service. According to the Times, experts are still unclear åwhether the ability to communicate online worldwide is prompting an increase or a decrease in terrorist actsπ.
./english/379.txt:146:Different political groups are in fact engaging in cyberwar as adjuncts of their political battles. Israeli hackers have repeatedly attacked the websites of Hezbollah, while pro-Palestine hackers have reportedly placed militant demands and slogans on the websites of Israelπs army, foreign ministry and parliament. Likewise, Pakistani and Indian computer hackers have waged similar cyberbattles against opposing forcesπ websites in the bloody struggle over Kashmir, while rebel forces in the Philippines taunt government troops with cell phone calls and messages and attack government websites.
./english/379.txt:152:The internet is thus a contested terrain, used by the left, right and centre to advance their own agendas and interests. The political battles of the future may well be fought in the streets, factories, parliaments and other sites of past conflicts, but all political struggle is now mediated by media, computer and information technologies and increasingly will be so. Those interested in the politics and culture of the future should therefore be clear on the important role of the new public spheres and act accordingly.
./english/379.txt:160:I have not discussed the ways that technopolitics could be used to struggle not only against capitalism, but for socialism. I would argue that socialist ideas are still relevant to the politics of the contemporary era and that in particular Karl Marx's ideas, for from being obsolete, are still essential in developing critical theories of globalization, technology and capitalism in the current conjuncture (see Kellner 1995). It could be that only a socialist politics could overcome the digital divide, making accessible to all the benefits of the technological revolution. A socialist government could provide wireless communications in underdeveloped societies making possible access to the internet and use of new communications and information technology even to societies that are not yet wired, or whose telephone systems extend only to the privileged. Interestingly, societies like Korea, Japan and the Philippines make more extensive use of wireless communications than the US, with wireless messaging systems and internet access made use of by the working classes as forms of popular communication.
./english/379.txt:164:This study has suggested that in the era of globalization and the internet political struggles are at once local and global, that there are continuities and discontinuities with struggles and movements of the past, and that we can therefore continue to draw on the most progressive ideas of the modern tradition while also developing new concepts of politics and new strategies for social transformation. A revolution of the future needs to articulate models and ideals of a post-capitalist economy, a radical democratic polity, an egalitarian and socially just multicultural society, and diverse, free and open culture. Ideals of the past can and no doubt will enter into revolutionary thought of the future, but new ideals, values and forms of everyday life will no doubt emerge. The future of revolution is thus open and requires new theory and practice as well as appropriation of the best progressive heritages of the past.
./english/379.txt:182:[6] There was, however, an assassination of Zapatista supporters by local death squads in early 1998 -- which once again triggered significant internet-generated pressures on the Mexican government to prosecute the perpetrators. Likewise, there has been ongoing government repression and sporadic violence, although, so far, the kind of massive repression of the movement favoured by many in the Mexican military and political establishment has been avoided. I should also mention here the incredibly conflicting interpretations of the Zapatista movement by its supporters and detractors, and the problem that it has been given iconic significance with all the attendant mythologization in the contemporary era. For my purposes, it represents a strong example of how new technologies can be used as an arm of political struggle and how computer-mediated technologies can help generate global support networks and circulate information of revolutionary struggles and movements.
./english/379.txt:228:Dyer-Witheford, N. (1999) Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
./english/379.txt:238:Harvey, N. (1998) The Chiapas Rebellion and the Struggle for Land and Democracy, Durham and London: Duke University Press.
./english/380.txt:13:Moreover, advocates of a postmodern break in history argue that developments in transnational capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of post-Fordism, or postmodernism as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Jameson 1991; and Gottdiener 1995). Others define the emergent global economy and culture as a "network society" grounded in new communications and information technology (Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998). For others, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and its market economy (see apologists such as Fukuyama 1992 and Friedman 1999 who perceive this process as positive, while others portray it as negative, such as Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Eisenstein 1998; and Robins and Webster 1999). Some theorists see the emergence of a new transnational ruling elite and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair 2001), while others stress global fragmentation of “the clash of civilizations” (Huntington 1996). Driving “post” discourses into novel realms of theory and politics, Hardt and Negri (2000) present the emergence of “Empire” as producing emergent forms of sovereignty, economy, culture, and political struggle that open the new millennium to an unforeseeable and unpredictable flow of novelties, surprises, and upheavals.
./english/380.txt:17: Indeed, globalization is one of the most hotly debated issues of the present era. For some, it is a cover concept for global capitalism and imperialism, and is accordingly condemned as another form of the imposition of the logic of capital and the market on ever more regions of the world and spheres of life. For others, it is the continuation of modernization and a force of progress, increased wealth, freedom, democracy, and happiness. Its defenders present globalization as beneficial, generating fresh economic opportunities, political democratization, cultural diversity, and the opening to an exciting new world. Its critics see globalization as harmful, bringing about increased domination and control by the wealthier overdeveloped nations over the poor underdeveloped countries, thus increasing the hegemony of the “haves” over the “have nots.” In addition, supplementing the negative view, globalization critics assert that globalization produces an undermining of democracy, a cultural homogenization, and increased destruction of natural species and the environment.[2] Some imagine the globalization project -- whether viewed positively or negatively -- as inevitable and beyond human control and intervention, whereas others view globalization as generating new conflicts and new spaces for struggle, distinguishing between globalization from above and globalization from below (and Brecher, Costello, and Smith 2000).
./english/380.txt:77: Moreover, with the turn toward neo-liberalism as a hegemonic ideology and practice, the market and its logic comes to triumph over public goods and the state is subservient to economic imperatives and logic. Yet the term technocapitalism points to a new configuration of capitalist society in which technical and scientific knowledge, computerization and automation of labor, and information technology and multimedia play a role in the process of production analogous to the function of human labor power, mechanization of the labor process, and machines in an earlier era of capitalism. This process is generating novel modes of societal organization, forms of culture and everyday life, conflicts, and modes of struggle.
./english/380.txt:133: My intention is to present globalization as conflictual, contradictory and open to resistance and democratic intervention and transformation and not just as a monolithic juggernaut of progress or domination as in many discourses. This goal is advanced by distinguishing between "globalization from below" and the "globalization from above" of corporate capitalism and the capitalist state, a distinction that should help us to get a better sense of how globalization does or does not promote democratization. "Globalization from below" refers to the ways in which marginalized individuals and social movements resist globalization and/or use its institutions and instruments to further democratization and social justice. While on one level, globalization significantly increases the supremacy of big corporations and big government, it can also give power to groups and individuals that were previously left out of the democratic dialogue and terrain of political struggle. Such potentially positive effects of globalization include increased access to education for individuals excluded from entry to culture and knowledge and the possibility of oppositional individuals and groups to participate in global culture and politics through gaining access to global communication and media networks and to circulate local struggles and oppositional ideas through these media. The role of new technologies in social movements, political struggle, and everyday life forces social movements to reconsider their political strategies and goals and democratic theory to appraise how new technologies do and do not promote democratization (Kellner 1997 and 1999b).
./english/380.txt:137: In their magisterial book Empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of “Empire” and an assortment of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-full situation. As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a complex process that involves a multidimensional mixture of expansions of the global economy and capitalist market system, new technologies and media, expanded judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power, sovereignty, and resistance.[6] Combining poststructuralism with “autonomous Marxism,” Hardt and Negri stress political openings and possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent process of the restructuring of capital.
./english/380.txt:141:Many theorists, by contrast, have argued that one of the trends of globalization is depoliticization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and end of traditional politics (Boggs 2000). While I would agree that globalization is promoted by tremendously powerful economic forces and that it often undermines democratic movements and decision-making, I would also argue that there are openings and possibilities for both a globalization from below that inflects globalization for positive and progressive ends, and that globalization can thus help promote as well as undermine democracy.[7] Globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism, a tremendous restructuring process, which creates openings for progressive social change and intervention. In a more fluid and open economic and political system, oppositional forces can gain concessions, win victories, and effect progressive changes. During the 1970s, new social movements, new non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and new forms of struggle and solidarity emerged that have been expanding to the present day (Hardt and Negri 2000; Burbach 2001; and Foran, forthcoming).
./english/380.txt:161: As the new millennium opened, there was no clear answer to Mandela’s question and with the global economic recession and the Terror War erupting in 2001, the situation of many developing countries has worsened. Yet as part of the backlash against globalization over the past years, a wide range of theorists have argued that the proliferation of difference and the shift to more local discourses and practices define the contemporary scene. In this view, theory and politics should shift from the level of globalization and its accompanying often totalizing and macro dimensions in order to focus on the local, the specific, the particular, the heterogeneous, and the micro level of everyday experience. An array of theories associated with poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism focus on difference, otherness, marginality, the personal, the particular, and the concrete over more general theory and politics that aim at more global or universal conditions.[10] Likewise, a broad spectrum of subcultures of resistance have focused their attention on the local level, organizing struggles around identity issues such as gender, race, sexual preference, or youth subculture.
./english/380.txt:173: For instance, the Internet can be used to promote capitalist globalization or struggles against it. One of the more instructive examples of the use of the Internet to foster movements against the excesses of corporate capitalism occurred in the protests in Seattle and throughout the world against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in December 1999. Behind these actions was a global protest movement using the Internet to organize resistance to the WTO and capitalist globalization, while championing democratization. Many web sites contained anti-WTO material and numerous mailing lists used the Internet to distribute critical material and to organize the protest. The result was the mobilization of caravans from throughout the United States to take protestors to Seattle, many of whom had never met and were recruited through the Internet. There were also significant numbers of international participants in Seattle which exhibited labor, environmentalist, feminist, anti-capitalist, animal rights, anarchist, and other groups organized to protest aspects of globalization and form new alliances and solidarities for future struggles. In addition, protests occurred throughout the world, and a proliferation of anti-WTO material against the extremely secret group spread throughout the Internet.[11]
./english/380.txt:185: More importantly, many activists were energized by the new alliances, solidarities, and militancy, and continued to cultivate an anti-globalization movement. The Seattle demonstrations were followed by April 2000 struggles in Washington, D.C., to protest the World Bank and IMF, and later in the year against capitalist globalization in Prague and Melbourne; in April 2001, an extremely large and militant protest erupted against the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Quebec City and in summer 2001 a large demonstration took place in Genoa.
./english/380.txt:193: Initially, the incipient anti-globalization movement was precisely that - anti-globalization. The movement itself, however, was increasingly global, was linking together a diversity of movements into global solidarity networks, and was using the Internet and instruments of globalization to advance its struggles. Moreover, many opponents of capitalist globalization recognized the need for a global movement to have a positive vision and be for such things as social justice, equality, labor, civil liberties and human rights, and a sustainable environmentalism. Accordingly, the anti-capitalist globalization movement began advocating common values and visions.
./english/380.txt:213: A recent twist in the saga of technopolitics, in fact, seems to be that allegedly “terrorist” groups are now increasingly using the Internet and Web-sites to promote their causes. An article in the Los Angeles Times (February 8, 2001: A1 and A14) reports that groups like Hamas use their Web-site to post reports of acts of terror against Israel, rather than calling newspapers or broadcasting outlets. A wide range of groups labeled as “terrorist” reportedly use e-mail, list-serves, and Web-sites to further their struggles, causes including Hezbollah and Hamas, the Maoist group Shining Path in Peru, and a variety of other groups throughout Asia and elsewhere. The Tamil Tigers, for instance, a liberation movement in Sri Lanka, offers position papers, daily news, and free e-mail service. According to the Times, experts are still unclear “whether the ability to communicate online worldwide is prompting an increase or a decrease in terrorist acts.”
./english/380.txt:221: Moreover, different political groups are engaging in cyberwar as adjuncts of their political battles. Israeli hackers have repeatedly attacked the Web-sites of Hezbollah, while pro-Palestine hackers have reportedly placed militant demands and slogans on the Web-sites of Israel’s army, foreign ministry, and parliament. Likewise, Pakistani and Indian computer hackers have waged similar cyberbattles against opposing forces Web-sites in the bloody struggle over Kashmir, while rebel forces in the Philippines taunt government troops with cell-phone calls and messages and attack government Web-sites.
./english/380.txt:229: The Internet is thus a contested terrain, used by Left, Right, and Center to promote their own agendas and interests. The political battles of the future may well be fought in the streets, factories, parliaments, and other sites of past struggle, but politics is already mediated by broadcast, computer, and information technologies and will increasingly be so in the future. Those interested in the politics and culture of the future should therefore be clear on the important role of the new public spheres and intervene accordingly, while critical pedagogues have the responsibility of teaching students the skills that will enable them to participate in the politics and struggles of the present and future.
./english/380.txt:236: And so, to paraphrase Foucault, wherever there is globalization-from-above, globalization as the imposition of capitalist logic, there can be resistance and struggle. The possibilities of globalization-from-below result from transnational alliances between groups fighting for better wages and working conditions, social and political justice, environmental protection, and more democracy and freedom worldwide. In addition, a renewed emphasis on local and grassroots movements have put dominant economic forces on the defensive in their own backyard and often the broadcasting media or the Internet have called attention to oppressive and destructive corporate policies on the local level, putting national and even transnational pressure upon major corporations for reform. Moreover, proliferating media and the Internet make possible a greater circulation of struggles and the possibilities of new alliances and solidarities that can connect resistant forces who oppose capitalist and corporate-state elite forms of globalization-from-above (Dyer-Witheford 1999).
./english/380.txt:244: On a global terrain, Hardt and Negri (2000) have stressed the openings and possibilities for democratic transformative struggle within globalization, or what they call Empire. I am arguing that similar arguments can be made in which globalization is not conceived merely as the triumph of capitalism and democracy working together as it was in the classical theories of Milton Friedman or more recently in Francis Fukuyama. Nor should globalization be depicted solely as the triumph of capital as in many despairing anti-globalization theories. Rather, one should see that globalization unleashes conflicts between capitalism and democracy and in its restructuring processes creates new openings for struggle, resistance, and democratic transformation.
./english/380.txt:284: Hence, a critical theory of globalization presents globalization as a force of capitalism and democracy, as a set of forces imposed from above in conjunction with resistance from below. In this optic, globalization generates new conflicts, new struggles, and new crises, which in part can be seen as resistance to capitalist logic. In the light of the neo-liberal projects to dismantle the Welfare State, colonize the public sphere, and control globalization, it is up to citizens and activists to create new public spheres, politics, and pedagogies, and to use the new technologies to discuss what kinds of society people today want and to oppose the society against which people resist and struggle. This involves, minimally, demands for more education, health care, welfare, and benefits from the state, and to struggle to create a more democratic and egalitarian society. But one cannot expect that generous corporations and a beneficent state are going to make available to citizens the bounties and benefits of the globalized new information economy. Rather, it is up to individuals and groups to promote democratization and progressive social change.
./english/382.txt:11:Of course, the forum, in all its dizzying global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing the same direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the big certainly put its mark on the event.
./english/383.txt:18:Goldman, Michael (Ed.). 1998. Privatizing Nature: Political Struggles for the Global
./english/383.txt:21:widespread struggle to transform existing nature-society relations into ones that are nonexploitative,
./english/383.txt:138:becomes a 'struggle for survival'.
./english/385.txt:51:With mass protests planned for April 16-17 in Washington, D.C. at the meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the opportunity to build on the WTO victory shines brightly. More than ever, we need to work on our ignorance about global issues with study groups, youth workshops, conferences. We need to draw specific links between WTO and our close-to-home struggles in communities of color, as has been emphasized by Raj Jayadev and Lisa Juachon in The Silicon Valley Reader:
./english/386.txt:119:These struggles by and large have been reactive and defensive in nature against unemployment, job security and rapidly worsening social conditions around public sector undertaking facing disinvestment and the insurance and banking sectors. Defensive struggles while necessary in sustaining elementary living conditions against the onslaught of globalisation provide short term victories. The defence of these interests in the long run requires radical restructuring of the structures of world capitalism by uniting the toiling people with an internationalist program and united struggle. This calls for not only the re-orientation of strategies but more fundamentally the ideological and cultural education of toiling people in values of solidarity, co-operation and egalitarianism.
./english/386.txt:123:A major organisation at the forefront of the struggles against infiltration of Global capitalism was the Karnataka Rytha Rajya Sangha (KRRS). It became famous in the early nineties by its agitation against Kentucky Fried Chicken and against the attempt at gaining monopoly rights on seed and plant material by Transnational companies like Cargill. The farmers were outraged by the prospect of buying seeds every season from multinational seed companies. Methods of seed presevation integral to the farming experience and knowledge system of farmers since the time immemorial will be destroyed by this process.
./english/386.txt:129:The new policy will not only lead to the indiscriminate destruction of marine eco-system and erode livelihood of traditional fishing communities but will have serious ecological consequences of intensive mechanised fishing. National Fish Workers Forum (NFF) was in the forefront of the agitation taking on issues of survival of traditional fisherfolk, preservation of marine ecology for utilising it in a sustainable manner, banning of fish trawling during the monsoon months of breeding season. Opening up of waters of the Indian Exclusive Zone (EEZ) to joint venture to exploit the wealth in a indiscriminate way forced the fishworkers to launch major struggle on these issues nation-wide. Protests, blockades, demonstration and hunger strikes forced the central and state government to concede some of the demands. Notable among the gains were the cancellation of permits to foreign vessels under joint venture, denial of extension of existing licences and adopting of measures to preserve marine eco-system.
./english/386.txt:131:Privatisation has become another `mantra' in the globalised era by the ruling block expropriating large tracts of fertile agricultural land for shrimp aquaculture by larger corporate interests - prompted by rapid returns, short gestation periods, the immense demand abroad for shrimp - many corporate house undertook prawn farming in massive way causing ecological, social and economic destruction due to high rate of water usage, introduction of chemical input, salination of water, etc. The struggle by various organisation like Grama Swaraj Movement against globalised aquaculture resulted in the Supreme Court of India giving a verdict to close down commercial shrimp farms throughout the Indian coast. But the government is now contemplating ways to dilute the judgement.
./english/386.txt:133:As in the case of the fishworkers' movement, movements against export-oriented aquaculture also have formed a national network, People's Alliance against Shrimp Industry (PAASI) and they have also initiated joint activities with similar struggles in the third world. Attempts are also made to generate awareness among shrimp consumers in the West, according to Vandana Shiva.
./english/386.txt:137:Globalisation has been very rapid in Indian infrastructure sectors like power. Transnational corporations have been able to make great inroads into the power sector as exemplified by the Enron project in Maharashtra and the Cogentrix project in Karnataka. These mega power projects are also centres of people's resistance; the struggle against Enron being able to catch wide national attention. Apart from these there have been other struggles against TNCs like the one against DuPont in Goa.
./english/386.txt:143:Global capitalism is no longer identified with one country. It is a borderless global order with increasing de-nationalisation of the nation state. It is at work through the new liberalising disguise that has metamorphosed through the collusion of the ruling bloc and the agencies of global market. It cannot be resisted with isolated actions, confined to individual countries however militant the struggle may be.
./english/386.txt:147:The immediate struggles will have to focus on the questions of survival and sustenance; on economic and social rights, on human rights including the right to self-determination. Alongwith protecting the sovereignity of the state against force of international capitalism and compel the state to fulfil its obligation to the people, to provide them social security and welfare, to meet their minimum needs. Also prevent the state to fritter away our natural resources and our environment in the name of development to transnational or indigenous capital. The content cannot be exhausted by these immediate needs. A goal of a new universal culture and a new internationalism will be necessary components of the vision.
./english/386.txt:149:Alliance building and people's solidarity is a focal point for promoting movement for justice concerns and build-up people's resistance against the forces of globalisation across nations. This alliance should be based on people-to-people contacts rooted in a culture of friendship and partnership that transcends borders and sectoral and organisational concerns. This calls for an attitude to learn from each others struggles and strengthen the relationships and alliances already underway in our own societies. We are challenged to be open to other cultures and experiences in our efforts to link not just ideas but persons; to support and contribute rather than merely expect support; to give meaning to language and communication between peoples; and to be open to initiatives and alternatives coming from all levels.
./english/387.txt:9:I was invited to give one of the inaugural speeches at the Second Latin American Congress of Rural Organizations (Congreso Latinoamericano de Organizaciones del Campo, CLOC) that took place in Brazil November 3-7, 1997. There were approximately 350 delegates from practically every country in Latin America (only Uruguay and El Salvador were absent). The Congress marked a turning point in Latin American revolutionary politics as it signaled the revival and dynamic growth of popularly organized, independent struggles to overthrow the neo-liberal regimes and to create a humane and egalitarian alternative.
./english/387.txt:11:The growth of peasant-led mass opposition to neo-liberalism is uneven. In some countries like Brazil, where the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) represents hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, the rural movement provides leadership to the national struggle. In other countries like Chile, the farmworkers’ movement has not yet recovered from the savage repression of the Pinochet years and is a marginal force even at local levels. One of the key factors explaining the rising influence of peasant movements is their autonomy and independence from electoral parties and guerrilla “commanders” where they were merely “transmission belts” of policy.
./english/387.txt:21:In Bolivia, the peasants, particularly the coca growing ex-tin miners, have led the struggle in defense of national sovereignty and recently swept the elections with their own candidates in the Cochabamba area.
./english/387.txt:30:At the CLOC conference most of the delegates were between 20 and 30 years old. They were fresh from national and regional struggles. The historic first Latin American Assembly of Rural Women was held before the CLOC conference and attended by close to 100 delegates. Over 40 percent of the delegates to the CLOC meeting were peasant women, mostly in their 20s to early 30s. This was an extraordinary change: at the previous CLOC meeting 3 years earlier less than 10 percent of the delegates were women.
./english/387.txt:32:The younger delegates fortunately had not passed through the sectarian leftist wars of the 1960s or 1970s. Their support for the Cuban Revolution was based on its resistance to U.S. intervention and its progressive agrarian reform. Few, if any, took their “doctrinal cues” from Fidel Castro. They “incorporated” Che Guevara or Fidel Castro to particular national and social struggle. Hence the coca farmer delegate spoke of Che’s anti-imperialism in the struggle against U.S.-DEA eradication policies. Fidel Castro was cited as a forerunner of the Brazilian peasants struggle to occupy land and resist eviction. Thus there is neither repudiation or iconization of past revolutionaries.
./english/387.txt:49:The new militancy of peasant women was manifested in other instances. A delegate of the Cochabamba peasant movement described the struggle of the coca farmers against the U.S.-directed eradication campaign. “This year they have already assassinated several of our members and one of our leaders. We have resisted and will continue to resist. I am supporting my elderly mother and my only son on my four acres. We negotiated with the government a pact in exchange for the eradication of 7,000 acres of coca production the government promised to finance alternative economic activity, including a factory to employ the displaced farmers. We have reduced coca production by 3,000 acres but they have not even started to build the factory. They have tricked us again. Now they are threatening to send the military to massacre us and eradicate all our sacred lands and leave us in misery. I want to learn how to use a gun. Because I want to be able to be part of the armed resistance when the Army invades.”
./english/387.txt:69:NGOs create many problems for peasant struggles: the huge outside funding linked to pursuing policies compatible with the free market; the focus on local projects rather than structural changes (land reform); the emphasis on self-exploitation and survival strategies (self-help) instead of comprehensive, publicly funded health, education, and housing programs.
./english/387.txt:71:Peasant leaders and activists have described how the NGOs competed with peasant leaders, divided communities, and co-opted activists with their funds. A Brazilian activist told of efforts by the women of the MST to formulate a common strategy at a Latin American Meeting of Peasant Women. “We proposed a united strategy for agrarian reform, an active role in the leadership in the land occupation struggles and confrontation with the repressive role of the state. The meeting failed to come to an agreement,” she said, “because of the manipulative behavior of the NGO professional women, who wanted to control the agenda and limit it exclusively to international cooperation and to confine the struggle to exclusively feminist issues which meant no support for agrarian reform, anti-imperialism and anti-neo-liberalism.”
./english/387.txt:73:She went on to describe these feminist NGO professionals as “authoritarian and with a colonialist mentality; they have nobody behind them except their wealthy outside backers.” An Ecuadorean peasant leader commented, “I have no objection to overseas NGOs funding our land reform movement if that’s what they are willing to do. What is offensive is their setting down their priorities and funding professionals from our country to come in and undermine our struggles.”
./english/387.txt:80:The most promising aspect of the new peasant movements is their understanding of the limits of strictly “peasant movements” confined to rural struggles. All of the major peasant movements are making a concerted effort to build an urban base of support and to coordinate rural and urban struggles. In Ecuador, FENOC is involved in the struggle to elect a constitutional assembly, reflecting the interests of the urban and rural poor. The Paraguayan Peasant Federation has formed an Agrarian Reform Forum including students, professionals, and businesspeople. They have expanded their political horizons to oppose free market capitalism and the narco-capitalist elite. In Bolivia the coca farmers have formed a new electoral party, the Alliance for the Sovereignty of the People. It swept to victory in all the coca growing countries, gathering over 60 percent of the vote and electing Evo Morales to Congress.
./english/387.txt:82:In Brazil the MST has begun a systematic effort to organize the giant favelas or slum settlements that surround Sao Paulo, Rio, and other major cities. They have found great receptivity among the favelados, mainly because of their successful rural struggles and the fact that most favelados are recent emigrants from the countryside. The MST is not only focussing on immediate demands for land titles and infrastructure (lights, water, paved roads, public transport, etc.), but also on political education through leadership training schools and the development of an anti-capitalist perspective based on an understanding of the exploitative nature of financial and real estate capital. They hope to avoid the previous pattern where local leaders who led a courageous struggle, then got themselves elected to the City Council, and subsequently built electoral machines based on clientelistic politics.
./english/387.txt:84:The MST sees their urban organizing project as part of a national political struggle. To that end, they have formulated a program called “Project Brazil” which is based on a reversal of all the major free market counter-reforms: the re-nationalization of basic industries (petroleum, telecommunications, etc.), the socialization of the strategic heights of the economy—banking, foreign trade and an integral agrarian reform, which limits cheap exports and promotes linkages between cooperatives and industrial food processing plants.
./english/387.txt:86:Winning the cities is not an open road. There are obstacles: the urban middle class and even the trade unions still have a patronizing view of the peasantry. Today it is the rural workers who are challenging the traditional belief that the urban working class leaders are the designated vanguard of historical change. Today’s peasant leaders are looking for an alliance with urban workers, as well as the urban poor in the giant slums, but only on terms of a common program in which agrarian issues share center stage. The old style internationalism tied to a socialist fatherland has been replaced by a new voluntary, decentralized, consultative internationalism in which diverse cultures flourish and common struggles are being forged not by charismatic leaders but by the steady organizing and everyday heroism of peasant women and men traveling all day and all night to the villages of Guatemala, the highlands of Ecuador, the wide expanses of Brazil, teaching, learning and creating a new revolutionary politics of social liberation and spiritual fulfillment. Z
./english/388.txt:89:WF: I think it obvious when you’re here that people connect to Lula and that his election is something they see as being very positive. But I would be very cautious about reading too much into that. We can see the election of a president from one party at one specific time and then the election of one from an opposing party the next time. Lula’s election should give some inspiration, but the movement at the heart of the WSF should be seen as a long, ongoing, never-ending struggle. It is not as if somehow the election of Lula has made another world possible and changed things. I don’t think we would agree with that view. But clearly, it has fuelled the spirit of this particular WSF.
./english/392.txt:344:struggle over the past several decades (and even over the past century and
./english/392.txt:352:successful − and that draw critical lessons for the long and hard struggle that
./english/392.txt:356:activist understanding of these struggles and of the issues that face
./english/392.txt:367:labouring poor and in relation to their struggles for dwelling (or ’housing’) rights and then later, from the
./english/394.txt:199:therefore might be supporters of armed struggle, thereby allegedly contradicting the WSF’s Charter
./english/394.txt:315:17 International League for People’s Struggles (ILPS), World People’s Resistance Movement (WPRM), South
./english/394.txt:335:Samir Amin (Third World Forum), interviewed by V Sridhar, January 2003 – ‘For struggles, global and
./english/395.txt:18:worldwide franchising; and an increasing struggle for control of the Forum. In large part this is
./english/395.txt:75:where people can dream of other worlds, individually and collectively and struggle to forge ways of
./english/395.txt:162:level of meaning: along with the struggle that is still emerging across the globe against neoliberal
./english/395.txt:272:organising big events to one of joining the struggle for forging a new vocabulary and grammar of
./english/395.txt:346:Can the struggle against neoliberalism be won only by those — and we remain a minority — who
./english/395.txt:347:have already taken committed positions against it ? In this struggle, as in any other, is it not
./english/395.txt:351:And beyond this, is it not necessary in such struggle to also create opportunities to attempt
./english/395.txt:353:create, but as part of the larger struggle ? The question is not only of whether ‘adherence’ is
./english/395.txt:451:advance. Sections of the Dalit movement in India for example, have struggled hard to bring caste
./english/395.txt:586:the struggle and debate that continues and is sharpening in the Forum, regarding understanding the
./english/395.txt:618:relations and ‘property relations’ are different.45 And indeed, we need to struggle to conceive of and
./english/395.txt:624:structures of authentic representation. This history, and this process — the struggle — are of
./english/395.txt:674:the struggle for social expression, is itself a struggle against neoliberalism. But this does not take
./english/395.txt:692:struggle with this formula however, sometimes creatively. It has, for instance, come up with the
./english/395.txt:713:struggle for control over it as it spreads. This is as true of the European Social Forum as of the
./english/396.txt:272:(box) Marathon Strategy Links Women's Voices, Events & Struggles Worldwide
./english/396.txt:277:FIRE’s marathon disseminated voices of those women affected by unequal work conditions, and gave a voice to women who are engaged in the struggle against racims and other related forms of intolerance, and to women active in NGOs who work against these forms of discrimination. Likewise, the FIRE webcast offered media attention to related campaigns, pointed out the lack of presence of the mainstream media in supporting these actions, and focused on women’s voices and participation in the media worldwide.
./english/396.txt:696:(From Kenya): Dear María Suárez and all the women involved with FIRE, Just a quick note from FEMNET in Nairobi to wish you a happy 9th anniversary. The broadcasts of FIRE demonstrate so clearly the links of feminism with other liberation movements, and the increasing importance of making these links in these days and this context. Making those links begins with communications. And in this way, FIR serves as an inspiration to feminist communications groups around the world. We wish you well in your continued struggle and small and big successes! Warmest regards, Muthoni of Kenya.
./english/397.txt:56:Support has often been warmest from countries with the most repressive regimes. Several delegations have gone to Turkey, where union leaders and opposition activists are routinely killed. Turkish unions have pledged support. The Kurdish refugee community in Britain has sent groups with dancers to dockers’ demonstrations. Many are clothing workers whom the dockers have supported in their struggle against sweatshop conditions.
./english/397.txt:58:Hassan from the Iranian Refugee Workers Association says: ‘The dockers are part of our struggle and we are part of theirs. Despite the many divisions amongst Iranian groups, all of them in our organization, support any action that comes from them. They are always asking what’s happening to them and we listen to the voice of the dockers. We will not let them be forgotten.’
./english/398.txt:16:Questions about the role and relevance of trade unions to the anti-globalization movement came up several times with a delegate from the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU) saying that there was a tension between trade unions and global civil society groups evident at the WSF. 'Trade unions have been at the forefront of struggles against neo-liberal globalization on a day-to-day basis in many southern economies' he said calling upon the WSF to adopt a clearer stand on the issue.
./english/399.txt:171:"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal or constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."
./english/401.txt:74:The aspiration for multiculturalism and self-determination often takes the social form of a struggle for justice and citizenship. It involves the claims for alternative forms of law and justice and for new regimes of citizenship. The plurality of legal orders, which has become more visible with the crisis of the nation-state, carries with itself, either implicitly or explicitly, the idea of multiple citizenships coexisting in the same geopolitical field and, often, the idea of the existence of first, second, and third class citizens. However, non-state legal orders may also be the embryo of non-state public spheres and the institutional base for self-determination, as in the case of indigenous justice.
./english/401.txt:90:In the post-cold-war period and as a response to the more aggressive bouts of hegemonic globalization, new as yet very precarious forms of labor internationalism have emerged: the debate on labor standards; exchanges, agreements or even institutional congregation among labor unions of different countries integrating the same economic regional bloc (NAFTA, European Union, Mercosul); articulation among struggles, claims, and demands of the different labor unions representing the workers working for the same multinational corporation in different countries, etc.
./english/401.txt:138: Oliveira/The Internationale in Brazil. Although apparently addressed to the international and internationalism, this paper is primarily concerned with the past and present of the Brazilian trade union movement, particularly the long-central metalworking/auto workers unions, and particularly the process of struggle/negotiation with the state and employers as Brazilian industry reels under the violent effects of neo-liberalism on a world scale. Oliveira does, however, devote several pages to the past and present of Brazilian and autoworker internationalism. He identifies three phases: 1) the anarcho-syndicalist internationalism of the first generation of workers, brought to Southern Brazil by immigrants from Southern Europe; 2) the party internationalism of the Communists in the 1920s-30s, later opposed by US efforts at a pro-capitalist internationalism - both marginal to the national-populist unionism of dictator Getulio Vargas; 3) a factory-worker internationalism that began under the military dictatorship, as Brazil became a major metal/motor manufacturer, and counterpart unions - particularly in Europe - became interested in the increasingly militant unionism of the São Paulo ABC region.
./english/401.txt:150: Véras/Brazilian Metalworkers. This is another paper focused on the industrial and national struggles of Brazilian auto/metalworkers, and concerned with their efforts to re-assert themselves nationally in the face of a neo-liberal globalization that has profoundly changed the socio-political weight of the industrialized and unionized working class in that country. Véras concentrates on the mobilization of workers for a national-level collective contract for the auto sector in Brazil (see Oliveira above). He refers to the attempts to develop a union presence within the Mercosur and union activity in relation to the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA, see Mello e Silva above). He also mentions the activities of the CUT to create new alliances at local, national and international levels. The CUT has been active in relation to the environment, children's rights, citizenship and education, and against the neo-liberalism of the Cardoso government:
./english/401.txt:162:In terms of theoretical approach, Romero refers to literature not so much on class and unions as that on citizenship, representation and participation. He is, it seems, primarily interested in the establishment within Urabá, and more widely, of some meaningful kind of civil society, in which a life and death struggle - between traditional landholding and other elites and the insurrectionary left and the poor - is surpassed by social compromise and pacts (from the local to the international level), to the benefit of both sides. He also considers that this kind of settlement provides the necessary base for any emancipatory struggle.
./english/401.txt:167:Estanque reveals the dramatic historical development of contradictory class and communal relations that seem to have permitted this exception to the rule of national-industrial unionism in Portugal (as elsewhere!). Beginning as a region of pre-industrial shoe production, where the putting-out system was practiced alongside farming, the Sao João de Madeira (SJM) traders/capitalists were early involved with Brazil. As the area industrialized in the 20th century, it became highly dependent on export production, and Portugal itself the second-largest shoe exporting country in Europe. Most recently SJM footwear has found (or been given) its place as an unlabelled subcontractor to major North European multinationals. At the same time, whether under liberal or authoritarian national conditions, the region appears to have developed a sharp sense of local identity, through the paternalism of local entrepreneurs and/or autonomous associational self-activity. It has been involved in major historical class and democratic struggles, industrial and national. And, most recently, the union has had to juggle the tensions between 1) practical and effective defense/advance of member's immediate interests, and 2) those of a growing radical-democratic local, national, European and global community of which it considers itself to be a constituent part.
./english/401.txt:177: Dietrich and Nayak/Fishworkers in India. Focused on the non-industrial fisherpeople of Southern India, D&N reveal how their fate has been largely determined by the inter/national capitalist market and both Northern and Indian state development and/or modernization policies. Far from accepting this fate, however, fishworkers have been attempting, for 30 years or more, to organize themselves both for defense, within the existing structures, and processes and counter-assertion beyond such. Their struggles have been rich, complex and even contradictory, since they have had to come to terms with class identity/divisions, and with communal identities (ethnicity, caste, residence, religion). They have also had to negotiate with the local and national state apparatus, and with organizers/intellectuals from the church, parties, unions. In so far as Kerala has been a progressive state within India, and that unions of the left have a major presence there, the fishworkers have also had to confront the statist and developmentalist left:
./english/401.txt:179:The Left, while mildly supportive of the fishworkers struggle, had always considered artisanal fisheries a dying sector and, adhering to Lenin's insight that the Revolution consisted of electrification and workers councils, had never entered the ecology and energy questions in deeper ways.
./english/401.txt:185:The most crucial question seems to be how to valorize the contribution of the working class in the informal sector worldwide and to give it a unified voice. This voice has to have a feminist perspective, as the mass of women in the Third World or the Global South are working in the informal sector. From this point of view, the experience of the NFF [National Fishworkers Forum – PW] is encouraging, as its leadership has been willing to create space for a feminist perspective on fisheries and the women involved, despite much hardship, have also not given up on asserting themselves in a heavily male dominated environment. However, this alternate perspective on interaction with nature, energy use, subsistence production as base for extended production, production of life and livelihood as central concern, has not found support from any of the mainstream trade unions. This can be explained by the fact that organized trade unionism had its origin in the very concept of industrialism which has turned out to devastate the resource base. Organized labor has the same insensitivity to the informal sector and resource management as patriarchy has had towards women’s housework and other subsistence labor. Even in Seattle, the unions of the organized sector deflected the mass struggle against market fascism of the WTO by demanding that the WTO include the social clause [the inter/national union attempt to establish labor rights through the WTO – PW]. The position in India is that social clause must be separated from trade agreements.
./english/401.txt:191:At this point in history, where the power inequalities are so magnified, it is difficult to provide a clear cut, confident answer… At this stage, SIGTUR is attempting to formulate a minimalist program as the first building bloc in a struggle for social emancipation. This program will attempt clear alternatives with defined strategies in the following spheres: 1) lean production, casualization, outsourcing, and the relocation of production to union free zones; 2) The privatization of the state sector; 3) The WTO.
./english/401.txt:231:Véras: BrazilianMetalworkers' contract struggles Trade union Brazil National Urban industrial Labor studies,Critical globalization
./english/401.txt:262:It is no surprise that knowledge sources, rights or claims should remain un- addressed in these cases/studies, given that this aspect of emancipatory struggle is not only the newest but the furthest from traditional (not classical) labor concerns. The labor movement used to have its own knowledge – various socialist theories and ideologies – many addressed to the areas raised by the RSE Project. It also had its own means of knowledge-production and conservation – schools, papers, journals, colleges, archives. The shortcomings of the old theories, the collapse of Communist, Social-Democratic and Populist projects, and the frontal assault by (neo-)liberalism, seem to have provided the coup de grace to any independent notion of labor knowledge, to its classical values and to any self-confident identity. Whilst the contemporary movement might make gestures, or preserve rituals, referring to classical labor traditions, it can hardly be expected to be sensitive to new and unfamiliar issues, claims and challenges to raison du capital - positivist, instrumental, consumptionist, technocratic and possessive-individualist.
./english/402.txt:10:Amilcar Cabral, assassinated leader of anti-Portuguese struggle in colonial Africa, suggested that after independence there would occur the ‘suicide of the petty-bourgeoisie’. Nice idea, but no cigar! As the more-sceptical Frantz Fanon argued at the same time, the post-colonial elites were going to do everything they could to retain and increase their privileges. There are striking power/wealth differences between Forum participants, particularly visible in the case of the South. In two or three Latin American cases known to me, the poorer participants travelled by bus – this sometimes meaning a 4-5 day journey, with entry obstacles at various border-crossings. There is no reason to assume that any elite is suicidal (nor that I was going to abandon a hotel with hot and cold running internet) without irresistible pressure from outside or below. In so far, on the other hand, as the WSF elite has declared certain principles relating to liberty, equality, solidarity, pluralism, the respect of difference and the pursuit of happiness, then it might be possible to confront them (us) with the necessity of re-balancing the power equation. The elites could then put their efforts, in their home states/constituencies into facilitating rather than dominating or controlling the Forum process.
./english/402.txt:52:For the rest, I am inspired by: energetic and innovative social protest, and original analyses of the local-national-global dialectic in Argentina; by the belated appearance in Peru of a network, Raiz/Root, which clearly has some feeling that the WSF is more than an NGO jamboree; by the Kidz in the Kamp who were discussing under a tree, and with informal translation, how to ensure that the emancipatory and critical forces had more impact on the Forum process; by the struggle, against all odds, of the US Znet people to mount ‘Life after Capitalism’, an event of post-capitalist propuesta within the Forum; by the increasing number of compañer@s, of various ages, identities, movements and sexual orientations, who believe that, in the construction of a meaningfully civil global society, transparency is not only the best policy but the right one.
./english/403.txt:7:Mass actions by networks that identify themselves as anti-capitalist have prompted both extensive mainstream media coverage and broad public interest in recent years. Nor has all of this attention been drowned out by what Matthew Fuller (2002) calls the current ‘war over the monopoly on terror’. As is proper, the anti-capitalist potential (or otherwise) of such movements has been widely debated. Amongst other things, this have involved assessment of their engagement (or otherwise) with contemporary class composition, and the risks within many of them of particular understandings of political practice: above all, the ‘activist’ syndrome (see, amongst others, Aufheben 2002; RTS 1999). Even making sense of the terrain and parameters of these movements is not always an easy task. Whilst formally constituted organisations play an integral part within them, in certain cases these movements’ experience of ‘"organising" may not take the form of "organizations" but of an ebb or flow of contact at myriad points’. Indeed, some have argued that their very confluence may lend a number of today’s movements an anti-systemic edge, to the point where ‘current struggles for particular changes are linking up into a collaboration whose impact may wind up being much larger than the sum of the individual influences’ (Cleaver 1999).
./english/403.txt:9:An earlier article by Harry Cleaver (1993) points out that a primary means by which movements against capital communicate within and amongst themselves is through the circulation of struggle. By this term he understands
./english/403.txt:11:the fabrication and utilization of material connections and communications that destroy isolation and permit people to struggle in complementary ways — both against the constraints which limit them and for the alternatives they construct, separately and together (see also the interview with Cleaver in De Angelis 1993).
./english/403.txt:13:Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2000) state in their book Empire that one of the most distinctive aspects of the anti-systemic movements in the decade before the Seattle days of 1999 was their inability to establish such a circulation of struggle. From Tianamen onwards, social movements emerged in dramatic circumstances while ‘fail[ing] to communicate to other contexts’. This, Negri and Hardt contend, was due to the absence firstly of ‘a recognition of a common enemy against which the struggles are directed’, and secondly of a ‘common language of struggles that could "translate" the particular language of each into a cosmopolitan language’ (Hardt & Negri 2000: 54, 56, 57). Only with Seattle, Negri has since asserted, has a new cycle of struggle truly emerged, albeit one different in nature to that captured in Marx’s metaphor of the ‘old mole’ (Cocco & Lazzarato 2002).
./english/403.txt:15:In reality, the picture is not nearly as simple as the one painted in Empire; indeed, in one important case — that of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas — Hardt and Negri are completely mistaken (Cox 2001; Dyer-Witheford 2001). In part, this inability to pay full heed to the communication between anti-systemic movements before the events of Seattle 1999 may well stem from an undue emphasis placed upon the most spectacular, visible aspects of the circulation of struggle. Criticising Negri on this score, Sergio Bologna has argued that
./english/403.txt:33:While still modest in scope, movement media has been on the rise in many places over the past few years, in many cases building upon an already existing undergrowth of communication channels, from print to radio (Downing 1984). Nonetheless, opinions differ as to the moment when computer-mediated communication became fundamental for global social movement activities. Cleaver (1997, 1998, 1999) has both written eloquently of the ‘electronic fabric of struggle’ woven around the Zapatistas, while himself playing a pivotal role in establishing and maintaining that fabric. Peter Waterman (1992) and Eric Lee (2000) have traced the online activities during the eighties of rank-and-file and dissident union members in the West, as well as those of ‘official’ unions, while others (Frederick 1993, Myers 1998) have sketched out the development of organisations such as the Association of Progressive Communication in the years before the Internet was opened up to a mass audience beyond US defence and academic circles.
./english/403.txt:55:Abstractly this is fine, but it begs essential questions: what is to be communicated, by whom to whom? In the "information age," it is all too easy to be deluged with information. This is not helpful unless the information is well organized for some use — which only raises the question, who will organize the information? The EZLN and its supporters have been marvellously inventive in using networks, but multiply Chiapas by even 10, never mind the thousands needed: how many channels can the mind consider? This is not the individual's problem. Sorting information requires political collectivity. It implies calculated division of labor and aspects of centralization: someone else will decide for you (presumably with your consent) what reaches you and what is the most important information. It also poses the related problem: what struggles deserve what attention, and who decides?
./english/403.txt:89:Another relevant point concerns the possibility of a ‘cosmopolitan language’ (Hardt & Negri 2000) able to facilitate the circulation of struggles between social movements. How might such an entity be formed? And can such a project begin without wrestling with the problem of translation, and all that this implies for the generation of information and knowledge? (Day 1994) For as Walter Benjamin (1969: 69) pointed out long ago, ‘any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information — hence, something inessential’.
./english/403.txt:91:This touches in turn upon some arguments raised in an interview that Anita Lacey and I recently conducted with another Melbourne comrade, as part of a small, ongoing enquiry into the use of information and ICT in local anti-capitalist politics. Active in a network that seeks to open up space for an ongoing dialogue between environmental and workplace activists, Colin defined useful information as ‘what can facilitate the process of building bridges and crossing borders’. Sceptical of the notion that trust — ‘the most important question’ — could be established ‘through the screen’, his biggest concern was that the enormous quantities of information available online may blind us to the knowledge and wisdom available from face-to-face encounters with those who have experienced and learned from earlier struggles against capital and the state.
./english/403.txt:119:Cleaver, H. (1998) ‘The Zapatistas and the International Circulation of Struggle: Lessons Suggested and Problems Raised’, http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/lessons.html, accessed 26 July 2001.
./english/405.txt:24:If the idea of social emancipation has leapt from the respectable shelves of history into the carnival of social movements, it is because it is free from what linked it to the world of the dead. A new transformative project is needed to face capitalism of the 21st century. This is why the movement cannot be sustained by old answers ? failed answers -, answers that were given during past phases of the struggle.
./english/405.txt:33:The new political culture tends to reject any attempts of creating hierarchy (that contest equality) or uniformity (that violate diversity) both directions that set it apart from capitalism and the ideas that come from the old forms of struggle against it. There are no "historic" social categories that are more capable than others to lead the world transformation. There are no campaigns that are a priori, more relevant than others. There are no directions ? either academic, or from political parties ? that are legitimised to define such campaigns in our names, outside our dialogue spaces.
./english/408.txt:14:A related issue concerned the participation of NGOs in the WSF. Relatively uncontroversial in Brazil, this was hotly contested in India where much of the left have developed a fierce critique of the NGOs for creaming off activists into well-paid bureaucratic jobs and confining the movements they back to relatively narrow issues. This critique - plus the WSFs exclusion of armed struggle groups (some M-L organizations are still involved in guerrilla campaigns in some regions of rural India) - was used to justify the organization of two rival forums, one of which (Mumbai Resistance 2004) took place at the same time as the WSF. It was a flop, attracting a few thousand compared to the 100,000 who thronged the WSF - yet more evidence that cultivating revolutionary purity for its own sake merely isolates you from those whose interests you claim to represent.
./english/416.txt:17:Related to the practical consequences of the "War on Terror" we should put in the centre of our political activities during the coming period the efforts of the Turkish state to apply its terrorist laws and methods inside and outside of Turkey. The new law was applied in the persecution of Turkish trade-unionists and anti-imperialist organizations and at least the relating methods also against the struggle of the Kurdish people for self-determination. In parallel efforts the EU and some European countries helped Turkey by banning these organizations and putting them on the EU Black Lists.
./english/417.txt:173:ESF’s are important to strengthen the local/national movements in their struggles for rights.
./english/417.txt:184:ESF’s are useful for Europe and the specific national struggles if new convergences and po-
./english/417.txt:189:-> The Forum will be lost if there are struggles over hegemony – the Forum does not belong
./english/417.txt:190:to anybody! However, we need to accept (and work with) the problem of these struggles
./english/417.txt:312: The Forum will be lost if there are struggles over hegemony – the Forum does not be-
./english/417.txt:315: struggles within the Forum. The (enforcement of the) Charta of principles as well as
./english/419.txt:28:IM. 8. What is the role of the assembly of social movements : what’s the link with the struggles in different countries, how to improve the visibility of an European strength? Why the actions decided aren’t carried on? Do we need more flexibility? What about its representativity as some org.s participating in the ESF don’t recognize the Assembly of Social Movements as the place where having political discussions and co-ordinating decisions?
./english/472.txt:21:The WSF is self-limiting; its charter, adopted at the first forum in Porto Alegre, explicitly excludes political parties and forswears taking political positions or proposing actions.4 It is a space, not an actor: it opens its agenda to all the forces wanting to discuss the issues relevant to the struggle for a better world.
./english/472.txt:48:After the 2003 Social Forum, many of those who had celebrated it for the first two years began to complain that the WSF was not living up to its promise to serve as a model of democratic organization. Indeed, the forum now contends with four big issues of internal debate: internal democracy, political action, global vs. local struggles and class inequality. The first two issues have been debated extensively in the forum’s councils and on the Internet. The latter two have not been so openly recognized.
./english/472.txt:62:Here is a key dilemma: how can the forum’s base act globally when it is so deliberately diverse and the priority of most participants is with their local and sectoral concerns? At the forum they discover that the problems are worldwide and learn about new ways to act locally, but they do not learn to confront the problems on a global scale. They believe that all their efforts will collectively add up to a global solution, but others argue that only a targeted struggle has any chance of success.
./english/473.txt:20:It doesn't take much imagination to foresee a situation where the global social-justice movement spends all its time arguing about how to phrase joint statements. As if the world needed yet another arena for internal power struggles and empty words in place of direct action. Consensus language could also easily provoke more wrath of the type offered by Fred Halliday in the Observer in the aftermath of the 2005 forum.
./english/473.txt:31:This struggle between governments, parties, and WSF organisers is inevitable. From Porto Alegre to Recife to Caracas, it is impossible to organise a Forum without the support of local government. "They always try to interfere," says Whitaker, adding that it is ultimately up to the local organisers of any event to stand their ground against interference with the programme. "If they don't say no they will be manipulated," he said, "I hope this is not the case of the organisers in Caracas."
./english/500.txt:46:She stressed that local grassroots groups in the struggle -- the displaced and the dispossessed -- should be in the frontline of the global movement. ''They have to be the leaders and play a prominent role.''
./english/502.txt:24:If the idea of social emancipation has leapt from the respectable shelves of history into the carnival of social movements, it is because it is free from what linked it to the world of the dead. A new transformative project is needed to face capitalism of the 21st century. This is why the movement cannot be sustained by old answers ? failed answers -, answers that were given during past phases of the struggle.
./english/502.txt:33:The new political culture tends to reject any attempts of creating hierarchy (that contest equality) or uniformity (that violate diversity) both directions that set it apart from capitalism and the ideas that come from the old forms of struggle against it. There are no "historic" social categories that are more capable than others to lead the world transformation. There are no campaigns that are a priori, more relevant than others. There are no directions ? either academic, or from political parties ? that are legitimised to define such campaigns in our names, outside our dialogue spaces.
./english/510.txt:28:The main dynamic that characterizes the Forum, as an open place of exchange, is the invitation to replace quarrels by the power of listening. We can then move towards fertile dialogue that can lead to the discovery of points of convergence and to the establishment of new alliances within this society. That way, we can launch new initiatives of struggle and transformation at the local, regional, or global level.
./english/512.txt:10:This is evidence of the increasing assimilation of the way of doing politics that is written into the WSF Charter of Principles: by horizontal action in networks, without internal struggles for hegemony, making room for civil society to emerge as a new political actor, autonomous of parties and governments.
./english/512.txt:26:At WSF International Council meetings the proposal very often comes up to bring the Forums to focus on just one of these sores – war, for example. The concern is to be more effective by concentrating efforts and reducing the extent and variety of the struggles that can be discussed – and turned into plans of action – at the Forums.
./english/512.txt:28:This proposal however corresponds to a way of doing politics that is different from what is experienced at the WSF as an “open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action” (2), according to the specific nature of each struggle and the type of action of each leading participant.
./english/512.txt:33:The two challenges that come from outside result from the action of governments and parties. Continuing with the political struggle in the same way as it has always been pursued, they find it hard to understand – and therefore to accept – what the WSF intends. This difficulty shows up clearly in the way parties and governments – and with them, international intergovernmental organizations – very often seek to associate themselves with the Forums. The WSF Charter of Principles establishes that they may not organise activities at the Forums, although they may take part at the invitation of participants, in activities that those participants organise (on the self-organised basis of the Forums).
./english/512.txt:54:The problem here lies in accepting innovations in the practices of those engaged in the struggle against neoliberalism. As occurs with any cultural change, this is a recurrent difficulty on the WSF International Council and on the various organising bodies.
./english/512.txt:56:It results from the enormous weight of the conception according to which all and any political struggle must have leaders or vanguards to mobilize the militants and direct the action. When that combines with the authoritarianism fostered by capitalism and which marks many positions, including those of the left, it leads to struggles for hegemony over leadership of what action is actually to be taken. This is expressed in permanent competition for power among the forces that oppose the dominance of capitalism, meaning that the prevailing logic is one of dispute rather than mutual openness, and space is opened up for all kinds of anti-democratic manoeuvrings and coups to gain terrain.
./english/512.txt:58:The first of these challenges arises out of the actions of those who are being called “intellectuals”, and who are invited to conferences and debates; the second stems from the so-called Assembly of Social Movements, which, at the close of the Forums, puts out appeals for mobilization in the struggle against neoliberalism and at times holds demonstrations that make its presence and strength more visible.
./english/512.txt:65:A the Bamako Forum, there was an attempt to do something similar to the “Manifesto” launched at Porto Alegre in 2005 by 19 leading figures, in an endeavour to bring all the proposals and struggles that emerge at the Forums together around certain main themes. This time, the effort was directed to relaunching the coalition of the “non-aligned” countries of the 1955 Bandung Conference, now that it is commemorating its fiftieth anniversary. An international seminar, held the day before the Bamako Fórum began, featuring leading figures from intellectual circles and the anti-imperialist struggle, sought to present itself as an opening ceremony of the Forum – as a prior orientation for the discussions that would be held there.
./english/512.txt:69:The Bandung Conference, in the struggle for economic and political independence for Third World countries, was a conference of heads of state, not of peoples – even though the former may present themselves as representatives of the latter. Its proposal thus presupposes that everything depends on governments, and that real action for change depends on taking political power. Now that is a hotly debated issue in the WSF process, which is a space for peoples to interrelate through their organisations. In that respect, the initiative taken at Bamako adds to one of the challenges coming from outside the Forum, that is, the endeavour to increase governments’ presence in its actions. Caracas offered na unparalleled opportunity to gain a vigorous ally: President Chavez, who is notorious combatant in the anti-imperialist cause, and presented by some at “the leader we were needing”.
./english/513.txt:8:The Forum was born robust, heir of historical struggles while combing new, emerging and fertile ideas, critical thinking, proposals and actions for change. By being an original, heterogeneous world-wide open space, the Forum had the virtue of enabling a great confluence and of encouraging the re-emergence of a collective awareness that changes are possible and viable, so setting off a process of inexhaustible transforming potential. Its ebullient rhythm has been such that the abundant initiatives, ideas and proposals seen over these past five, short years have produced enough material for hundreds of debates.
./english/513.txt:16:This issue is precisely one of the vital issues of debate on the Forum’s future, and is inextricably linked to its original goal of fighting neo-liberal globalisation and attempts to consolidate that struggle.
./english/513.txt:20:The Forum’s origin is undoubtedly the cause of justice, both existing and urgently pending: peoples’ struggles and those of the excluded and victims of discrimination, the defenders of integral world views, intellectuals, alternative media, and a broad combination of all those who adhere to the Forum’s principles of change. However, their potential can’t be seen solely from a mathematical viewpoint; adding is important but much more so is coming together, the convergence of proposals and actions, enriching everyday language with symbols and practices, and drawing up concrete agendas which reflect their collective hopes.
./english/513.txt:22:Yet, what are their ideas for change? They are many and diverse, their point of convergence is the struggle against the Neo-liberal model, to build that Other Possible World, imagined as inclusive, egalitarian and based on solidarity. For this very reason, the Forum – conceived of as an open space where social movements, initiatives, proposals, networks, organisations and individuals all come together – now sets out to face the challenge of debating the different possible ways of doing things, of conceiving actions and ensuring that changes are possible.
./english/513.txt:31:common struggles, of inter-related causes, which find expression in specific moments and contexts.
./english/513.txt:33:There are also those who see it as both a starting and an arrival point for developing a process of struggle that is clearly defined by a concrete agenda of struggle against capitalism.
./english/513.txt:39:Can the Forum collectively define common world gatherings or rallying points in order to enable the struggles taking place everywhere to express themselves in one or more key moments, and so achieve greater impact? Can it provide a focus for a common agenda and calls that inter-relate the multiple, inter-related resistances/struggles to the different sources of oppression within the system? Can the Forum’s agenda prioritise vital issues such as dignity, sovereignty, justice and peace? Common sense says so; the political significance of the agenda of struggle against the model also says so, and in fact it is already happening, but these issues still don’t form part of its explicit aims.
./english/513.txt:46:In fact, within the rhythms of the Forum, there is the time-frame of the events, that of struggles, of practices and of debates, which are all inter-related. The challenge lies in how to combine the timing of the processes of struggle with that of the Forum events; in how to avoid an imbalance, where the timing of the events affects that of struggles. On the contrary, they should contribute to strengthening them, taking into account that they have their own specific terrain and agendas.
./english/513.txt:48:The different social movements that actively participate in the Forum have been proposing for some time the idea that its timing shouldn’t contradict that of the movements’ struggles and actions, rhythms and potential, including the economic situation of the most excluded. The situation of the Vía Campesina International Peasant Movement, one of the world’s most important movements, illustrates the point. For example, the most important events on its agenda over the past few months were marked by an important mobilisation against the WTO in Hong Kong last December, which was followed immediately by two polycentric forums held in two different continents in January. This raises a number of questions, one of which is how to ensure that these struggles become an open space within the Forum’s collective timing.
./english/513.txt:65:The Forum is undoubtedly the largest planetary initiative, bringing together citizens, in history. Its accumulated experience is benefited by the wealth of an important trajectory of struggles and resistance to old and new forms of domination; its heritage of critical thought, alternatives and visions of change are an inexhaustible source of proposals and actions; its participatory, pluralistic and diverse character is the terrain for building new democratic practices. In sum, in its short life the Forum has begun a wide-ranging process of opening up possibilities for struggle against the development model. Its growth now implies the need to invent strategies to politically organise resistance to the model and to do so, from a pluralist and diverse prospect of hope, that the Forum awakened on a planetary scale when it affirmed that “Another World is Possible”.
./english/519.txt:12:But this must not neglect neither the globalizing project’s legitimacy crisis before important sectors of the world population, nor the existence of a movement which is capable of maintaining a dia-logue with different worldwide leftist components seeking through struggles and initiatives, to build a different world – in this sense, the World Social Forum in more than five years of existence, is al-ready being successful. Nowadays, the ones who oppose themselves to the system have a place where they can move; a growing audience listening to their ideas and they are starting to test their different proposals for changes.
./english/519.txt:16:In Europe, the defeat of the European Constitution proposal in referendums in France and Holland represents an important obstacle for the Maastricht project’s fulfillment, because a political renewal would be given to the neo liberal construction of the European Union as a big market, a problem to which, up to now, there is no solution – with the poor youth protesting in France showing the latent risks contained in the present path. In the United States, in spite of the repressive and defensive con-text, many important social mobilizations have recovered themselves, such as the transportation strike in New York. The same is happening with political struggles, particularly within peaceful movements and movements for the withdrawal in Iraq. However, the predominance of a very con-servative political atmosphere remains within central capitalist countries (including Japan, Australia and Canada) and within the great performers of the global system (Russia, China, and, to a certain extent, India).
./english/519.txt:42:The WSF has shown itself very efficient in giving impulse to the left wing’s political struggle in the beginning of this century. Innumerous declarations, platforms and calls have been coming out of the process’ events and have been fundamental to organize from the referendum on the FTTA in Brazil to the protests against the invasion of Iraq on February 15th, 2003. In each forum, social movements network meetings agree on an agenda for global mobiliza-tions, which is reference to thousands of movements and organizations. Declarations such as the “World Charter on the Rights to the City” have been produced in many forums. During the Caracas Forum, de declaration “Another integration, urgent, possible and necessary” was made. The “Ba-mako Call”, written in a seminar that took place one day before the Forum, is an important refer-ence to our days, assembling much of what the WSF has produced up to now. Some examples of “conclusions” produced “during the Forums” could be multiplied infinitely, and many would point out its efficiency as an impelling force to the organization of initiatives which are central to the left-ist movement nowadays.
./english/519.txt:44:But, in spite of all these evidences showing the WSF’s efficiency, some still insist that if the Forum does not undertake resolutions, declarations or platforms, it will “end up being a fair”. Therefore, this insistence seems to rely less on what is made explicit within the discourse (how to organize the struggles better) and more on acting methods and political culture conceptions, to rely on what should be the model of organization for the political action adopted by us. This discussion needs to be done without ambiguities.
./english/519.txt:48:The global movement in which the Forum’s existence is based on has brought to us three important lessons: it demonstrates the efficiency of network-like organization to articulate current struggles (which opposes itself to pyramidal structures, which are conservative and bureaucratic); the revalue of internationalism within the left; and valuing pluralism within social and political composition of any emancipation project without establishing hierarchy among its components. The Forum-like format (open-space, self-organized, structured in network and non-decision making) copes with these challenges and must be defended against any kind of past “international directions” nostalgia.
./english/519.txt:50:Some IC members see the WSF as a possible new historical subject of the 21st century’s struggle for emancipation. They think of its constitution as a similar one to the 20th century’s internationals. But the subjects (plural) of contemporary people’s struggle have already shown themselves at the WSF, uniting in a flexible manner, up to the extent in which their political understanding points to this direction. Institutionalizing the WSF as “the” subject, allowing the space to debate and articu-late in overlap with its actors, would prevent these subjects from developing, whereas these subjects should be strengthened, by getting closer to a wider number of struggles and regional, national and local movements.
./english/519.txt:57:At the Mumbai Forum, during a panel about the WSF’s future, Sohi Jeon already warned us about the fundamental implications of this: the Forum process must incorporate the big protagonists from popular struggles in regional, national and local levels, which is the only way for us to keep grow-ing and strengthening, which is also the only way of condensing sets of networks that compose the global movement and the WSF process. Our concern regarding this topic was reflected in the last Porto Alegre Forum, in which we adopted the methodology of stimulating the convergence of themes and struggles, increasing initiatives of dialogues and meetings among different actors.
./english/519.txt:59:This year’s polycentric process surely enables an enlargement in the WSF’s horizontal relation with some regional and national processes – in Bamako and Caracas this was clear and we hope that the same occurs in other stages of the process (Karachi, Athens, Bangkok, and for us in Brazil, Recife). We also have to evaluate the methodology’s efficiency within these events and verify if the worries that have guided us in Porto Alegre 2005 are being properly contemplated. But for the 7th WSF in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007, we must fundamentally build a participative process for the event‘s preparation, a methodology and a communication process that enables global connections of the processes, which at this moment are relatively dispersed – and this in a bigger qualitative scale than has ever been done in any WSF process’ events. But always keeping in mind that the Forum does not substitute social movements nor any kind of struggle, on the contrary, it is an instrument to assist them.
./english/519.txt:65:In the last period, this attempt of linking the Forum and some left sectors received a new impulse because of the situation present in Latin América with the new left parties or left-origin parties gov-ernments. It produced a renewal of nationalizing temptations, reinforced by the strengthening of the sectors with government resources access. The frustration with PT and Lula’s government moved tendencies in the region towards Chavez government, which has been leading important social changes and anti-imperialist struggles. It is essential to the global movement and to the WSF proc-ess to dialogue with all the positive experiences in the anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist struggles in progress. The choice of Caracas to host one of the events of the policentric process refelcted the recognition of Bolivarian Revolution’s positive role.
./english/519.txt:69:In the article “WSF: from resistance to the struggle for a post-neoliberal world or retrogression”, written by Emir Sader a little before the Caracas Forum, he says: “The WSF leaves the neo liberal-ism resistance stage and starts to participate actively in the fight for ‘another possible world’ or it will be doomed to retrogression. Taking place in Venezuela, it is an excellent opportunity for the WSF to take this step further. If it gets out of this event undamaged, recovering the same previous speech, without having learned from the extraordinary conquers and warnings that Caribbean and Latin America offered, it will condemn itself to be in the margin of the big battles that are in pro-gress now against the imperial hegemony and neo liberalism in the world”.
./english/519.txt:71:This quote may give rise to various criticism, regarding topics that go from “denying” the fact that the Forum has actively participated in the fight for ‘another possible world’ (as a space) and it was an important agent in the global ideology struggle for revaluing leftist projects, up to its “ultimate” character as if it was the last chance to correct a mistake, which would be producing its current marginality. We may also think about it as nostalgia of a past in which there were countries whose governments represented international tendencies of the socialist movement. Moscow, Belgrade, Beijing, Havana, Tirana and even Pyongyang were already presented as the ones which would lead socialism to victory — geopolitical determinations that specific sectors have tried to turn into politi-cal imperatives.
./english/519.txt:77:Agreeing or disagreeing with Holloway’s ideas (I am among those who disagree with the argument that it is possible to change the world without “undertaking” the power), each socialist movement experience has been reinforcing the idea that parties and governments, even the most progressives, exist within places of dispute which normally leads them to relate themselves with the various forces in a “friend” and “enemy” logic. Using power to induce changes, or simply adapting them-selves to the current order looking for self-benefit, this logic has a destructive dimension in the popular protagonism and in long-lasting participatory democracy process. In the other hand, the so-cial movements performance is based on the coherence of struggles for the multiple interests and causes of more plural civil societies.
./english/519.txt:81:After the polycentric process, Nairobi 2007 will face the challenge of putting in perspectives different experiences of the global movement. The VII will be a moment to dialogue with the African dramatic reality, to learn from its struggles and enrich the movement against neo-liberal globalisation and imperialism.
./english/519.txt:87:- making the event’s methodology and more suitable to the convergence of struggles, cam-paigns and mobilizations, deepening the experiences from Porto Alegre 2005;
./english/519.txt:89:- building more efficient and formal ways of dialogue with the parties and governments committed to the struggle for another world;
./english/522.txt:28:Second element of success, diverse popular movements effectively appropriate the democratic and secular space opened by the forum: small fishers from the Karachi region; peasants from the province of Punjab; trades unionists in struggle against privatisation; nationalists from Sind (where Karachi is located), Baluchistan (in the west) or Kashmir (in the north); and a myriad of women’s organisations. As at the WSF in Mumbai, in January 2004, the movements were participants as such in the forum, impelling the space, more than is often the case in Europe or in Latin America. The WSF in Karachi thoroughly merited the name of social forum. It expressed the radicalism of democratic and social demands.
./english/522.txt:59:Of course, each forum has its own characteristics and functions. But the form “forum/process”, “meeting space/place of impulsion of actions” clearly responds to needs linked to the period and not only to a specific political geography. We already knew it, but this is a confirmation of it. The forums allow the rallying of resistance (in its diversity) in a time of globalisation, when the crisis of the socialist reference has not been overcome and the modes of centralisation of the past period (around the workers’ movement or armed struggles) do not work as before.
./english/522.txt:61:2. The significance of the Pakistani experience. The Karachi forum illustrates this first point of conclusion. The political situation in the country is not good. There are key struggles, sometimes victorious, but the trade union and social movement remains fragmented and globally weak. The country is extremely divided. Social structures are often very different according to province, or even inside the same province like the Punjab. The whole history of the Pakistani state since its formation in 1947 is traversed by conflicts between the elites of “ethnic” groups and provinces for the control of the administration and the army (which are dominated by the Punjabis, but also the Mohajirs). Regional or national conflicts are numerous (Baluchis, Pashtoons, Kashmiris, Sindhis and so on) and can lead to internal wars. Statistics show 97% of Pakistan’s population are Muslims, with all the ambiguity linked to the use of categories of religious (or cultural?) appearance against a complex social reality (don’t doubt it, there are Pakistani atheists). But we have seen the multiplicity (Sunni, Shiite, Ahmadiyya, Sufis and so on) and the violence that this “unanimous” percentage hides.
./english/524.txt:14:Based on the experiences in Mali, polycentrism appears to be a good idea: it was Africans themselves who determined the agenda and were seeking appealing responses. Of course, the jargon that is so typical of the struggle against “neo-liberalism” was voiced here as well as the anger about political leaders with enormous foreign bank accounts. But much more striking was the way in which from within the continent itself, a quest for a vision on Africa’s future was clear. Pan-Africanism had returned: one radio MTV station for the whole of Africa; complete economic integration; and railway lines that would run right through and over the whole continent. The forum itself however, was a living testimony of the necessity to transcend the frontiers drawn by colonialism. Of the people who had registered from Eastern and Southern Africa only few actually appeared. In francophone Mali, it was the Malians who dominated together with other francophonians.
./english/524.txt:17:Debt cancellation and a call for a forceful response to shameless robbery in the exploitation of Africa’s natural wealth (“how is it possible that we who possess the biggest natural wealth on the whole earth are the poorest continent at the same time?” a participant wondered). There was an appeal to develop Africa’s full potential, taking as a basis precisely those youth who are now looking for possibilities elsewhere due to lack of work. A primary issue then is education – “Eduquer ou périr” (educate or perish) the African philosopher Ki Zerbo said already fifty years ago – but directly connected with work. This implies changes in the political, economic, and socio-cultural environment. Remarkably, participants did not just see African culture as a good thing but also as an impediment for initiatives coming from people themselves. The individual deserves respect, not just as a member of a group, but also based on her own values and dignity. Organizations for human rights implementation are active all over the continent, also precisely in the struggle against poverty.
./english/529.txt:22:The overwhelming feeling of solidarity which pervaded the whole event, was especially important given the context in which it was held, -the extremely precarious and divisive Pakistani political situation. For Pakistanis to meet so many fellow actists was more important than the big picture discussion. Although some people might believe the pipe dream that what ails Pakistan, -multiple independence struggles, environmental and natural catastrophe, widespread poverty and illiteracy, and the leadership of an unelected, uniformed USA-Puppet general commanding a military junta can be solved within any existing democratic process they are wasting irreplaceable time. It’s abundantely clear that no politics can deal with, or is even recognizing what will happen to Pakistan’s, or any other economy in the world, once the price of fuel, doubles, triples or quadruples, as it may well do this very year There is no political system in the world that can deal with this, nor have any even begun to consider it.
./english/532.txt:17:freedom of movement and freedom of communication [...] the everyday struggles of millions of people crossing borders as well as pirating brands, producing generics, writing open source code or using p2p-software.[6]
./english/532.txt:31:In the social movement thus defined, openness is clearly becoming a constitutive organising principle, as it connects with the hopes and desires circulating around the idea of the ‘multitude’, a term whose post-Spinozan renaissance has been secured by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Empire. The multitude is a defiantly heterogeneous figure, a collective noun intended to counter the homogenising violence of terms such as ‘the people’ or ‘the mass’. For many thinkers in the post-Autonomist tradition, this multitude is a way of conceiving the revolutionary potential of a new ‘post-Fordist proletariat’ of networked immaterial labourers. In certain circuits within the social movement, pace Schneider and Lovink, FLOSS organisation is seen as the techno-social precondition of a radical democracy in becoming. However tenuous this assemblage may be, it goes some way to explaining the way in which FLOSS and openness have become quite central rhetorical terms in the struggle to produce an identity for the networked, anti-capitalist movement. But it is also true that certain characteristics of the idea of openness have genuine organisational influence within the movement. A study of openness in this context is useful in three degrees: first, to the social movement itself ‘internally’; second, to ‘outsiders’ wanting to gain a good understanding of ‘what it is’; third as a critique of those who would seek to represent the movement with, or attempt to manipulate it through, a particular deployment of the idea of openness.
./english/532.txt:58:a fluid network for communication and co-ordination between diverse social movements who share a loose set of principles or ‘hallmarks’ [...] Since February 1998 [...] PGA has evolved as an interconnected and often chaotic web of very diverse groups, with a powerful common thread of struggle and solidarity at the grassroots level. These gatherings have played a vital role in face-to-face communication and exchange of experience, strategies and ideas [...][11]
./english/532.txt:65:4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximise respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism.
./english/534.txt:28:Chavez argued that the forum should take advantage of its momentum and build a political struggle, and that it is important to support governments like that of recently elected Evo Morales in Bolivia. He noted that the concrete advances in Venezuela would not have been possible without taking political power. Some participants resented Chavez injecting himself into one of the key debates in the forum; Chavez, however, argued that even if he were not president he would still be present, advancing these ideas. He stated, "I am just one more person like the rest of you in forum."
./english/534.txt:46:What role will the forum play in that process? The WSF tends to remain, to a certain degree, a place where organisations quickly organise events, but then fail to realize their potential to network and connect with other movements and struggles until the next forum the following January. Attendance is still largely limited to those with the time, resources, passports, and visas necessary to travel to a central location. Participating organisations and movements must engage in an evaluation of how they can realize meaningful articulation of these struggles throughout the year.
./english/534.txt:48:Perhaps at this point the WSF has served its original purpose of altering the discourse around economic and social policies. It has been a wonderful place to break out of the isolation and solitary local organising efforts, and connect with others around the world working on similar issues, and regain energy to continue the struggle. It has realized the goals of the slogan "globalize the struggle, globalize hope." No matter what shape it takes in the future, the WSF has been a historic experience with a lasting impact on social movements around the world.
./english/544.txt:14:But in the chaos traditionally there in the WSF, a semblance of order normally emerges to enable the moot to play its due role of allowing social movements to interact with one another and create awareness among the people and mobilise them. Regrettably, this proved to be the weakest spot of WSF 2006 (Karachi). The organizations which attended - those working for landless peasants, bonded labour, fisherfolks’ rights, the Baloch, the Sindhis’ and the Kashmiris’ rights - were delighted with this opportunity to meet and strengthen their movements. But their message didn’t spread far and wide as it could have. This is a pity because so much human energy was available, waiting to be harnessed. There were so many issues waiting to be raised to create public opinion in favour of a struggle.
./english/544.txt:28:This consultation rightly perceived the WSF as a long-term process of engaging forces of anti-war and anti-neo-liberalism under one banner. “Realizing the need to diffuse the process in Pakistan the group committed itself to a continued struggle and efforts to take it further to all corners of the country. The group also pledged to continue its struggle to unite all progressive, rights-based and democratic forces in Pakistan against the common threats to the world and marginalised groups,” the press statement released on the occasion had said.
./english/548.txt:13:A series of panels on “Breaking Down the Ivory Tower” examined the role of universities in the creation of another world. The discussions viewed relationships between scholars and social movements, moved to an examination of the role of academics in the struggle for social justice, and ended with the formation of a transnational network of scholars and activists to promote collaborative actions around common concerns. Another group of critical scholars held a series of informal meetings and created an activist-oriented research network.
./english/550.txt:1:Toward an European network for exchanges, think and struggle against the precarisation of job and lives
./english/550.txt:36:informations and solidarities between the struggles, others attach more
./english/550.txt:42:necessity : The network must be tied to the struggles. An other
./english/550.txt:81:struggles but too the common demands for the abolition of the
./english/565.txt:140:struggles, aiming to explore the subversive potentials of computing,
./english/565.txt:273:struggles to digital mediums, thanks to its decentralised structure and
./english/565.txt:323:other struggles.
./english/565.txt:520:covering social struggles that are generally ignored. By taking its
./english/565.txt:570:struggles over the years, and the very practical victories it could lead
./english/565.txt:573:geek struggles can only benefit from getting offline for a while. Here
./english/565.txt:652:· new tools, new struggles, new identities
./english/565.txt:719:liberation & queer struggles, among others. For more detailed history,
./english/569.txt:5:1. The Fifth World Social Forum, which met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between 26 and 31 January 2005, demonstrated once again the enormous strength of the global movement that became visible in the struggles of Chiapas, Seattle, and Genoa. 200,000 at the opening demonstration, 155,000 participants involved in 2,500 activities, a wealth of cultural events, the concluding Assembly of the Social Movements that took up the call for a global day of protest against the occupation of Iraq on 19 March - all of these are things to celebrate.
./english/569.txt:29:This effect of this fragmentation, particularly in combination with Lula’s intervention, is not politically neutral. It runs counter to the trend in the wider movement to make connections between the challenges we face, between neo-liberalism and environmental catastrophe, for example, and crucially between corporate globalization and war. As Emir Sader, one of the leading intellectuals of the Brazilian left and a WSF founder, put it,'while the Forum emphasizes secondary issues, there is no major debate about the most important issue of the day - the struggle against the war and imperial hegemony in the world.'
./english/569.txt:31:4, It would be a mistake to make too much of these weaknesses. The 5th WSF was the occasion for many successes. The Anti-War Assembly, for example, marked a real step forward in cooperation among activists from different parts of the world. An alliance of environmental groups managed to launch a much needed week of action against climate change from Porto Alegre. No doubt other thematic assemblies and networks were able to take initiatives, though the general fragmentation makes it hard to tell. The final Assembly of the Social Movements, though regrettably not publicized in the WSF Programme, did provide a real sense of diverse activists converging together on a common agenda of struggles. And there were, as far as we know, some good debates.
./english/571.txt:43:The World Social Forum has been defined as a civil society event, but there exists a considereable debate on how the limits of this civil society should be defined. Who gets in, and who stays out? If the World Social Forum is a counter-event to the World Economic Forum, in 2004 Mumbai Resistance was the counter-event’s counter-event. Mumbai Resistance was conceived as a “truly anti-imperialist” parallel event that took place next to the World Social Forum venue in Mumbai. One of the concerns of the originators of Mumbai Resistance was that the WSF is not open to “all forms of struggle”, referring to the rule, expressed in Article 9 of the Charter of Principles, that military organizations cannot participate in the WSF (9).
./english/571.txt:73:Only five years ago, the WSF was just a casual suggestion. Now new ideas and proposals are being forged within the WSF and also outside it. It is very likely that some of these ideas and proposals become at least as real and vivid as that of the WSF. There is no reason to understand world developments in a particularly optimistic light, on the contrary, but the WSF is seen by many to provide a basis for new dialectics of hope. The prevailing spirit in Mumbai was very encouraging for most participants, as witnessed by all those who have written reports about the WSF IV saying that it has given them new strength to continue with their struggles.
./english/571.txt:99:Desai, Rajani X (2003) The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle against 'Globalisation'. New Delhi: Aspects of India’s Economy.
./english/576.txt:57:When Linda Sippio, a leader at the Miami Workers Center, visited a once-idle farm near Porto Alegre that had been taken over by the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST), she saw links to her own people's struggle to hold ground in their rapidly gentrifying Florida neighborhoods. "We're meeting Brazilian groups that are organizing like we are, and we're showing our support," she said. "That helps us both build power."
./english/578.txt:6:The World Social Forum is coming to Africa in 2007. This is great news. But how exactly will the coming of the WSF to Africa in 2007 advance the struggle against neoliberalism and capitalist domination? This is an important question for people who want to stop the centuries-long pain and suffering of the masses in Africa and other parts of the world.
./english/578.txt:7:Having attended all the world social forums, I think that they continue to be an important rallying point for all struggles against neoliberalism in the world. But there are certain tendencies developing in the WSF which have me very worried. When the WSF comes to Africa, we should be able to build on its strengths and eradicate its weaknesses.
./english/578.txt:9:Brazilian President Luis Ignacio “Lula” da Silva chose to address January’s WSF 2005 during the launch of the Global Campaign Against Poverty (G-CAP) rather than, as many expected, in the bigger session after the opening march. I believe that the G-CAP is a campaign conceptualised and designed in the boardrooms of NGOs and funding organisations, rather than in the streets and trenches of practical grassroots struggles by social movements, trade unions and other mass organisations of the working class. While the WSF slogan is “another world is possible”, the G-CAP campaign seeks to build this new world using the scaffolding of the old, namely, the United Nations' Millenium Development Goals, International Monetary Fund/World Bank prevarications and Southern governments' capitalist policies.
./english/578.txt:14:The African Social Forum's founding principles recognise the primacy of social movements over non-government organisations in the struggle against neoliberalism. NGOs, research institutes, individuals and academics are important but they must play a supportive role. It is the masses themselves who possess the power to liberate themselves — hence the importance of social movements and other mass organisations such as trade unions, grassroots women’s and youth groups, informal traders' associations and homeless people's federations. But it seems that the African delegations to the WSF still largely consist of NGO types. This was clearly the case in the meetings of the ASF council held in Porto Alegre during the WSF 2005.
./english/578.txt:21:We should use the build-up to the WSF 2007 to build and strengthen the social movements in Africa. We need a program of action for this momentous task. We should broaden and strengthen the ASF as the tool to co-ordinate this work. Maximum internal democracy, accountability, collective leadership and mass participation are crucial in building the ASF. NGOs and research institutes are important and welcome in the ASF but only those who agree to the primacy of mass organisations in the struggle; only those who privilege methods of struggle which actively involve the rank and file rather than rely on few specialists to fight it out. The WSF 2007 in Africa should be structured logistically, organisationally and politically to favour the social movements and their daily struggles.
./english/578.txt:22:The WSF 2007 in Africa cannot afford to be a talk-shop. We should consider a specific concrete campaign and outcome that will benefit the African masses practically. Some have suggested linking the WSF 2007 with the call for the actual cancellation of Third World debt and the struggle for reparations. I personally support this approach as it unites us with Africans in the diaspora who are also fighting for reparations. But whatever specific campaign we decide upon, be it HIV/AIDS linked to gender equality or trade, we must not forget the analogy of the birds in the cage. The WSF in Africa must help us gather the social forces and build the power to destroy the cage rather than buy us the freedom of one bird.
./english/578.txt:24:In our preparations for the WSF in Africa we will need to draw the class line between exploiter and exploited, capitalist and victim/opponent of capitalism. Let us unite and build towards a WSF 2007 that will take forward the struggle to destroy capitalism rather than merely reform it.
./english/579.txt:40:The coming elections can prove to be a turning point not because the BJP makes a qualitative leap forward in its individual tally but because the Congress may collapse as a national party. Programmatically, it is in all key respects a softer version of the BJP but without its powerful cadre base (courtesy of the RSS), or its aggressive policy of transforming (through major personnel changes) all governing institutions and structures it can lay its hands on whether in civil society or in the state apparatuses at Central and provincial levels, or its determination to eventually bring about a Hindu Rashtra. Socially, the Congress, as evidenced by the recent assembly elections, is losing its last, hitherto stable base – the tribals in central India – to the BJP. For a full five decades after independence, every single breakaway from the Congress, even when led by leaders whose national stature had been forged in the great freedom struggle before 1947, quickly faded into total oblivion. Since 1997, two such breakaways, the Trinamul Congress of West Bengal and then the National Congress Party of Maharashtra, have stabilized as major regional parties not in the least afraid to hobnob with the BJP.
./english/582.txt:24:There were 140 installations like this, and the Forum of the workshops and the seminars was as diverse, plural and colorful as those of Porto Alegre. Who walked 19th morning, along part of one of the corridors, could find debates about the increasing abortion of female embryos in India ( qualified as “ hidden femalecide”); about the international campaign against North – American bases (promoted by a 25 organizations network based in different countries); about Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance ( a Philippine woman explained, in English, that for many Asiatic communities, the concept individual, sees in each human being, a part of the community), about the new international relations system ( emerged from a refined critic about the lack of transparency and democracy in WTO, IMF and WB); about dwelling rights and livable cities ( a fiction in Mumbai), about the struggle against monarchy in Nepal ( besides the rounded faces and the hard eyes of the Nepalese, it attracted the attention the fact that they reached to understand each other, even if they were speaking so low, that many times the voices were replaced for the microphone of the room next door), about the impact of globalization among the “ untouchable” Indians ( the debates on these topics were always the most crowded and able to attract the street Forum).
./english/582.txt:53:Arundathi´s answer has two tones: “ To preserve its diversity, the World Social Forum can´t move back to the practice of final statements, that eliminate diversity. And it was very good to have done it, until now, exactly in the way we did it “ she says. Immediately, she changes the tuning . “ It’s necessary to change, as the times change. Nobody can stay stuck. The Forum needs to flee from this great risk. It absorbs our best energies, mobilizes the most generous minds only for us to start thinking, after four days, about the next meeting. In that case, it wont bother our enemies. It will keep being our own music, but it will ever reach to be our struggle”
./english/586.txt:6:The Mumbai WSF succeeded in demonstrating that the spirit of Porto Alegre, while being a universal aspiration, acquires specific tonalities in different regions of the globe. Its universality is actually a product of the very reach of neoliberal globalization, which subjects every region of the world to the same economic model and its consequences: deepening of social inequalities, demoralization of the state, destruction of the environment. In this sense, the choice of Mumbai as the venue of the 2004 WSF could not have been wiser. With its population of almost 15 million, Mumbai is the living symbol of the contradictions of capitalism in our time. An important financial and technological center and the site of India’s thriving film industry — Bollywood, producing more than 200 movies a year for an increasingly global audience — Mumbai is a city whose extreme poverty easily shocks western eyes. More than half of the population live in slums (roughly two million on the streets), whereas 73 percent of the families, usually large, live in one-room tenements. The recent spread of informal economy has turned 2 percent of the population into street vendors. In India, however, the struggle against this background of inequalities gains specific nuances that have left their mark on this Forum. First, on top of economic, sexual and ethnic inequalities there are caste inequalities, which, though abolished by the Constitution, continue to be a decisive factor of discrimination. The Dalits, one of the lower castes, formerly designated as the “untouchables,” made a very strong appearance at the Forum. Of the 100.000 participants, more than 20. 000 were Dalits, who saw in the Forum a unique opportunity to denounce the discrimination that victimizes them. Second, the religion factor, which in the West tends to carry less weight in view of the secularization of power, is in the East a crucial social and political factor. Religious fundamentalism — a plague all over Asia, including India itself with the increasing politicization of Hinduism — was a major topic for debate, as was the role of spirituality in the social struggles for a better world. Third, having taken place in Asia, the Forum could not help but pay special attention to the struggle for peace, not only because it is in the West Asia, from Iraq to Afghanistan, that US’s war aggression is strongest, but also because today South Asia (India and Pakistan) is a region full of nuclear weapons. Having all this in mind, the Social Movements Assembly called a world march against the war on March 20, the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Fourth, at the Mumbai WSF the western conception of ecological struggles gave way to broader conceptions, so as to include the struggle for food sovereignty, land and water, as well as the preservation of biodiversity and natural resources, and the defense of forests against agro-business and lumber industry.
./english/586.txt:8:By its very success, the Mumbai WSF creates new challenges for the WSF process. I single out three main ones. The first is the Forum’s expansion. It is not just a question of geographic expansion, but the expansion of themes and perspectives as well. Meeting in Mumbai, the IC decided to encourage the organization of local, national, regional and thematic forums, in order to deepen the syntony of the “Porto Alegre Consensus” with the concrete struggles that mobilize such a diversity of social groups across the globe. Furthermore, the WSF has been collecting an impressive amount of knowledge concerning its organizations and movements, the world we live in, and the proposals that go one being presented and implemented to change it. This knowledge must be carefully evaluated to be adequately used and render the Forum more transparent to itself, thus allowing for self-learning for all the activists and movements involved in the WSF process. Finally, as knowledge accumulates and the large areas of convergence are identified, the need for developing plans of collective action increases. The issue is not so much to augment the WSF’s efficaciousness as a global actor — efficaciousness is not gauged by global as much as by local and national actions — but mainly to prepare responses to the attempts of the World Bank, IMF and the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to coopt the agendas of the WSF and sanitize them in favor of solutions that will leave the ongoing economic disorder intact. Given its open-space nature, the WSF will not present proposals in its own name; it will rather facilitate the articulation between the networks that constitute it, in order to deepen plans of collective action and put them into practice.
./english/586.txt:10:The twofold need to evaluate and spread the accumulated knowledge and prepare plans of collective action with a sound political and technical basis led to more discussion than never before in previous Forums of the relationship between expert and grass-roots knowledge, and, more specifically, between social scientists and popular struggles. Several workshops were devoted to this general topic. One of them, entitled “New Partnerships for New Knowledges,” was organized by the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra. The participants were social scientists and activists. Immanuel Wallerstein (USA), Anibal Quijano (Peru), D. L. Sheth (India), Goran Therborn (Sweden), Hilary Wainright (UK) and myself were among the social scientists; Jai Sen (India), Irene Leon (Equador) and Moema Miranda (Brazil) were among the activists. The discussion concentrated on themes that are at the core of the idea of public sociology: the relationship between expertise and engagement; from critique to plans for action; the reliability of the knowledge underlying social struggles and its critique; the impact on social scientists of their engagement with lay or popular knowledges; activists as producers of knowledge.
./english/589.txt:13:While participating in the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai, several members of the CADTM delegation (Committee for the abolition of the third world debt) were in touch with various NGOs and social movements in order to assess some current struggles such as the one against the Coca-Cola Company in Kerala. They tried to understand the specificity of the Indian social background, particularly the caste system, by focusing on the Dalits, who represent about 200 million inhabitants out of a total of one billion Indians. They are the victims of traditional and age old oppression, and we wished to meet the men and women among them who did something to put an end to this situation. It was also an opportunity to find out about various aspects of the Indian current reality: from the issue of street children to the effects of neoliberal policies on some economic sectors like tea production. The trip to India made it possible for us to speak with a large number of activists who are active in several fields: environment, human rights, health, education, housing, languages [1], culture, gender, religions [2]. It was interesting to try and understand how they perceive the World Social Forum and the world alternative movement in which they are actors. We started in Mumbai, the town where the fourth Word Social Forum took place. Then we travelled to the state of Karnataka, some thousand kilometres from Mumbai, to the southwest. Finally, we went to Kerala.
./english/589.txt:17:Mumbai where dignity is an everyday struggle
./english/589.txt:28:Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), member of CADTM international network, is a secular voluntary organisation established in 1981 to be an interface between Scholars, Academics and Social Activists; to initiate the process of social awakening through critical reflection and alternative discourse thereby contributing to strengthening people’s struggles towards the goal of a just and more humane social order.
./english/589.txt:50:This entails developing and promoting more focussed advocacy, lobbying and campaigning strategies ranging from Dalit to gender rights and from rights of minorities and children to the struggles of the people for livelihood and against suppression of human and democratic rights and erosion of cultural values. The programme also seeks to promote and strengthen civil society organisations in building solidarity- action networks on critical issues affecting the lives and “rights” of the people, to challenge the structures, cultures and dynamics of violence, inequality and injustice, and for the promotion of participatory, democratic politics and economics which makes people as the centrality of the social process.
./english/589.txt:80:The RLHP action is part of a global struggle to abolish child labour and guarantee that all children get an education. At Mysore in March 2003 RLHP organised a national conference for the abolition of child labour as part of the Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL a network of 5,400 members belonging to 17 states [5]). For three days, some 1,200 children and 800 activists who had come from all corners of the country considered how best they could achieve their aim. Public authorities were questioned. A street demonstration was organised. We have to keep in mind that child labour is related to the poorer families being heavily in debt. Indebted parents who cannot pay back a private moneylender may have no choice but to let him have one (or several) of their children. The lender will make them work as long as the loan is not repaid, and in some cases the interest rate is so high that children actually become slaves since there is no way their parents could ever pay back the exorbitant amounts that are demanded of them.
./english/589.txt:82:The Dalits struggle for housing and dignity
./english/590.txt:10:His analyses of the relationships, be they between the WSF and the advance of the struggle against neo-liberalism, or between the WSF and the parties and the politicians, or of its Charta of Principles make the nature of the WSF perfectly clear: “a space and a process, and absolutely not an entity”, which has created “a historical crossroads”. I will keep my commentary limited to two questions treated in his book.
./english/594.txt:14:BETWEEN THE WSF WORLD WIDE AND THE THAI PEOPLES MOVEMENT: What was noticeable was the way people took it for granted in the WSF that the imperialist war in Iraq was linked to neoliberalism and that the anti-war struggle would hit the US government at its most vulnerable point and thus help spur the anti-neoliberal struggle. This is not something understood generally by the Thai movement which has suffered from an “apolitical” position, mainly as a result of the legacy of Maoism and the influence of conservative NGOs. Many Thai delegates to the WSF were unaware of the anti-war meetings and any of the decisions (eg 20th March) and do not seem to understand the importance of organising for the 20th March.
./english/598.txt:25:In this way social forums put into practice the assertion of the womens and ethnic minorities movements of the 1970s, that movements of the oppressed and marginalised need autonomy to develop and identify their own needs, identities and sources of power. Political parties do not have a monopoly of the power to achieve change; indeed generally they have flunked the task of reform. The emergence of social forums doesnt make the political party redundant. It leaves it a distinctive contribution to the wider process of struggle carried out by a plurality of actors: the role of linking extra-parliamentary campaigning with the very different timetables and tactical necessities of electoral politics. To perform this role effectively - to act as amplifiers rather than mufflers of the movements in the streets and the workplaces - parties have to open up their methods of organising and thinking. Every way of reforming party policy has to start from an experimental approach, Rifondazione Communista leader Fausto Bertinotti told the Mumbai Forum. Practice has to come before theory. The collective intellect is the movement, and the party is helping to contribute to that, but it cannot in itself be that collective intellect.
./english/598.txt:34:Everyone at Mumbai expressed the excitement of connecting their struggles with those of others. Homa Kadeep, for example, helps coordinate campaigns defending forest peoples rights to land and natural resources across India. She said: What is happening here is that we are connecting with people from Brazil, South Africa, Canada… We go home knowing we are not alone. We are also discovering how to be more effectively coordinated.
./english/598.txt:36:This sense of opening possibilities was shared by young Zimbabwean activist Kelvin Hazangwi. Im organising against the privatisation of water, Hazangwi said. But I want to learn from a group thats working on freeing the people of Tibet. I want to know the struggles theyre facing. But I also tell them how we are fighting the struggle against water privatisation. And my cause in Zimbabwe can also be part of a cause against water privatisation in Mali. These linkages can now be made. What Im saying is that there should be coordinated linkages.
./english/605.txt:8:There is an estimative that 135,000 to 150,000 people took part in the 1,200 WSF activities. The WSF 2004 has done a great impact in Indian left sectors. This country is marked by regionalism, communalism and diversity in languages, religions and cultures. It has been prepared since 2002 – in fact, the Asian Social Forum in January 2003 was its first rehearsal. It was done in a more plural and demanding context than the former WSFs, stimulated by a more heterogeneous left sector than the Latin American or European ones. It was the result of the unitary action of organizations who come from very distant political traditions – from Gandhism to the more traditional Communist Parties, from various Maoist organizations to NGOs. This unity was carefully built thanks to a wide preparation and mobilization process in the different regions in the country. That explains why the Forum was marked – respecting its Charter of Principles – by a less reticent posture towards the political parties, eliminating the image, for times raised, that they are strange to the Forum and to the wider struggle that makes sense to it.
./english/605.txt:10:This Forum has definitely joined the agenda of struggle against neoliberalism with the struggle against militarization and the empire: to the delegates present in Mumbai, the struggle against poverty and exclusion resulting from capitalist globalization is inseparable from the struggle against war and imperialism. But this Forum also included issues before ignored or put aside in the global movement´s agenda, such as the struggle against cast discrimination, which keeps 200 million Indians in the edge of society and claims a rethink about the problem of racism, and the struggle against the combined effects of communalism, patriarchalism and religious fundamentalism – increased by the present path of the imperial power and the fundamentalist hindu government in New Delhi.
./english/605.txt:36:These were the sectors which with most highlight have brought their problems and struggles to the IV WSF – specially the dalits, who comprehended few less than half Indian delegates. The hottest problems in these people´s lives – which delegates of their organizations had understood being linked to the neoliberal globalization – were those motivating most part of the discussions realized in Nesco Grounds. In addition to the issues with a special class focus established by the communist or socialist left sectors, another great range of inquiries emerged more directly from combat to castism, communalism, religious sectarism and patriarchalism have earned centrality in the Forum.
./english/605.txt:40:For large part of the delegates present in Mumbai, the international political agenda has a clear center, the fight against Bush government, to North American imperialism and its military offensive. This was the core of the discussion over Irak, Afghanistan, Korea and Palestine, the most visible range of themes. Of course the fight against the free trade agreements that multiply in the region has found its place, as well as the struggle against expulsion of the immigrant workers in Korea or Japan, for the weapon control, for “Making Tibet a peace zone”, for food security and preservation of biodiversity and natural resources etc. But nothing has weakened the force of the fight against the threat represented by government Bush to the world. That explains the strength of the Gerneral Assembly of the Global Movement against War claim – that took part in the Forum – for a world journey of fight against the end of occupation in Irak in March 20th.
./english/605.txt:48:To the WSF Mumbai represented a giant quality step in the scope of dialogue that it facilitates and in its social enrootment. From the “another world struggle” point of view, this was probably the most important step since the proposal was enforced, in January 2001. But only the follow-up of the process will verify its ability to translate in an effective articulation of the struggle held in “West” and in these world regions, which cannot be subsumed to any common label.
./english/605.txt:53:Part of the popular and militant character of the IV WSF has resulted and was result also from the efforts and resources dedicated to the cultural dimension of the event, conceived not as “entertainment” or “show”, but essentially as political manifestation. Since Asiatic Social Forum it was clear that the treatment given by Indians to this issue was very different and politically more suitable than the former forums. The cultural initiatives were not shows by professional artists, but part of the present communities´ and movements´ struggles. Even the exhibition of “western” cinema were conceived by many cultural activists embraced as Forum´s organic cells.
./english/605.txt:81:Mumbai has enriched the WSF agenda and integrated new and important forces in the process. But also reinforced the will of the Forum being a new and more useful tool to multiply political action and moving current correlation of forces. The more the neoliberalism seems sold out, the more this aspiration nourishes. At last, the Forum is not an end in itself, but a mean so what thousands of movements in the world can articulate and strengthen their struggles. And in Mumbai, with the consolidation of the Forum in the most conflictive and populated zone of the planet, this will has gained a sense of emergency. That has expressed in several critical discussions and self-criticism among the process protagonists, who point the need of changing directions towards Porto Alegre 2005. What balance can be made today about the Forum´s role in motivating our alternatives?
./english/605.txt:85:But has the WSF process empowered the struggles and national mobilizations? As stated Sohi Jeon during intervention in the conference “Neoliberalism, war and the WSF meaning”, in Mumbai, “the real agent or the subjects of the change, of the constitution of alternatives, are not merely the participants in the Forum, not even the Forum itself, but the workers, the peasants, the women, those racially oppressed in each community and country. They are the subjects of the change.” (The World Social Forum at a Crossroad in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br).
./english/614.txt:5:The World Social Forum emerged as a result of the mobilizations against neoliberal globalization and as an international space for reflection and organization of those who oppose to neoliberal polices or are building alternatives to prioritize human development and the overcoming of market supremacy in each country and in the international relations and, at the same time, a space for the coordination of struggles and movements. Four years later, both the WSF development and the coordination of struggles and movements have put on the table the need for reflection on the WSF itself and its relation to the social movements. A reflection that, though it has been part of the debates at the International Council, has gained public projection both in the last European Social Forum and the WSF celebrated in Mumbai.
./english/614.txt:7:The debate on the Forum is part of a more general reflection on how to generate, from the common perspective of radical criticism to neoliberalism, spaces of inclusion that could be useful both to go deepen in the reflection and better definition of our critic, alternatives and strategy against the neoliberal model, and to make the WSF an useful tool to advance in the coordination among movements and struggles to oppose neoliberalism and war.
./english/614.txt:9:These two sides of the equation are indisociable: the WSF only makes sense and has a future in the sense that it feedsback the struggles against neoliberal globalization and is a relief to them, allowing to mix in its interior non deliberative spaces, such as the Conferences, seminars, panels, etc, with other more deliberative ones as the selforganized activities within the WSF, promoted by diverse social movements. Amogst them is the Social Movements Assembly, which has bee a reference mark in the struggle against neolibreal globalization in the past years, because from it have been promoted the mobilizations sich as Quebec against the FTAA, or the one in Cancun agaist the WTO, besides Genoa and the February 15th , and that after all, have been one of the central aspects of legitimation of the WSF as a reference in the struggle against the system.
./english/614.txt:19:· In the first place, with relation to the Conferences, seminars and panels spaces. By the general rule, in these four years, there hasn’t been many advances further than the critic to neoliberalism (with no built record of it so far), and we carry a huge deficit regarding the reflection and confrontation around the strategies of struggle in order to oppose the system and, besides, the elaboration of alternatives, not understood as an intellectual exercise of experts, but rather, as a process of reflection and contrast built from the dynamics of the social movements struggles. The process of building alternatives as the “food sovereignty” can serve as reference to this matter, that we should start by defining those issues in which, because of the urgency of the problems, as well as because of the movements developments, could be approached.
./english/614.txt:23:Because as much as we go forward in the confrontation with the system the debate on the alternatives, struggles strategies, building of alliances and form of action gains an urgency and a greater relevance; and the WSF can not turn its back on this reality. If we do not want the WSF to exhaust in a repetitive formula, its necessary that its activity is linked to the real dynamics of the social movements and social struggles and that is useful to advance in this areas.
./english/614.txt:25:Its not a matter of turning the WSF into a deliberative space that decides among options under debate, nor of approaching the alternatives elaboration through academic meetings that submit to WSF a proposal to conclude as a alternative paradigm, the “Porto Alegre consensus” against the “Washington consensus”, but that, preserving the open and plural character of the WSF, to begin a common reflection on the concrete problems that the struggle against neoliberalism and war faces and to move to the WSF the debates present in the real dynamics of the movements, as way to move forward in the building of alternatives in the distinct scales in which this movement is expressed: global and local.
./english/614.txt:63:We are all conscious that as time goes by and the more the Forum consolidates itself, the risks of institutionalization and instrumentalization raises. That’s why the evolution and the future of the WSF, its role in the struggle against neoliberal globalization, its relation to the social movements and the role of them in its development have to be permanet preocupation amongst us, but avoiding to fall in the temptation to change its open and plural character.
./english/614.txt:67:But our attention can not be focused only in the future of the Forum, because the Social Movements Assembly that occurs during it has built and builds a central reference not only to those who attend the Forums, but also to the push forward in the struggles and in the development of new initiatives. And, to a large extent, one of the WSF sources of legitimacy is found in the fact that the agreements reached during this assembly have served to show the utility of the Forum as a framework to develop in practice the confrontation to neoliberalism, from a perspective of radical proposals and the flexibility at the time of building alliances.
./english/614.txt:69:There is no dout that the reiforcement of the assembly, the steps that we’ll undertake in the building of ther social movements international network and the correspondence of our agreements in the global level to the local and regional spaces, are the best guarantee to maintain the Forum in good road. Because only as far as its development has as reference the social struggles and approches the problems that the movements bring into it, the Forum will not be at risk of atrophy, but it’s also clear that its opening to an umbrella of more broad and diverse social forces will, at the same time, be source of contradictions and tensions.
./english/620.txt:13:We would like to take it as given that WSF should not be limited to only a reflective space but also should facilitate global anti-imperialist struggles. However, we agree that WSF itself should not be seen to be an organisation, which either builds or leads such struggles. This distinction is important as those who are constructing this open space for movements should not end up by substituting themselves for the movements. The movements in various countries are the spearhead of struggle against imperialism – either its militaristic, coercive version or its more insidious economic version. The WSF, as a platform, enables these movements to come together -- as either one network or a multiple set of networks – in order to take this struggle forward. For this, the WSF space can be consciously constructed to bring together the concerns, experiences, information and issues of diverse movements and groups, and also catalyse the formation of networks around these issues.
./english/620.txt:15:We believe that WSF, in effect, has provided this kind of an environment and this has helped not only in revitalising the anti-imperialist struggle internationally, but also in helping different networks and groups to come together. Some of it is already visible in synchronising the anti Iraq War struggle in different countries – demonstrations, protests on the same day throughout the world -- and in working out a common understanding regarding the Cancun Ministerial. The social movement assemblies in the WSF have undoubtedly provided a focus for the above.
./english/620.txt:46:The distinction between the WSF organisers organising the space while the movements organise the activities/action plan should continue. The WSF organisers are not necessarily of the movements: the WSF organisers should preferably not compete with movements for space. Any success in building a global anti-imperialist struggle depends on the movements coming together, both politically and in organisation terms.
./english/626.txt:22:And an Indian newspaper called it an "anti-global event." With more than 120 countries participating, could an event be more global in nature? "Anti-globalisation" is another term often and erroneously used to describe the WSF. This is just another form of globalisation. A counter-globalisation. A globalisation that challenges the prevalent neo-imperial corporate globalisation agenda. A globalisation from below. A globalisation of struggles. A globalisation of resistance. A globalisation of movements, of activism, of defiance. A globalisation of hope.
./english/626.txt:24:I like to believe the Forum is an open space. Some would disagree. Like those who formed Mumbai Resistance. Yes, the WSF keeps some people out, officially. Like those involved in armed struggle. Because one of its charters is about non-violence. Yet, it allows everyone to come there. To share a platform. To raise a voice. To launch an idea. To build a movement. To generate solidarity. To challenge hegemony. To defy imperialism. And even to question the WSF.
./english/626.txt:26:"There were no concrete outcomes," complain many critics. Yes, there were no formal declarations passed; who needs more of those? But there were hundreds of outcomes. The forging of people-to-people bonds. The uniting of struggles. The building of bridges. The strengthening of solidarity. The shaping of new alliances, new coalitions, new relationships. The articulation of alternatives. These are all outcomes. Intangible perhaps, but valuable outcomes nonetheless.
./english/629.txt:28:Furthermore: if we do it, we will be – without any help from those we are fighting against...- throwing away a powerful instrument of struggle that we were able to create drawing on the most important political discovery lately: the power of the free horizontal articulation, which explains the success in Porto Alegre, as well as in Seattle and of the February 15th manifestations against the war. And we have to bear in mind that if the horizontal social articulation still has so much to contribute now for our fight, it will also be necessary in the very process of construction of the world we want.
./english/629.txt:44:As the squares, the Forum is an open space, as its Principles Charter also specifies. But it is not a neutral space like the public squares. The Forum opens from time to time in different parts of the world - in the events where it takes place - with one specific objective: to allow as many people, organizations and movements as possible that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and struggles of others, discuss proposals of action, to become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Thus, it is a space created to serve a common objective of all those who converge to the Forum, functioning horizontally as a public square, without leaders nor pyramids of power in its interior. All those who come to the Forum are willing to accept these conditions - for this reason, in order to join this “square”, one must agree with its Principles Charter.
./english/629.txt:46:In fact the Forum works as a “factory of ideas”, or an incubator, from which as many new initiatives as possible, aiming at the construction of another world we all consider feasible, necessary and urgent, are expected to emerge. That means we can expect the birth of very many movements, bigger or smaller, more or less combative, each one with its specific objectives, to perform their own roles in the same struggle whose development is the primary aim of the square.
./english/629.txt:48:As a matter of fact, the biggest potentiality of the Forum-space is precisely that: to create movements that amplify the struggle. Conversely, when a movement generates new movements, this happens unwillingly, against the grain, as a result of internal divisions. And that is what would occur if the Forum became a movement.
./english/629.txt:52:On the other hand, the Forum allows for the exertion of more or less fervor in the common struggle, depending on the phase each one finds oneself engaged in the pursuit, together with all humanity, for another world. Conversely, in a movement there is a natural mutual expectation between the participants.
./english/629.txt:72:This is, in fact, an issue that demands a more careful reflection, in view of what is being witnessed in the “marches” and street manifestations which tend to characterize the conclusion of the Foruns. The banners should be the banners of all, as a final visible expression of its diversity and of the variety of proposals sheltered by it or born from it. To priviledge this or that struggle, in the “commissions” to rank first in the march or in the appointment of contingent public speakers in the final acts of the marches, contradicts the principles of respect to the diversity, and conveys a vision of a Forum-movement instead of a Forum-space. But this is another question to be discussed.
./english/629.txt:80:It would be in fact a pity if this joy of the “square” was lost - as it would tend to occur if it wasn’t a “square” anymore. It’s a joy - the same joy that we would like to always see in the “other possible world” - that ends up by taking hold of and invigorating everybody, inspired as it is by another finding of the Forum, while destroying the divisions that segregated the struggles that the different movements fostered: the fact that we are many in the same fight. In that way, in the open space provided to all by the Forum, the militants of these different movements meet up with and recognize each other: the ones fighting for the women’s rights, for the rights of the urban and rural workers, of the environment, of the children, the ones who seek new economic domestic relations or at the level of international organizations, the ones who work for democratic participation in the governments or for the enhancement of the spiritual dimension in the human being, etc., in the great diversity of the existing “movements”.
./english/629.txt:82:Such “militants” of so many struggles - many of them long being severed due to different ideological and political options - find in the Forum an unprecedented opportunity to know each other and, if possible, to get together, overthrowing the partition to which they were driven by the dominant parties. This meeting with “old friends” - if one might put this way - is initially, for many, a surprise, followed by joy, when they realize that they are in fact united.
./english/629.txt:90:To maintain the WSF as a space is then, maybe, the best way to guarantee its biggest asset, which must be preserved at any cost. Therefore, without overrating, we could go as far as to say that, those who want to transform it into a movement - will end up, if they succeed, by working against our common cause, whether they are aware or not of what they are doing, whether they are movements or political parties, and however important, strategically urgent and legitimate their objectives might be. They will be effectively acting against themselves and against all of us. They will be hindering and suffocating its own source of life – stemming from those articulations and initiatives born in the Forum - or at least destroying an enormous instrument that is available for them to expand and to enlarge their presence in the struggle we are all engaged in.
./english/629.txt:122:Without any doubt the priority given to the self-organized activities – that expresses in the practice of the events organization the option for Forums-spaces and not for a Forum-movement - would be much conducive to accomplishing the objectives of the WSF, formulated in its Principles Charter and indicated in the beginning of this text: to allow as many people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism as possible to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and the struggles of the others, discuss proposals of action, become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Because in fact it’s in the self-organized workshops and seminars that this can occur, and not in the traditional context of large meetings and congresses, where the people listen passively to what respectable people have to say, and by chance be lucky enough to have the opportunity of formulating questions.
./english/629.txt:132:These proposals would only be justified if the Forum was a movement, but they are not adequate to a Forum-space, to a “square”, that, as we have already seen before, does not admit a representing “political direction”. It demands, more than anything, people and institutions willing to perform the task of organizing the use of the square without interfering in the contents discussed in it and even less in the freedom that should be granted to all participants. That is to say, it depends on people and organizations willing to devote their time and resources – as an executive body – to promote the gathering and the articulation of all people engaged in the struggle for “another world”.
./english/629.txt:136:In this perspective, the concept better adapted to the organization committees and also to the International Council, within the option Forum-space, is of a “facilitator”. Facilitators do not command. What they do is making it possible for the existing or future movements to progress in their struggles. In order to create incubators of movements and engagements and to build “squares” and “factories of ideas”, they don’t need confrontations among them, discussing alternatives about how to change the world, still less do they have to try to impose ideas and proposals to each other. What they need is to be concerned within the common perspective that they adopt, in making each event organized by them accomplish the objectives of the Forum itself. What they need is to choose and operate, considering the political picture of each time, the best alternatives of organizing the time and the space that will be made available and will be used by those who should and wish to come to the “square” to discuss alternatives, advance proposals of action and, get together to fulfill them.
./english/629.txt:142:But if at the present moment it is useful and necessary that the barriers between different types and areas of engagement are brought down; that the articulations in the struggle against the neo-liberalism are spread all over the world and get amplified, stronger and more dense; that more movements, nets and initiatives of struggle are nurtured; that the debate of proposals and ways to overcome the domination of the capital are deepened; if this is the moment we are living in, we can be sure that the task of multiplying Forum-spaces is inestimable, irreplaceable and highly commendable, in our common engagement.
./english/639.txt:12:Of course the forum, in all its dizzying, global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing in one direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists from opposite ends of the globe excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the "big" certainly put its mark on the event.
./english/644.txt:8:International solidarity was in the air at the WSF. One example was a proposal that came out of one discussion, which focussed on labor, for a worldwide general strike. Although an impressive panel composed mostly of leaders of trade union federations from around the world concluded that we are not yet at the point where such a call would be effective, a lively discussion about successful struggles, factors which contributed to victories and new approaches revealed a pattern of national general strikes around the world to stave off privatization and deregulation.
./english/646.txt:114:Gender tensions have also been present in the WSF. Even though there exist no major gender differences in the numbers of overall participants, certainly the Brazilian OC consists predominantly of middle-aged men. In the IC, representatives of feminist organisations and other women have played a more visible role reflected in the programme, and struggles for sexual preference rights have played an increasing, though still somewhat marginal, role in the events.
./english/654.txt:11:In fact, for those delegates the Forum was really what its organizers intended it to be: a horizontal space in which the delegates could freely put forward their proposals and struggles - without considering any of these issues to be more important than others and without anyone imposing their ideas or their pace on the others -, to exchange experiences, to learn and to develop themselves through knowing about the struggles, hopes and proposals of others, to deepen their analysis about the issues that arise in their fields of action, to articulate themselves at national level and especially at the worldwide level . That is to say, to gain effectiveness and to move forward in their work of social transformation. There would not be so much interest in participating in this event if it were only about taking orders, or being having each ones options controlled, or being pushed to disciplined actions and mobilizations, or having to approve statements and motions or collective positions - which does not imply the lack of commitment to action. This is why the organizers of the Forum wrote in its Principles Charter that the Forum should not take positions as the Forum itself, that no one should speak on behalf of the Forum and that in none of its meetings should time be invested in discussing and passing "final documents".
./english/654.txt:17:Most journalists, for example - and this appeared in the coverage they gave to the Forum -, used as they are to interview leaders and gurus or to highlight struggles for power, do not understand why there is not a "final document" or "concrete proposals" of the Forum. They do not ask for the same in Davos, but they do want it in Porto Alegre. They find it hard to understand that the World Social Forum is not a summit, but one of the bases of a social movement that, in order to develop itself, cannot have summits or bosses. A "final synthesis" after five days of work, with 15,000 or 50,000 people, would necessarily mean an impoverishment and could only be approved through some kind of manipulation; and everybody leaves the Forum happier than if they had had to fight to include at least one line of their proposals in the final document...
./english/654.txt:21:Naturally, there are other tensions that come up even among those who organize the Forum or those who come to help them. For instance there are those who would prefer the Forums International Advisory Council to become a new world direction of the struggle against neo-liberalism, controlling and guiding that process. The perspectives of continuity assumed by the organizers seem to aim in another direction, with the consolidation of the method oriented by the Forums Principles Chart. It is more and more accepted that the Forum is a process and not an event or a new international organization directed by the leaders of a substitutive "unique-monolithic thought", which would be fatal to the Forum itself. It is also necessary , for example, to see to it that the conferences dont end up with guiding syntheses, voted by their respective audiences, or that they do not prevail over the workshops. At the same time, the decisions taken by the organizers so far aim at enabling the power of attraction of the Forum to generate in other parts of the world the same mobilization it has engendered in Brazil. The 2003 Forum will probably start with some ten regional or thematic Forums in the different geopolitical areas of the world, from September to December 2002, before a new world Forum, to take place once again in Porto Alegre. In September 2003 it would start in the same way, with the possibility of finishing it with a world meeting in India in 2004.
./english/654.txt:23:In fact, the biggest challenge for the organizers of the World Social Forum does not consist in defining new and better contents that could lead to even more concrete proposals, but to guarantee the continuity of the form the Forum was given - a case in which the means are determinant for the aim to be reached. The contents will naturally arise from the process thus launched, within mankinds struggle towards another world, and they will necessarily lead to the different editions of the Forum, with matters common to all and with the specific issues of each region of the world where it will take place. What is most important is to ensure that that new paradigm of political transforming action, created by the World Social Forum, is not absorbed by the "old models".
./english/671.txt:8:This open encounter was the most important element of Porto Alegre. Even though the Forum was limited in some important respectssocially and geographically, to name twoit was nonetheless an opportunity to globalize further the cycle of struggles that have stretched from Seattle to Genoa, which have been conducted by a network of movements thus far confined, by and large, to the North Atlantic. Dealing with many of the same issues as those who elsewhere contest the present capitalist form of globalization, or specific institutional policies such as those of the IMF, the movements themselves have remained limited. Recognizing the commonality of their projects with those in other parts of the world is the first step toward expanding the network of movements, or linking one network to another. This recognition, indeed, is primarily responsible for the happy, celebratory atmosphere of the Forum.
./english/671.txt:13:The Porto Alegre Forum was in this sense perhaps too happy, too celebratory and not conflictual enough. The most important political difference cutting across the entire Forum concerned the role of national sovereignty. There are indeed two primary positions in the response to todays dominant forces of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization that is equally global. The first poses neoliberalism as the primary analytical category, viewing the enemy as unrestricted global capitalist activity with weak state controls; the second is more clearly posed against capital itself, whether state-regulated or not. The first might rightly be called an anti-globalization position, in so far as national sovereignties, even if linked by international solidarity, serve to limit and regulate the forces of capitalist globalization. National liberation thus remains for this position the ultimate goal, as it was for the old anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles. The second, in contrast, opposes any national solutions and seeks instead a democratic globalization.
./english/671.txt:28:Like the Forum itself, the multitude in the movements is always overflowing, excessive and unknowable. It is certainly important then, on the one hand, to recognize the differences that divide the activists and politicians gathered at Porto Alegre. It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to try to read the division according to the traditional model of ideological conflict between opposing sides. Political struggle in the age of network movements no longer works that way. Despite the apparent strength of those who occupied centre stage and dominated the representations of the Forum, they may ultimately prove to have lost the struggle. Perhaps the representatives of the traditional parties and centralized organizations at Porto Alegre are too much like the old national leaders gathered at Bandungimagine Lula of the PT in the position of Ahmed Sukarno as host, and Bernard Cassen of ATTAC France as Jawaharlal Nehru, the most honoured guest. The leaders can certainly craft resolutions affirming national sovereignty around a conference table, but they can never grasp the democratic power of the movements. Eventually they too will be swept up in the multitude, which is capable of transforming all fixed and centralized elements into so many more nodes in its indefinitely expansive network.