From 13-15 November, according to the organisers’ own figures, 51,000 activists from around Europe and beyond participated in the second European Social Forum. They listened to speeches, debated alternative strategies for resistance to war and globalising capitalism, they made international and even intercontinental contact with one another. This huge international gathering is and remains an enormous step forward over the narrow national isolation of the last twenty years and more.
In addition to the ESF proper, a Women’s Assembly was held immediately before it that had about 3,000 taking part. After the ESF ended five thousand participated in the Assembly of the Social Movements on Sunday 16 November. Also a trade union forum took place in central Paris on the two days before the ESF started. Unfortunately this was “by invite only” from the ETUC bureaucrats. It appears that negotiations were going on between the ESF “organisers “ and the union bureaucrats throughout but the outcome was never clear.
Thus ESF this year was thus roughly the same size as last year’s event in Florence. The difference-apart from its splitting into four separate sites – was that there was nowhere near the same flooding in of French labour movement activists and youth as there was on the Friday night in Florence. Also the 100,000 who marched in Paris on the Saturday was but a pale shadow of the huge million-strong march in Florence.
However, as in Italy, those who attended the sessions, were overwhelmingly young people – even if the platform speakers and organisers belonged to an older generation, and consisted in the main of union officials, academics and NGO full timers. Overall there was less vibrancy and dynamism than in Florence but perhaps more concentration on which way forward for the movement. A critical, indeed self-critical spirit marked a number of seminars and even plenaries. This was a good thing and will be welcomed by serious militants, even if not by the Hooray Henrys or Henriettes of the movement.
The programme of the ESF centred on 55 huge plenaries, with thousands attending each plenary. These had too many platform speakers. Many of the speakers rehearsed identical arguments and often seemed to have few if any differences with one another This left little room for debate from the rank and file participants but could not the important debate that was running through the ESF.
Political trends
Distinct political trends and their spokespersons were clearly visible. There was the neo-social-democratic and post-Stalinist reformists: led by ATTAC-France, with Bernard Cassen, Ignacio Ramonet, Jacques Nikonoff, Susan George, i.e. the academics and journalists of Le Monde Diplomatique. There were many representatives of the Parti Communiste Française (PCF). To these should be added the Guardian journalist George Monbiot, as should Walden Bello, the advocate of autarky for third world bourgeois governments.
In a slightly different category were the trade union leaders (CGT, CGIL, G10-solidaires, FIOM, COBAS. RMT, IG Metal, ver di FSN, Sud PTT, etc. They were generally still only the more left wing leaders plus more significant numbers of rank and file activists. Then there were the more radical populists led by the Disobedienti, who occasionally spoke from the platform of the main sessions but mainly inhabited the Espace GLAD (Globalisation of struggles and Actions of Disobedience), plus Michael Albert from the United States.
The large organisations of the “far left” or “Trotskyist” tradition were headed by a large number of key figures of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire ( LCR) These included its presidential candidate Olivier Besancenot, the philosopher Daniel Bensaïd, François Vercammen and Attac organiser Christophe Aguiton. From Britain, the Socialist Workers Party and its international co-thinkers (the IST) notably from Germany, Greece and France. They were headed by Alex Callinicos, Lindsey German, Jonathan Neale, Chris Nineham. In addition the left reformist Italians were strongly represented by Rifondazione comunista, the Italian Social forums with leaders like, Fausto Bertinotti and Vittorio Agnoletto.
In the Assembly of the Social movements and its preparatory meetings the key figures were Sophie Zafari (delegate of the FSU, the teachers union but also Attac and the LCR and Pierre Kalfa (G10 Solidaires union, Attac and the LCR and Luciano Muhlbauer from Cobas,
However there was also a real and significant subjectively revolutionary current amongst those attending. Whenever outspoken revolutionary interventions were made substantial applause followed.
Reform or revolution?
The 250 seminars, made up of coalitions of organisations, with fewer platform speakers and with much more space for contributions from the floor proved a far better location for debate. A similar number of workshops took place, organised by specific organisations.
In the plenaries on the future of the movement Bernard Cassen, former president of Attac, was blunt in his criticisms of the ESF in Florence. He criticised the ESF’s annual nature, bemoaning the enormous labour involved in organising it, the over concentration on “action", etc. He repeated suggestion that the movement should concentrate on winning over public opinion and existing establishment politicians and parties. As a speaker from the League for the Fifth International pointed out, this method is a was that of the late-nineteenth century British Fabians, who argued not only for “the inevitability of gradualness” (i.e. evolution not revolution) but for “permeating” the capitalist parties rather than setting up independent workers parties to struggle for power.
For Cassen there could no question of the movement embracing the cause of the Iraqi resistance to the US and British occupation. This would only alienate those in power that Cassen sought to convince of the need for a miniscule tax on short-term speculative capital flows that he believes could humanise capitalism and make it truly national once again.
Needless to say the great majority at the ESF thought differently – Cassen’s attacks on the left went down like a lead balloon every time, and nearly everyone recognised the justice of fighting imperialism and capitalism by direct action.
As in Florence- but even more nakedly- the huge democratic deficit at the top of the movement was open to view. Indeed whenever this fact was pointed out, it drew loud applause. The activists are clearly becoming ever more aware of the undemocratic behind-the-scenes cabal who run the ESF. The Porto Alegre rules, the jet-setting international preparatory meetings and the need to work with left-reformist municipalities to secure venues strengthens the reformists like Cassen.
Compared to the ad hoc counter conferences and convergence centres which went alongside the anti-capitalist mobilisations of 1999-2001, these events are far more respectable, staid events. They run the very real danger of excluding the real lifeblood of the movement, the revolutionary élan of the youth and militant rank and file trade union militants. Already this has pushed the more radical, anarchist and populist elements to the fringes of these events. Their sectarian inability to handle reformism politically plays a role in this and leads them to withdraw to their own space – the Hub in Florence and the GLAD in Paris where they organise their own mini-utopias.
The Assembly of the Social Movements
The Assembly of the Social Movements (ASM) held on 16 November in St Denis – attended by several thousand activists was much less militant and enthusiastic, perhaps dampened by the dreadful weather but also by the lack of any clear focus and inspiration from the “leadership". It agreed on a whole series of actions for the coming year. But the statement it issued marked a victory for Attac and the right in that they prevented the movement from calling a for a Europe wide general strike or even a day of action.
The most important and wrong element of the principles of Porto Alegre states:
"The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body”
The banning of debates from ending in decisions, i.e. votes, and the adoption of any policies or proposals by the ESF itself, condemns the ESF to near impotence.
This was seen graphically at the Assembly on the Sunday and at the two preparatory meetings (on held on Tuesday and one on the Saturday night which prepared the declaration and agreed the incredibly long and boring list of speakers.
In order not to challenge Attac – and the mandarins of the World Social Forum the Italian organisers of ESF 2002 and the LCR/IST created the Assembly of the Social Movements, held on Sunday to decide, or rather endorse any action. It is not formally a part of the ESF itself.
Last year during the ESF a series of preparatory meetings was held throughout the forum, consisting of 80- 100 delegates which debated the various calls to action. The call for the global anti-war demonstration on February 15 came from this body.
Things were very different in Paris. On the Tuesday morning in Bobigny a hundred of so representatives of the social movements were presented with a statement which wanted the ASM to concentrate on a campaign culminating on the 9th of May – the day on the European Constitution. It completely ignored the class struggle in Europe and did nothing to aid the necessary fusing of the anti-capitalist movement with the labour movement.
The key issue facing both movements in the coming year is the massive assault on the social gains of the European working class. The European constitution is a step towards setting these attacks in legal concrete but we needed to call for a coordinated counterattack against the EU governments they are agreed on slashing health and education systems, pension schemes jobs in the public sector etc.
It is vital to level up from the highest points achieved in the struggles of the last year. We have to learn from the mass strikes that took place in France, Germany, Italy and Austria in 2003.
At the preparatory meeting for the Assembly on the Saturday night a draft statement to be put to the Assembly drawn up by an anonymous working group excluded both an explicit call for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and any explicit call for a day of action against social cuts and privatisations.
Thanks to an Italian woman delegate, to the German and Greek Cliffites, Berlin and Austrian Social Forums people and ourselves, enough fuss was made to force them into a new “consensus” or compromise. Whilst the Greek IST comrade Petras spoke strongly for the day of action Chris Nineham looked sick and then harangued his Greek and German comrades on the dangers of forcing the issue against the French, thus risking a premature split in the movement.
Unfortunately the compromise was brokered by the SWP and only weak and evasive formulations were included.
"We are fighting for “the withdrawal of the occupations forces from Iraq and for the immediate restitution of sovereignty to the Iraqi people” and –
"We engage ourselves to take part in all the actions organised by the social movements, in particular to build for a common day of action supported by the social movements, notably by the European trade union movements.”
No date and no real call to action even though sections of the German and Italian unions wanted a day of action. The so called revolutionary left, the SWP and LCR did noting about this rotten compromise. We hazard an educated guess that the SWP, particularly its leading members Nineham and Callinicos were so fixated with bagging the ESF that they were willing to give in to the right wing.
The LCR, two of whose members Sophie Zafari and Pierre Kahlfa tried to railroads the preparatory meetings has its eyes firmly fixed on the prize of the Euroelections (where its bloc with LO may get 20% of the popular vote) It clearly wanted not a day of action on the social cuts in February or March but a day of action on the European constitution on May 9th, just before the Euroelections.
Thus thanks mainly to the political cowardice of the USFI and the IST- their latest infatuation with electoralism – the final the outcome of the Assembly and therefore of the ESF was much more evasive, more reformist than was the case in Florence. We simply cannot allow next years Forum to be as barren of results as this was. If so it could be the last. That would be a real tragedy for the international workers movement.