[fse-esf] correction to report

[Globalise Resistance]

Given that on 2 November, myself and Jonathan Neale sent apologies to 
this list for missing the Frankfurt meeting because we were centrally 
involved in organising the Campaign against Climate Change protest in 
London, I think it is unfair to interpret our absence as a "boycott".

many thanks

Guy Taylor


On 6 Nov 2006, at 15:24, League for the 5th International wrote:

> European Social Forum Preparatory Assembly- the Left Organises
> 6 November 2006
>
>  On November 3 -5 150 delegates from all over Europe met in Frankfurt 
> for the first meeting of the “Preparatory Assembly” of the European 
> Social Forum. Martin Suchanek of Arbeitermacht, German section of the 
> League for the Fifth International, was there. The EPA was assembled 
> to discuss the results of the fourth European Social Forum held in 
> Athens in June this year and the way forward for the anti capitalist 
> movement. Though as usual the main organisations from France, Italy 
> and Germany talked-out any serious proposals for change in its 
> structure, its capacity to take concerted action against neoliberalism 
> and war, the growth of forces calling for change and willing to fight 
> for it was a real step forward.
>
> The largest delegations in Frankfurt came from Greece, France, 
> Germany, Italy and Turkey. The attendance from Eastern Europe 
> including Russia has also markedly increased. There were smaller, but 
> active delegations from Austria, the Basque Country, Belgium, Denmark, 
> Portugal and Sweden, plus a representative from Palestine. The biggest 
> “absence” was the British, including a complete “no show” from the 
> Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
>
>  All the major forces in the ESF were present. On the right wing, the 
> European Left Party, the trade union bureaucrats, the NGOs and Attac, 
> There were also the more unions like COBAS from Italy.
>  However, the role of the “centre”, traditionally played by the 
> centrist forces of the Fourth International (USFI) and the IST-SWP was 
> this time only filled by the FI alone. All the SWP ‘s sister 
> organisations –even Linksruck from Germany –boycotted the meeting.
>
>  The EPA started on Saturday morning, with a report and balance sheet 
> of the Athens ESF and a discussion on the “future for the movement”.
>  There was a general agreement, that Athens was a very vibrant, lively 
> event and had a very large participation from youth and radical 
> working class activists. Also the number of trade unions sending 
> delegations had increased. It had drawn in large numbers from Turkey 
> and increased the participation from Eastern Europe
>
>  That Athens was much more radical, anti-capitalist and 
> anti-imperialist did not please everyone. Also the lifting of the ban 
> on political parties was contested. Athens also saw the emergence of 
> an organised opposition to the dominance of reformists and their 
> hangers-on - an Anti-imperialist Space.
>
>  Many organisations – including the Creek Social Forum itself, the 
> Turkish organisations, immigrant organisations, some of the delegates 
> from Italy, the organisations from the Anti-imperialist Space – saw 
> all this as a real achievement.
>
>  Others were far from pleased. Judith Dellheim from the German PDS 
> urged the need to go back to the ban on parties, supposedly in order 
> allow their members and leaders to “speak freely as individuals.” In 
> reality this means freedom from being held responsible for the deeds 
> of their parties such as Rifondazione’s participation in a neoliberal 
> and imperialist government.
>
>  Likewise representatives from Attac and ARCI (Italy) expressed their 
> concern, that the ESF would “narrow” its basis and become dominated by 
> anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist forces and communists of all 
> sorts.
>
>  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.
>
>  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.
>
>  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.
>
> An Anti-imperialist Network
>
>  Up to now, the more radical forces have worked in isolation from each 
> other. On the Friday before the ESF there was, as usual, a day for 
> network meetings. This time one of them was the Anti-imperialist 
> Network formed out of the anti-imperialist space in Athens. It 
> gathered organisations like the Organisation of Greece Communists, 
> Turkish organisations of Stalinist origin, the PFLP, the Basque 
> nationalist Left and youth, and the League for the Fifth International 
> and the youth organisation Revolution.
>
>  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.
>
>  It agreed to call for maximum support for the Beirut International 
> Solidarity Conference (16-19 November) to mobilise together against 
> the G 8 in Heiligendamm (2-8 June 2007), building a mass demonstration 
> and an anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist block on it, to organise its 
> own seminars and workshops within the counter summit.
>
>  Also it was agreed to cooperate closely with the 
> anti-repression-network and the anti-war network, which itself agreed 
> on an international day of action in support of Palestine on 17-18. 
> April 2007.
>
> Where is the ESF going?
>
>  In the plenary meetings of the EPA, once again as so often before, 
> the lightly disguised reformists and the supposed- Trotskyists of the 
> Fourth International and Attac dodged all the burning questions beyond 
> the old calls for more “efficiency” and “transparency”. They avoided 
> any discussion about the Italian situation and Bertinotti and the RC 
> leaderships’ fight against our movement.
>
>  Here one could see, the real existing balance of forces in the EPAs 
> and ESFs on show. The whole question of transparency is used to avoid 
> political conflict and bore people to death with vacuous debates on 
> “method”. So an open “preparatory meeting” for the next Preparatory 
> Assembly will take place in January. It will decide the exact date and 
> venue of the EPA. This will meet again at the end of March 2007 to 
> decide on the location of the next European Social Forum. The three 
> candidates for holding its are Austria, Denmark-Sweden and Portugal.
>
>  The meeting showed that fears (or hopes in some cases) that ESF/EPS 
> process is dead are still premature. But it does remain in a comatose 
> state – a condition deliberately fostered by its undeclared and 
> informal inner leadership. This is not altogether surprising surprise.
>  The ESF (and the World Social Forum -WSF) too came into being as a 
> result of capitalist globalisation and as a result of the emergence of 
> a movement fighting against it. But this movement not only combined 
> resistance from different classes and strata – workers, peasants, 
> youth, petit bourgeois and middle classes.
>
>  It also included different political trajectories – a large part 
> representing petit-bourgeois forces (the NGOs, populists and 
> libertarians) or reformist forces, i.e. bourgeois politics, but from 
> organisations socially rooted in the working class (like trade unions 
> and reformist parties. The latter were impelled towards the 
> anti-capitalist youth after Seattle in 1999 by the resolute march 
> rightwards to full-blown neoliberalism by the big reformist parties – 
> the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, the German 
> Special Democrats.
>
>  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.
>
>  Obviously, a unity between reformism and forces wanting to fight 
> imperialism and capitalism can only be temporary and only on the basis 
> of agreements to undertake serious joint action.
>  This is particularly so in period of intensifying class struggle.
>
>  The problem is that as the crisis for European imperialist project, 
> in part caused by the anti-globalist and anticapitalist movement, 
> deepens the call has gone out from sections of the European ruling 
> class to co-opt some of the “left” reformist parties that have played 
> a big role in the ESF. The capitalists support new versions of the 
> popular front – like L’Unione in Italy - and use them to derail, 
> contain or split the resistance and radicalisation of the masses. 
> Obviously, one cannot have a “united” movement, with one part in 
> government attacking the other part on the street resisting.
>
>  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.  
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