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Politics Turned Upside Down; Towards the Principles of A New
Politics
28 January, from 15.30 to 21.00
WSF 5, Porto Alegre, Hall F201 Terrain 8
Co-organised by Transnational Institute, Transform! Italia and Institute for Popular
Democracy (Philipines)
Speakers: Ezequiel Adamovsky / Argentina - Tariq Ali / Pakistan - UK - Marcos Arruda / Brazil - Marco
Berlinguer / Italy - Jose Correio Leite / Brazil - Gigi Francisco / Philippines - Michael Hardt / USA - Roland Llamas / Philippines - Javier Navascues / Spain - Fannie Ncap ayi / South Africa - Alvaro Portillo / Uruguay - Prabir Purkayastha / India - Hilary Wainwright / UK ... and others
See background notes
This seminar is intended as part of a international process of
discussion and reflection on innovative experiences contributing
towards a new politics of the left. The starting point of the seminar is
a recognition of the importance of struggles and movements for change
autonomous from the state. From that starting point it explores ways of
organising for structural or society wide change which build on,
strengthen and interconnect these struggles. What relations this
implies with the state, what role if any for what kind of political
parties are treated as open but fundamental questions. The seminar will
be in two parts.
Part 1.The seminar will start from reports on how people are actually
struggling for survival, social justice and dignity in their daily
lives. These reports should be grounded in actual experience but will
aim to identify patterns, tendencies in the demands and issues on which
people focus, the ways they organise and the forms of power they create.
They should end by posing questions for strategies for
structural/society wide change and the role and character of a
supportive political party.
Introduction: Hilary Wainwright, TNI (New Politics)
The panel of contributors is in the process of being finalised. It will
include speakers who will draw on:
a) Recent surveys of struggles over labour and over the city in Italy,
Marco Berlinguer, Transform! Italia;
b) Forms of popular power in Argentina. Ezequiel Adamovsky. El
Rodabello
c) The experience of Via Campesina including of relief and
reconstruction in Tsunami zone. Via Campesina speaker
d) The struggles around privatisation and public provision in South
Africa. Fannie Ncapayi. Calusa - NGO working with rural movements on
land and infrastructure issues
e) The insights of the feminist movements. Gigi Francisco. DAWN -
Development Alternatives for Women Network (South East Asia)
f) Attempts to carry out functions perfomed by the party through
movement based processes for example, the methodology exemplified
through the WSF of aggregating proposals - traditionally the party
function of drawing up a programme or the new methods of developing a
collective memory, also traditionally a party function, now attempted
through movements networks, techno activists. Jose Correio Leite.
Brazilian Committee of the WSF
g) Attempts to find a voice for radical movements in systems of elite
democracy, notably the USA, and wider conclusions to be drawn from this
and other experience of popular resistance in the present period.
Michael Hardt , Duke University, USA
Part 2. It will be on the lessons to be learnt from attempts in the
past twenty years or so explicitly and self-consciously to rethink and
recreate forms of the radical political agency, whether as a new kind of
political party or a none- party, entirely new kind of subjectivity.
This panel would focus both on issues concerning relations with
government and the related issue of the organisation of the party itself
and its relation to popular movement and struggle - the experiences and
issues raised in the first session.
This panel would be introduced by Tariq Ali. New Left Review with a
general argument about the need to engagement in the political/electoral
sphere
And speakers on lessons from:
a) Different experiences of relations between left parties and
government including the experience of the left in Brazil, in India and
in Bolivia.
- Marcos Arruda. PT, PACS and TNI.
- Dionisio Nunez, MASS member of parliament plus head of the commission on
narcotics.
- Prabir Purkayastha, Delhi Science Forum
b) Lessons from attempts to create new kinds of political parties,
drawing in particular from the experiences of the Spanish United Left
and the Philipines.
- Javier Navascues - Fundaciones des investigationes marxistas
- Roland Llamas and the Institute for Popular Democracy and Akbayan
Draft Background Notes, for distribution at the beginning of the seminar.
By Hilary Wainwright
We start from a double problem but also with resources for hope. The double problem is: on the one the failure of traditional parties of the left to achieve the goals of social justice which they proclaimed and secondly the fact that although social movements have gained huge support, including on an international scale - against the war, against neo-liberalism - they have nevertheless failed too in achieving their goals. So although we need alternative agencies of social transformation to the traditional political party, our search and experimentation must go beyond social movements as they presently exist.
Our resources for hope include the constantly growing and spreading and interconnecting movements of grass roots resistance and vision; also a source of hope is the capacity of many of these movements for innovation and learning.
We need to break thoroughly with the old parliamentary and vanguard paradigms and start from a precise understanding of the new forms that the constant struggle for human dignity takes (on this basis we might well return to salvage positive and necessary elements of classical left politics, and integrate them into a new framework).
So the first session - which we intend will feed into and inform the second - hears and interrogates reports and reflections on emerging struggles and forms of resistance. We want to understand: the demands that are being raised - not always predictable; the new kinds of alliances that are being made; the new radical cultures and ways of pre-figuring the future that are being created; the ways in which technological innovation and political innovation could interact and strengthen our capacities for change; how far and in what way the movements achieve in new, more radical and effective ways, some of the activities traditionally carried out by the party. In what ways are they, by their very nature as movements autonomous from state institutions, more effectively transformative than political parties? On the other hand what are their limits? For what purposes do they need a specifically political organisation, acting at the level of state and electoral institutions?
This leads into the second session. Here we will discuss what, in the context of the new kinds of subjectivity discussed in the first session, remains for political organisations to do? What kind of political organisation _ in terms of its forms of internal organisation and culture, its relation to movements and grass roots struggle and its relation to government and to international institutions - can truly build on and work in partnership with social movements, supporting their radicality, overcoming their political limits without undermining their autonomy? What can be learnt from the experiences of the left in government about how, when the left gains office, the people can gain power. Here the experience of Brazil is central but other experiences such as Uruguay, Bolivia and Spain also provide a basis for important insights.
What also can we learn from attempts to creat new kinds of explicitly `movement parties' as in Italy and the Philippines?
Outcome... ... a working group to summarise some initial principles to put on the WSF notice board/circulate on the web etc..what else?
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