Athenian democracy
Hilary
Wainwright
The fourth European Social
Forum, held in Athens in May, outstripped the modest expectations of the Greek
organisers. Hilary Wainwright reports on the key themes of the Athens forum –
and what might come next
In the build up to the European Social Forum (ESF) in Athens, the fourth since
Florence in 2002, the Greek organisers were modest in their expectations of
its political significance. ‘It will be a well organised event; but that’ll be
it,’ said Panayotis Yulis from the ESF social and political rights network on
the eve of the gathering that took place in the abandoned airport next to the
almost abandoned Olympic village from 4-7 May.
The political context of the left in Greece helps to explain this somewhat
fatalistic approach. The left there has long been weighed down by the strength
and the heavy dogmatism and sectarianism of the most orthodox communist party
in Europe. The anti-Stalinist Synaspismos party, strongly influenced by the
social movements of recent years, receives just a few per cent of the vote. An
autonomous social-movement left has had no identity whatsoever.
By the Monday after the ESF, however, members of the Greek Social Forum, the
main grouping behind the event, could not believe what had happened. The
forum’s 80,000-strong demonstration was ‘the largest demonstration ever called
independently of the Communist Party’, said Sissy Vovou, one of the organisers
of the forum’s women’s assembly. ‘Most notable were the many young people who
were not members of any political organisation. It’s a sign of a subterranean
radicalisation.’ The positive aftermath was spoiled only by the taste of tear
gas after a group who call themselves anarchists tried to provoke a reaction
from the police by chucking Molotov cocktails.
It wasn’t just the size and composition of the demonstration that made the
concept of social movements likely, at last, to become a potent part of the
language of public debate in Greece. It was also the forum itself, which was
organised very consciously to illustrate that it is possible to run a
30,000-strong extravaganza of political discussion and cultural experience in
a participatory, egalitarian and pleasurable way.
Out were big plenaries with endless lists of celebrity speakers; in were
focused seminars involving networks whose roots were first put down in the
previous forums in Florence or Paris and are now coming to maturity. Out were
corporate sponsorship and high price entrance fees; in were solidarity funds,
low entrance fees and thorough international organising work, leading to over
1,000 participants from Turkey and 3,000 from eastern Europe.
A generally good-humoured social movements assembly at the end of the forum heard of focal points for action over the next year. These include a Europe-wide week of action to campaign for complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, against the threat of a new war in Iran, against the occupation of Palestine, for nuclear disarmament, and to eliminate military bases in Europe; and a day of mobilisation across Europe and Africa in favour of an unconditional legalisation and equal rights for all migrants, and the closure of all detention centres in Europe.
There was a mood of satisfaction with the three days of intense, almost sleepless, international planning. ‘It’s been more focused than ever before. More new ideas have come up than ever before,’ said Alla Glinchikova, one of 100 Russian participants from the Moscow Social Forum.
The flow of new ideas coming from the ESF is something even Le Monde remarked upon in its leader on ‘Europe Day’ – a few days after the Athens forum. It pointed to the ESF as a source of alternatives at a time when the European elites are at an impasse. I found a widespread insistence on the importance of deepening our analysis. ‘It’s not enough just to be against Bolkestein [the EU directive introducing market forces to essential services]. We need specific analyses of how neo-liberalism is being carried through in different countries, the impact of enlargement and what can be learnt from the UK,’ commented Kenny Bell, deputy convenor of the northern region of Unison. To this end the network of public service trade unions is organising not just action but a Europe-wide seminar in October.
This conscious connection
between action and analysis was also indicated by a new seriousness towards
the knowledge of the movements. ‘An aspect of the power of the movements is
the fact that as they act and organise they are generating knowledge from
below,’ said Mayo Fuster, one of a group of researchers, media and techno
activists working to systematise the collective knowledge of the ESF.
But along with these signs of maturity went a sense of the need for innovation
within the innovation. A few years back the focus was on breaking up
hierarchy, creating decentralised, autonomous forms of organisation, ensuring
space for the multiplicity of initiatives, projects and organisations that
made up the movements. The concept of the network expressed the idea of
coordination without a centre. But now there is a search for new ways of
interconnecting the multiplicity.
The search comes out of practical needs, felt after taking decentralisation to
its limits. For Yannis Almpanis, the human ‘hub’ at the centre of the process
of merging the hundreds of seminar proposals into a manageable list, the need
is for ‘more open collective decision making with clear rules to overcome the
problem of informal power’. For example, techno-political tools, using the web
as a means of interactive communication and collaborative work, are playing an
increasing role in the development of the ESF. They are vital to extending
decision-making beyond those who can afford the airfares and the time to
attend organising meeting – a recurring source of informal power.
For the next ESF gathering the talk is of holding it somewhere like Brussels
and organising it on a Europe-wide basis, rather than it being nationally
hosted as in the past. As indicated by the Eurotopia survey discussed on the
following pages, there are still many tensions and disagreements and very
uneven growth. How the social forum process responds to these challenges will
determine whether it can build something of lasting influence on the
foundations laid in the past few years.
May 2006
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