17.11.2005

Empty platitudes or programme of action

Around 180 people from across Europe attended the November 12-13 'Assembly for a charter of principles for another Europe' in Florence. This charter, which could potentially be a very useful tool for the struggles of the working class in Europe, will be presented to the next European Social Forum in Athens in May 2006. However, the confusion about the purpose and structure of the charter mirrors the political disarray of much of the European left, says Tina Becker

The assembly was a huge success for one simple reason: it was the first time for many years that the most important left organisations in Europe have got together in an open meeting to discuss politics and not organisational matters. The finished charter is supposed to be our own alternative to the social charter of the European constitution, though it will not follow the structure of that text. The weekend was divided up into seven sessions, each lasting around two hours and covering themes like 'peace and security', 'Europe in the world' and 'workers and social rights'. Each session was introduced by two speakers, some of whom had produced discussion papers, while others seemed to make up their speech as they went along. The discussions that ensued certainly provided a useful - if sometimes slightly scary - insight into the political thinking of the participants. As this assembly took place under the auspices of the European Social Forum, in which political parties are semi-banned, most of the attendees unfortunately self-censored themselves, 'forgetting' to mention their party membership. Mind you, most people there have been getting to know each other quite well, as they have been attending the same meetings over the last few years - the last time at the European Left Party conference two weeks ago. Ever since the demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of 'official communism', there have been various attempts at left cooperation across Europe. This process started with the creation of the Forum of the New European Left (NELF) in 1990 and its 'parliamentary arm', the United European Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) in 1999. The creation of the European Left Party is part of this process of reuniting the left, as is the establishment of the European Social Forum in 2002. Claims that the ESF is simply a conglomeration of 'the movements' are easily shown to be absurd by a truthful look at the organisers and main participants in these events. All of these efforts have so far had one thing in common: they have not led to political clarity. Even worse, they have not even attempted to work out where our organisations agree politically - and, crucially, over which issues there is disagreement. Far from such open and transparent discussions being regarded as a way of aiding our unification on a higher political level, they are seen as potentially damaging and an embarrassing. Any political statements and positions agreed by the above organisations tend to be not much more than platitudes and inconsequential waffle. Not that everything is wrong - just that statements tend to reflect the lowest common denominator, which in this political period is unfortunately so low that it often slips below the common-sense radar. Last week's assembly could be described as an attempt to break out of this self-created political cloud-cuckoo-land. Unfortunately, it was a rather half-hearted one. It is still unclear, for example, what purpose this charter should serve. The 14 introductions ranged from brief, concrete demands in bullet form to long, semi-philosophical explorations of the concept of citizenship. While some of the 14 were chosen by the organisers because their proposers are members of the more important organisations involved (though in the ESF process they cannot say so), others only represented themselves - which was, of course, reflected in the quality and concreteness of their contributions. Both introductions on the question of the environment fell into the latter category, as did Hilary Wainwright's musings on the question of 'Citizenship, equality and difference'. They all lacked hard or subsumable ideas and did not really provide a method of how we could construct our own Europe from below. By the end of the first day it became quite clear that there was a divide opening up between those participants who had hoped that we were in the process of producing a kind of minimum programme for a Europe from below and those who want the charter to be a very broad outline without any concrete demands. Unfortunately, the latter concept was pursued by the bigger organisations present: the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, the Communist Party of France, the Greek left party, Synapsismos, and most importantly Rifondazione Comunista, who hosted the event. The comrades from those organisations consistently argued that we need broad generalities about "a peaceful and social Europe" and should not get 'bogged down' in detailed discussions about how exactly we would manage to achieve our Europe or what we would want it to look like. Pacifism As to the politics, they were just as confused. This was not helped by the fact that only three of the 14 introductions had been translated into English beforehand and that it was often rather difficult to understand the more complex issues through simultaneous interpretation alone. The first morning saw an interesting and important discussion on the question of 'peace and security'. Both introductions were deeply pacifistic, especially the one presented by Raffaela Bollini, who represents the Italian left political institute, Arci, which is linked to the Democratic Left. But she also quite clearly expressed Rifondazione's view on the matter and was criticised only by a handful of comrades from smaller organisations across Europe. Pierro Bernocchi speaks: a ray of sense She writes: "[Our Europe] recognises the right of human beings and peoples to resist oppression and injustice using means which don't produce additional oppression and violation of universal rights, and it commits itself to involve the international community in the defence of the demands for justice raised by the victims." Apparently, "our Europe" should not just turn the other cheek and under no circumstances defend itself with weapons of any kind - we are also supposed to "respect the existing international rights on peace and justice" and "commit ourselves to promote and develop the democratic international institutions founded for assuring peace and justice between the peoples". All it needs therefore is to "remove the obstacles that exist in the present international institutions". The United Nations just needs a little bit of tweaking, while the International Court of Justice, on the other hand, is just fine the way it is and should be "supported by our Europe". Italian working class history is of course anything but pacifistic (remember Mussolini dangling from a tree), but unfortunately, in its quest to fuse with 'the movements', Rifondazione Comunista is giving up on that history. In addition, the comrades undoubtedly are also very interested in proving their 'responsible' credentials to Romano Prodi, with whom they want to share government after the 2006 elections. Levelling up or down? Another enlightening discussion ensued in the session on 'workers and social rights'. A text was produced by Angela Klein, who is a member of the small German Trotskyist group, Internationale Sozialistische Linke, which is attached to the Fourth International (whose main organisation in Europe is the LCR). Her contribution was one of the few that actually consisted of concrete demands - however, reading through them you almost wished she had been more abstract "¦ "Every gainful employment is liable to social insurance and enjoys, where possible, the protection by collective agreement," she writes (my emphasis). Naturally, workers control is not mentioned, and instead comrade Klein writes that "the employees have the right to be informed and listened to on the economic and financial situation of the company for which they work" (my emphasis). They also have the right to be totally ignored in practice by their employer, I presume. Her draft also included the demand for a "maximum work time in the Union" that "may not be above 40 hours per week". Jacques Chirac and Angela Merkel will be pleased to hear that: after all, this would represent a real rise in working hours for French and German workers. "The Union creates the overall conditions for a minimum wage level in the community," she writes. However, my suggestion for a workers' commission to work out how much a person in today's Europe would need to earn in order to reproduce themselves socially and culturally was briskly brushed aside when she summed up. Apparently, it would be "impossible" to pay people in France the same wage as those in Poland and she only meant it 'theoretically'. This was echoed by Gianfranco Benzi from the Italian union, CGIL, who said that "there are too many different working conditions in Europe" and that there could be "no harmonisation of rights" just yet. Rather than levelling up to the best conditions in Europe, the comrade suggested that we should find a 'middle way' that would not demand too much of capitalism and our employers. But without a European minimum wage, companies can switch production abroad to save on wages or, under the Bolkestein directive, can pay workers from Poland the level of Polish wages, even though they are working in Britain or France. Unfortunately, most of the attendees either seemed oblivious to comrade Klein's horrid suggestions or they actually agreed with them. Criticism came almost exclusively from the few representatives from Britain (see below). Self-determination Another bizarre introduction was heard on the question of 'Democracy and participation'. Lydia Menapace, a member of the Italian Federalist movement, used her 10 minutes to talk against the rights of nations to self-determination. Like her comrades, who were very visible over the weekend, she thought that the way to combat nationalism would be the denial of democratic rights to oppressed people. "You don't have to be a free nation first before you can become something else. Why can't we go straight from an oppressed nation to being something else?" In this concept, socialism almost seems to be delivered magically by some super-force - it certainly has nothing to do with self-emancipation. Open borders? Hilary Wainwright's musings on the concepts of 'Citizenship, equality and difference' were in that sense less obnoxious, because they were rather nebulous and full of 'ESF-speak'. The aim of her semi-philosophical exploration was to get close to "what Hannah Arendt called public happiness". A campaign for 'residence citizenship' would make the public very happy, apparently, but my amendment to expand this through an explicit call for open borders would not and was rejected. You see, the seemingly classless 'public' (comrade Wainwright omitted any mention of class) is much happier if they cannot live and work wherever they choose and if capitalism continues to distinguish between useful and useless immigrants. As our interview with Elisabeth Gauthier shows, this attitude is unfortunately far from unusual on the European left, where principled political positions are sacrificed for the sake of 'responsible Realpolitik'. The comrades who drafted the initial contributions have now been asked by the Italian organisers to include amendments, which will then be discussed at the next ESF assembly in Vienna (January 6-8). It might have been more useful to commission small working groups instead, as those individuals (some of whom are part of very small political organisations or none at all) have already indicated that they are not willing to include many of the more critical suggestions. This is another example of the inadequacy of this particular form of 'consensus method' used in the ESF: dissenting viewpoints will simply get sidelined, as there is no facility to record them in any meaningful way. So, while this assembly was useful in that it clarified some important political differences amongst the participants, it has opened up a big can of worms. The visions for an alternative Europe were often naive, sometimes deeply reformist and occasionally surreal. But there were also a few rays of sense shining through. For example, in his introduction on 'Social common goods' (ie, social services), Pierro Bernocchi from the Italian leftwing trade union federation, Cobas, explained how social services are a reflection of class struggle in each country. He demanded that we should fight for an "extension of democracy" and "control of those services by all those who work there and use them". It remains to be seen if this assembly has brought us any closer to our vision of a Communist Party of the European Union. The clarification and open discussion of different political ideas is certainly a step in the right direction. No SWP, no Respect As usual, the British contingent was rather small. Apart from myself and Hilary Wainwright (Red Pepper), there were three members from Workers Power and Cath Fletcher from the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, who currently lives in Italy. A number of European comrades were rather puzzled that again no comrade from the Socialist Workers Party/Respect had bothered to show up. Since the European Social Forum in London in 2004, which was undemocratically run by the SWP on behalf of London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, the comrades have certainly kept their distance from the whole ESF process. However, seeing that Respect only two weeks ago applied to join the European Left Party, it might have been a nice gesture if they had at least pretended to be interested in the issue of Europe. But in the SWP's economistic world view, Europe is simply "boring" and a "non-issue", as Chris Nineham put it several times during the preparations for the London ESF. The comrades are proud to have nothing to say on the question of Europe and privately admit that their real position is for British withdrawal from the European Union. ESF 2006 postponed The next European Social Forum in Athens has been postponed by one month to May 4-7, at the request of the Italian comrades. The Italian general elections looks set to take place at the beginning of April 2006, after which Rifondazione Comunista is hoping to enter government in coalition with former president of the European commission, Romano Prodi. If it would help to bugger up these plans, it could be worthwhile insisting on the original timetable. However, the comrades look set to repeat their tragic experiment - this time as full members of the government coalition, not just in a supporting role, as during the first Olive Tree. Related articles * Party discipline no longer works Elisabeth Gauthier is a member of the executive committee of the Parti Communiste Franà§ais. She spoke to Tina Becker about the recent riots in France