The “encounter ” as it was described on the agenda pulled together about 45-50 people in Paris. It started on Sunday and is due to finish on Monday afternoon and I’m hoping to get a report on that session in the next day or day.
Who was there? Britain seems to be the world centre of the ecologically aware proletarian vanguard. The Alliance For Green Socialism had five or six people there. Socialist Resistance had six. The Left Greens had four or five including Derek Wall, one of the event’s convenors and the SWP were represented by their well regarded comrade Jonathan. A Paris based AWL comrade spoke a couple of times and, for the first time ever, I was able to agree with everything a member of that current said. Greece too was well represented with a number of comrades from SYRZIA. More about Greece later. There was a small number of comrades from Brazil and Argentina, most notable of whom were ecossocialistas. Check out their website. It’s in Portuguese but it’s easy enough to follow. Then there were four or five LCR members, somebody from the French Green Party representing himself, a couple of people from the Danish Red Green Alliance. Solidarity (US) was there as was Sinistra Critica. In addition there was a spread of individuals some of whom seemed to have more useful contributions to make than others. Apologies were received from a member of the Nepal Green Party and comrades in China, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Japan.
So you can see that the organisers were able to draw on a wide range of contacts and networks. The average age of the participants was probably on the wrong side of fifty and it was predominantly male.
Like most readers of this site I don’t like anything that brings “touchy feeliness” into politics. So I was tempted to call for a split when someone proposed that we sit in a circle “so we can all see each other”. The view didn’t reward the effort of moving the chairs.
After the introductions it was quickly agreed to have a multi-lingual website. This already exists in a rough form. Ian Angus will be in charge of that. There followed a long discussion on the next event. It seems to be a small step from a shabby, cold hall on the edge of Paris to a major international conference in Brazil during the 2009 World Social Forum and that seems to be the plan. The Brazilian comrades, some of whom I think are with the Fourth International’s Socialist Democracy group, seem confident that they can pull it off. In the meantime the Greek comrades offered to host a smaller event before next summer. A coordinating committee of sixteen or so people was elected and comrade Tracey was thrilled to be nominated as SR’s representative.
Michel Löwy gave a rare insight into the ferocious democratic centralism that the LCR leadership uses to keep a grip on its members. He said words to the effect of “we didn’t get any central committee’s permission to do this. We just went ahead and did it because it seemed a good idea.” Contrast this to the approach that is so common in theEnglish speaking left.
Is anything likely to come out of it? It’s too early to say. What was impressive was the seriousness of purpose of the convenors and their success in pulling together such a spectrum of opinion. The precise meaning of “ecosocialism” still has to be properly defined and for this to happen will require an international process of discussion and today was an early step on that road. How this concept then begins to affect political practice and develop an explicit current will be the next big test. The really interesting discussion will be on the next Ecosocialist Manifesto. In this context the distinction between reformist and revolutionary solutions to the environmental crisis is more than rhetorical. My judgement based on today’s contributions would be that the next version of the Manifesto will be an explicitly revolutionary document.
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