The Promise of the European Social Forum
Phil McLeish
(
Contents
1. Introduction: Paris 12-16 November 2003
2. Needs of the hive mind (I) :
Exchange
·
Primacy of flows over nodes
·
Count quantities of participation
·
Demassify ourselves!
·
Build a city of
·
Map Strategic Proximity (content)
·
All Power to the Database! (content)
·
A Time of Unity (time)
3. Needs of the Hive Mind (II): Self-organisation
(i) (Direct) Action: Let’s Act together
(ii)
Facilitation
4. A Democratic European Social Forum
·
Transparency
·
Accountability
·
Impartiality and independence (of the committee vis
a vis participant organisations)
·
Participation
A European public space
capable of setting limits to capital is such a burning necessity that its
emergence can only be a question of time. The ESF could play a critical role in
this process, and become the seed crystal for a redemocratisation
of European society.
Whether it chooses to move
towards becoming such a ‘constituent assembly’ or whether it remains as a
‘people’s university’ – an amiable environment in which to hear some very
interesting and clever people speak – depends critically on how it is
organized. An organization capable of facilitating the emergence of European
post-national citizens’ networks, is an entirely new
beast, as different from the NGOs which emerged over the last 50 years as it is
from the political parties and trade unions of the 19th and 20th
centuries.
Such an organization needs
to maximise political
exchange (across regions, sectors, movements and natural allies) within a
context of participatory
collective action. This article makes concrete proposals as to how time,
space, and thematic content within the forum might be structured to achieve
this.
A clear constitutional
framework for the ESF is required, one which makes the organising committee
transparent, accountable to the assembly and committed to an overarching value
of political independence and neutrality. Striving to reach agreement or unity
on political principles is unimportant at best and dangerously divisive at
worst. Far more important in the forum realising its potential is the provision
of excellent facilitation services, and the recycling and renewal within it of
past and present experiments in participatory democracy.
1. Introduction:
The European Social Forum process is
without any doubt of central significance in developing a challenge to neoliberalism within
I absolutely enjoyed the four days. I heard many thought-provoking and stimulating speeches. The dedicated and careful preparation that enabled the smooth running of a miraculous logistical feat was awe-inspiring. Mingling amongst so many comrades all looking for routes out of this mess rekindled in me a political optimism and determination lacking in recent years. And yet, despite my excitement, I believe that the potential of the event was nowhere near being realised.
To me, more than anything else, the event felt like a huge people’s university – a vast curriculum of lectures and seminars essentially comprising individuals making speeches. Some speakers were enthralling to listen to, some were interesting and some, inevitably, were less impressive. Yet although I filled my notebook with notes, I felt a residual dissatisfaction. There were two distinct issues here.
1. On the one hand I was frustrated because, having come with a quite specific set of interests and concerns, I felt sure there must be people from other countries here that I absolutely needed to talk to. I didn’t know how to track them down, other than by simply launching into conversation with my neighbour in the lecture theatre. Sometimes this worked, though even then, that person thereafter vanished forever into the sea of people. It didn’t particularly help that I was sleeping in a nationally segregated group. So I experienced a certain promise of encounter and exchange that remained unmet.
2. On the other hand, I found it frustrating being confined to the role of consumer of ideas, even such interesting ideas as these. I wanted to become a participant in a political process. I therefore held out a lot of hope for the final day which was to be the “Assembly of European Social Movements”. This was to be the point at which we step from discussion to practice, from debating ideas to putting forward proposals for action. What kind of action proposals were these?
· Some were simply to ask for the endorsement or approval of a particular political position.
·
Some proposed that we all agree
on a particular message eg. “lets all say no to the
constitute or a yes to social rights or to an open
·
Some proposed in broad terms
that we act on a certain issue –
e.g. resist water privatisation, support peace in
·
Some were to invite people to
support particular events e.g. the
anti Bush demo in
All the initiatives deserved support, some of them were urgently important, some powerful opportunities. Yet sorely lacking in all of the proposals was the flesh and bones of practical detail. In one case a person stood up (I no longer remember what the theme was) and started saying ‘we need to choose a date to all work towards, because otherwise things won’t move forward’. He then picked a date out of the air and proposed it! Many of the proposals were actions that had already been planned by one or other national organisation and were simply being networked at the Assembly. Very, very few bore the imprint of a novel collective, international planning process that had directly emerged out of the Forum itself. This kind of general enumeration of campaigns and appeals for support should have taken place on the first day as part of a general brainstorming process to generate working groups. By the final day they should have been transformed into powerful international joint projects and coordinations. Yet little sustained work seemed to have been added during the Forum itself.
In theory these action proposals emerged from the 5 streams. Yet the streams were conceived not as political processes – for instance as participatory think tanks to generate European political projects - but rather they seemed simply convenient umbrellas to erect over a sequence of discrete panel discussions. And although on the website each meeting was assigned a number, these had been removed from the final programme, so I, like everyone else simply went to the meetings that appealed to me. Nor – as a punter - was there any particular reason to stick to meetings labelled only with one or other number. The disconnection between sessions meant there was no guarantee or even likelihood that you’d be able to work in a more focused way at a theme or build up an ongoing relationship with others working on the same topic. In some ways it just put you more at risk of getting things repeated.
Let me give two
examples. From the
Or imagine that, having provisionally
decided that something needs to be done this year regarding the constitution,
the organising committee had set up 3 think-do tanks on: (1) A peaceful
These twin failures, a) to maximise – from the point of view of the participant – relevant productive and potentially enduring political exchanges and b) to integrate individuals into the Forum as deliberating and creative collective agents, both drastically curtail the promise represented by the FSE. This essay attempts to identify some of the steps needed to make good that promise.
2.
Needs of the hive mind (I) : Exchange
National public spheres emerged together
with their respective national bourgeoisies during the 17 th and 18 th centuries. By
the end of the 19th century national labour movements were important
actors on these stages, and other social movements entered the fray during the
course of the 20the century. In the space of a few decades, power has simply
evaporated beyond the reach of all of these forces. This is now widely
understood. Everyone is searching for a way to reconstitute at a European (and
global) level, social movements capable of setting limits to capital. This
fevered searching lies behind the hunger to meet and exchange which draws
people to the ESF. This is not a fad – we stand before the imminent eruption of
a European public space, the reconstitution of
Clear, is that we don’t need it to speak on our behalf or to build a unified political programme. The politics of representation generates pyramidal bodies in which information flows up and decisions flow down. In the network society, this kind of body is an anachronism. It can be bad enough in a particular sector – eg. bureaucratic trade unions that brake union militancy, top heavy development NGOs out of touch with those in the fields. But where the organisation’s function is to link across and between sectors, regions, and movements then something wholly different is required.
The organisation we need to run the Social
Forum only needs to do one thing, but it needs to do this exceptionally well.
It needs to foster, nurture and encourage the emergence of a new
(i) Primacy of flows over nodes
A network comprises flows moving through nodes. Moving from segmented national political fields to a European one (and generally from a society of stable institutions to a society of networks), means that vertical national flows are much less significant than the horizontal international ones. A large and influential organisation adept at operating within a national political culture may be less important than a website or email list run by one person when it comes to the import – export of struggle. An organisation critical in communicating one struggle may prove completely inadequate to communicate others.
The hive mind of the coming European revolution comprises huge flows of information, inspiration, skills, tactics, strategies, knowledges, analyses, contacts, values, symbols and memes travelling between regions, sectors, classes and movements. By contrast, existing national nodes - organisations, identities, or parties - are simply etchings carved out or sediment left over from the great flows of the twentieth century.
Before they are arise, the course these flows will take cannot be known. Afterwards, their memory will be repressed by the soon-hardening nodes through which the flows route themselves. Movements are rarely conscious of whence their constituent elements were borrowed or plagiarized. Organisations proudly drape themselves with these elements as indispensable badges of identity. Organisers thrown up by events, who find themselves serving or surfing these waves of history narcissistically imagine themselves their authors. Last year’s bright creative movement becomes a fossilized bureaucracy or an inert ritualistic subculture. Perhaps this has always been the case, but the turnaround simply happens faster now.
Once we take seriously the primacy of flows over nodes, two things follow. The first is the need to maximise flows. The rest of this chapter deals with the organisational implications of pursuing this. The second is the need to make available flexible organisational mechanisms to enable flows to swiftly and efficiently stabilise themselves, ie. to throw up new nodes. This is addressed in the following chapter.
(ii)
Count quantities of participation
The first point to make about the interrelation between participation and exchanges is that, simply in crude quantitative terms, participatory rather than consumerist meeting structures make an enormous difference to the number of exchanges possible. One person addressing a crowd of 1000 people produces 1000 (univocal) exchanges. A panel of six people addressing this crowd produces 6000 (univocal) exchanges. If 1000 people break into groups of 10 in which each person addresses their group in turn, then there are 9 x 10 exchanges per group, ie. 90 x 100 = 9,000 (dialogic) interactions. If each of these groups feeds back to groups of 100, and then these back in turn to the whole group, then the number of exchanges is [9,000] + [99 x10 x 10] + [999 x 10] = 28,800 exchanges, and that is without even allowing for discussion, simply counting individuals addressing the group.
However, if people were simply standing up and ranting demagogic gibberish, we would simply have a lot of rubbish exchanges. If the meeting packed up, everyone went their separate ways and were never again to be reconvened, we would simply have the memory of a lot of rubbish exchanges.
(iii) Demassify Ourselves!
So the second point to make is that for exchanges to be more than fleeting units of information arrival, the individuals making them need to be situated and organised rather than anonymous and massified.
A mass is not a certain quantity of people, it is a certain quality of social relationship in which the constituent individuals are powerless and behave as an amorphous, undifferentiated amoeba vis a vis the whole. People who are not a mass are organised. Organising huge numbers of people requires integrating people on multiple levels of scale. The whole needs to be experienced by each person not as a huge summation of individuals but as a richly textured ensemble of overlapping levels and scales of organisation across space, time and content.
There is a certain tension here, because, left to our own devices we tend to organise ourselves into our little (largely national) cliques, clubs and parties. This produces organisation, but where these impulses are allowed to dominate they suppress exchange. Being territorial impulses I propose they find spatial expression, leaving the organisation of time, and above all the structuring of collective work projects to be neutrally and impartially generated according to the need of maximising flow rather than accomodating pre-existent nodes.
(iv) Build A City of
The space of the forum should be structured according to four principles:
·
A home for all
Channelled and directed into the organisation of space, competitive tribal political identities could generate a rich and diverse environment that goes way beyond a bunch of stalls covered with leaflets. Groups might be granted enough space to set up exhibitions, cafes, meeting spaces, notice boards all dedicated to promoting the agenda and concerns of the groups.
·
Enabling mutual recognition
In as far as it was necessary, the coordination and allocation of this identity-space should respect the need to maximise mutual recognition. The goal would be for wanderers to be blown away by the abundance and hospitality of the movement, without ever getting lost. The social semiotics of the internet, markets, fairs, festivals, the street and the agora all provide clues to the kinds of environment which maximise exchange – dormitory suburbs and the grid tell us what to avoid.
·
Separating public and private space.
With a secure identity base for everyone, the shared areas given over to work could be more ‘neutral’ to encourage a more inclusive, solidaristic and even civic attitude, where the only thing that matters is being effective together. These shared spaces should still be navigable rather than anonymous. Linking themes to spaces (say – an Open Europe in this hall) will concentrate and amplify exchanges around that theme, and prevent participants losing each other.
4. Navigability of the whole
Preferably on foot. In
·
For the next ESF we need to find one
place where we can live and work together
as closely as possible
(v)
Map Strategic Proximity (content)
I might be able to solve your problem,
and you might be able to solve my problem, but neither of us - nor anyone else
- yet realises this. We both need to be put in a situation where a) we will be
more likely to meet, and b) we will be under pressure to assist each other and
c) having made contact, we will be readily able to remain in touch. This and
the next section addresses the first of these issues.
People are more likely to want to network with some people than with others.
These wants and needs must be respected while being given the most
geographically inclusive range possible, in order to build
How can political content be carved up in such a way as to destabilise national political identities and generate maximal international flow and solidarity around the issue in question without relying on central definitions and framing of the issues? The Forum needs to remain decentred, open and navigable by all. How can we achieve this AND shrink the political universe in a way that pulls everyone closer together, without shifting one faction into the centre?
Social integration aimed at stimulating flows rather than further institutionalising existing nodes needs to occur along five separate axes, four of which are secular and one occult. The four secular ones are (1) region (2) sector / class (3) identity / movement / keywords and (4) enemies. The first is self explanatory; the second refers to a person’s objective social location – for instance peasant, worker, youth, woman immigrant; the third identifies a person’s subjective self-understanding – eg. Trotskyist, environmentalist, local social forum member, human rights activist; the fourth identifies the policy, institution or process being combated. The underlying premise is that people will be more likely to network / exchange / cooperate with those strategically close to them. Living in the same place, experiencing the same reality, belonging to the same scene, or fighting the same thing: these are all obvious forms of proximity.
This idea simply updates the socialist ideal of solidarity that was conceived as a supersession of the split between bourgeois morality’s proclaimed altruistic virtues and the sleazy reality of individualistic greed which propelled that class to power. Fundraising for striking workers in distant lands was not a selfless act of charity, but an act of (long-term and enlightened) self-interest. We need to hold firm to the underlying idea of solidarity as mutual aid (or a reciprocal gift relationship). At the same time, instead of presupposing one universal proletarian solidarity, we need to foster and create multiple local solidarities.
A person
securely situated along several of these axes has fantastic potential to be
able to communicate across networks. The following illustration is crude,
schematic, artificial and simplistic. However it seeks to demonstrate the
mobile and fluid way in which struggle gets communicated way. Hypothetically
assume there is a dynamic and energetic struggle against GATS in
Say you are a
(1) Parisian (2) schoolteacher (3/4) active in anti-nuclear struggles. You
attend a (2) European schoolteacher meeting of 80 people, where a decision is
taken to make GATS a strategic focus for
What is happening in all these exchanges, is that proximity on one axis stimulates flow along another. Of course all these kinds of exchanges happen organically anyway at an event like the social forum. Friendships are struck and encounters are made. Much of this happens at the bar, in the meal queue, waiting for the speakers to start. But it should not be regarded as an addendum to the important business of listening to our leaders’ important thoughts and analyses – these grassroots exchanges are the core purpose of the Forum, and it needs to be consciously structured to stimulate and multiply them. But, says the politician, how can centre stage be carved up if not through ego warfare and their resultant peace pacts in which I agree to listen to you lot as a concession to ensure everyone else has to listen to me?
(vi) All Power to the Database!
In the same way that Google is more useful than phoning the government when we seek the answer to a specific question, it should not be down to Attac, (s)G(w)R(p) or any other alliance of organisations who claim to know what our priorities are to sort us into workstreams. Relying on the arbitrary fairness of a database and our own self-descriptions, it should be quite possible to sort everybody into working groups. When registering, everyone fills in an online form. It contains four fields into which they are invited to enter terms locating them on the axes referred to above, and also supplying information as to their foreign language skills. All of this information is put through a database centrifuge which randomly “chooses or deducts metastable molecular or quasi molecular units (4),” ie. assigns participants to groups in the same way a dating agency finds you a partner.
Based on data supplied all participants are assigned to:
· Affinity groups: see the next section.
· Regional groups comprising approximately 200 people. This might represent a town, a province, a country or several adjacent countries. These groups could freely decide to subdivide, or merge with other groups if it seemed worthwhile. This group will meet during day 2, once participants have got a feel for the various work streams they are going to engage in and it makes sense to coordinate approaches. They will also meet at the end of the Forum to plan how to support each other in carrying back the products to their local groups
· The groups constituted along the other three axes would produce the bulk of the work at the forums. Subject to language barriers and interpreter availability they should all shuffle for maximum geographical diversity. Where less diversity is present in a group, it may be appropriate for representatives of those places to be given more time to speak.
· Otherwise, these groups would seek to match participants as closely as possible depending on information supplied by them: groups would then decide to merge or divide as they needed to. A public database and notice boards would enable emergent groups to describe their plans and meet other cells for coordination. Regions, sectors, movements, enemies: probably these sessions should aim to run consecutively rather than concurrently, maximising loose ties.
· If self-organisation is to prevail, we will need a publicly accessible and easily usable room booking system responsive to changes in the need for workspace as it arises, ie. instantly.
· Since all of these groups would begin to emerge as soon as people registered, there is no reason why they could not begin life as email lists, which would enable an agenda to begin to be drawn up and minds to start sharpening before people arrive at the site. Given adequate computer access, they could continue during the forum as email lists which would enable other groups to post requests, and the groups to coordinate between sessions.
ü
In preparation for the
vii) A Time of Unity
If the organisation of space is geared towards encouraging the celebration of difference, and the organisation of substantive work is geared towards stimulating flow and the creation of new unities, the structuring of time needs to be oriented towards creating general cohesion amongst everyone. This needs to happen at two levels:
At the microlevel of individual group processes
All effective groups go through a rhythm of opening and closing circles of communication. Ideas are thrown up, key themes selected, resources gathered, certain issues prioritised and developed, outward presentation or communications finessed, ongoing communication set up. Each of these distinct stages needs to be clearly signalled and collectively experienced as a discrete moment in a process. A skilled facilitator will be able to achieve this, ensuring that any transition between stages is agreed and approved by all the members of the group, that one circle of communication is closed down before another is opened up.
The generalised experience of the Forum that should be consciously striven after resembles that of an accident or collision. At the beginning of the event, particles / participants should be accelerated to a maximum speed and then crashed into one another. Thereafter, the bulk of the event will be experienced in slow motion, until the end, when filled with momentum, everyone will accelerate out the event back to their communities.
The way to achieve this is to fill participants’ first day with exposure to difference, to open their minds, introduce them to new friends, help them see the world from other perspectives. In short, to practice LISTENING. Individuals need a personal way in to experiencing this world of difference and they also need to get a glimpse of the movement of movements. The former is encouraged by assignment to affinity groups generated by the database according to the system proposed above, the latter by a general assembly of gifts and needs and by a huge cultural celebration.
a) Affinity Groups
This affinity group should comprise around 12 people. It will be as geographically diverse as possible, subject to the constraints of ensuring enough people within the group are able to interpret each other. Complete comprehension is not essential in any event, since the experiences of straining to understand as well as being misunderstood are both useful ways of learning to listen. Apart from geographical shuffling the affinity group should attempt to match people as closely as possible to others like them. Participants should be able to rank keywords entered onto these three fields in order of importance to make it easier to achieve this. A fair chunk of time needs to be allotted to this group at the very beginning of the Forum, although it should also meet thereafter either at the beginning or end of every day. Its function will be to provide a strong and ongoing social anchor into difference, helping to disorientate people into their neighbours’ worlds, to provide a cross-cultural context in which consensus building from bottom up can be practiced and in which the process and procedure of the Forum can be evaluated. This group could also play games and enjoy other shared experiences going beyond language.
b) Assembly of Gifts and Needs
The other event which needs to occur on the first day is a general assembly of gifts and needs. This will be like a huge collective brainstorm. Each participating group should be able to present itself succinctly. Since any flow will either travel from or to this node, the group should think hard about both its gifts and its needs and supply information on both. The former might comprise an inspiring story, a cunning tactic, a piece of research or an important insight. The latter might comprise an event that needs support, an alliance that needs building, or a local political blockage that needs removing. These might be talks or short films. Such presentations will only provide small tasters, since it is very hard to accurately perceive your value to others when you do not know their needs, or the importance of others to you when you are unaware of their gifts. Still, it is a starting point enabling all participants to see what they might get from or give to others. Being on the receiving end of such a welter of inspirational stories also opens the minds of all participants. The communistic generosity of the multitudes invites us to soften our little identity shields and petty tribalisms. This sets us up well for working together over the coming days.
c) Carnival of the Movements
Finally, the other event that needs to occur on the first night is a collective dreaming, a carnival of the movements.
The days thereafter, individuals will set to work concentrated in the various working groups, whose results will be presented at the final Assembly of Creations.
This will also be an assembly of gifts and needs, but it will differ in two key respects from the opening assembly. First, the presentations will be made by the working groups generated by the Forum, rather than by pre-existing organisations. Their focus will therefore automatically be European rather than national. Second, the presentations will be entirely focussed on action proposals for the next year. Inspired with practical solidarity and cooperative internationalism, people will flood home to carry on the work.
3.
Needs of the Hive Mind (II): Self-organisation
The groups generated by the database in a first articulation will, in a second articulation, attempt to constitute themselves into ‘functional compact and stable structures’(5) ie. an effective force. For this to happen, three things are necessary: 1. The group aspires to having a common purpose; 2. Excellent facilitation services are available to it, and 3. The group is allocated a fair share of overall resources available to the forum. The latter point is contingent on the organising group running the forum itself being open, accountable, impartial and democratic. These issues are dealt with in the next section
(i) (Direct) Action: Let’s
Act together
The emphasis on flow and exchange presented this far should in no way be seen as contradicting the need for collective work. Although in any one isolated moment of exchange one party gives and one takes, it is only through undertaking WORK together that a context emerges in which general long term reciprocal gift relationships becomes likely.
The huge significance of direct action – (which is never simply direct, always mediated, always symbolic) is that it sharpens minds by focussing them on tangible objectives, on influencing the real world outside, on tactics and strategy rather than worldview: the how rather than the what. The demands of practical problem solving tend to dissolve the rigidities of defensive ideologies and identities, enabling them to interact (and conflict) as creative resources to be drawn on, rather than as static positions to adhere to. By contrast, the more the ‘common action’ reduces to simply making a statement, producing a document, or defining an identity, the greater the risk of unravelling the group into its constituent parts rather than transcending them into something wholly new.
So the group, assembled by the database, should simply be told: “Act together to change something.”
(ii) Facilitation
As important to the functioning of the Forum as translators - and more important than most politicians - are excellent facilitators. With the service of a skilled facilitator, groups of strangers can swiftly learn to work together cooperatively. A good facilitator can:
· elicit participation from as many group members as possible,
· assist the group in distinguishing substantive and procedural issues
· help to identify ways of switching between plenary & small groups and vice versa
· probe conflict and use it as the generative motor of group dynamism rather than as a mutual blocking
· help the group to clarify and disentangle different threads in a discussion
· let it see when decisions need to be made
· mirror back to the group conclusions it seems to be reaching and enable it to confirm or qualify them
· fade his or her presence from the maximum necessary to the minimum possible
ü In preparation for the
It is hardly
reasonable to expect the European Union to function democratically, if we
cannot practice it amongst ourselves. Nor is it likely that anyone will take
seriously our critique of the lack of democracy in
On the other
hand, if we were to turn the ESF into a unique and historically unprecedented
experiment in popular participatory democracy, it could serve as a seed crystal
for the new
A democratically run ESF needs an organising committee which is:
· Transparent
· Accountable to those taking part in the process
· Impartial / independent of participating organisations
· Participatory: ie. open for anyone to use or initiate
This is the minimum first step. It requires that
· agendas of the organising meetings should be published in good time,
· procedures should be in place to enable anyone to make representations to the organising committee
· the meetings should be open to visitors
· full minutes should be made available
· accounts should be made public
(ii) Accountability
The organising committee cannot really be accountable to the forum until it comes into existence.