Dear C&C subscriber
In October, the European Social Forum (www.ukesf.org, www.fse-esf.org) will
be hosted in London The 2003 social forum was in Paris and the 2002 forum
in Florence; the Paris event was attended by about 50,000 people. The
British proposal, endorsed by the Forum’s European Assembly in March, is to
hold it at Alexandra Palace, probably with spinoff events in locations
around Bloomsbury. I think this is a unique opportunity for Capital and
Class to promote discussion and activity and link up with sister
organisations.
CSE's Executive Committee agreed it would be a good idea for Capital and
Class to work with sister organisations and prepare proposals for activities
around a theme something like ‘another economics is possible’.This would
involve European organisations such as the post-autistic economics movement
in France, anti-Maastricth currents, EEAPE, etc and also in the UK
Association for Heterodox Economics, Radstats, etc.
I think there are two definite areas of activity to think about:
a space for pluralism: ‘official’ economics is promoted as a uniquely true
vision of the world. A plethora
of responses have challenged this focusing on teaching (post-autistic
movement, Cambridge initiative), but
also research and publication, more generally on the way that ‘official’
economics suppresses the alternatives
(AHE, contre la pensee unique, EAEPE etc). In the UK preoccupations are eg
the whole RAE process, the Royal
Economics Society’s refusal to countenance pluralistic selection processes,
etc. With material like Fred
Lee’s and David Harvie’s I think that CSE has led on this and should try to
coordinate responses in Europe.
an alternative to neo-liberalism: the IMF’s policies are openly
acknowledged to be a complete disaster. What
are the concrete alternatives to structural adjustment? If we want global
justice, what should Europeans fight
for? What does the global South need to pursue an independent economic
policy? What is the next step after
Jubilee 2000 in the fight against debt enslavement? What constitutes a just
trade policy? Etc.
There could be many more ideas: this is just a first stab.
Also, it may well be that other proposals could emanate from Capital and
Class eg Labour Process, Argentina, etc. If so, make your suggestions known
to the XC!
Whether a given proposal works or not depends on two things:
(1) can you do some work on it?
(2) can you interest anyone else in it?
The forum process is a grassroots one. On April 1 the forum will be open for
proposals. To get a good ‘take-up’, the most important thing is support from
a wide range of organisations. There are two types of event that we can be
involved in:
*Seminars – relatively large, more structured events with
simultaneous translation
*Workshops – smaller events without simultaneous translation
The ESF process as a whole will also set up ‘Plenaries’. The difference
between Plenaries and seminars is that the Plenaries are organised by the
ESF process but the seminars are self-organised by participants. This year,
following the Paris experience and the World Social Forum in Mumbai, there
will be a strong emphasis on seminars and workshops and less priority to the
Plenaries, which will be shorter, less in number, and will contain less
speakers.
Although there is no formal structure for ‘streams’ with a succession of
connected workshops and seminars, there will be overall ‘themes’ and
obviously, if we find that there are a range of ideas that our sister
organisations and ourselves want to discuss, there is scope to make more
than one proposal.
I’d like to suggest that people contact me if they can offer
* suggestions for potential C&C initiatives (preferably accompanied by
an offer to work to bring it about)
* help on the alternative economics proposal
Regards
Alan Freeman
