<div dir="ltr"><p><b>"The workers... battle-cry must be: 'The Permanent Revolution.'" — Marx and Engels, 1850</b>
</p>
<a name="_span_style_color_black_European_Social_Forum_a_report_from_Malmo_span_"></a><h4><span style="color: black;">European Social Forum: a report from Malmo</span></h4>
<p>Last Sunday, the European Social Forum (ESF) came to a close in the
city of Malmö, southern Sweden. Nearly 10,000 people from across Europe
took part in hundreds of political and cultural events over four days,
reports Wladek Flakin, from the independent youth organization
REVOLUTION.
</p>
<p>The highlight was a demonstration on Saturday with 15,000
participants where trade unions, environmental groups, autonomists,
left parties and socialist youth organizations together called for
"Power to the People!".
</p>
<p>The ESF participants came primarily from Scandinavia. For example,
14-year-old Vilma came with two friends from "Ung Vänster", the Swedish
Left Party's youth organization. "We have spent the last few days
painting banners, but we were also at the demonstration for immigrants'
rights", she said about her personal highlights at the forum.
But activists from across Europe - from Spain to the Ukraine - and even
from Latin America were also there. From Germany, dozens of people
traveled in buses from the "Left Youth - Solidarity" and the trade
union youth. Even from the Basque Country, over 20 young activists
came, after spending 40 hours in two small buses. The ESF'ers stayed in
gymnasiums and schools around the city, while the events took place in
public buildings, rented ballrooms and a mosque.
</p>
<p>The ESF is an opportunity for different movements to network
internationally. Opponents of the U.S. Air Force base in Vicenza in
Italy could meet up with opponents of the planned U.S. missile base in
Poland. In a large gathering, they exchanged experiences and planned
protests against the forthcoming 60th anniversary of NATO.
Representatives of European students also had a special meeting to
discuss a Europe-wide day of action against education cuts.
</p>
<p>Special events
New for the ESF was a "Labor Youth Space": a church building in which
the trade union youth from different countries organized their own
workshops. "The point is to have the youth of the European trade unions
network from below" said Joachim Heckel, a young activist of the German
metalworkers' union from Nuremberg. "Here, we see that flexibility a
huge problem for young workers across Europe. That is why we must think
about organizing Europe-wide days of action."
</p>
<p>At an event about the EU "terror lists", representatives of the
revolutionary left from Turkey, the left-wing independence movement
from the Basque country and anti-imperialist organizations from Denmark
shared the podium. They explained how these "black lists" are used to
repress left-wing parties and movements around the world. At the time
of the forum, a huge wave of repression by the Spanish state against
the Basque independence movement was in full-swing, in which several
political parties were banned. Ulrik Kohl from the Danish group
"Fighters and Lovers," which sells T-shirts with the logos of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Colombian
guerrilla organisation FARC, had been condemned the day before for
"supporting terrorism" – at the ESF, however, he announced he would
continue the solidarity work.
</p>
<p>Riot and chaos
</p>
<p>Over the the weekend, the Swedish tabloid press headlined: "Krawall
och Kaos!" or "Riot and Chaos!". This was referring to a "Reclaim the
Streets" party which had gone through Malmö's city centre on Friday
evening. The approximately 2,000 participants danced to hip-hop and
techno - and because the Swedish autonomists seem somewhat more class
struggle-oriented than their German counterparts, the whole party took
place behind a banner with the slogan "Klass mot Klass" ("class again
class").
Some people sprayed graffiti along the road and a window pane of the
bank SEB was smashed - i.e. it was hardly the mass riot that the press
had been warning about for days! The police, who were present, remained
surprisingly reticent. "If they were to attack, then everything would
get much, much worse" said an ESF organizer about the police tactics.
</p>
<p>Outside the official ESF program, numerous actions by the
anarchist-oriented "Action Network" took place. On Friday, for example,
around 1,000 people gathered in front of the office of the energy
corporation E.on to protest against climate change. The day before, a
few hundred had demonstrated in front of the "foreigners' office" in
Malmö to call for an end to deportations.
</p>
<p>The ESF ended on Sunday with the Assembly of Social Movements that
decided on a final declaration of the forum. A major mobilization for
all ESFers will be the protests against the 60th Anniversary of NATO in
April 2009. But the protests against the G8 summit in Sardinia in July
2009 or against the climate conference in Copenhagen in November 2009
also have a great significance. The venue and date of the next ESF has
already been decided too: 2010 in Istanbul.
</p>
<p>A preliminary balance-sheet
Overall, the forum was different from previous forums in Florence
(2002), Paris (2003), London (2004) and Athens (2006). Malmö is the
smallest city to ever host the ESF, and in light of this, the 15,000
participants at the demonstration represented a success. Since the
venues were scattered throughout the city, it was difficult for an
individual to get an overview of the forum – but the number given by
the organizers of 10,000 registered participants would certainly be
accurate.
</p>
<p>The size of the 5th ESF was below expectations (20,000) as well as
below the levels of previous ESFs (with the possible exception of the
more or less disastrous 3rd ESF in London). This can be partly
explained by external factors. For example, there were hardly any
participants from Germany, given that there were almost 60,000 people
at different demonstrations at the same time in Cologne, Berlin and
Stuttgart. So the three buses from Germany were on average only half
full.
But that's not enough to explain the ESF's small size. The ESF is the
great forum of "talking past" or "talking at" one another – the
political diversity amongst the participants, from social democratic
NGOs to environmentalist hippies to revolutionary Marxists makes it
difficult to find a common denominator. But the functioning of the
forum and especially the final assembly makes it completely impossible.
The final declaration is not decided by a democratic vote, but rather
presented by a more or less self-appointed preparation group and then
rubber-stamped with "consensus". The text contains bullet points to
satisfy nearly all of the participants, but no concrete mobilization
plans. After years of noncommittal chatting, many are wondering what
the use of the whole event is, and that is a good explanation for the
almost constant decline in number of participants.
</p>
<p>Given the shrunken size of the ESF, the anarchist counter-activities
on the sidelines had a much greater weight than before. In past years,
it was no more than splinter groups who organized, parallel to the ESF,
small (and hard to find) "counter-forums". But this time, the "ESF
Action Network" represented a serious competitor to the ESF. Simply
because of high ticket prices (€40 or €20 for students), there were
certainly more than 1000 young people from southern Sweden or the
neighboring Copenhagen who came to the ESF, but not to the official
seminars, only to the anarchistic actions on the all around.
</p>
<p>Problems and potential
The vast majority of seminars were alienating for young people. It was
not unusual for an event lasting two and a half hours to consist of two
hours of speeches from the podium and half an hour of "discussion",
whereby the latter consisted in reading out different communiqués. The
demands in the flyer from REVOLUTION for independent youth structures
at the ESF proved to be completely correct. It was positive that for
the first time there was a "youth space" by the trade union youth, but
this was occupied by up-and-coming functionaries and offered little
opportunity for an independent organization.
</p>
<p>The non-stop attacks on workers, migrants and young people in
Europe, which are centralized by the EU, make a common, Europe-wide
resistance more necessary than ever before. But the unofficial
bureaucracy which dominates the ESF (which is in turn made up of
various social-democratic and trade union bureaucracies) again and
again prevents that the ESF from becoming a focus of such resistance.
We greatly appreciate the networking that takes place at the ESF -
after each meeting, activists from across Europe exchange their email
addresses - but overall the ESF is and remains pretty aimless.
</p>
<p>As far as we are concerned, we will participate at the ESF - the
relatively larger revolutionary left in Turkey will certainly make the
forum in Istanbul more exciting - but always emphasize that a
revolutionary international organization is needed to turn the diffuse
slogan "another world is possible" into a concrete, socialist reality.
</p>
<p>Wed 24, September 2008 @ 11:45
</p>
<p>LATEST PUBLICATIONS
</p>
<ul><li> 'Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement' ESF Malmo 0908): <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc">http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'Challenging Empires: The World Social Forum. (2nd Edition, 488 pp). Ordering: <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm">http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'Back in the (Ex-) USSR': <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://zope2.netzwerkit.de/RusRepLatest.pdf">http://zope2.netzwerkit.de/RusRepLatest.pdf<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'Recovering Internationalism; Creating New Global Solidarity', <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html">http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'Prague 1968: "Workers of the World, Forgive Me!"', <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf">http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'A Union Internationalism for the 21stC', <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563">http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563<img class="externallink" src="http://openspaceforum.net/twiki/img/icons/external_link.gif" alt="external link" border="0"></a>
</li><li> 'International Labour Studies in the UK', in "Work Organisation Labour and Globalisation", Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 180-200. <a target="_blank" class="wiki external" href="http://www.analyticapublications.co.uk/">http://www.analyticapublications.co.uk/</a></li>
</ul>
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