archivi delle proteste globaliarchives of global protestsTo the organizers of the second Intercontinental Encuentro:
March 16, 1997
From Monty Neill, for Midnight Notes
1) The esssential focus of the second encuentro must be how to strengthen the struggle against neoliberalism and for humanity: that is, it must be strategic and organizational.
2) In the first encuentro, the participants did a lot of work to summarize what neoliberalism is. The resulting book (which unfortunately is not available in English; it may not be available in other languages as well) should be a basis for further discussion.
a) This means we should not have a focus on "what is neoliberalism"; inevitably as we discuss strategy and organization, we will have to return to the various meanings, understandings, analyses, experiences of neoliberalism to in order to further deepen our knowledge, but we should, at encuentro 2, do so in the context of discussing strategy and organization.
b) If possible (that is, the text is available in all relevant languages), it should be expected that participants in Encuentro II will have read the text from the first encuentro in order to be prepared to build on, not repeat, the work of the first encuentro.
3) This is not the first effort to build an "international." We need to learn from previous efforts and analyze their limitations, bases, etc. These include the various "marxist" internationals, feminist and ecological efforts. Some means of presenting some of the analysis of these and other efforts, in terms of overcoming capital, needs to be undertaken.
4) Implicitly, somewhat explicitly, the guiding organizational and strategic principle from the first Encuentro seems to be (in the words of Gustavo Esteva) "one no, many yeses." That is, an agreed no to neoliberalism, but many forms of developing/living non-capitalist life.
a) Is this the guiding principle? Should we affirm it? Recall that at least previous internationals tended toward "one no, one yes."
b) If it is the guiding principle, what does it mean in practice? Many yeses could contradict each other, could become "partial no's", could perpetuate exploitations and hierarchies of power, justify continuing oppression, etc.
c) How, that is, are the yeses to develop real cohesion against capitalism and yet remain "many."
5) At the first encuentro, the proposal was for two networks, one for communication and one for support.
a) This seems to be not a good distinction; they overlap -- should one not communicate resistance, and does not support entail communication? Therefore, this proposal for two networks should not be the basis for strategic and organizational discussions.
b) If the "network" is the mode of organization, we need to have clear discussions about what this means (e.g., electronic networks exclude most of humanity; people get deluged with "information"). How do the networks not just support via such things as letters to Zedillo, but support in ways that strengthen the capacity to organize everywhere. Is this the political form that allows "one no, many yeses"?
6) Midnight Notes' analysis concludes that internal divisions within the class must be overcome in the process of attacking capitalism/neoliberalism. These include racism, sexism/patriarchy, hierarchies of wages and skills and labor, nations, and more.
a) we should discuss, based on the concrete experiences of encuentro participants, how these hierarchies operate and how people are fighting them (how to overcome the capitalist/neoliberalist aspect of our own lives as part of overcoming neoliberalism).
b) we should discuss how capitalism/neoliberalism continually creates new divisions, hierarchies, contradictions within humanity (to us, the broad working class), in every sector of life; and how to stop capital's creation of new divisions.
7) Participants in encuentro 1 were involved in many struggles, as will no doubt be true of encuentro 2. How do we learn from each other and build them.
Space for sharing and analyzing and learning from our struggles could be helpful.
In sum, we need to have a focus on strategy and organization that must build on the first encuentro. We propose a number of questions for discussion: What can we learn from the past; Do we proceed with "one no, many yeses" and if so, how? How can we actually develop and strengthen networks that help us move against neoliberalism and for humanity? And, how can we overcome divisions within humanity that we know must be overcome both as part of the struggle against neoliberalism and part of being the humanity we want to be?
These questions, we propose, can be a way to think about organizing the second encuentro.
A final note: We did not find the questionnaire to be very helpful for thinking about the nature of the second encuentro. We conclude that if we are to go to the expense and time of attending, we need to know that it is organized to focus on essential issues and build on the first encuentro. We hope our comments above help in that process.
To the For Humanity and Against Neo Liberalism index
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