Antinomies: Relations between Social Movements, Left Political Parties and State. Reflections on the European Social Forum in London and beyond

Mario Candeias

Between 14 and 17 October, more than 25,000 participants came together at the ESF in London, located at the wonderful Alexandra Palace, as well as at several other locations in Northern and Central London where several ‘autonomous spaces', ranging from a ‘radical theory forum' to ‘tactical media' and ‘beyond the ESF', were also held. It is impossible to grasp all the issues discussed at the ESF, reaching from ‘life after capitalism' to ‘life despite capitalism', from ‘against privatisation' to the ‘experience of the commons', from the ‘women's assembly' to the ‘no border network', from ‘organising for workers rights' to the ‘first assembly of the Precariat in Europe' (a theme barely present on the official ESF) and so on and so forth. The supply of seminars and workshops was enormous, but the process of merging seminars in the run up to the ESF in many cases had led to the bringing together of things that do not fit.

One of the most debated aspects at the ESF was how to develop strategies of social transformation beyond a simple negation of the existing neoliberal from of globalisation. In the face of changing conditions, altered modes of capitalist production, transformed social relations and social forces, the left has had to think through its self-understanding, its inner contradictions, its strategies. Ever since there has been discussion about non- or anti-etatist political forms and strategies or more institutionalised ones – and what the relations between them should look like, if there are some. We could remember the split between Marx and Bakunin, or later between Marxists and Anarchists. We could remember the different concepts about the relations between the movement, in the singular, the supposed male workers movement, and socialist or communist parties, ranging from Lenin to Luxemburg to Trotsky to Gramsci to Mao and so on. We could also remember the movement of ‘68, its march through the institutions or into an alternative space/ niche for new modes of living. And of course the relation between autonomy and institutional politics was a problem for the second feminist movement in the 1970s and 80s well as for the peace movement and the ecological movement – just think about the German Greens. There is a lot of experience that should not be forgotten. Maybe that was one reason for a – not political but - generational uniformity discussing that problematic at the ESF.

Ever since the disruption of state socialism and the spread of neoliberal hegemony across the world we live under a far-reaching process of capitalist transformation. Its contradictions and the engagement of people all over the world had led to the emergence of a movement of movements – this time we keep the plural. In the last years we have seen a kind of consolidation of that process, and the World and the European Social Forum (like other fora) have a remarkable part in that consolidation. But there are very different ideas about how to continue and which political forms are appropriate for a new kind of radical social transformation. There is a consensus about plurality and the richness of diversity, but also a comprehension of the need for coherence. Very often the problem is discussed in the form of simple dichotomies like the opposition between institutional politics and autonomy, between movements and parties, between avant-garde thinking and basic democracy, between civil society and state and so on. But these essentialisations are false oppositions, because all these oppositions in concrete life are contradictions in motion.

Maybe we could call them antinomies arising from the field of practice of political movements themselves. Antinomies prevail when two or more forms of action and organisation seem to exclude each other, but are indispensable at the same time. To avoid dividing the movement and to develop political capabilities it's necessary to learn what Bertold Brecht called “to operate with antinomies”, to deal with our own contradictions beyond a non-committal or evasive – may I say post-modern – plurality.

State vs. society, parties vs. movements? 1

John Holloway's book Change the World without taking Power has deeply influenced parts of the alter-globalisation movement. His question is whether the left should concentrate its struggle on the state, to influence it, even to take state power – or to reject the state? Holloway treats the state as an entity separate from society, its alienated form of organisation. He identifies parties as parts of the state, reproducing the alienated form, working ‘in the name' of us, this way excluding us from decisions. The outcome is betrayal. As the state they exclude us and separate us from each other as state citizens. Moreover the state is the form of negative movement to repress social self-determination and self-organisation. So we have to stop reproducing these forms of social relations dominated by capital and state: ‘if we stop tomorrow, capitalism will no longer exist'. That means turning the back to the state, creating autonomous spaces, burning holes into capitalism. As the negation of capitalism is part of everyone's everyday experience we could build on that to create our own spaces. In Holloway's understanding the state is just an instrument for repression of disobedience and rebellion – some kind of Leninist approach to the state (or an unconscious anarchism). But what about the partial victories and achievements of the left, like the regulation of the working day, the welfare state and so on, as contradictory as they are? In the whole history of left defeats, it seems that small victories were assured by some kind of state politics too. It is obvious that this alone is not enough but it makes clear, in the sense Poulantzas offered, that the state is not a closed entity but a materialisation of changeable relations of social forces, therefore a redefinition of institutions might be possible.

For Hilary Wainwright, a socialist feminist and editor of Red Pepper , simply negating capitalism in a conscious moment means trying to make the enemy disappear, to dematerialize it in a moment of consciousness. She doubts that one could change the world without transforming power. Therefore she calls on us to Reclaim the State (the title of her latest book). The fact that state-oriented politics in the past and today have led to defeats is an important experience. But a defeat does not mean necessarily that the attempt was wrong. There is still a need for institutions to stabilize our fights against neoliberal forces and also against specific state apparatuses. And we need public resources, which were an important aspect especially for the feminist movement. Without the jobs created in the state sector, without organised care for children, women were not able to come out of their households, step into the public, create their own spaces and take part in making politics. At the same time the feminist movement posed many of the questions stated by Holloway. So the task is neither to simply reject the state, in a way mirroring the wrong view of old etatist politics, nor to rely on the state, but to fight In and Against the State (the title of a book by Holloway in 1979), to change state relations.

Wainwright remembers the Greater London Council ended by Thatcher because of its socialist position and what followed from that. With this experience in the background, struggles against privatisation today combine a call for reinventing the state with the creation of new forms of democracy: one example is the participatory budget. And there is still a need for some kind of party, she thinks. The problem with the old parties was not that they were acting within the state but without a movement behind. So the relation between movements and party is crucial. Parties have to give up the monopoly of decision making, of programme making, of centralised representation, and their national limitations.

Phil Hearst, a member of the SWP and of the 4th International, raised the example of Argentina . In the deep crisis in 2001 movements like the Piqueteros emerged. They did not refuse state offers, they tried to use state benefits for their self-organisation. But lastly, Hearst claims, they failed: one could not get self-determination without a change of social relations and institutions as a whole. There is a need for a sustaining party on a national level (in opposition a woman from Argentina threw in that the old left militant parties brought the movement to death). In other places, for instance Venezuela , the transformed state is pushing civil society and indigenous communities to self-organisation. 2 That kind of politics is founded in existing social conditions, not in a mythical concept of revolution. Revolution is not possible in a sudden crisis, it is a long process, Hearst insists: the left needs institutions for continuous politics. The plurality of movements alone does not develop a solid strategic convergence of positions. Moreover the different movements do not play an equivalent role in this process. A party, and not simply the sum of social movements, might still be the best agent of conscious ‘unification' (Bensaid) in a ‘worker's state'. Again the point is unification (instead of pluralistic coherence) and again it is the working class as essentially united, leaving the current weakness of workers' resistance out of consideration as concrete relations between movements and party too. A Basque disputant put the point that Argentina was ‘a moment of subjectivity', that will have far reaching consequences, not a failure of autonomous politics and social movements – but the example clearly shows the contradictions in such a process of social transformation.

Fausto Bertinotti, Secretary of the Italian Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (the refounded Communist Party), states the problem that revolutionary politics are no common political project today. The problem of capitalism existing is not articulated as political problem. Therefore the task for a radical left party is to make it a problem. But it is clear that taking the power does not mean the abolition of capitalism and revolutionary transformation. The first step is to raise some limitations to capitalism. In the face of a deep crisis of representation it is important to regain a large participation in the elections in favour of a regime change. This is still limited to the old model of representation and participation every four or five years, but tries to create or sustain spaces for everyday participation and self-organisation at the same time. But politics go further than state and parties. From Marx, we know that capitalism produces and reproduces the separation of state, bourgeois society, and economy, what leads to different forms of alienation. Therefore for a real social transformation the reconstruction of revolutionary subjects is needed, not as a monolithic one. For Bertinotti in an atrophied perspective ‘auto-organisazione' and the reinvention of politics (as party politics) is the same. Holloway questions that: using a party (as part of the state) to construct the revolutionary subject means separating the people, means building hierarchies, means decision making in our name instead of self-construction of the subject. Changing the world therefore, a young Italian woman stated, means changing ourselves. ‘I want to be powerful – not take the power.' Holloway: ‘Our power is no counter-power but anti-power.' But, ‘we can not turn our back to the state, because the state will shoot us in the back, somebody else answered. To face capitalist power and state force not anti-power but counterpower is needed to defend our autonomy.

A scream out of hell – moving out!

There is a ‘desire for self-determination', John Holloway continues. 3 Self-determination starts as a movement out of the ruling social relations rooted in everyday experience (otherwise the struggle for communism would be meaningless). State and self-determination are incompatible, because the former is the negation of the last. The state is ‘a process of decision making in place of ' . There is no room for a dialectical ‘ as well however' , for saying we must construct a form of self-determination, however it is important to struggle within the state as well. Both forms of struggle cannot be pursued peacefully side by side, because they move in different directions. The state is the permanent and active intervention against self-determination. But there might be some room for a ‘but nevertheless': while creating forms of autonomy, in ‘specific situations the struggle through the state could give us access to means for strengthening our struggle for self-determination'. But the desire for self-determination is a movement against and beyond representation, state and labour. This desire can not wait until a party reaches power, it can not wait, because capitalism is destroying us, undermining the conditions of reproduction: ‘ya basta' and ‘que se vayan todos'. Self-determination has to start immediately, nevertheless this is a slow process – ‘we will walk not hurry, because we will have to go far' – this understanding of politics breaks with linear temporalities. 4 Therefore the communist revolution starts now but like an utopian star it remains an urgent (but hardly achievable) need.

The creation of autonomous spaces is absolutely necessary, but is it enough when it is not done in a perspective of making the whole social structure available for transformation? Holloway's concept of power and anti-power is closely linked to a dichotomy of the state and an (autonomous) civil society burning holes into the structure of capitalist-state rule. But if we take Gramsci seriously civil society or any autonomous space is not something apart from the state, but the primary and very contradictory field of struggles about hegemony. The capitalist rule is not only based in the relations of production but a cultural hegemony that goes through each one of us. How to deal with real contradictions in and between us? Giving the ‘we' of the movements such an emphasis Holloway obscures other forms of domination, reproduced by ourselves. Moreover movements as networks are themselves building informal hierarchies (Spehr 2004), structured by power relations, with its own avant-garde, different levels of savoir-puvoir . But this construction of ‘we' as one movement in all its diversity produces a myth like Hardt and Negri's ‘multitude' – which might explain the success of both books.

In contrast to post-structuralism, Holloway reformulates an essential notion of subjectivity outside of concrete social relations, assumes Joachim Hirsch, a prominent author writing on critical state theory. 5 Instrumental power in Holloway's understanding alienates the subject from its immediate subjectivity, ‘dehumanises'. He therefore misses Marx's cognition that the ‘essence' of human beings in reality is the ‘ensemble of social relations'. Moreover in contrasting instrumental and creative power Holloway on the one hand denounces all forms of intermediate institutions and representations, and on the other hand offers creativity as a possibility free of contradictions. That is bound to a romantic notion of original communism, of a nonalienated community. But it might be necessary in a complex society to develop some objectified forms of institutions for mediation (Versachlichung und Vermittlung) – not all forms of objectification necessarily lead to fetishism, although there is a danger. Without intermediation it is doubtful if such a society would be a free one. Developing creative anti-power in itself is a contradictory process: there is a need for alternatives beyond fragmented local struggles, for an understanding about theoretical, social and political concepts, goals and strategies. Such conflicts in the movement are also conflicts about power that could not be negated. But it is of great importance, Hirsch tells us, that Holloway has formulated a clear critique of all political concepts trying to fight the existing power relations with their own weapons. And he has brought back the notion of revolution into our thinking and acting.

Piqueteros in and against the state

Neka Jara and Andres Fernandez from the ‘movement of unemployed workers' (MTD Solano/Buenos Aires) have clarified what preguntando caminamos (asking we step forward) means in concrete. 6 The economic collapse in Argentina in 2001 produced a need to self-organize the existential means of reproduction, there was hardly any time for politico-theoretical preparation. P iquetes (street blockades) and land occupations especially required a high degree of organisation. For all participants the question quickly arose: what forms of self-understanding, subjectivity, organisation, and temporalities could be developed to advance and assure durable changes? In this context they adopted a distanciated strategic position vis-à-vis the state. In their understanding they do not demand anything from the state, are no beggars, with the piquetes they force (‘arrancar', pull out) the state to give unemployment benefits. Out of their experience of what happens when the state disappears, they urge access to general means of reproduction (water, food etc.) – but without relying on the state provision of these means. In the meantime they organize their own groups for education, production, healthcare etc. – using state benefits to strengthen their autonomist organisation. Part of the benefits are socialised to buy land, build social centres etc. Social work is subsidized by production for market exchange. Every task is part of the socially necessary work, either it produces profit or not. And everybody is free to choose the work she likes.

However autonomy is not simply a thing one can take. Autonomy has to be worked out, in search of new forms of social relations and subjectivities. Nearly 90% of the locally active members are women. In organising these new social relations a need for desaprender (‘unlearning') became evident in the face of entangled modes of domination reproduced in the community (for example machismo) and became part of self-educating processes. The movement gives itself space for collective reflection to work on conflicts. Partisans tried to get into the movement, but their old forms of clientalism and domination prevented a deeper influence. There is no disintegration of the movement in the face of a new government. Things have been institutionalised, networks of organisations been created, durability is the goal (not conjunctural actions) – but as this is a process from below (like in Chiapas as well), quiet, slow, changing subjectivities, it is not that visible in the media. The state is absent, apart from its repressive functions. The experience of exclusion was necessary for the movement. ‘Neoliberalism itself induced us to appropriate its promises, but without reintegrating into the system that excluded us.' But repression is getting harder. 7 ‘Will we always need someone to organise us our lives', Jara asked, ‘some political party, or union, or government?' For Holloway the piqueteros (although they do not like this expression, because it hides the everyday production and reproduction within the community) are the most prominent case of ‘urban zapatismo', burning holes into the structure, against the existing, breaking with identities – it is the movement of non-identity. This is not a loss, there is nothing to be repressed, and it should not be a sacrifice but a pleasure.

What movement, what party?

This link to concrete situations of resistance in time and space on the ESF is sometimes difficult to achieve. In many seminars and workshops you just get flat, already known analyses, simple propaganda and wishful thinking. Again and again the common enemy (neoliberalism, transnational corporations, the US, the WTO etc.) is condemned – in this sense the perspective on the ESF seems too unified; the few times debates became concrete consensus was melting away – the different approaches and goals were too diverse: a necessary result emerging from the contradiction of the ESF (and WSF) process itself as open space for discussion and self-education, without a real attempt to develop some applicable and visible alternatives. Therefore the Forum is no movement in itself (in contrast to Thomas Ponniah's view 8 ), but maybe a space for a new political consciousness and sovereignty, the modern form of articulation and association of structurally fragmented groups, classes and movements. However, because there is no alternative social project formed, the actual representative crisis of neoliberalism does not lead to a weakening of its hegemonic position. Pierre Khalfa supposes that diversity paralyses. 9 But its not diversity as such – which might enrich the movements – but a lack of deep analysis, including the production of neoliberal hegemony from below, in combination with non-committal plurality. This undermines a generalization of experiences, views and understandings (without closed unification under one primary force) preventing us from achieving coherent approaches and strategies. On the one hand there are more or less successful local social movements, creating autonomous spaces and transforming subjectivities, sometimes re-appropriating the essential means of reproduction from below, but hardly touching the relations of power on national or even transnational level. On the other there are global events for the altermondialist, national and transnational NGOs, some national parties, getting some media presence, shaping the public discourse, but far away from the everyday experience of the people, acting in some kind of representative vacuum without really questioning the ruling political form (Brand 2004). There is a need for intermediate political forms. At the heart of the problem lies the relation between representation and participation. A permanent movement (in the strict sense of the word) is difficult to sustain, movements are fragile forms with periods of higher or lesser activity, they develop out of concrete situations of dissent with the ruling mode of production and living, with a perspective of (molecular) social transformation, while the struggle for this transformation has to be a very long-standing one. Out of this results a need for institutionalisation to bridge times of less activity, disintegration, defensive situations and to overcome defeats, save experience and knowledge for the next generation of activists etc. A renewed concept for left political parties could be one possibility to create intermediate institutionalised political forms.

What is a party? A party does not simply represent a group or class; it is always a result of inner struggles between different interests and struggles with other parties or social forces. It only represents a group or class when it is able to intervene into the culture and politics of other groups and classes, reorganising the whole class and social structure (including the groups and classes it wants to represent). The bourgeois understanding of political representation as passive element therefore is only part of the reality. The opposition between representation and participation is not that hard when the mutual organising and transformative aspects between representatives and represented, between social movements and parties come to the fore. If we take this seriously representation on both sides is an active one, directed to convergence between the two sides while never achieving it, because they represent two different cultural/political forms. Parties are the fields of struggle between self- and foreign (or alienated) social association (Selbst- und Fremdvereinigung) virulent in every society.

Parties have a dual character: in the parliamentary system they are part of the state, therefore transforming social conflicts into institutionalised forms of consensus building, integrating oppositional forces into the ruling power structure. Radical parties could try to discredit the consensual uniformity, to extend the legal forms, to break with rules of the political field, but up to a specific degree they have to play the game. Nevertheless parties are also part of civil society and for a left radical party its strength depends essentially on the existence and organic connection to active social movements. Otherwise a left party is going to isolate itself, lost in the structures of parliamentary politics without the transformative power of movements as their mobile spine and vital space for imagination. Left radical parties have to reflect their privileged position in ruling political systems, divide power with social movements systematically, giving them institutional forms of influence over party decisions and (financial) means. The more successful they are, the more they have to ‘disempower' themselves vis-à-vis the movements, recognising that they are not the centres of hegemonic counter-power, nor a privileged political form for social transformation. Such a party could be some kind of ‘institutional backbone' (Spehr 2000), an infrastructure (Brand 2004) for social movements, creating and securing spaces for activities from below.

Parties like movements need institutionalised spaces for self-reflection and critique beyond the daily tasks. The connections might be intensified via interchanging personal, representatives of movements on (open) electoral lists of the party, active participation of party militants and movements on all levels of decision making, obligatory reports to militants and movements etc. (see Spehr 2004). Progressive parties in power could hold a strong defensive potential against repressive attacks, strengthening offensive political movements, assuring social achievements by giving them a legal form (for a possible future when the movement may be weaker). If they create a closed bureaucracy feeling independent from the movements, cutting the vital organic relations for negotiating compromises with the social bloc in power, the ‘party becomes anachronistic', losing ‘its social content' (Gramsci, Gef.7, H.13, 1579). ‘If the radical left tries to cooperate with the majoritarian left (participating in governmental coalitions or other strategic alliances), under conditions of neoliberal hegemony, it is under suspicion [and in danger] of renouncing its own positions for taking part in policy making processes', pretending to ease the pain of politics otherwise implemented without their participation. Even because of its radical [ethical] standards applied to politics in such situations, ‘the radical left is seen as especially untrustworthy measured with these own standards' (Brie 2004; Candeias 2004, 340).

 

Taking the government does not mean taking power – cultural hegemony is rooted in complex state structures, in civil society and in webs of private institutions, in everyday thinking, in habits and of course: cultural hegemony is always ‘a political one, but also and especially a economic one, its material basis rooted in the decisive functions the hegemonic groups exercise in the core of economic activities' (Gramsci, Gef.3, 499; Marx, MEW 3, 46). Therefore the dangers for self-deception, strategic misjudgements, exaggerated self-assessment, cooptation, and entanglement in the traps of Realpolitik etc. are manifold. Therefore a critical distance vis-à-vis the state and political parties is essential for the survival of social movements. But we enforce these dangers if we understand the party as something outside from us – than it becomes ‘a fetish' (Gramsci, Gef.7, H.15, 1730).

Parts of the movements think that the parties are something apart, alienating us from each other and from our desire to self-determination, becoming an apparatus that decides for us and betrays our will. But they don't see that in separating the parties from the movement they promote bureaucratisation, parties lose active participation, become a mechanical closed form, with political aims that are an expression of their dried up social basis, just the functionaries remain. Turning our backs on state-oriented politics and parties reproduces the bourgeois division between state, civil society and economy, instead of understanding the ensemble of social relations not only as determining but also as one channel that is available for the transformation of the whole social organization. We have seen what happens when parties and movements cut off their organic connections or when movements disappear and parties continue to exist. The ‘arrogance of the party' (ibid., H.14, 1696) that develops in such situations was quite visible at the ESF (Wainwright 2004), enlarging the gap between some parties trying to dominate the ESF and the radical movements. This was also visible on the huge demonstration of about 100.000 participants, where only a few (British) groups were represented in the final speeches (Pomrehn), incessantly invoking solidarity with the resistance in Iraq and Palestine – which for many movements is absolutely unbearable.

One problem is that the existing radical left parties are representatives of a completely undermined social basis, while the trans-nationally restructured social groups and classes have not jet created their own political institutions. The altered conditions of struggle in a new mode of production and living are not yet reflected, leading to sectarian particularities. Sometimes old forms of the welfare state are the orienting measure (or even older concepts of world revolution of a unified world proletariat), sometimes the complete rejection of these structures throwing their progressive elements over board. The idea of a rifundazione comunista (see Haug 2003, 292ff) in its broadest sense therefore is a very reliable one (although the Italian formation is still quarrelling with its hierarchical constitution). 10

Gramsci warned against sectarian, narrow-minded thinking: ‘A political party is not only the technical organisation of the party itself, but the whole active social bloc.' (Gef7., H.15, 1774) In a specific hegemonic constellation ‘nobody is unorganised or independent from a party, if organisation or party is understood in its broadest sense not formally' (Gef.4, H.6, §136). Each social bloc, as a convergence of different social groups, classes, genders etc., generates only one formation in the sense of this broader integral understanding of a party (that is nearer to the notion of social forces and movements than it is to parties in the narrow sense). All different partial formations, the non-commitment to plurality, are only transitional ‘reformist' forms, oriented on simple negation or on transforming only partial dysfunctional elements, not the existing mode of production as a whole. Therefore a communist refoundation is more than a renewal of given party organisations (where you could become a member, pay your fee, and vote for your ‘leader'). It requires the reinvention of proletariat as Marx put in the Manifesto : ‘the proletariat recruits itself from all classes of population' (MEW 4, 469), a diffuse milieu of released, redundant people without property except their own labour power. Under circumstances of the neoliberal, transnational mode of production this includes the increasing global industrial labour force, the modern precariat as well as the modern cybertariat, the rural labour force as well as landless people, the non-paid reproductive workers (mostly women), the migrant labour force – all of them shaped by differentiations along class, gender, race, nation, their positions in production processes, political alliances, cooptation by ruling forces, etc. If we take all these diverse fragmentations seriously we could come to a deeper understanding of a contradictory multitude that is to be worked out to a coherent social bloc of forces able to form social transformation. This new modern prince (Gramsci) cannot be understood ‘as a singular form of collective agency, for example a single party with a single form of identity' (Gill 2003, 221). What is required is an articulation of the different political forms due to concrete situations, permanent reorganisation of organisational forms in the face of developing conditions, including the collective and individual ‘molecular change of modes of thinking and acting', forcing this transnational partiality (Parteiung) to rearticulate again and again, arranging new and original problems to solve (Gramsci, Gef. 8, §51). 11 This is not possible without involving constantly the active elements of subjectivity.

The relation between parties and movements, between state-oriented politics and autonomy is not an outward one; they are not separated from each other, but are not identical either. ‘We have to run the risk of contamination' and vice versa, as Luciana Castellina put it (2004). The common perspective Roger Martelli formulated in 2000: ‘It is not about taking power, but giving it back to society' or even taking it back (re--appropriating), starting a real process of what we in German call (Selbst)Vergesellschaftung – a process of (self)societalization. The goal is to build an alterglobalisation movement as a real democratic power able to achieve it objectives. The issue of how get there is still and will remain a very controversial process – dealing with antinomies means to understand the contradictions of the multitude.

Bibliography

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Notes

1. ESF-seminar on Strategies of social transformation, co-organised by: Transform! (Italy); the Transnational Institute; Critique Communiste (France); the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Germany); Project K ; Socialist Resistance (UK); and Red Pepper (also UK), October 16.

2. For Tariq Ali there are two modes of revolutionary politics in Latin America today: the Zapatista movement, retired in the jungle of Chiapas , and the ‘successful' case of Venezuela : “There is an idealistic slogan within the social movements, which goes like this: ‘We can change the world without taking power.' This slogan doesn't threaten anyone; it's a moral slogan. The Zapatistas - who I admire - you know, when they marched from Chiapas to Mexico City , what did they think was going to happen? Nothing happened.” ( www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1223)

3. Autonomous space seminar ‘life despite capitalism', London School of Economics, October 17.

4. The temporalities of party politics are contradictory, in Holloway's understanding: they seek power, trying to take advantage of political conjunctures, while asking their members to wait until the party is in power, and then until they change the world for us.

5. A discussion in extension of ESF debates between Holloway and Hirsch, co-organised by Attac and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Berlin , October 18. (see the debate in Das Argument 249 and 250 in 2003.)

6. At the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation Berlin , October 19 (see also Habermann 2004).

7. Although the situation is getting better under President Kirchner, the protests have been criminalized, piquetes are forbidden. But while the right to work, to get food, housing etc. is a higher value than the public order protesters think their piquetes are legitimate.

8. In his analyses of the Social Forum process at the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation Berlin , October 19.

9. ESF-seminar on the Future of the Movement – Strategies and Perspectives, Alexandra Palace, October 15, coorganised by Italian ESF-coordination, Attac France, Genoa 2001, Attac Suisse, Red Pepper, Global Resistance (UK), Cultural Resistance and others.

10. The idea for a new social democratic party is surly not the recommended way for changing the world, just a very defensive intention to fill up the representative gap.

11. Gramsci denounces when the mass becomes a mass for manoeuvre for the party (Gef.8).