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From: RedLUZ/LUXWeb <redluz@...>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 15:12:33 -0500
To: LuxWeb <LuxWeb@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: LuxWebII <LuxWebII@yahoogroups.com>, LuxWebIII
<luxwebIII@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: The Left We Want / From France



  The Left We Want
  See authors and signatories below
  Le Monde

Original version in french:
http://www.lemonde.fr/article/0,5987,3232--325253-,00.html

English:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062803G.shtml

  Wednesday 25 June 2003

  We are citizens, local elected officials, political, professional or trade
union activists. We are resolutely to the left. The primary raison d'être of
our action is situated in the absolute refusal to allow millions of men and
women to suffer and in the conviction that politics can and must change this
reality.

  We are entering a savage world that wants to bring down whole sections of
the basis for a progressive civilization.

  Conservative forces everywhere have never gone so far in their attempt to
impose a new economic, social, and moral order. Whether it calls itself
ultra-liberal or neo-capitalist, this steamroller also flattens spirit,
culture, intelligence.

  Faced with this will to situate the total of human relations inside market
logic and to annihilate any critical reflection, we affirm that the failures
of the great Utopias of the twentieth century have not destroyed the human
capacity to imagine another possible world or to build it starting now.
Neither the fall of the Berlin Wall nor the electroshock of April 21, 2002*
leads us to erase the values and ideas on which great hopes may be founded.

  Far from constituting a contingent accident, the April 21, 2002 KO was the
outcome of a long process marked by the abandonment of the sense of the Left
and of those for whom it primarily exists: the "small", the humble, those
"without", the working and creative world. This Left "out of sorts with the
Left" about alternation when the social movement expects it to deliver an
alternative.

  For more than twenty years, this cycle of a left that disappoints, a right
that worsens and an extreme right that proliferates keeps repeating itself.
In fact, it's necessary to recognize that the most significant, and also the
most regressive ruptures or attempts at rupture of our society come from the
right. Every time the left refuses to clearly attack all forms of domination
and oppression, the right profits from it to go further and faster toward a
harder, more violent, and more unequal society.

  Unfortunately, we haven't noticed the start of a beginning sincere
critical examination during the recent party congresses of the SP, CP, and
the Greens.

  Faced with the repetitive failure of the Left party machines, we think
it's time to create the bases of an alternative network on the left that are
neither a preachy protest never offering anything possible, nor a casing for
liberalism. Beyond our differences along the way, we share a certain
urgency, and some radical choices, to believe that another world is possible
and to work for it now. For us, as for many men and women in the world, it's
appropriate to return to the Left's original sources.

  The radicalism of our dreams and hopes is also nourished by history.
Communism's failures cannot be reduced to Stalinist diversions. The failures
of social democracy cannot be summarized by repeated denials. The deep
source of both failures is to be found in the inability to produce relations
with power that are not founded on authoritarianism, elitism, misogyny,
suspicion of differences, mediocrity, the exaltation of individual
sacrifice, and the permanent temptation to decide for others.

  We want to promote a new activist culture in tune with the aspirations of
an emancipated humanity, founded on the free confrontation of ideas,
personal blossoming, parity, participative democracy, ethics, sincerity,
solidarity, freedom.

  This transformative purpose is already carried by social movements, local
experiments, activist practices.

  This abundance of protests against the established order must result, this
time, in a change of policy. This is what motivates our action. We are, in
effect, convinced that social mobilization which confines itself to
declaring its autonomy vis a vis politics amounts to effectively delegating
a political monopoly to the existing parties. We need to emerge from this
scenario which invariably leads to disappointments and set-backs. We think
it's time to question the dogma of separation between social movements and
political interference.

  When, everywhere in the world, men and women are fighting for the right to
work, for shelter, for education, for equal access to AIDS treatment, for
fair commerce, for peace; when men and women refuse GMOs and the sacking of
their territory, when the arrogance of the powerful and the rich to presume
to impose their rules on the planet puts millions of people on the street,
it is truly time to question the distribution of roles between social and
political actors; to conceive of an electoral moment in the service of just
causes and not the reverse. It is truly time to create a network with the
will to get out off the beaten and rebeaten paths. By this appeal, we commit
ourselves from this moment to the goals that identify a true alternative on
the left:

* Economic recovery is inseparable from social progress and occurs with a
significant increase in the lowest salaries, social minima, and mass
consumption.
* Europe must no longer be a monetarist pillory, but a space for social
solidarities and cooperations. Poor country debts must be cancelled without
conditions and financial transactions taxed.
* We declare that the suburbs are at the heart of society and of the
changes to be effected by massive construction of low cost housing, by
developing public services, by seizing diversity as an opportunity, by
dedicating significant monies to policies of prevention, education and all
that promotes "living together".
* The priority that must be given to far-reaching measures in favor of
all those 'without" is in the general interest and will represent progress
for all of society.
* We are in favor of voting rights for foreign residents, of the
regularization of status for those without papers, of the recognition of the
right of asylum, of suppression of double penalties.



  When society is in profound mutation, when the elites dismiss to this
extent a distant image of social and cultural diversity, when the danger of
an extreme right in power is not a phantasm, one cannot, one must not, stick
with this heavy status quo. Nothing would be worse than a political
landscape reduced one more time to a mediocre choice between the right and a
hegemonic SP, with the enormous risk that the only alternative be embodied
by the extreme right, which would lead to a true disaster.

  Faced with such a risk, it is urgent to federate the forces that think and
act in the same direction. We launch this appeal and invite you to
illuminate it with your ideas, to enrich it and to criticize it in the light
of your own experiences. There is no limit to this process. The elections
which take place in 2004 can be the opportunity to bring millions of people
together around this alternative.

  We propose to all those for whom this text resonates to make it known, to
distribute it widely, to take the initiative in public debates using all
available collectivities, networks, and sensibilities. We hope that it will
be a contribution to a public encounter in the fall that will allow a
convergence of all initiatives aiming to realize these objectives. With all
those who join us in this process, we'll decide together how far we must go.

  Nuri Albala, lawyer ; Jean-Marie Angelini, union member (Sneps-PJJ) ;
Ariane Ascaride, actress ; Clémentine Autain, assistant to the mayor of
Paris (app. PCF) ; Patrick Braouezec, Deputy (FCP) from Seine-Saint-Denis,
Mayor of Saint-Denis ; Malik Chiban, film-maker ; Isabelle Lorand, surgeon ;
Philippe Mangeot, Editor-in-chief of Vacarme ; Gustave Massiah, Vice
-President of Attac ; Yannick Mazevet, carpenter ; Mireille Mendès France,
member of the International association of Democratic Jurists; Antonio
Negri, philosopher ; Christelle Pesme, undecided young person, feminist
activist ; Maya Surduts, President of Cadac (the Coordination of
Associations for the Right to Abortion and Contraception); Malika Zediri,
organizer of the association of the unemployed, Apeis.

-------

  Translation: TruthOut French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.

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