arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

For the social movements that have emerged throughout Europe over the last
few years to take root and flourish, it is necessary to coordinate,
initially on a european level, the various groups – trade unions,
associations and NGOs devoted to human and social rights-, within an
organized network, whose form has yet to be invented, and which will be able
to develop our forces, harmonize objectives and elaborate common projects.
These movements, despite their differences and occasional disagreements all
advocate the defense of those who have been left aside by neo-liberal
policies, and the resolution of the problems left aside by theses policies.

As these problems are ignored or repressed by social democratic parties
above all preoccupied with managing the present economic order of things so
as to keep their hands on the helm of the state, and which have come to
accept growing inequality, unemployment and casualization an authentically
critical counter-force must be capable of bringing them constantly back onto
the agenda, by developing new forms of action expressing, as in Seattle, the
true aspirations of the citizenry.

Since such a counter-force has to confront international forces like the
multinational companies and institutions, it must therefore in turn be
international and, to start with, European. Being confronted with forces
aiming at the conservation or restoration of the past, most notably by the
dismantling of what is left of the Welfare state, it must be a force of
movement which, like the social movements of the XIXth century that
gradually imposed the conquests of the Welfare state, can and should force
international organizations, national states and their governments to
propose and implement effective measures to control the financial markets,
to fight inequalities and to impose a better distribution of wealth within
and between nations.

For these reasons we propose that, before the end of the year 2000, General
Estates of the European Social Movement be held with the objective of
elaborating a charter of the social movement, and building the foundations
of an international structure bringing together all the intellectual and
organizational forms of resistance to neo-liberal policies, with the
greatest autonomy from parties and governments.

This conference should be concerned firstly with providing a forum of
discussion of the various projects of social transformation which oppose the
social and economic processes presently under way (flexibilization,
casualization, pauperization, etc.) and of the ways of combatting the
law-and-order policies which European governments are now using to
neutralize the effects of these processes ; secondly, with the establishment
of permanent links facilitating rapid mobilization with a view to common
action of all the groups concerned, – without introducing any form of
centralizing control or losing the diversity of their respectives
inspirations and traditions, thirdly with the definition of common
objectives for concerted action at a national or international level
oriented towards new forms of social solidarity based on unified and
improved social benefits.

The convergence of all those whose daily combat against the most harmful
effects of neo-liberal policies provides them with a practical knowledge of
the subversive potentialities of such actions and its creative possibilities
could spark of a process of collective creation capable of offering all
those who no longer feel at home in the world as it is a realistic utopia
around which their different but converging combats could be articulated.

signatures : charte@raisons.org (http://www.raisons.org)