Global Justice School 2010

27th of November – 18th of December 2010

Arrivals are expected on Saturday 27th of November, departures are scheduled on Saturday 18th of December, after a detailed evaluation and general cleaning. The school is organized in three separate modules. Participants, who can not stay the whole three weeks, can choose to attend only one or two modules.

Module 1 The global economic crisis

• Sunday 28th of November and Monday 29th of November

The global economic crisis: a Marxist analysis of the actual crisis and a reminder of the previous crises of global capitalism. This will be the foundation and the global framework of the whole school.

Stéphanie Treillet

FRENCH

• Tuesday 30th of November

Women and the global crisis: the document produced for the last World Congress as the starting point. Social problems, migration, wars and violence against women, the rise of patriarchal religious rules against women, attacks on abortion rights, the climate crisis and food sovereignty, all these problems affect women in a specific way.

Terry Conway

ENGLISH

Evening on the debt crisis: with a lecturer from the CADTM

Myriam Bourgy

FRENCH

• Wednesday 1st of December

The ‘new’ working class: definition of working class and class consciousness, an overview of the history of trade-unionism and of the formation of working class parties should be part of the introduction, linked with a brief history of the Internationals. New problems concerning class consciousness, class identity and fragmentation of the working class will also be discussed.

Louis-Marie Barnier

FRENCH

• Thursday 2nd of December

The crisis and migration: a short theoretical and historical approach, analysis of the gender dimension, legal and illegal immigrants, war and climate migrants. The political questions linked to migration: fortress Europe, militarisation of borders (Mexico), racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, divisions in the working class, the fights of undocumented workers and of ‘illegal’ immigrants (USA, Europe), the rise of extreme right movements and parties.

Murray Smith

ENGLISH

• Friday 3rd of December

Day off, possibility for participants of a walking tour in Amsterdam: Rob Gerritsen

• Saturday 4th of December

The crisis of the world order, imperialism today: Lenin’s classical analysis, the dominance of American imperialism today, the role of European imperialism, geopolitics, the changing roles of ‘emerging’ economies (China in Africa, Brazil in South America…).

Gilbert Achcar

ENGLISH

• Sunday 5th of December

The crisis and identities, religious, ethnic, sexual: those identities play different roles and are subject to different dynamics in the current crisis. Religion as a progressive or a reactionary force; ethnicity as a new field of struggles (indigenous peoples and their rights); nationalism (our classical analysis applied today) in a globalised world; how do sexual identities and LGBTI struggles express themselves in different parts of the world.

• Gilbert Achcar, "Marxists and Religion - yesterday and today", International Viewpoint, 2005
• World Congress Fourth International Lesbian Gay Liberation
• Islam, sexuality and the politics of belonging in The Netherlands
• self-organization, self-emancipation and identity
• Arab Sexualities

Peter Drucker

ENGLISH

Module 2 The ecological crisis

• Monday 6th of December

Revisiting Marx (and Engels) on nature: what is Marx’s vision on the relationship between humanity and nature? Was Marxist a “productivist”? The development of the workers movement and its vision on progress and on the relationship between man and nature will be part of a historical overview.

Alain Tondeur

FRENCH

• Tuesday 7th of December

Food crisis, food sovereignty, peasant movements: the economic crisis and the ecological crisis ; new role of anticapitalist peasant organisations and indigenous peoples, impact of the food crisis for the rural and urban poor in the Global South, link with agricultural policies in Europe and the USA.

Esther Vivas

SPANISH

• Wednesday 8th of December

The climate crisis explained: the scientific evidence and explanation of this climate crisis, its roots in the capitalist mode of production, what and how do we campaign against this crisis. This conference is mainly based, concerning the political part, on the resolution of the World Congress.

Marijke Colle

ENGLISH

• Thursday 9th of December

What is ecosocialism: our socialist program revisited in the framework of the global ecological crisis; why change from socialism to ecosocialism? Dialectics between means and aims, technology is not neutral, link between social justice and ecological justice. Which type of structural measures, which type of production and consumption?

Laurent Garrouste

FRENCH

• Friday 10th of December

Guided tour of the IISH (International Institute of Social History) by Marcel Van der Linden

Module 3 Strategy, program and the building of parties

• Saturday 11th of December Social movements and our fight for another society: unions are amongst the first mass social movements; the women’s movement, the global justice movements, mass campaigns (against the war, against climate change…) are an important field of our intervention. What is the importance of these movements for our ecosocialist and feminist project? What is the link with our building of parties?

Penny Duggan

ENGLISH

• Sunday 12th of December

Historical overview and discussion on parties: why parties? What kind of parties? History of the worker’s parties, differences with bourgeois parties; what is a contemporary interpretation of a Leninist party? Recent experiences in building parties.

Josep-Maria Antentas

SPANISH

• Monday 13th of December

Strategies of transformation in Latin America: popular movements, electoral processes, progressive governments, to what extent can we see a break with imperialism and neo-liberalism? What are the challenges before us: the relationship between the left and social movements, “pachamamismo” and indigenous movement, the coup in Honduras, the situation in Venezuela, a return of the right? The discussion on “socialism of the XXIth century”. What are the possibilities and what is the importance of international solidarity campaigns in Europe and elsewhere. Franck Gaudichaud

SPANISH

• Tuesday 14th of December

BRIC, Asia and the global crisis: the new specific characteristics of Asia, its growing importance in the global crisis; an insight in our political work and new perspectives in party building.

Pierre Rousset

ENGLISH

• Wednesday 15th of December

The crisis and Europe: the economic and institutional crisis in Europe, new opportunities, new challenges in building broad anticapitalist parties, European campaigns, strategic problems in the European context.

Léon Crémieux

FRENCH

• Thursday 16th of December

Plan, market and democracy: a balance sheet of the Stalinist centrally ‘planned’ societies, what do we mean by our project for socialist democracy? How much room for the market? What representation of the people? What is socialist ‘governance’?

Catherine Samary

FRENCH

• Friday 17th of December

Why internationalism and why an international: historical aspects of the four internationals; the F.I. today (see also ‘Role and tasks’ voted at the W.C.); globalisation and the appeal from Chavez.

Léon Crémieux

FRENCH

• Saturday 18th of December

Final global and individual evaluation by all participants and global cleaning!