Atlanta to London

I started writing this on the Eurostar from Brussels, and I'm finishing it up the next afternoon at Marxism 2007 in London.

The US Social Forum was enormous, and as usual there is the feeling of about a dozen conferences going on in the same place and overlapping only slightly. I mostly went to talks on socialism and the labor movement. Probably the most interesting one (which I'm still chewing one a little) was the one I already mentioned about minority (or "pre-majority") unionism. This is basically a matter of figuring out what to do when there is an organization of workers which is not legally recognized as a union nor likely to be in the immediate future.

I am of course one of those who believe that the labor movement is what workers get together and do rather than the organizations the government chooses to recognize, and who think that the biggest problem with said movement is how few of the people in it realize that. I myself, although I'd been told it before, rally realized how true this was when I found myself a member of a union with a solid institutional position but huge gaping holes in its actual functioning, which is a bit depressing. It's very encouraging to see people come into it from the other side.

Although it was more diffuse, spread out over several other workshops, I was also very pleased to see that Solidarity and Labor Notes seem to take the matter similarly seriously. One or the other hosted a big proportion of the workshops I attended, and for the most part I liked what I heard a great deal. I was particularly glad to see that they at least seem to be thinking about some of the things that have been on my mind about how labor bureaucrats often use students and student groups.

I see that about half of the folks quoted in Socialist Worker's article on the forum were members of the ISO delegation, although of course none are named as such. But enough of that.I also had some less innocent fun contemplating the efforts of various groups which were present. I've already mentioned the ISO, whose tiny presence I found rather striking. The SWP (who thought Social Forums were a middle-class waste of time until there was one in Venezuela) had about half-a-dozen tables of the usual sort, and the RCP now seems to have enough Chairman Bob merchandise to leave everything else at home.

I had a related experience at a session on revolutionary organizing in the 21st century or something of that sort. This was an entirely stultifying experience for the 90 minutes or so I managed to get myself to stick around, which consisted of 40 minutes of corporate-training-style ersatz friendliness courtesy of Bring The Ruckus, an "anti-authoritarian cadre organization" descended from Love'n'Rage followed by a variety of Maoist soundbites from BTR, FRSO, and various study groups, with a few innocuous words from a Solidarity member. It was packed (at least at the beginning) and went on for another 3 hours so after my eyes glazed over.

Unfortunately I had to leave before the forum was over, so I missed a few interesting-looking workshops, particularly one to do with GI outreach which I'm hoping to hear about from a friend.

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Brussels, as usual, was quiet but very pleasant. It was a bit less grungy than I remembered, I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not. London should be more exciting, again I'm not sure whether that's good or not. The trip over to London was quite nice, and I'm staying with two photography students in Peckham.

Marxism is good so far. I'll write more about the workshops later, but I should mention that I just had a fairly frustrating conversation with an SWP member who seemed to be trying to convince me that the ISO had missed out on the "anticapitalist movement", as though he knew what was going on their better than I did just because he'd read a couple of documents.