Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 23:04:38 +1000
From: Mneillft-AT-aol.com (by way of sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Steve Wright))
Subject: AUT: mesa 1a&b madrid - report


Monty had posted this to the list, but to date it hasn't appeared.

Apologies if you *do* end up getting it twice - you can blame me if that helps.

Steve

______________


Content-ID: <0_2205_871934771-AT-emout19.mail.aol.com.7704>

Hi. I have attached a copy of the report of mesa 1a & b of Madrid. (This
version was scanned in from a copy of the text I kept from Madrid; I have not
checked the scanned version but trust the person who did so.) (I tried to
send this earlier but it appears it did not go through, so this is another
try.)

I attached the text as an ASCII file. If you do not receive it properly and
can get to the web site, you might check
<www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3849/gatehrdx.html> as I hope it will be
posted there soon. Perhaps also it will be posted to
<www.pangea.org/encuentro>.  If you still cannot get it after a few days, let
me know and I'll try to just include it within the text of the message and
hope that goes through clearly.

Also, I hope by the end of this week to post some commentary on mesa 1a and
the encuentro, including a proposal to continue discussions from that mesa.
(I do not have the Barcelona report and hope it will get circulated soon!)

I am posting this report wherever I can (sorry if you get multiple copies and
let me know if you do not want your name for further postings on this topic
from me).  But I know that  many people who were at mesa 1a-b in Madrid, to
say nothing of 1a-b in Barcelona or people from other mesas who might be
interested in this report  or in continuing this discussion (economics; work;
resistance to capitalist economics and work;  particularly with an eye to
developing strategy) will not see this or subsequent messages -- so if you
have means to reach more people by circulating this summary, please do so.
 Thank you.

Monty Neill
<montyneill-AT-aol.com> or <mneillft-AT-aol.com>

Content-ID: <0_2205_871934771-AT-emout19.mail.aol.com.7705>
        name="MESA1A.ASC"


Report of Madrid Mesa
1a
, Work and the Means of Production, and
1b
, Creating
Conditions for a Life with Dignity.



I. Introduction


We came together to help make a world of dignity and justice and well-being
for all
humanity.  This should include the dignified, democratic participation of
us all, women
and men, in producing the material things we need, redistributing the
wealth, raising our
children, and taking care of each other.  But neoliberal capitalism offers
us misery and
exploitation so that to work is to create the chains of poverty and
subservience for most
of us and wealth for a few.


The system of capitalist work is a system of divisions and hierarchies:
isolated individuals
competing with each other through competing national economies, hierarchies
between
women and men, between north and south and within them, by race and
national origin,
by wage and kind of work.  So our struggles against work must also overcome
these
divisions if they are to be successful.


Changes in the nature of work under neoliberalism are inherently
contradictory.  On one
hand, employment is more necessary than ever in order to survive.  But
employment is
less and less available and rewarding.  This creates the conditions for
increasing conflict
against capitalist waged work.


So we meet in this mesa to share our understanding of work under capitalism
and to
develop the ideas, strategies, demands and networks of communication and
struggle that
will enslave us to go beyond capitalism and create a diverse and just
world,  to dare to
invent our future.


II. Work


1. Changing North/South/East Relations


Relations between north and south and within both north and south are
changing, in
work and production, and in all social spheres.  Today, there are
similarities and
differences in the forms of exploitation between north and south.  The
similarities are
increasing, but there remain old forms of imperialism which are now being
renewed by
neoliberalism.  Neoliberalism stimulates both development and
underdevelopment in
both north and south, so that we find the north in the south and the south
in the north.
Additionally, the workers in the east are now being prepared for various
forms of
exploitation by northern corporations.  Workers in the north do not
fundamentally
benefit from imperialism -- it is the ruling class and the transnational
corporations, and
particularly speculative financial capital, that benefit -- but there is a
lot of complexity
and inequality in relations between the working class in the north and the
working class
in the south.  Workers in every part of the world lose under neoliberalism,
but the
workers in the south lose more.


The structures, organization and relations of work in both north and south
are changing.
One reason is migration, especially from south to north and from the land
to the cities as
people are forced off the land, and neoliberal policies of austerity and
opening of
markets create massive poverty.  Capitalist investment meanwhile moves some
kinds of
jobs from north to south in search of cheaper labor and no environmental or
social
regulations.


Those who hold economic and political power have central organizations that
organize
structural adjustment, force the payment of external debts, impose
so-called free trade
and privatization, and plan the reorganization of work and investment.
These include
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Work Bank, World Trade Organization (
WTO
),
Asian Pacific Economic Council (
APEC
),
MERCOSUR
, and the
NAFTA
 and


Maastricht
 treaties.  Social democratic institutions and the so-called socialist
parties of
Africa, Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and many trade union
bureaucracies
have all accepted neoliberalism and collaborate with global agencies,
transnational
corporations and governments to impose the neoliberal agenda.  We oppose
all these
groups and institutions and their plans for our exploitation and death.


2. Many Faces of Work


Capitalists try to reduce all of human life to work and consumption in the
market.
Capitalist work is thus exploitation, so that the demand for capitalist
work is the demand
to be exploited.  Many ways are used to force us into this exploitation.
However, to
work as humans is to produce and reproduce our conditions of life and means
to relate
with each other.  The human way to work is not of competing atomistic
individuals, but
of social individuals working in cooperative, dignified, and democratic
arrangements.
The question of human work therefore opens the political question of direct
democracy
from below to determine the production and reproduction of our lives.
However, we
must all live, and to live today it often requires that we participate in
one of the many
forms of capitalist work.


Today, neoliberal capital uses every kind of work in its efforts to suck
profit out of the
lives of people.  Much of the work in the world, perhaps that of half the
people of the
world, is done in ways that are not directly or immediately part of the
market.  This
comprises mostly forms of
agricultrual
 work and life, but also includes the many areas of
the informal economy.  The rule of money finds ways to exploit this work,
make profit
from it, and to bring it under market control.


At this most recent phase of world capitalist development, in both north
and south
slavery increases, as well as many forms of work that are semi-slavery,
such as debt
bondage, child labor, forced prostitution, prison labor and
workfare
.  In free trade zones
and the maquiladora factories, workers labor in near-slavery conditions.


Neoliberalism depends on increased exploitation of the
unwaged
 and more unpaid work
from everyone.  Unpaid work includes all the work traditionally done by
women in the
home to raise children, make men ready for work outside the home, nurse the
sick, care
for the elderly, and reproduce the entire domestic sphere.  It includes
unpaid forced
overtime, time spent looking for work, and labor obligations for landlords
and local
political bosses.  Neoliberalism also blurs the distinction between waged
work and semi-
slavery by imposing  flex-time,  on-call labor, self-employment, working at
home -- all
ways in which the whole life is, like in slavery, reduced to work for capital.


Without a fundamental redistribution of work time to make it equal, there
will also be
more service labor in which the low-waged workers work for the higher paid
workers.
Today we see women migrating from the south to work in the homes of the
wealthy in
the north as they have done for generations in the south, while often the
men are
gardeners and take care of the property of the wealthy.


The neoliberal offensive removes labor protection laws relating to limits
on hours of
work, security of labor contracts, and the minimum wage.  It imposes
workfare
 in which
capitalist work is made a requirement for receiving state unemployment and
welfare
benefits.  New,
superexploited
 and insecure forms of work are imposed especially on
women and increase the exploitation of the family.  These policies are
imposed in both
north and south, and they make conditions in the north more similar to
those in the
south.


There are also many socially destructive areas of work including the
military and the
police, prisons, social welfare bureaucracies, and the capitalist mass
media apparatus.
These forms of work destroy the dignity of those who do that work while
even more
destroying the dignity and often the very lives of those against whom they
work.  There
are also many forms of socially useless work, such as in banking,
insurance, trading and
keeping track of who owns what piece of capital, as well as forms of work
that only exist
because of the overwork others of us are forced to do: such as fast food
restaurants.
The workers in these sectors must be helped to find other forms of employment.


We also need to carefully consider technology, to determine what technology
is humanly
useful and what is humanly destructive, what makes less work and what makes more
work, what is environmentally sound and what is not.  Neoliberalism uses
technology not
as a tool to liberate humanity from tedious and unnecessary work, but as
weapon in the
competitive battle, as a means to control and impose work.  So we must also
consider
the forms of technology, modifying technology as necessary to use for human
ends.


Finally, capitalist work and the search for jobs creates competition among
us.  Neoliberal
strategies try to reduce us to isolated individuals and destroy our
communities and
solidarity in order to make us unable to resist capitalist work.  Having to
live under such
conditions is a form of emotional and social work as we try to recover from
these abuses.
More, capitalist work involves the destruction of the environment and
having to live with
the consequences.


In response to slavery, semi-slavery, wage slavery and all forms of
exploitation through
work for capitalism, we assert the need for democratic, participatory control of
production so that we all can live a life of dignity, including life at
work, while
eliminating useless and destructive work.


3. Consumption


Capitalist work and
capitalist
 consumption are closely related, but they are mediated by
the market, so that consumption requires money.  Only those with money are
free to
consume in the free market.  Here there is great inequality in both north
and south and
between north and south.


A society geared towards the production for profit creates superfluous
consumption and
lives devoted to consumption.  Some forms of consumption are not ecologically
sustainable or socially positive, and these must be reduced or eliminated.
Neoliberalism
also manipulates production to create new needs and new markets, and it
imposes such
forms of production as
monocrop
 agriculture for export while destroying production of
food for subsistence.  There is also the use of enormous areas of land to
produce meat,
which is not globally sustainable.  Meanwhile, billions of humans live of
the edge of
starvation or live with minimal subsistence.  Their need must be met, but
in ways that
are dignified, and socially and ecologically sustainable.


These problems ultimately cannot be solved within the capitalist market.
We must have
participatory democratic control over production in order to solve questions of
consumption.  To solve these problems, we must be able to reorganize
consumption on a
more collective and ecologically sustainable basis so that we do not have
to consider
consumption in terms of more or less, but in terms of the quality it brings
to our lives.
Thus the political and ethical aspects of consumption could be taken into
account, such
as the real costs of our consumption to producers, other consumer, and the
environment.


III. Struggles and Alternatives: Reducing Work Time and Creating
Non-Capitalist Work


Struggles to reduce capitalist work time, to control land and the means of
production,
and to build alternative ways to produce and reproduce our life can unite
diverse people
against the inhuman vampire called neoliberal capital.  We recognize that
to survive we
engage in many particular struggles over immediate issues, but when linked these
struggles can open the door to wider and deeper struggles.


We need therefore to develop principles with which we can analyze our
struggles to see
if they put us in a better position to overcome the inhuman way of life we
are forced
into, whether they reduce hierarchies and create wider spaces of shared
democratic
participants.  Some of these principles include: to reduce the risk of
being co-opted by
capital; to ensure that our struggles and demands correspond to many
sectors, needs and
aspirations; and to ensure they embody a principle of human liberation.  We must
therefore be sure that reductions in work in one place are not at the
expense of work in
another.  We can also develop principles that distinguish between projects
imposed from
the top or outside by capitalism, and those from the bottom and inside,
from the people.


The struggle to reduce capitalist work allows more time to struggle against
capital and
more time to develop alternative was to produce, live and redistribute
domestic chores.
We simultaneously demand higher wages and equalization of wages, between men and
women, citizens and migrants, north and south, different kinds of workers,
and races.
The struggle to reduce work time for capital is a struggle not only of the
waged workers,
but also of the
unwaged
 workers, the millions of farmers and peasants, students,
unemployed, elderly, housewives and indigenous of the world.  For example,
a well in a
village could mean the reduction of arduous work by men and women.  When we
reduce
work time, we must ensure the equal distribution of the work that we decide
needs to be
done.  While we reduce work time, me must insist on conditions that ensure
dignity and
health for the work that remains to be done.


A guaranteed income assuring life with dignity for all residents of nation
is also right.
We say residents because this right belongs to migrants as well as
citizens: we all have
rights to inherit the wealth and knowledge that are products of centuries
of collective
human activity.  This right is independent of requirement to work for
capital.  Income
without work can also be gained through various struggles such as occupying
houses or
land,
reappropriations
, and refusing to pay for services.


In the south, and in some places of the north, rights to land, water, and
other means of
agricultural production are essential to life with dignity and the creation
of just societies.
These rights must not be limited by requirements to produce for the
capitalist market.


Creating alternative spaces for production and social life is good in
itself because these
spaces enable relations that are outside of and beyond the market.  They
also can put
limits to capitalist expansion and support creation of spaces in which
struggles can grow
and be protected.  We can learn through this how to create many visions of
ways to
organize our lives and production.  The satisfaction of needs outside of
direct control of
the capitalist market enables us to fight capital on a terrain that is more
favorable to us.
These forms of alternatives can develop out of traditional forms of work,
but some
traditional forms involve exploitation and also must be abolished.  Many
forms of  third
sector  work (supposedly depending neither on the market nor the state) are
not true
alternatives to capitalist work, but instead are a new form of lower-waged
capitalist work.


All these struggles -- to reduce work time, guarantee income, gain control
of means of
production, and developing alternatives -- can be raised in both south and
north, but in
different ways that respond to the different particularities.  These
struggles can be
contradictory, so we need to pay careful attention to how they can support and
strengthen each other and not be used against each other.  Our struggles
are much
stronger when they are combined so that each particular demand is not
isolated or
coopted.  We need to create a process of building on and enriching our
struggles that
includes careful study and honest discussion.  It is also important in this
process of work
to transform the relations between women and men in both personal and
political lives.
This means that men, not only women, assume the responsibility of this
struggle.


To make successful struggles and to win a new world, we need many forms of
organization.  We insist on the right of all people to organize and defend
themselves
from attack by states, corporations, paramilitary and fascist groups.


IV. Strategies and Actions


To win our demands along the way toward a new world that contains many
worlds, we
must develop strategies and analyze them in light of our goals and
principles.  We must
also understand the institutions and process of neoliberalism in their
military, financial,
political, ideological and cultural forms, as well as neoliberal forms of
production and
consumption.  We understand that the neoliberal capitalist system is only
one of many
expressions of exploitative power that exist, some of which pre-date
capitalism, including
patriarchy, racism, and caste distinctions.  We are committed to fight
against exploitative
power and oppression in all their multiple forms and guises.


We have agreed to create networks as a fundamental form of organization,
rather than
parties or other forms of organization.  We see these networks as horizontal and
participatory, as ways of living in part the future we are struggling to
make, though we
recognize that the construction of the networks as such will not solve the
problems of
power and democracy in the ways we organize ourselves.  But we have many
questions
about the best ways to proceed:
     --how can we build upon existing networks?
     --should we set up our own network and undertake struggles specific to
our own
network so that people will take the
Encuentro
 even more seriously?
     --how should we begin networks - locally, regionally, nationally,
globally, or by
subject or some combination?
     --how can we include struggles not represented by participants in the
network?
     --how can we create new ways to link struggles and networks and
support each
other?
     --how can we best use a mix of electronics and print media to reach people?
     --are there limits to networks as a form of struggle, and if so, what
more do we
need to create?


Actions coordinated across national boundaries by a network for practical
struggle can
take many forms including:
     --civil disobedience
     --boycotts of specific transnational corporations, against their labor
practices, their
attacks on indigenous peoples and their ecologically destructive actions
     --campaigns against payment of taxes for destructive ends, such as the
military
     --political and solidarity strikes
     --mass public actions against austerity, structural adjustment and the
institutions
which impose them, and all neoliberal practices; and
     --self-defense by any means necessary.


Using these methods and more, we can take actions against the institutions
and practices
that attack us.  Mesa
1A
 and
1B
 recognize that there are many actions worthy of
support, but we here explicitly state our general support for the following:
     --support for the Declaration of
Alcobenda


     --counter-summit to protest the
WTO
 meeting in Geneva in May 1998
     --actions against
Maastricht
,
NAFTA
, and other continental of subcontinental
strategies of strangulation on humanity
     --actions against the arms trade; and
     --campaigns against external debt.


V. Conclusion


We come together to help make a world of dignity and humanity.  The
richness of our
discussions, the warmth of our exchanges, and the humanity of our
experiences and
struggles have demonstrated to us that we are dignified subjects.  But this
dignity is
taken away from us when the capitalist work machine uses us for its
purposes.  We have
outlined the general elements that could give voice to a strong collective
NO!  to this
inhuman way of life.  But we also know that there are many  YESES! , many
different
but compatible visions of ways to exercise power on our lives as dignified
human beings.
The creation for the flowering of these  YESES!


On these foundations we must now develop, discuss and debate strategies
that we can
use in our different circumstances to create a world of justice, direct
democracy from
below, and dignity.  We expect that the next
Encuentro
 will focus on the question of
strategies and build on the work we do between now and then.


One  NO!  many  YESES!


31 August 1997, Madrid, Spanish State, Third Planet from Sol.


P.S. Finally, we want to thank the
companeras
 and
compeneros
 who have organized this


Encuetro
 for the enormous work they have done.  This silent effort has made it possible
for us to get together and create, within the brutal capitalist world that
surrounds us,
what one member of our group call  this precious communist bubble.



[Editor's note: Mesas 1a and b in Madrid involved 80-100 people from
probably 15-20
nations (I do not have a count), mostly people from Europe.]


{Second editor's note: I hope persons interested in the work of this mesa
will continue to discuss the issues raised and more importantly develop
strategy that will help us reach the goals we have outlined in this report.
I will circulate by the start of Sept. a brief proposal for this. If you
see this report and want to see the brief proposal but do not receive it by
the start of Sept., please contact me by email at
<montyneill-AT-aol.com> and I will forward it to you. If you see it and do not
have email, write to me at Monty Neill, Box 204, Boston, MA 02130 USA.]




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