[Note: The Charter for the New European Social Movement is a recent initiative, and one which the Turtle applauds. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is closely linked to the Charter; he was recently interviewed by Kevin Ovenden for Socialist Review, and his remarks are available on the web here. To see the full list of signatories, visit this site, from which the texts published here have been taken.]

It is imperative, for the social movements which have asserted themselves throughout Europe over the past several years to be able to endure and expand, that we bring together, first on a Europe-wide scale, the various collectives concerned, trade unions, associations of the jobless, the homeless, the "paperless" (illegal migrants and refugees), student coordinations, women's groups, gay and lesbian alliances, non-governmental organizations for ecology, human rights, etc., in an organized network, whose precise architecture remains to be invented, capable of cumulating their distinct forces, orchestrating their diverse goals and elaborating common projects.

In spite of their differences, nay their divisions, these various movements have in common, among other things, the fact that they take up the defense of all those left out by neo-liberal policies, thereby tackling all the issues left aside by theses policies. These issues are deliberately ignored or repressed by social-democratic parties who, being concerned first and foremost with managing the established economic order so as to conserve the command posts of the state, are acquiescing to rising inequalities, unemployment, and precariousness. It is critical that a genuine symbolic counter-power be capable of putting these issues continually back on the agenda through novel forms of action (especially symbolic actions) that express, as was done in Seattle, the deep demands of the citizenry.

This counter-power must confront international forces < supranational > governmental institutions and transnational firms. Therefore it must itself be international and, to start with, European. Having to deal with forces aimed at the restoration of the past order, especially through the dismantling of the welfare state, it must be a force for forward progress (une force de mouvement) which, like the social movements which gradually conquered the major social and economic rights from 19th century onwards, could and should constrain international organizations, national states and their governments to proclaim and implement efficient measures to curtail the destructive power of markets (and chief among them financial markets) and to impose a more equitable distribution of wealth within and across countries.

This is why we propose to hold, before the end of the year 2000, an Estates General of the European Social Movement whose goal would be to elaborate a charter for progressive action and to lay down the foundations of an international (and internationalist) structure that would bring together all the various organizational and intellectual forms of resistance to neoliberal policy, and this in full independence from parties and governments. These meetings would offer an opportunity for (1) an open confrontation between the different projects of social transformation designed to thwart the ongoing processes generative of social inequality and regression ("flexibility", casualization of labor, reduction of social rights, pauperization, etc.) and to combat the law-and-order measures increasingly proposed by European governments for neutralizing their destructive effects; (2) establishing permanent links facilitating rapid mobilization geared to joint action involving all of the assembled collectives without for that introducing any kind of centralizing constraint and without losing any of the richness due to the diversity of their respectives inspirations and traditions; (3) defining common objectives for national and international action, oriented towards the construction of a society of social justice and solidarity, founded on the unification and elevation of social norms and rights.

Bringing together all the women and men who have acquired, from their daily struggles against the most deleterious effects of neoliberal policy, practical knowledge of the subversive potentialities that these struggles hold and of the creative responses that they call for would help trigger a process of collective creation capable of offering, to all of those who do not identify with the world as it is, a realistic utopia around which the diverse but convergent efforts and struggles of the past few years could coalesce and become organized.