Published twice annually beginning in 2009, the Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme grew out of the efforts of a group of people involved in Québec social movements and the political left. In 2006 we formed a collective called the Collectif d’action politique (CAP). Not affiliated with any political party or group, CAP seeks to partake in and contribute to the debates and struggles of today’s progressive social movements. At the same time, we want to develop an in-depth analysis of contemporary capitalism and participate in re-imagining socialism for the 21st century.
Many of CAP’s participants and contributors come from the university and educational milieus but we see ourselves as intellectual activists, that is, at once, scholars and producers of ideas, and activists belonging to a variety of citizen and trade union movements. Thus the Nouveaux Cahiers does not consider itself an academic journal. The contributions we solicit draw on a wide range of expertise, from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Our starting point, however, is that knowledge does not arise spontaneously and that an analysis and understanding of social processes and events demands a rigorous approach. Remember Marx’s withering observation: “[But] all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”1
The Neo-Liberal Revolution
Capitalism, in its most recent form of neo-liberalism, is restructuring the world we live in. It is accelerating the globalization of the world economy by broadening the process of accumulation at a planetary level through the increased integration of national economies, financialization and the implementation of new technologies that atomize wage labor and enable corporate delocalization. It redefines the state by buttressing the security functions of the state and diminishing its social role. It imposes a conservative ideology, both socially and culturally, and promotes the anti-social credo of “everyone for himself.” It also insists that there is no alternative to the existing system and that the principle of social hierarchy must be re-established and strengthened as the fundamental guiding principle in our societies. In order to effect this vast political shift, neo-liberalism systematically attacks and destroys the social gains that have been won through the struggles of unions and social movements over the last half century.
Resistance
In face of this attack, social movements old and new have been and continue offering resistance. Migrant workers in the United States, indigenous farmers in Mexico, anti-globalization activists in Seattle in 1999, students against the commodification of education in Québec, First Peoples defending their lands in Canada, feminists in the Global March for Women, the piqueteros of 2
Argentina, Indignados in Europe, young pacifists the world over, and many, many others— all these groups have been building a diverse and complex alternative movement, a movement with new perspectives that are anti-capitalist and post-capitalist. These movements of resistance seek not only to challenge existing power arrangements but also to reinvent and redefine a citizens’ democracy in the fullest sense of the word.
Through these struggles, new dialogues, values, and identities are creating the foundations of a new culture of the Left, a culture that is pluralist, critical, and capable of self-criticism, one that can create new models and move beyond itself.
Our aims
As a committed part of this movement, CAP and the journal Les Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme have three major goals:
– To analyze the structural dimensions of contemporary capitalism
– To develop an anti-capitalist and post-capitalist vision that is at once theoretical and practical
– To help develop new alternatives to foster the growth of social movements and the Left.
We do not want to re-invent the wheel. While we are keenly aware of the historic limitations of the actually-existing socialism of the 20th century, we are nevertheless heirs to a rich heritage of past ideas and struggles. But we do hope, through the ongoing development of theory and practice, to contribute to understanding and acting upon all the vital questions that figure so centrally in the movement of resistance to capitalism.
How to get in touch
e-mail: [email protected]
Read the Nouveaux Cahiers (in French): cahiersdusocialisme.org
Mailing address:
Collectif d’analyse politique CP 35062 Fleury Montréal (QC) H2C 3K4) Canada
1 Karl Marx, Capital (Volume III), (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977 ) p.817.