Inspirational Speech

In the midst of the large protests of J18, Seattle (N30), Washington (A16), Melbourne (S11), Prague (S26) , Ottawa (A20) and Genoa, the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement started it’s alternative annual meeting the World Social Forum.

Local and Regional Social Fora were encouraged and one has just happened in the US.

Michael Albert, who runs the Z magazine web site, has written a review containing the speech he wished had been given at the end of the US Social Forum. It’s quite long, but here’s an excerpt:

We are trying to win a new economy in which there are no classes. No one in the better world we seek will own workplaces, resources, or other people’s ability to do work. There will be no owners of Walmarts or Microsofts. There will be no private profits. There will be no wage slaves, working under the dictates of others. Further, no one will monopolize empowering conditions at work, as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and managers so typically do now, and on that account rule over those left only menial and obedient tasks. No one will earn inequitably whether from property, power, or output. No one will have more say over decisions than the fair share that we all are entitled to in accord with how much we are affected. There will be no top and no bottom of who decides what for whom. There will be no order giver and no order taker about production, allocation, or consumption. There will be no class responsible for decisions while another class is suppressed and responsible only to obey. We will all be elevated to use our fullest capacities and express our fullest desires, rather than most of us learning only to endure boredom and to obey orders showered down on us by the anointed masters of all that occurs. Our new economy will be classless, at last. Out with the old boss – and out with any new boss, too. We will enjoy a participatory economy, operating as one part of a participatory society.

But our project is not just about economics – we are not economistic. We realize that life is not working and consuming alone. For example…

Read the whole thing here.