Why international public meetings are important for the future

On 16 November, the ICC held an online public meeting on the theme "The global implications of the US elections", in which several dozen people from across four continents and fifteen countries took part in addition to ICC militants. There was a simultaneous translation into English, Spanish and French so everyone could follow the discussions, which took place in just over three hours. We have published an initial report on the meeting on our website: An international debate to understand the global situation and prepare for the future

Since then, we've received a large number of letters, some to welcome the meeting, others to continue the debate or to ask new questions, an indication of the momentum generated by this energising meeting.

One of these letters, signed by Blake, gave a more negative assessment of this international meeting and suggested that we should do things differently, that we should hold other types of meeting. This criticism is both fraternal and well-argued and we publish this letter and our response below.

 

Letter from a reader

Hello, a few comments on the public meeting last Saturday.

I don't have too much to say on the actual content, I agree with the position put forward by the organisation, essentially that the Trump election is a sign and an aggravating factor in the continuation of decomposition.

I want to mainly comment on the organisation of the meeting. It's very difficult to deal with a huge number of people on line. All the meetings I have participated in online with large numbers are not designed for discussion. Generally they are for giving information, discussion happens in much smaller forums/groups. 

First of all, there are constant technical issues (the threat of the pad being deleted(!), people not turning off microphones, connectivity issues etc)

Also, in relation to the discussion, I feel there's very little actual 'discussion' when you have so many people. Mostly comrades intervene once, to give a statement of their views, and so there's little dialogue and development of a depth (that was my feeling, and why I didn't intervene in the meeting). A few comrades posed questions (e.g. JC about 'rationality') but there's no discussion from others, and instead you have the 'response of the organisation' (which is obviously important to have, but it then feels like a student-teacher relationship).

Another negative (for me) was having comrades speaking other languages. If you can't speak/understand then what happens is you tend to switch off and wait until that person has stopped speaking, this breaks concentration. It was a good idea to translate those non-English interventions and quickly put them back into the pad, but: 

(a) some of the translations were poor (unsurprisingly, Google translate hasn't caught up with our somewhat specialised vocabulary) and 

(b) as I was reading the last intervention the next intervention was going ahead, so again it's difficult to follow and keep up. 

Despite the advantages of having different voices, and giving a sense of internationalism, I think it does not really work for a public meeting online (which is very different from, say, a public meeting face to face where you can have live translation…

A proposed idea how to organise the meeting: 

- 1 presentation to everyone (20 mins),

- Then the meeting is split into the language groups, who can then discuss freely (say 1 hour),

- A break - during which the discussions / questions / main themes etc are collated (10 mins)

- Followed by a plenum with a whole group discussion - (1 hour).

There are several advantages to this; 

1. Smaller groups generally = easier management. 
2. You still have an international meeting (in the Presentation and plenum discussion), but reduce some of the limitations of meeting online.
3. Some comrades are intimidated by larger numbers/language ability (e.g. Japanese comrades) and thus may be more encouraged to speak. (On a related side note; do you think constantly saying that you want 'new comrades/attendees' to speak actually does the job you want it to do? Constantly 'haranguing' people to speak (just how it came across to me), generally does not produce much response, personally I have not noticed any more people participating. You have a greater array of communicative means online, so you should consider using them. For example, why not ask attendees, if they don't want to speak, to write a short paragraph of what they think into the chat box, which can then be read out..? I can virtually guarantee you will get more responses that way..) 
4. Smaller groups, generally can mean a little longer for each person to contribute (You can emphasise the '5 min limit' during the main plenum). 
5. Finally, you can get out much of the repetition and basic ideas in the smaller group and therefore should be able to have a 'higher' level discussion in the whole group session.....If you wanted to discuss this further, please get in contact.

regards

Blake

Our response

Firstly, we warmly welcome this letter. Through his criticisms and proposals, the comrade is contributing to our collective reflection with the aim of improving the organisation of debates, promoting the confrontation of positions and aiding the process of clarification.

Also, Blake is correct in regard to the number and we did make it clear in the report of this international meeting published on our website that there really were a lot of people there “several dozen people from across four continents and some fifteen countries took part”.  Given the large number of participants, not everyone was able to take part in the debates and it was not possible for the same person to speak several times. As Blake says, these constraints partly prevented the questions raised from being deepened and it restricted the time for contributors to respond to each other.

And Blake is also right when he points to the technical difficulties involved in holding an online international meeting in several languages which requires live translations to be recorded on different computer pads, and for comrades to adhere to the necessity of switching off their microphones when it's not their turn to speak, and so on.

These are the reasons why the ICC also organises other types of meetings:  online meetings in a set language with fewer numbers, public meetings in towns and cities where people can be together ‘physically’, and meetings where there is no set subject announced in advance and where the participants are able to propose topics for discussion (current affairs, history, theory, etc.). There's no denying that these meetings give rise to lively exchanges of views, allowing arguments and counter-arguments to develop and positions to evolve, and we announce all these planned discussions in advance on our website in the ‘ agenda ’ section.

In this spectrum, the international online meetings have a special, indeed crucial, role to play. Let's start with the most obvious. Comrades are isolated, sometimes alone, and they joining a meeting where comrades from different countries, speaking in different languages, share the same passion for revolution and a desire to deepen their understanding of the evolving world events and the need to participate in the development of working class consciousness, an exhilarating and uplifting experience.

This international dimension is not only good for morale, it is also, and above all, good for reflection. In this phase of capitalist decomposition, with the tendency to withdraw, the fear of the outsider and thoughts being fixated on immediate and local events, it is absolutely vital for the world's searching minorities to break this isolation, to link up, to join and work together in all languages, to develop the broadest and clearest vision.

At the meeting on 16 November, in which we came together to understand better “The Global Implications of the American Elections”, the various contributions made by participants from the four corners of the globe enabled us to cross-reference information and analyses and to draw on different sensibilities and experiences. Blake may have noticed himself that the speeches by French-speaking comrades bore a more assertive confidence in the proletariat and its future struggles which is probably partly linked to the fighting spirit and experience of the working class in France.

It's true that not all participants were able to speak but is having one's own say really the most important thing? On the contrary we believe that understanding how to listen and learn from the thoughts of others is also a crucial element in the dynamics of a debate and the process of collective clarification. During this three-hour meeting, the militants of the ICC spoke only three times, in order to leave the maximum of time to all the other comrades but also to listen and better understand the different positions, the nuances and the disagreements at stake[1]

Underlying this is something even more profound: the feeling we share that 'proletarians have no country!' The struggle of our class is on a global scale, the communist revolution is international and this internationalism is not just a feeling or an impulse, it is also a concrete, real and significant social and political force.

As regards the practical organisation of this international meeting, the comrade refers to the problems with the microphones and the pads and the difficulty in keeping concentration when the debate is taking place in several languages... All this is true, and it means we are still learning. We've received a lot of letters from participants asking us how they can better master their computer on this or that technical aspect for the next time. Here again, this small concrete example reveals something much deeper: this meeting in several languages like future ones is where we can learn and get used to meeting together in large numbers, so we can organise the management of our debates and strengthen our ties internationally. The focus of these meetings is on the future!

Because how will the future of capitalism look if we are to overthrow capitalism through a world revolution? With the development of combativity, consciousness and its revolutionary minorities, our meetings will have to bring together more and more people, from more and more countries. Today, bringing together several dozen participants, in three languages, is just a foretaste of what we will have to manage in the future. Both technically and in the organisation of debates, all participants must gain experience so that the revolutionary minorities from across the globe can carry out their responsibilities in the class and for the class.

We should be enthusiastic about being part of such militant activity! So, we look forward to seeing you at the next meeting!

ICC, 8 December

 

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[1] In his letter, comrade Blake spoke of a debate consisting mainly of questions from the participants and answers from the ICC, saying that this gave the impression of a ‘teacher/student’ relationship. The small number of interventions by the ICC (only three in three hours) and the dynamic nature of the discussion, with each speaker responding to the others and stating his or her agreements and disagreements, seems to us to belie this impression. But there is another underlying issue: meetings of revolutionary organisations are not a time for everyone to have ‘their’ say, ‘their’ free expression. No, the aim of these debates is to clarify and confront positions, with the aim of participating in the development of consciousness towards revolution. Revolutionary groups therefore have to defend their position, their clarity and their coherence.