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World Social Forum

International Meeting of Radical Anti-Capitalist Parties

Document: Communiqué - Mumbai, India, January 20, 2004

Monday 5 April 2004

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January 20, 2004, an international meeting of radical, anti-capitalist, political parties took place in Mumbai, India, at the invitation of 18 parties from Asia-Pacific and Europe. The first aim of this meeting was to help organizations from different continents to get in touch, to have an initial exchange of views about what each organization expects from a process of international cooperation, to expand and deepen the existing links without any attempt to formalize them, and to begin to discuss common actions.

48 organizations met at this occasion, 5 others parties willing to participate eventually could not come to Mumbai. Thus, in total, 53 organizations from some 25 states answered positively to this initiative. Most of the participants came from Asia-Pacific and Europe, but Africa, Latin America and Middle East were also represented. The concerned parties have different origins, histories and strength; often, they even did not know one another before the Mumbai meeting which proved to be a unique occasion to tie new links between organizations from different continents and various ideological trends.

Participating parties share an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist outlook, and are engaged in the ongoing mass mobilizations against military and corporate globalization. They are willing to engage in dialog, assert mutual solidarity, act together internationally, and thus contribute to give a new concrete content to internationalism, to the strengthening of people’s struggles world-wide and to the elaboration of real alternatives to the present imperialist world order.

In a very warm atmosphere, the meeting allowed a general exchange of view on many aspects of today’s struggles: against militarism and war, for the rights of the working class and the oppressed, for national liberation, gender equality and equal access to health, on environment, to name only some. A common feeling emerged that imperialism, in all its manifestations and on every level, must be fought, challenged and overthrown.

The Mumbai meeting of radical parties gave its full support to the call, initiated by the anti-war movements in the United States and by the antiwar co-ordination that met at the occasion of the World Social Forum, for a world-wide day of mobilization March 20, 2004. All organizations will do their best to help to the success of this initiative for peace and against the occupation of Iraq, in solidarity with the Palestinians and other people facing occupation and military intervention.

A facilitating committee has been chosen to co-ordinate and continue the process that was started at the meeting. The facilitators are presently from Australia, Brazil, France, Great Britain, India, Italy and United States.

A second meeting of radical parties will take place in one year’s time, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It will be prepared by political exchanges through an e-mail list and at the occasion of international gatherings, the coming months, to which our organizations will participate. Preparatory discussions will focus, among others themes, on two key issues: our shared responsibilities in relation to the world-wide growth of the movements against military and corporate globalization, and how international co-operation between radical parties can shape today, in a different way than in the past.

The international meeting of radical parties is open to new organizations that could not be integrated in the process before the Mumbai event.