Laboratories Of Hope
rs21 •
An invitation to build a ‘laboratory of hope’…
When things are difficult, and we all feel that twinge of desperation. When the Media is full of scaremongering about the imminent threat of ISIS, and you can’t see any way, or any time, to actually change anything. That’s when we need ‘Laboratories of Hope’.
It’s what Antonio Gramsci wrote about, facing down rats, illness and terrible decor in a fascist jail. The need for anti-capitalist organizations that can test vaccines against capitalism. Spaces where we can think and organise imaginatively, and make those dreams of a completely different world more realisable. We have a responsibility to use our organisations as tools for that, beyond the boundaries of membership. Spaces that we use to support each other and learn together.
Not meetings to win a line, or to platform a phoney debate, or to recruit. No, instead we want to we meet to catalyse a process of thought, collective thought. We need to research so much: what work is like today, what movements and organisations are going to go viral. What’s changed about the world? But we need to do more than come up with a single answer.
Our science isn’t linear; we don’t want to produce papers but we do want to develop a worldview. Our laboratories, if we want them to be useful, need to be so much wider than long talks and exercises in self-justification. They need to be the sofa we collapse on after wearing our feet out at work or on the march, the jokes we tell, and the games we play.
It is in this spirit that North London rs21 invites individuals and organizations on the local left to join us in collectively and democratically organising monthly forums for the purpose of militant reflection, beyond the organizational boundaries we are so used to. We propose a first organising meeting Wednesday 29th April, 7pm. If you are interested and want more details or a chat about what is just an idea at the moment, please e-mail us at rs21northlondon@gmail.com
Solidarity,
revolutionary socialism in the 21st century (North London)
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