The Great Transition: Reviving post-capitalist solidarities
With the collaboration of Alternatives and Historical Materialism
Tiohtià:ke/Montreal, Quebec, Canada – May 29 to June 1, 2025
The Great Transition collective is calling on all those interested in building a fairer future to propose activities for the fifth edition of its international conference. The event aims to foster reflection on ways to strengthen the various branches of the left, social movements, and activist groups, both in their practices and in their theoretical analyses. This edition is also being held as part of the first World Social Forum of Intersections, whose theme is detailed at the end of this call.
The world is burning. Forest fires, droughts, and floods are multiplying across the globe. The Israeli state is massacring the Palestinian population with the complicity of Western powers, putting the region at risk. Inequalities are on the rise all over the planet. People are being evicted from their homes, and others are struggling to pay the rent, while landlords are getting richer. Grocery is becoming ever more expensive, while large food retailers are making record profits. Migrants drown crossing the Rio Grande and the Mediterranean, while their brothers and sisters are exploited and underpaid in the fields, warehouses, and hospitals of the Global North.
It’s becoming increasingly urgent to implement radical left solutions: socialize the means of production; create worker and consumer cooperatives; de-asphalt and revitalize our living environments; develop non-market housing; decentralize power; collectively share care work; demilitarize our societies. These measures are the bare minimum to create the conditions of a decent life for all. There is an undeniable need to dismantle capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism.
Yet the authoritarian right and extreme right are on the rise. They are in power in several countries; they are on the doorstep of power in several others. As they have always done, they divert attention from real problems by attacking scapegoats such as racialized people or LGBTQ+ people. Even if they pursue policies favorable to big business, they sometimes give themselves a “social” image or drape themselves in a supposedly anti-elite discourse, which allows them to win over some sections of the working classes.
The left has enjoyed some recent electoral successes and major mobilizations, but its strongest proposals have failed to gain ground. Left-wing political movements often confine themselves to protecting social gains. How can we regain the offensive? How can we counter both neoliberal and far-right rhetoric? How can we change the balance of power so that left-wing ideas and practices gain a lasting foothold?
The pandemic broke a wave of protest that seemed to be gathering momentum. From Chile to Hong Kong, via Lebanon and Sudan, popular uprisings were shaking up the powers that be. Climate protests were attracting increasing numbers of people. For this fifth edition of the Great Transition, we want to recapture this momentum and reconnect with the creative energy of large-scale mobilizations.
We also want to find ways for the left to reach out to our neighbors, colleagues, and fellow citizens, to root ourselves in our living spaces, to develop bonds of trust with those around us, to create communities. These alliances will be necessary to fight against exploitation and mass expropriation, protect our natural spaces, and build lively, livable neighborhoods and villages together.
Reviving post-capitalist solidarity also means recognizing the wealth of experiences that prefigure the world we’re building. We need to draw inspiration, for example, from indigenous land protection practices, from communities that have successfully implemented real self-management, and from democratic public services that enhance our freedom and autonomy.
The time has come to move beyond criticism, to organize and move forward. We invite you to propose panels, activities, and communications for the Great Transition 2025 on tactics, strategies, reviews of past and recent experiences, and alternative models that enable us to move towards a post-capitalist world.
To submit an activity (250 words maximum) : edito.lagrandetransition.net/en-ca
The deadline is 11:59 PM on November 10, 2024. If you have any questions, please email us at info@thegreattransition.net.
How can I contribute?
We encourage activities that go beyond the classic “panel” format: practical workshops, experience-sharing, strategic discussions, debates, memoirs of struggles, brainstorming, artistic and cultural performances, militant actions, and so on. Activities giving a voice to several participants will be favored, but individual proposals will also be considered. We welcome submissions from marginalized and diverse people. Proposals that do not reflect this ideal of diversity may be rejected. Note also that we encourage activities that aim to introduce the public to a theme from a popular education perspective. The event will be mostly in French and in English. We look forward to hearing your boldest ideas!
What is the World Social Forum of Intersections (WSFI)?
This thematic edition of the World Social Forum promotes a conception of intersections as a concrete approach to fostering systemic change. In a context where intersectionality highlights interlocking systems of oppression and privilege, the concept of intersections instead focuses on creating opportunities for co-learning that lead to action, by decompartmentalizing different milieus such as urban and rural, environmental and social action, feminisms and climate action, academia and activism, and so on. This concept advocates an intergenerational approach and links local and global scales for the multiplication of profound and inclusive transformations.
As The Great Transition 2025 will be held within the FSMI, we invite you to submit proposals inspired by this desire to cross our experiences and expertise in the hope of creating borderless post-capitalist solidarities.
Examples of themes
- Evolution of global capitalism in the context of climate change
- Degrowth, just transition and the creation of new commons
- International solidarity movements (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions against the State of Israel (BDS); Black Lives Matter; anti-tax-haven movements, World March of Women, etc.)
- Trade union struggles and struggles for the right to mobility and dignity of temporary workers and migrants
- Movements for the right to housing and the right to the city, resistance against urban megaprojects
- Local and international initiatives for emancipation, popular education and democratization
- Struggles against rising living costs, collective responses to poverty and exclusion
- Housing cooperatives, squats, occupations and other solutions to the housing crisis
- Palestine solidarity encampments
- Movements for demilitarization and against war
- Blockades and resistance against ecocidal and extractivist projects
- Relationships between different social movements: creating alliances and convergences, developing common strategies, carrying out joint action campaigns
- Defunding the police and opposing repression
- Reflections on the left’s relationship with the state
- Feminist, queer, decolonial, anti-racist and anti-capitalist alternatives to the current system