Much of left thinking has been based on denial: don't eat this, believe that or behave like the other. Slow Food provides a healthy antidote of inclusion, rather than exclusion...It got me thinking.
The final paragraphs
Slow Food raises a lot of questions about what a social movement actually is. It undoubtedly has had a wider impact in Italy, where it has spun off a number of other slow movements (Slow Cities, Slow Money). But also beyond, there are now tens of thousands of adherents all around the globe, who identify with an analysis that merges issues of quality with those of justice and sustainability. The movement is, by and large, entrepreneurial, championing smallholders' rights to produce and sell their goods to eco-conscious consumers, in a market setting not dominated by corporate agriculture. This separates Slow Food from the conventional left. So does its enthusiastic embrace of the pleasure principle.
identify other evolving approaches, movements, but it also sets out what could be problems for the left.
We know what we want (see UN declaration of Human Rights if you don't)
We have had a few years since that was published, boy have we done well!
That is the problem. It's not going to be easy and it's not going to be quick.
Slow politics. Why not?
The cycle of politics even in democratic states means that little is achieved in the 4 to 5 years between elections. The parties, organisations and movements of the left are not geared to securing irevocable progress for people who need it. Added to which, of course, no one who has power ever relinquishes it.
Even though I am old, grey and have not changed much in the world I am heartened by the yoof of today and its approaches to these problems. Laurie Penny articulates some of these, in the cement is free grauniad, and captures a fine absurdity.
Of course, the old left is not about to disappear completely. It is highly likely that even after a nuclear attack, the only remaining life-forms will be cockroaches and sour-faced vendors of the Socialist Worker. Stunningly, the paper is still being peddled at every demonstration to young cyber-activists for whom the very concept of a newspaper is almost as outdated as the notion of ideological unity as a basis for action.Now if you can turn that very elegant phrase into a programme of action and create a set of tools for progress and conviviality you will really do something. But don't forget the conviviality, in my view it is what defines us as truly human!
We speak in hundreds of thousands of voices – voices that are being raised across Europe, not in unison but in harmony.
