New York - The TMC interviews Marcello Musto from the Department of Political Science at York University.
Toronto Media Co-op: Where are you from?
Marcello Musto: I’m originally from Naples, Italy but I have lived in Toronto since Sept, 2009. I work in the department of Political Science at York university, probably the most radical political science department in the Anglophone world.
TMC: Why are you here?
MM: This is the second year that I organized panels here and there are maybe two main things I do at the Left Forum.
The first is organizing panels on Marx and Marxism. After the latest economic crisis Marx is once again a la mode. After the last 3-4 years there have been many conferences dedicated to Marx, and I’ve done panels here over the last 3-4 years working with Marxist’s main theory.
I’ve also been organizing this panel for the second year, The Left In Crisis. The reasons I’m organizing this is because the left needs to understand this: the North American movement is very weak, but they don’t understand what’s happening in other parts of the world. So my task here is to organize this delegation to bring them here but also to let the people in North America know what’s going on with the movement in India, India, China, South Korea, Turkey, etc.
TMC: What do you feel comes out of Left Forum?
MM: My idea is that the Left Forum is still very weak and is much less organized and strong than the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, for example. But this is not because there are more people there, it simply reflects the actual movement in North America. Therefore the forum is isolated, weak and not organized and I don’t think it will offer a lot now in this historical phase as a manifestation of what to do. Today is exciting but it is very vague and I can feel a weakness in terms of collaboration.
TMC: Then why do you come here?
MM: I come because this is what we have and…I’m from Naples…we have to make the pizza with what ingredients we have and I’m optimistic about this given what we have in the coming future.
