It was truly an honor to be witness to a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein this morning at the Social Forum.  I recorded audio (available for download here), and jotted down a few notes that I'd love to share.  I know I will listen to this conversation again soon, and hope to spend some more time when things are less hectic reflecting on their words and observations.

Grace Lee Boggs: Living at the expense of the earth has brought us to the edge of disaster.  We face evolution to a higher humanity or the devastation and extinction of all life on earth.  Revolution is also evolution.

Immanuel Wallerstein: Historical systems do not go on forever.  The modern world system has entered into strucutral crisis, it's coming to an end.  The system doesn't provide the possibilities in its own terms to work.  Its own terms is an endless accumulation of capital... It's worked brilliantly for a couple of hundred years, but its moved far from eqilibrium and we are in a structural crisis.  Struggles today are not about preserving the present system, but what will replace it.  Every little action on our part helps to determine the end.  We don't know who's going to win the struggle about what replaces the current system.  There's no certainty, but it all depends on us.

Grace Lee Boggs: Resistance to commodification is a human resistance.  All over the world we have resistance developing.  People are resisting the commodification of relationships, the commodification of their communities.  The movement we are engaged in is not only about the transformation of institutions but also about the transformation of ourselves.

Immanuel Wallerstein: To live well is not necessarily to endlessly consume.  This isn't the kind of system that people at Davos want to create.  It doesn't have to be capitalism, it could be worse than capitalism. We have to talk about the consequences of this for organizing.  Everybody has to eat today, not tomorrow.  You can't tell people that they have to wait another 5 years or 10 years or 20 years.  That was a line of the historic anti-systemic movements.  You've got to worry about today, but you can't only worry about today.  The problem is working out a strategy that contains an immediate attempt to meet people's needs and a medium run strategy of changing the system.  People need to have less pain immediately.  That doesn't transform the world, but it meets people's needs.  You've also got to explain to people that we've got a 20 or 30 or 40 year struggle.  There will be some new system, it can be better or it can be worse.