World Social Forum: Another Forum is Possible? The Unofficial Viewpoint by Sundaram (From CPI-ML International Newsletter: March-April 2003) After popularizing the slogan `Another World is Possible' it was inevitable that one day some wit would taunt the organizers of the World Social Forum with a parody of the original - `Another Forum is Possible ?'. But as the third WSF concluded in Porto Alegre, Brazil late January this half-mocking, half-humorous quip is taking on more serious tones. Is indeed another WSF possible ? But before we get into that, the good news first. The recent round of historic global rallies mid-February against an impending US attack on Iraq was certainly a major victory for organizations involved in the WSF process. Ever since the Seattle protests against the WTO and the three WSF events in Brazil there has been some kind of a worldwide momentum building up for joint action on an important international issue. Though the February 15 action was also joined by numerous groups not part of the WSF there is no doubt that the internationalist consciousness revived by the Forum has paid off spectacularly. It is precisely this sort of potential for mass movement that makes the WSF event so attractive and relevant to activist groups all around the world. Having said all that now for the bad news. There are ample signs that the organizational, ideological tensions building up within the WSF constituents for some time now are reaching boiling point. Unless dealt with in a transparent and practical manner the WSF may be headed for a period of prolonged turmoil, if not actual splintering of some sort. If that sounds too dire, consider the following trends emerging within the WSF. Broadly there are two distinct conflicts within the Forum: a) Logistical/Financial: The first WSF event in 2001 was attended by 15,000 delegates, the second one by nearly 50,000 and the most recent one in January by a massive 100,000. All three years a bulk, almost 90 per cent of the delegates in Porto Alegre, were from within Brazil and other Latin American countries. The size of the gathering, once seen as its strength, is now getting to be an obstacle and making it impossible to make proper logistical arrangements. The chaos at the Forum site, due to the large number of workshops, seminars, performances is preventing meaningful participation or interaction and runs the risk of alienating many of those attending. The irony of all this is of course is that despite the quasi-anarchist rhetoric of the WSF organizers (`The WSF is not a organization, it is a process') the real, practical problems of hosting such a mega-event are frustrating even for those who champion chaos in theory. After the WSF 2003 event two of the loudest voices complaining about the way it was held were Naomi Klein, author of `No Logo' and Michael Albert, editor of the US based Z Magazine, highly influential among WSF participants. Klein, in a recent article said that the WSF had been `hijacked' by everything `big'. `Big attendance',` big speeches', and most of all `big men' like Luiz Inacio `Lula' da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, who came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans, she complained (despite herself being one of the `big' names at the WSF last year ! ). Albert on the other hand railed against the WSF's lack of organization after a series of lectures on `Life after Capitalism' (basically Albert's pet theme of creating a blueprint for an ideal socialist society) flopped due to poor attendance amidst the logistical confusion of the event. On the financial front there are even greater tensions with a lot of heartburn among many participants about what they see as the emergence of a `privileged' layer of activists who always seem to get their tickets to Porto Alegre and hotels to stay paid for. In a recent debate with Susan George of ATTAC, France, an organization which was among the originators of the WSF idea the Argentinian `neighbourhood assemblies' activist Ezequiel Adamovsky accused the Forum of `becoming unduly focused around big names or intellectuals who get most of the funding, whilst many grassroots activists cannot afford to attend and don't get the space they deserve'. The fact that this kind of petty issue can even come up in a process that is trying to make `another world possible' shows two things: 1) given the number of NGOs attending the WSF, fighting over funding is but natural. In a world of limited (and shrinking too!) donor organizations there is bound to be a `class struggle' within the NGO world between the haves and the have-nots !! 2) On a more serious note this debate is also an indicator of the way money and funding are becoming bigger and bigger factors in the organization and control of the WSF. For all the rhetoric about the `non-hierarchical, participatory and transparent' nature of the WSF process the truth remains that - not unlike the real, capitalist world- it is mostly those with access to deep pockets who get to attend, have their opinions heard and make a difference to the shape and direction of the WSF. Another finance related issue vis a vis the WSF is the phenomenal cost of hosting the event. According to one estimate this year's WSF cost about 5 million US dollars to organize, with most of the money coming from US and European donors and the registration fees of participants. The week-long event itself was said to have pumped 50 million dollars into the local economy!!! It might be an unkind thing to say about the event but surely the dividing line between activism and tourism is fading fast! b) Political/Ideological: The original idea of the WSF was mooted sometime in the year 2000 by the French anti-globalization group ATTAC who then joined hands with the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and a few other groups to host the first Forum in Porto Alegre in January 2001. At that time the idea was to have a permanent counter by anti-globalization groups to the annual meeting of multinational bankers, CEOs and heads of government called the World Economic Forum (WEF), held every year in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF was never meant to be an organization, according to its originators, but only a `space' for debate, discussion and sharing of experiences between activist groups from around the world. The definition of `activist groups' deliberately excluded both political parties of any kind (the PT was mysteriously made an exception) and groups that used violence as part of their struggles. So for example at the WSF 2002 the Colombian guerilla group FARC was denied space to hold a press conference on the grounds that they were an `armed group'. However the composition of groups attending the WSF itself has been quite diverse- pulling and pushing in a variety of political directions. These can be categorized as follows: 1) The `radical' reformists: ATTAC, one of the key founders of the WSF - the Third World Network and Walden Bello's Focus on Global South- would fit into this category with their demands for implementation of measures such as the Tobin Tax, lifting protectionist trade policies in the West, setting up an Asian Bank to counter the weight of the IMF and World Bank etc., Though the Brazilian PT has several political trends running through it the dominant wing led by Lula would fall into this category of reformers too. It must be pointed out that this reformist position is not the same (at least for the time being) as the usual garden-variety social democrats of Europe and elsewhere. These groups seem to have set a limited agenda right now to fight for changes in global resource flows, curbs on multinationals, countering the influence of multilateral financial institutions and even against imperialist war. Whether they will be satisfied with just these demands or go beyond that at an appropriate time is open to question. Broadly these groups are influenced heavily by the ideas of the New Left of the 60s which rejected the Soviet Union and the traditional Communist Parties accusing them of being too `Stalinist', centralized and authoritarian. This group is broadly in command of the WSF process and despite some minor differences within its fold, is likely to persevere with the idea of holding more events and expanding it through regional and local forums all over the globe. 2) The Anarchists: There are dozens of these small groups of self-styled anarchists within the WSF who hold intellectuals like Noam Chomsky as their guru and want to bring down capitalism and replace it with a decentralized, participatory, socialist, democracy. They claim they don't like setting up institutions, they don't like leaders of any kind and the revolution will be magically carried out by the `people'. Problem with this approach is obviously that when you get more than one anarchist in the same room they already become an organization whether they want to recognize it as such or not. And that is what is happening with the WSF also- there are so many anarchists with similar demands and attitudes that they have de facto become a big organization of their own in practice while denying this reality in speech. In the field of practical, day to day politics they are clever enough to recognize that you need tangible institutions to take on the might of imperialism but when someone attempts to create such structures they immediately denounce it as `Stalinist' blah, blah. A good example of this approach is Ezequiel Adamovsky, the Argentinian activist mentioned earlier who has strongly objected to groups like Focus trying to create a `network of networks and movements' to co-ordinate global action on various issues. According to him `to set up a secretariat of a network means actually the opposite of a network'. Meanwhile in the same interview at another place he says ' we need to link our struggles with the struggles of others all over the world. --- not only to learn and exchange experiences at a theoretical level but also to try to organize a common strategy to change the world' ! Pray what is the difference between his ambition and that of those trying to network with other networks!!! A popular jargon with the anarchists is the term `horizontal ' implying a non-hierarchical process as opposed to `vertical' which is considered `top-down and authoritarian'. It needs to be pointed out that first of all `horizontal' can also mean dead and flat on your face. And anyway what we see the anarchists do in practice is a constant flip-flop between horizontal and vertical postures depending on which way the bullets are flying!! Sections from this group are most likely to denounce the WSF of having been `taken over' by Stalinists or X or Y lobby and try to form parallel forums on their own. 3) The NGOs: For the NGO movement that started out in the sixties as an `alternative' to the organized Communist parties the WSF has become some sort of a Mecca. They are the real `tourist' component of the WSF- the big money spenders- who can bask in the glory of all the radical rhetoric for a few days every year and go back home to work out how to get funding to attend the next year's WSF! This is not to say that the many micro-level issues that NGOs normally take up are not important- on the contrary they are extremely important- the problem is only with the way these organizations approach the problem. If you analyze the average NGO anywhere these are usually dominated by one influential personality, highly dependent on centralized funding sources far from the area of activity, lack accountability to the people they are supposed to be working for and so on. All this makes them nice little `Stalinist' organizations on their own with the key difference that while Stalin was able to set up a functioning socialist state (whatever its other problems) and resoundingly defeat German fascism the average NGO is yet to transform the harsh realities of a single cluster of villages in the developing world. In terms of political vision this group sees the WSF emerging as some kind of `second chamber' of the United Nations and proposals to this effect are already being circulated!!! This section will play along with the WSF process as long as the annual event is held in places which have good hotels, infrastructure and places to visit after the meeting. For example if you hold next year's WSF in Bihar instead of Kerala this group will vanish from the scene. 4) The Communists: The WSF event has attracted a number of communist and Marxist groups (basically their front organizations) also to its fold for a variety of reasons. Some of them are here to both learn from the experiences of others and influence them in turn towards a more radical path of movement, demanding revolutionary changes to the world order. This is the minority. There are also Communist parties involved in the WSF who are in complete agreement with the idea of reforming capitalism- most preferably through electoral, parliamentary means- and for whom Brazil's Lula is a shining example of such an approach. (see article on Lula). And apart from these there are also small, Trotskyite groups in the WSF who want to `hijack' the event through `entryist' (the process of `smuggling' your way to the top of a system) politics and proclaim it as the new International. All these groups will have to be alert to the direction the WSF is being pulled in so that they are not taken unawares by sudden, unwarranted developments. Next year the WSF has decided to hold the event in India. On one hand it should be seen a great honour to host an event that has helped revived an international anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist consciousness and bring various political streams together. On the other hand we should ask the fundamental question as to why the event needs to be held annually at all- like an activist trade fair of sorts? There seems to be a bureaucratic mechanism in place that is calling for turning the WSF into an annual event irrespective of its continued relevance to what else is happening around the globe. For example instead of holding another WSF in India next year why not hold one in Baghdad next month- where the gathering of a 100,000 people from around the globe has a great chance of freezing the US war machine on its tracks? The `space' offered for discussion and debate by the WSF in the past three years has been great but it is time to move on and try more creative ways of changing the world we live in. Otherwise the WSF runs the real risk of becoming an event with hundreds of physically and vocally active but politically stagnant participants. Of course `another World' will be possible even then but certainly not through on the Paris to Porto Alegre route! One interesting proposal that has come from some of the WSF constituents is for concentrating organizational efforts on holding local, provincial and national level forums which can then send delegates to a global forum to be held once in a few years time. Regional level forums like the recently held Asian Social Forum can be organized more frequently- depending on the need felt for such a gathering by participating organizations. This makes sense because then the entire process of building a truly representative World Social Forum can start from below instead of the top as is the case right now. And if the process of bringing together different political streams for the cause of anti-globalization, anti-imperialism is to become a serious affair the work will have to start at the grassroots and not the treetops. |
GADAR HERITAGE FOUNDATION Indians for Social & Economic Justice |
World Social Forum: Another Forum is Possible? The Unofficial Viewpoint by Sundaram (From CPI-ML International Newsletter: March-April 2003) After popularizing the slogan `Another World is Possible' it was inevitable that one day some wit would taunt the organizers of the World Social Forum with a parody of the original - `Another Forum is Possible ?'. But as the third WSF concluded in Porto Alegre, Brazil late January this half-mocking, half-humorous quip is taking on more serious tones. Is indeed another WSF possible ? But before we get into that, the good news first. The recent round of historic global rallies mid-February against an impending US attack on Iraq was certainly a major victory for organizations involved in the WSF process. Ever since the Seattle protests against the WTO and the three WSF events in Brazil there has been some kind of a worldwide momentum building up for joint action on an important international issue. Though the February 15 action was also joined by numerous groups not part of the WSF there is no doubt that the internationalist consciousness revived by the Forum has paid off spectacularly. It is precisely this sort of potential for mass movement that makes the WSF event so attractive and relevant to activist groups all around the world. Having said all that now for the bad news. There are ample signs that the organizational, ideological tensions building up within the WSF constituents for some time now are reaching boiling point. Unless dealt with in a transparent and practical manner the WSF may be headed for a period of prolonged turmoil, if not actual splintering of some sort. If that sounds too dire, consider the following trends emerging within the WSF. Broadly there are two distinct conflicts within the Forum: a) Logistical/Financial: The first WSF event in 2001 was attended by 15,000 delegates, the second one by nearly 50,000 and the most recent one in January by a massive 100,000. All three years a bulk, almost 90 per cent of the delegates in Porto Alegre, were from within Brazil and other Latin American countries. The size of the gathering, once seen as its strength, is now getting to be an obstacle and making it impossible to make proper logistical arrangements. The chaos at the Forum site, due to the large number of workshops, seminars, performances is preventing meaningful participation or interaction and runs the risk of alienating many of those attending. The irony of all this is of course is that despite the quasi-anarchist rhetoric of the WSF organizers (`The WSF is not a organization, it is a process') the real, practical problems of hosting such a mega-event are frustrating even for those who champion chaos in theory. After the WSF 2003 event two of the loudest voices complaining about the way it was held were Naomi Klein, author of `No Logo' and Michael Albert, editor of the US based Z Magazine, highly influential among WSF participants. Klein, in a recent article said that the WSF had been `hijacked' by everything `big'. `Big attendance',` big speeches', and most of all `big men' like Luiz Inacio `Lula' da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, who came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans, she complained (despite herself being one of the `big' names at the WSF last year ! ). Albert on the other hand railed against the WSF's lack of organization after a series of lectures on `Life after Capitalism' (basically Albert's pet theme of creating a blueprint for an ideal socialist society) flopped due to poor attendance amidst the logistical confusion of the event. On the financial front there are even greater tensions with a lot of heartburn among many participants about what they see as the emergence of a `privileged' layer of activists who always seem to get their tickets to Porto Alegre and hotels to stay paid for. In a recent debate with Susan George of ATTAC, France, an organization which was among the originators of the WSF idea the Argentinian `neighbourhood assemblies' activist Ezequiel Adamovsky accused the Forum of `becoming unduly focused around big names or intellectuals who get most of the funding, whilst many grassroots activists cannot afford to attend and don't get the space they deserve'. The fact that this kind of petty issue can even come up in a process that is trying to make `another world possible' shows two things: 1) given the number of NGOs attending the WSF, fighting over funding is but natural. In a world of limited (and shrinking too!) donor organizations there is bound to be a `class struggle' within the NGO world between the haves and the have-nots !! 2) On a more serious note this debate is also an indicator of the way money and funding are becoming bigger and bigger factors in the organization and control of the WSF. For all the rhetoric about the `non-hierarchical, participatory and transparent' nature of the WSF process the truth remains that - not unlike the real, capitalist world- it is mostly those with access to deep pockets who get to attend, have their opinions heard and make a difference to the shape and direction of the WSF. Another finance related issue vis a vis the WSF is the phenomenal cost of hosting the event. According to one estimate this year's WSF cost about 5 million US dollars to organize, with most of the money coming from US and European donors and the registration fees of participants. The week-long event itself was said to have pumped 50 million dollars into the local economy!!! It might be an unkind thing to say about the event but surely the dividing line between activism and tourism is fading fast! b) Political/Ideological: The original idea of the WSF was mooted sometime in the year 2000 by the French anti-globalization group ATTAC who then joined hands with the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST) and a few other groups to host the first Forum in Porto Alegre in January 2001. At that time the idea was to have a permanent counter by anti-globalization groups to the annual meeting of multinational bankers, CEOs and heads of government called the World Economic Forum (WEF), held every year in Davos, Switzerland. The WSF was never meant to be an organization, according to its originators, but only a `space' for debate, discussion and sharing of experiences between activist groups from around the world. The definition of `activist groups' deliberately excluded both political parties of any kind (the PT was mysteriously made an exception) and groups that used violence as part of their struggles. So for example at the WSF 2002 the Colombian guerilla group FARC was denied space to hold a press conference on the grounds that they were an `armed group'. However the composition of groups attending the WSF itself has been quite diverse- pulling and pushing in a variety of political directions. These can be categorized as follows: 1) The `radical' reformists: ATTAC, one of the key founders of the WSF - the Third World Network and Walden Bello's Focus on Global South- would fit into this category with their demands for implementation of measures such as the Tobin Tax, lifting protectionist trade policies in the West, setting up an Asian Bank to counter the weight of the IMF and World Bank etc., Though the Brazilian PT has several political trends running through it the dominant wing led by Lula would fall into this category of reformers too. It must be pointed out that this reformist position is not the same (at least for the time being) as the usual garden-variety social democrats of Europe and elsewhere. These groups seem to have set a limited agenda right now to fight for changes in global resource flows, curbs on multinationals, countering the influence of multilateral financial institutions and even against imperialist war. Whether they will be satisfied with just these demands or go beyond that at an appropriate time is open to question. Broadly these groups are influenced heavily by the ideas of the New Left of the 60s which rejected the Soviet Union and the traditional Communist Parties accusing them of being too `Stalinist', centralized and authoritarian. This group is broadly in command of the WSF process and despite some minor differences within its fold, is likely to persevere with the idea of holding more events and expanding it through regional and local forums all over the globe. 2) The Anarchists: There are dozens of these small groups of self-styled anarchists within the WSF who hold intellectuals like Noam Chomsky as their guru and want to bring down capitalism and replace it with a decentralized, participatory, socialist, democracy. They claim they don't like setting up institutions, they don't like leaders of any kind and the revolution will be magically carried out by the `people'. Problem with this approach is obviously that when you get more than one anarchist in the same room they already become an organization whether they want to recognize it as such or not. And that is what is happening with the WSF also- there are so many anarchists with similar demands and attitudes that they have de facto become a big organization of their own in practice while denying this reality in speech. In the field of practical, day to day politics they are clever enough to recognize that you need tangible institutions to take on the might of imperialism but when someone attempts to create such structures they immediately denounce it as `Stalinist' blah, blah. A good example of this approach is Ezequiel Adamovsky, the Argentinian activist mentioned earlier who has strongly objected to groups like Focus trying to create a `network of networks and movements' to co-ordinate global action on various issues. According to him `to set up a secretariat of a network means actually the opposite of a network'. Meanwhile in the same interview at another place he says ' we need to link our struggles with the struggles of others all over the world. --- not only to learn and exchange experiences at a theoretical level but also to try to organize a common strategy to change the world' ! Pray what is the difference between his ambition and that of those trying to network with other networks!!! A popular jargon with the anarchists is the term `horizontal ' implying a non-hierarchical process as opposed to `vertical' which is considered `top-down and authoritarian'. It needs to be pointed out that first of all `horizontal' can also mean dead and flat on your face. And anyway what we see the anarchists do in practice is a constant flip-flop between horizontal and vertical postures depending on which way the bullets are flying!! Sections from this group are most likely to denounce the WSF of having been `taken over' by Stalinists or X or Y lobby and try to form parallel forums on their own. 3) The NGOs: For the NGO movement that started out in the sixties as an `alternative' to the organized Communist parties the WSF has become some sort of a Mecca. They are the real `tourist' component of the WSF- the big money spenders- who can bask in the glory of all the radical rhetoric for a few days every year and go back home to work out how to get funding to attend the next year's WSF! This is not to say that the many micro-level issues that NGOs normally take up are not important- on the contrary they are extremely important- the problem is only with the way these organizations approach the problem. If you analyze the average NGO anywhere these are usually dominated by one influential personality, highly dependent on centralized funding sources far from the area of activity, lack accountability to the people they are supposed to be working for and so on. All this makes them nice little `Stalinist' organizations on their own with the key difference that while Stalin was able to set up a functioning socialist state (whatever its other problems) and resoundingly defeat German fascism the average NGO is yet to transform the harsh realities of a single cluster of villages in the developing world. In terms of political vision this group sees the WSF emerging as some kind of `second chamber' of the United Nations and proposals to this effect are already being circulated!!! This section will play along with the WSF process as long as the annual event is held in places which have good hotels, infrastructure and places to visit after the meeting. For example if you hold next year's WSF in Bihar instead of Kerala this group will vanish from the scene. 4) The Communists: The WSF event has attracted a number of communist and Marxist groups (basically their front organizations) also to its fold for a variety of reasons. Some of them are here to both learn from the experiences of others and influence them in turn towards a more radical path of movement, demanding revolutionary changes to the world order. This is the minority. There are also Communist parties involved in the WSF who are in complete agreement with the idea of reforming capitalism- most preferably through electoral, parliamentary means- and for whom Brazil's Lula is a shining example of such an approach. (see article on Lula). And apart from these there are also small, Trotskyite groups in the WSF who want to `hijack' the event through `entryist' (the process of `smuggling' your way to the top of a system) politics and proclaim it as the new International. All these groups will have to be alert to the direction the WSF is being pulled in so that they are not taken unawares by sudden, unwarranted developments. Next year the WSF has decided to hold the event in India. On one hand it should be seen a great honour to host an event that has helped revived an international anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist consciousness and bring various political streams together. On the other hand we should ask the fundamental question as to why the event needs to be held annually at all- like an activist trade fair of sorts? There seems to be a bureaucratic mechanism in place that is calling for turning the WSF into an annual event irrespective of its continued relevance to what else is happening around the globe. For example instead of holding another WSF in India next year why not hold one in Baghdad next month- where the gathering of a 100,000 people from around the globe has a great chance of freezing the US war machine on its tracks? The `space' offered for discussion and debate by the WSF in the past three years has been great but it is time to move on and try more creative ways of changing the world we live in. Otherwise the WSF runs the real risk of becoming an event with hundreds of physically and vocally active but politically stagnant participants. Of course `another World' will be possible even then but certainly not through on the Paris to Porto Alegre route! One interesting proposal that has come from some of the WSF constituents is for concentrating organizational efforts on holding local, provincial and national level forums which can then send delegates to a global forum to be held once in a few years time. Regional level forums like the recently held Asian Social Forum can be organized more frequently- depending on the need felt for such a gathering by participating organizations. This makes sense because then the entire process of building a truly representative World Social Forum can start from below instead of the top as is the case right now. And if the process of bringing together different political streams for the cause of anti-globalization, anti-imperialism is to become a serious affair the work will have to start at the grassroots and not the treetops. |
