Stuart Munckton
Green Left
6 February 2009
The ninth World Social Forum ended on February 1 in Belem with its “Assembly of assemblies” adopting “dozens of resolutions and proposals to be the subjects of a programme of mobilisations around the world in 2009”, according to a February 2 Inter-Press Service report.
The 2009 WSF, formed as an international gathering of the global justice movement, held “21 thematic assemblies” that broke “the apparent WSF taboo on taking common political stands under pressure from thousands of civil society groups anxious to seize the opportunity opened by the global economic crisis to progressive change”, according to the IPS.
As a result, global demonstrations have been planned between March 28 and April 4 to demand urgent action on climate change. IPS reported that a “key target of this initiative is the G-20 summit of industrial countries scheduled for Apr. 2 in London”.
The Palestinian Day of Return, on March 30, was also marked as a day for protest against Israeli aggression.
October 12, the anniversary of Spanish colonialism of the Americas has been set as another date for global actions in defence of the rights of indigenous people around the world.
According to the IPS: “Under a light rain on a soaked lawn at Belem’s vast Federal Amazonian Rural University campus, a spokesman of the WSF’s Assembly of Social Movements itemised some of the wider programmatic contents of the mobilization.”
These included: nationalisation of banks; no reduction of workers’ wages; energy and food sovereignty for the poor; ending foreign occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan; sovereignty and autonomy for indigenous peoples; the right to land, decent work, education and health for all; and democratisation of the media.
IPS claimed: “This is the closest the WSF has yet come to becoming a global political force, a dilemma it has faced since its inception in the city of Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, in January 2001 as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“Foreign correspondents and local media have underlined the sharp contrast between the vibrant atmosphere in Belem and the somber faces of corporate bosses and Western leaders in Davos, where Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown went so far as to admit the crisis has no precedent nor any reliable forecast.”
A January 30 Venezuelanalysis.com article reported that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez spoke to a meeting of thousands on January 29 as part of the forum, in which he described Latin America’s social movements as “trenches of resistance” against global capitalism that need to go on an offensive towards creating an alternative to capitalism.
Chavez commented on the WSF slogan “Another world is possible” by stating that “another world is necessary, and another world is being born in Latin America and the Caribbean!”
“Just like Latin America and the Caribbean received the biggest dose of neoliberal venom”, Chavez said, “our continent has been the immense territory where social movements have sprouted with the greatest strength and begun to change the world”.
According to Venezuelanlaysis.com, Chavez called for social movements to “step up their popular offensive toward revolutionary changes”.
Speaking at the meeting, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa slammed the First World-controlled institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, stating: “Using the art of deception they will try to confuse us into thinking the victims are the guilty ones.
“They are the ones responsible for the crisis. They are not the ones to give us lessons.”
2009/2/8
Declaration of the World Social Forum 2009
Declaration of the Assembly of Social Movements at the World Social Forum
January 27-February 1, 2009
Belem, Brazil.
February 1, 2009 -- We the social movements from all over the world came together on the occasion of the 8th World Social Forum in Belem, Amazonia, where the peoples have been resisting attempts to usurp nature, their lands and their cultures. We are here in Latin America, where over the last decade the social movements and the indigenous movements have joined forces and radically question the capitalist system from their cosmovision. Over the last few years, in Latin America highly radical social struggles have resulted in the overthrow of neoliberal governments and the empowerment of governments that have carried out many positive reforms such as the nationalisation of core sectors of the economy and democratic constitutional reforms.
In this context the social movements in Latin America have responded appropriately, deciding to support the positive measures adopted by these governments while keeping a critical distance. These experiences will be of help in order to strengthen the peoples' staunch resistance against the policies of governments, corporations and banks who shift the burden of the crisis onto the oppressed. We, the social movements of the globe, are currently facing a historic challenge. The international capitalist crisis manifests itself as detrimental to humankind in various ways: it affects food, finance, the economy, climate, energy, population migration and civilisation itself, as there is also a crisis in international order and political structures.
We are facing a global crisis which is a direct consequence of the capitalist system and therefore cannot find a solution within the system. All the measures that have been taken so far to overcome the crisis merely aim at socialising losses so as to ensure the survival of a system based on privatising strategic economic sectors, public services, natural and energy resources and on the commodification of life and the exploitation of labour and of nature as well as on the transfer of resources from the periphery to the centre and from workers to the capitalist class.
The present system is based on exploitation, competition, promotion of individual private interests to the detriment of the collective interest, and the frenzied accumulation of wealth by a handful of rich people. It results in bloody wars, fuels xenophobia, racism and religious fundamentalisms; it intensifies the exploitation of women and the criminalisation of social movements. In the context of the present crisis the rights of peoples are systematically denied. The Israeli government's savage aggression against the Palestinian people is a violation of international law and amounts to a war crime, a crime against humanity and a symbol of the denial of a people's rights that can be observed in other parts of the world. The shameful impunity must be stopped. The social movements reassert their active support of the struggle of the Palestinian people as well as of all actions against oppression by peoples worldwide.
In order to overcome the crisis we have to grapple with the root of the problem and progress as fast as possible towards the construction of a radical alternative that would do away with the capitalist system and patriarchal domination. We must work towards a society that meets social needs and respects nature's rights as well as supporting democratic participation in a context of full political freedom. We must see to it that all international treaties on our indivisible civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights, both individual and collective, are implemented.
In this perspective we must contribute to the largest possible popular mobilisation to enforce a number of urgent measures such as:
Lastly, we commit ourselves to enriching the construction of a society based on a life lived in harmony with oneself, others and the world around (el buen vivir) by acknowledging the active participation and contribution of the native peoples.
We, the social movements, are faced with a historic opportunity to develop emancipatory initiatives on a global scale. Only through the social struggle of the masses can populations overcome the crisis. In order to promote this struggle, it is essential to work on consciousness-raising and mobilisation from the grassroots. The challenge for the social movements is to achieve a convergence of global mobilisation. It is also to strengthen our ability to act by supporting the convergence of all movements striving to withstand oppression and exploitation.
We thus commit ourselves to:
Launch a global week of action against capitalism and war from March 28 to April 4, 2009, with: an anti-G20 mobilisation on March 28, a mobilisation against war and crisis on March 30, a day of solidarity with the Palestinian people to promote boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel on March 30, a mobilisation for the 60th anniversary of NATO on April 4, etc.
Increase occasions for mobilisation through the year: March 8, International Women Day; April 17, International Day for Food Sovereignty; May 1, international workers' day; October 12, global mobilisation of struggle for Mother Earth, against colonisation and commodification of life.
Schedule an agenda of acts of resistance against the G8 summit in Sardinia, the climate summit in Copenhagen, the summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, etc.
Through such demands and initiatives we thus respond to the crisis with radical and emancipatory solutions.
January 27-February 1, 2009
Belem, Brazil.
February 1, 2009 -- We the social movements from all over the world came together on the occasion of the 8th World Social Forum in Belem, Amazonia, where the peoples have been resisting attempts to usurp nature, their lands and their cultures. We are here in Latin America, where over the last decade the social movements and the indigenous movements have joined forces and radically question the capitalist system from their cosmovision. Over the last few years, in Latin America highly radical social struggles have resulted in the overthrow of neoliberal governments and the empowerment of governments that have carried out many positive reforms such as the nationalisation of core sectors of the economy and democratic constitutional reforms.
In this context the social movements in Latin America have responded appropriately, deciding to support the positive measures adopted by these governments while keeping a critical distance. These experiences will be of help in order to strengthen the peoples' staunch resistance against the policies of governments, corporations and banks who shift the burden of the crisis onto the oppressed. We, the social movements of the globe, are currently facing a historic challenge. The international capitalist crisis manifests itself as detrimental to humankind in various ways: it affects food, finance, the economy, climate, energy, population migration and civilisation itself, as there is also a crisis in international order and political structures.
We are facing a global crisis which is a direct consequence of the capitalist system and therefore cannot find a solution within the system. All the measures that have been taken so far to overcome the crisis merely aim at socialising losses so as to ensure the survival of a system based on privatising strategic economic sectors, public services, natural and energy resources and on the commodification of life and the exploitation of labour and of nature as well as on the transfer of resources from the periphery to the centre and from workers to the capitalist class.
The present system is based on exploitation, competition, promotion of individual private interests to the detriment of the collective interest, and the frenzied accumulation of wealth by a handful of rich people. It results in bloody wars, fuels xenophobia, racism and religious fundamentalisms; it intensifies the exploitation of women and the criminalisation of social movements. In the context of the present crisis the rights of peoples are systematically denied. The Israeli government's savage aggression against the Palestinian people is a violation of international law and amounts to a war crime, a crime against humanity and a symbol of the denial of a people's rights that can be observed in other parts of the world. The shameful impunity must be stopped. The social movements reassert their active support of the struggle of the Palestinian people as well as of all actions against oppression by peoples worldwide.
In order to overcome the crisis we have to grapple with the root of the problem and progress as fast as possible towards the construction of a radical alternative that would do away with the capitalist system and patriarchal domination. We must work towards a society that meets social needs and respects nature's rights as well as supporting democratic participation in a context of full political freedom. We must see to it that all international treaties on our indivisible civic, political, economic, social and cultural rights, both individual and collective, are implemented.
In this perspective we must contribute to the largest possible popular mobilisation to enforce a number of urgent measures such as:
Such an alternative will necessarily be feminist since it is impossible to build a society based on social justice and equality of rights when half of humankind is oppressed and exploited.
- Nationalising the banking sector without compensation and with full social monitoring
- Reducing working time without any wage cut
- Taking measures to ensure food and energy sovereignty
- Stop wars, withdraw occupation troops and dismantle military foreign bases
- Acknowledging the peoples' sovereignty and autonomy ensuring their right to self-determination
- Guaranteeing rights to land, territory, work, education and health for all
- Democratise access to means of communication and knowledge.
- The social emancipation process carried by the feminist, environmentalist and socialist movements in the 21st century aims at liberating society from capitalist domination of the means of production, communication and services, achieved by supporting forms of ownership that favour the social interest: small family freehold, public, cooperative, communal and collective property.
Lastly, we commit ourselves to enriching the construction of a society based on a life lived in harmony with oneself, others and the world around (el buen vivir) by acknowledging the active participation and contribution of the native peoples.
We, the social movements, are faced with a historic opportunity to develop emancipatory initiatives on a global scale. Only through the social struggle of the masses can populations overcome the crisis. In order to promote this struggle, it is essential to work on consciousness-raising and mobilisation from the grassroots. The challenge for the social movements is to achieve a convergence of global mobilisation. It is also to strengthen our ability to act by supporting the convergence of all movements striving to withstand oppression and exploitation.
We thus commit ourselves to:
Launch a global week of action against capitalism and war from March 28 to April 4, 2009, with: an anti-G20 mobilisation on March 28, a mobilisation against war and crisis on March 30, a day of solidarity with the Palestinian people to promote boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel on March 30, a mobilisation for the 60th anniversary of NATO on April 4, etc.
Increase occasions for mobilisation through the year: March 8, International Women Day; April 17, International Day for Food Sovereignty; May 1, international workers' day; October 12, global mobilisation of struggle for Mother Earth, against colonisation and commodification of life.
Schedule an agenda of acts of resistance against the G8 summit in Sardinia, the climate summit in Copenhagen, the summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, etc.
Through such demands and initiatives we thus respond to the crisis with radical and emancipatory solutions.
2009/1/30
The World Social Forum 2009
(1) World Social Forum message to Davos: We told you so
Rory Carroll
Latin America correspondent
The Guardian UK
January 30, 2009
The bankers and politicians gathered in Davos for the World Economic Forum may have only admitted it to themselves privately, but a rival summit wanted to remind them: you really screwed up.
In a challenge to the high-powered Swiss gathering, tens of thousands of anarchists, socialists, environmentalists, Amazon tribes and South American presidents gathered in the Brazilian city of Belem this week to promote Latin America as a model for global economic development and co-operation.
The theme of the ninth World Social Forum was "another world is possible", but in light of the financial crisis spreading through western economies, the unofficial motto was "we told you so".
US economic blunders had created the mess and only "21st-century socialism" could fix it, said the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. "Misery, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, and it's mostly the fault of global capitalism."
The forum had to seize the initiative and offer solutions, Chávez told cheering crowds. "In Davos the world that is dying is meeting, here the world that is being born is meeting."
The week-long gathering near the mouth of the Amazon river drew up to 100,000 people, including indigenous tribes and five regional heads of state. All offered a critique of western-led globalisation.
The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, one of a new wave of leftist leaders, said the neo-liberal idealogues in Davos had failed. "They are the ones responsible for the crisis. They are not the ones to give us lessons."
With Paraguay's bishop-turned-president, Fernando Lugo, Correa led an audience in an ebullient chorus of songs, including Comandante Che Guevara, a tribute to the Argentinian revolutionary.
Bolivia's Evo Morales, the Andean country's first Aymara president, said social movements must ensure priviliged elites no longer accumulate capital without considering the human cost.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist, has previously attended Davos but this year shunned it for Belem and brought with him a dozen cabinet ministers.
His government would invest in industry to create jobs rather than throw public money at banks as Europe and the US had done, he said. "I believe the crisis is much more severe. We don't know how deep it will go."
Latin America still winces at the painful humiliation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ordering austerity measures in the 1980s and 90s. "Now, I expect the IMF to go to [the US president, Barack] Obama and tell him how to fix the economy," said Lula.
***** ***** *****
(2) World Social Forum 2009: a generation’s challenge
Geoffrey Pleyers
openDemocracy UK (http://www.opendemocracy.net/)
January 30, 2009
The "alter-globalisation" movement gathers in Brazil at a moment of crisis in the system it has long opposed. But its triumph is qualified as it searches for a way to turn global breakdown into political opportunity, says Geoffrey Pleyers.
These should be good times for the "alter-globalisation" movement. The unprecedented combination of crises in the global economy, environment, and governance makes its argument for a just and equal world - "another world" - seem more relevant than ever. Geoffrey Pleyers is a researcher of the Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Louvain (UCL) and a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics
An extended version of this text will be published in Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, & Jan Aart Scholte, eds., Global Civil Society Yearbook (Sage, 2009)
The author would like to thank Fiona Holland and David Hayes for their efficient and kind help in editing this text
Yet the 100,000 activists expected to assemble at the eighth World Social Forum (WSF) in Belém, Brazil, from 27 January- 1 February 2009 are at a crossroads. The ideas they have been proposing for much of the last decade have in many ways been vindicated by the global financial breakdowns, food riots and elite failures of 2007-09; but even as it celebrates the demise of forces it has unrelentingly challenged the movement itself is divided over its political and organisational direction.
The change within
After its inaugural meeting in January 2001 - a year after the demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit which dynamised the movement - the WSF experienced impressive growth, reflected in increasing participation (from 15,000 to over 170,000 from 2001-05). The forums have become huge meeting-places where people of many nationalities share experiences and discuss local and global issues.
The "alter-globalisation" movement (also called the "anti-corporate-globalisation movement" or the "global social justice movement") has undergone two profound changes since the WSF's last visit to Brazil, in January 2005. That event, in the city of Porto Alegre, remains the most successful forum of all - in terms of the quality and openness of the discussions, and of the size of the event (200,000 people attended the opening demonstration, and 2,500 workshops were run by 5,700 civil-society organisations).
The first great change is in the social geography of the movement, with a notable decline in some of its historical bastions (including most western European countries) but success in important regions such as Africa (where, for example, over sixty national and regional social forums have been organised since 2005) and north America.
The second change is the reorganisation of the movement around new guidelines. The internal quarrels about the forums' objectives and the movement's political orientations are a symptom of this reconfiguration.
The paradox of Geneva
The World Trade Organisation meeting in Geneva on 22-29 July 2008 offered a clear illustration of the current state of the social movement. The purpose of the meeting of thirty delegations from the WTO's most influential member-states was to break the deadlock over the Doha trade-liberalisation process; the failure of negotiations in Seattle (1999), Cancún (2003) and Hong Kong (2005) meant that the credibility of the organisation was at stake.
Europe's "alter-globalisation" organisations had been able to mount large-scale demonstrations at the international summits in Genoa (2001), Gleneagles (2005) and Rostock (2007). Yet despite the importance of the WTO conference - and the fact that it took place in the midst of an evolving global economic crisis - they were unable to mobilise their activists at Geneva.
The evidence of retreat is unmistakable. Major activists' networks - such as the Movimiento de Resistencia Global in Barcelona, the Attac movement and most local social forums - have disappeared or declined; continental forums such as those in Malmö (17-21 September 2008, with 12,000 in attendance) and Guatemala City (7-12 October 2008, with 7,500) attracted far fewer people than previously. Moreover, the movement is much less visible in the mass media than in the 1998-2005 period.
At the same time, the influence of the movement has been felt in other ways. Many of the institutions charged with supervising international trade liberalisation, which encouraged southern countries to adopt neo-liberal policies, now face discredit. Whereas in the 1990s, opening a country to international trade was seen as the only path to greater economic growth, by the late 2000s it had become routine for establishment voices and even state leaders to express support for a new global governance system to contain the destructive tendencies of "casino-", "cowboy-", "hyper-" or "super-" capitalism.
The change of rhetoric reflects a wider ideological shift: the end of three decades marked by the hegemony of neo-liberal ideas. The "alter-globalisation" movement has played an active role in this process, for example by enlarging the space of discussion of trade and economic policies far beyond the realm of international "experts", and by challenging the neo-liberal orthodoxiesof the Washington consensus. Thus even in their relative retreat from the mass mobilisations of the past, the social movements have won a kind of ideological victory.
There is a paradox here: the "alter-globalisation" movement and the organisations and events which compose it seem to have lost much of their capacity at the very time when even prominent policy-makers are coming to believe that the global financial and governance system has in crucial respects failed.
The failure of success
In these circumstances, what is the point of the World Social Forum? It could be argued that it more needed now than ever: that is, to contribute actively to the building of a new and fair global order that can address deep problems of poverty, inequality, food insecurity and ecological crisis. The problem here is that the movement is more united in what it has been against than in what it should now be for. In particular, "alter-globalisation" activists divide into three distinct currents about the way forward.
The local approach
The first current of the alter-globalisation movement) considers that instead of getting involved in a global movement and international forums, the path to social change lies through giving life to horizontal, participatory, convivial and sustainable values in daily practices, personal life and local spaces.
Many urban activists cite the way that, for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico and other Latin American indigenous movements now focus on developing communities' local autonomy via participatory self-government, autonomous education systems and improving the quality of life. They appreciate too the convivial aspect of local initiatives and their promise of small but real alternatives to corporate globalisation and mass consumption.
This approach is exemplified also in initiatives such as the "collective purchase groups" that have multiplied in western Europe and north America. These typically gather small groups of people who buy from local (and often organic) food-producers in the effort to make quality food affordable, create alternatives to the "anonymous supermarket" and promote local social relations. In many Italian social centres, critical-consumption movements have taken the space previously occupied by the alter-globalisation mobilisations. The "convivial de-growth" and "convivial urban" movements belong to a similar, sustainable and environmentally friendly, tendency.
The advocacy approach
The second current of the movement believes that the way forward lies through efficient single-issue networks able to develop coherent arguments in areas such as food sovereignty and developing-world debt; in turn this work can become a route to raising broader questions.
The protection of water-supplies from privatisation, for example, can be used to explore the issues of global public goods, the role of global corporations and "the long-term efficiency of the public sector". After several years of intense exchanges among citizens and experts focusing on the same issue, the quality of arguments has considerably increased to the extent that this form of activity has become the core of the social-forums' dynamic.
There are several examples of the effectiveness of such networks - often without media attention. The European Public Water Network's influence on the city of Paris's decision in November 2008 to restore municipal control over water distribution is just one.
The state approach
The third current of the movement holds that progressive public policies implemented by state leaders and institutions are the key to achieving broad social change.
In the past, "alter-globalisation" activists have struggled to strengthen state agency in social, environmental and economic fields; but now that state intervention has regained legitimacy in the wake of systemic crisis, this more "political" component of the movement believes that the future lies in solidarity with the projects of radical leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales.
The national policies of these leaders (social programmes favouring the poor, or taking control of key economic sectors) and their regional alliances and new institutions (the Alternativa Bolivariana por Nuestra América [Alba] coalition, the Banco del Sur) represent a strong pole of attraction for many activists. But if Latin America is the main focus for such identification, similar processes have been at work in western countries too; for example, much of the impetus of the first United States Social Forum in 2007 was redirected towards Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
The shared approach
The participants in the Belém meeting can justly welcome the failure of many aspects of an economic model they long opposed. But as they move beyond critique towards a new role in a transformed global arena, can they find some common ground among these three currents?
An escape from the crises of economy, sustainability and governance is a huge and urgent task that may last a generation. From this perspective, the three trends of the "alter-globalisation" movement could be seen as politically complementary rather than competing strategies. An imaginative understanding of this kind could be the basis of a shared approach that gives the World Social Forum a fresh lease of life.
Rory Carroll
Latin America correspondent
The Guardian UK
January 30, 2009
Left to right: Presidents Fernando Lugo, of Paraguay, Evo Morales, of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of Brazil, Rafael Correa, of Ecuador, and Hugo Chávez, of Venezuela, at the World Social Forum in Belem. Photograph: Andre Penner/AP
In a challenge to the high-powered Swiss gathering, tens of thousands of anarchists, socialists, environmentalists, Amazon tribes and South American presidents gathered in the Brazilian city of Belem this week to promote Latin America as a model for global economic development and co-operation.
The theme of the ninth World Social Forum was "another world is possible", but in light of the financial crisis spreading through western economies, the unofficial motto was "we told you so".
US economic blunders had created the mess and only "21st-century socialism" could fix it, said the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. "Misery, poverty and unemployment are on the rise, and it's mostly the fault of global capitalism."
The forum had to seize the initiative and offer solutions, Chávez told cheering crowds. "In Davos the world that is dying is meeting, here the world that is being born is meeting."
The week-long gathering near the mouth of the Amazon river drew up to 100,000 people, including indigenous tribes and five regional heads of state. All offered a critique of western-led globalisation.
The Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, one of a new wave of leftist leaders, said the neo-liberal idealogues in Davos had failed. "They are the ones responsible for the crisis. They are not the ones to give us lessons."
With Paraguay's bishop-turned-president, Fernando Lugo, Correa led an audience in an ebullient chorus of songs, including Comandante Che Guevara, a tribute to the Argentinian revolutionary.
Bolivia's Evo Morales, the Andean country's first Aymara president, said social movements must ensure priviliged elites no longer accumulate capital without considering the human cost.
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist, has previously attended Davos but this year shunned it for Belem and brought with him a dozen cabinet ministers.
His government would invest in industry to create jobs rather than throw public money at banks as Europe and the US had done, he said. "I believe the crisis is much more severe. We don't know how deep it will go."
Latin America still winces at the painful humiliation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ordering austerity measures in the 1980s and 90s. "Now, I expect the IMF to go to [the US president, Barack] Obama and tell him how to fix the economy," said Lula.
***** ***** *****
(2) World Social Forum 2009: a generation’s challenge
Geoffrey Pleyers
openDemocracy UK (http://www.opendemocracy.net/)
January 30, 2009
The "alter-globalisation" movement gathers in Brazil at a moment of crisis in the system it has long opposed. But its triumph is qualified as it searches for a way to turn global breakdown into political opportunity, says Geoffrey Pleyers.These should be good times for the "alter-globalisation" movement. The unprecedented combination of crises in the global economy, environment, and governance makes its argument for a just and equal world - "another world" - seem more relevant than ever. Geoffrey Pleyers is a researcher of the Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research at the University of Louvain (UCL) and a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics
An extended version of this text will be published in Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, & Jan Aart Scholte, eds., Global Civil Society Yearbook (Sage, 2009)
The author would like to thank Fiona Holland and David Hayes for their efficient and kind help in editing this text
Yet the 100,000 activists expected to assemble at the eighth World Social Forum (WSF) in Belém, Brazil, from 27 January- 1 February 2009 are at a crossroads. The ideas they have been proposing for much of the last decade have in many ways been vindicated by the global financial breakdowns, food riots and elite failures of 2007-09; but even as it celebrates the demise of forces it has unrelentingly challenged the movement itself is divided over its political and organisational direction.
The change within
After its inaugural meeting in January 2001 - a year after the demonstrations in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit which dynamised the movement - the WSF experienced impressive growth, reflected in increasing participation (from 15,000 to over 170,000 from 2001-05). The forums have become huge meeting-places where people of many nationalities share experiences and discuss local and global issues.
The "alter-globalisation" movement (also called the "anti-corporate-globalisation movement" or the "global social justice movement") has undergone two profound changes since the WSF's last visit to Brazil, in January 2005. That event, in the city of Porto Alegre, remains the most successful forum of all - in terms of the quality and openness of the discussions, and of the size of the event (200,000 people attended the opening demonstration, and 2,500 workshops were run by 5,700 civil-society organisations).
The first great change is in the social geography of the movement, with a notable decline in some of its historical bastions (including most western European countries) but success in important regions such as Africa (where, for example, over sixty national and regional social forums have been organised since 2005) and north America.
The second change is the reorganisation of the movement around new guidelines. The internal quarrels about the forums' objectives and the movement's political orientations are a symptom of this reconfiguration.
The paradox of Geneva
The World Trade Organisation meeting in Geneva on 22-29 July 2008 offered a clear illustration of the current state of the social movement. The purpose of the meeting of thirty delegations from the WTO's most influential member-states was to break the deadlock over the Doha trade-liberalisation process; the failure of negotiations in Seattle (1999), Cancún (2003) and Hong Kong (2005) meant that the credibility of the organisation was at stake.
Europe's "alter-globalisation" organisations had been able to mount large-scale demonstrations at the international summits in Genoa (2001), Gleneagles (2005) and Rostock (2007). Yet despite the importance of the WTO conference - and the fact that it took place in the midst of an evolving global economic crisis - they were unable to mobilise their activists at Geneva.
The evidence of retreat is unmistakable. Major activists' networks - such as the Movimiento de Resistencia Global in Barcelona, the Attac movement and most local social forums - have disappeared or declined; continental forums such as those in Malmö (17-21 September 2008, with 12,000 in attendance) and Guatemala City (7-12 October 2008, with 7,500) attracted far fewer people than previously. Moreover, the movement is much less visible in the mass media than in the 1998-2005 period.
At the same time, the influence of the movement has been felt in other ways. Many of the institutions charged with supervising international trade liberalisation, which encouraged southern countries to adopt neo-liberal policies, now face discredit. Whereas in the 1990s, opening a country to international trade was seen as the only path to greater economic growth, by the late 2000s it had become routine for establishment voices and even state leaders to express support for a new global governance system to contain the destructive tendencies of "casino-", "cowboy-", "hyper-" or "super-" capitalism.
The change of rhetoric reflects a wider ideological shift: the end of three decades marked by the hegemony of neo-liberal ideas. The "alter-globalisation" movement has played an active role in this process, for example by enlarging the space of discussion of trade and economic policies far beyond the realm of international "experts", and by challenging the neo-liberal orthodoxiesof the Washington consensus. Thus even in their relative retreat from the mass mobilisations of the past, the social movements have won a kind of ideological victory.
There is a paradox here: the "alter-globalisation" movement and the organisations and events which compose it seem to have lost much of their capacity at the very time when even prominent policy-makers are coming to believe that the global financial and governance system has in crucial respects failed.
The failure of success
In these circumstances, what is the point of the World Social Forum? It could be argued that it more needed now than ever: that is, to contribute actively to the building of a new and fair global order that can address deep problems of poverty, inequality, food insecurity and ecological crisis. The problem here is that the movement is more united in what it has been against than in what it should now be for. In particular, "alter-globalisation" activists divide into three distinct currents about the way forward.
The local approach
The first current of the alter-globalisation movement) considers that instead of getting involved in a global movement and international forums, the path to social change lies through giving life to horizontal, participatory, convivial and sustainable values in daily practices, personal life and local spaces.
Many urban activists cite the way that, for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico and other Latin American indigenous movements now focus on developing communities' local autonomy via participatory self-government, autonomous education systems and improving the quality of life. They appreciate too the convivial aspect of local initiatives and their promise of small but real alternatives to corporate globalisation and mass consumption.
This approach is exemplified also in initiatives such as the "collective purchase groups" that have multiplied in western Europe and north America. These typically gather small groups of people who buy from local (and often organic) food-producers in the effort to make quality food affordable, create alternatives to the "anonymous supermarket" and promote local social relations. In many Italian social centres, critical-consumption movements have taken the space previously occupied by the alter-globalisation mobilisations. The "convivial de-growth" and "convivial urban" movements belong to a similar, sustainable and environmentally friendly, tendency.
The advocacy approach
The second current of the movement believes that the way forward lies through efficient single-issue networks able to develop coherent arguments in areas such as food sovereignty and developing-world debt; in turn this work can become a route to raising broader questions.
The protection of water-supplies from privatisation, for example, can be used to explore the issues of global public goods, the role of global corporations and "the long-term efficiency of the public sector". After several years of intense exchanges among citizens and experts focusing on the same issue, the quality of arguments has considerably increased to the extent that this form of activity has become the core of the social-forums' dynamic.
There are several examples of the effectiveness of such networks - often without media attention. The European Public Water Network's influence on the city of Paris's decision in November 2008 to restore municipal control over water distribution is just one.
The state approach
The third current of the movement holds that progressive public policies implemented by state leaders and institutions are the key to achieving broad social change.
In the past, "alter-globalisation" activists have struggled to strengthen state agency in social, environmental and economic fields; but now that state intervention has regained legitimacy in the wake of systemic crisis, this more "political" component of the movement believes that the future lies in solidarity with the projects of radical leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales.
The national policies of these leaders (social programmes favouring the poor, or taking control of key economic sectors) and their regional alliances and new institutions (the Alternativa Bolivariana por Nuestra América [Alba] coalition, the Banco del Sur) represent a strong pole of attraction for many activists. But if Latin America is the main focus for such identification, similar processes have been at work in western countries too; for example, much of the impetus of the first United States Social Forum in 2007 was redirected towards Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
The shared approach
The participants in the Belém meeting can justly welcome the failure of many aspects of an economic model they long opposed. But as they move beyond critique towards a new role in a transformed global arena, can they find some common ground among these three currents?
An escape from the crises of economy, sustainability and governance is a huge and urgent task that may last a generation. From this perspective, the three trends of the "alter-globalisation" movement could be seen as politically complementary rather than competing strategies. An imaginative understanding of this kind could be the basis of a shared approach that gives the World Social Forum a fresh lease of life.
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