World Social Forum at a Crossroad - Revision history

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-	==World Social Forum at ~~A crossroad~~ by ''Walden Bello''==	+	==The World Social Forum at a Crossroad by ''Walden Bello''==
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		+	Walden Bello's article was first Published in [http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4196 Foreign Policy in Focus] on May 4, 2007. Below, it is reproduced from [http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45621 Pambazuka News] 24 Jan, 2008.

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-	~~Walden Bello wrestles with the question: Has the WSF become simply a~~
-	~~forum of ideas with no agenda for action?~~

	A new stage in the evolution of the global justice movement was		A new stage in the evolution of the global justice movement was

Book: /* Caracas Versus Nairobi */

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Caracas Versus Nairobi

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-	[[Category: ~~Evaluations~~ of ~~the Social Forums~~]]	+	[[Category:Evaluation of social forums]]
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Book: /* Caracas Versus Nairobi */

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Caracas Versus Nairobi

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-	~~[[Category:Belem WSF 2009]]~~
-	~~[[Category:Proposals]]~~

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	''* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at http://www.ips-dc.org) Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.''		''* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at http://www.ips-dc.org) Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.''
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	[[Category:Nairobi WSF2007]]		[[Category:Nairobi WSF2007]]
	[[Category:Belem WSF2009]]		[[Category:Belem WSF2009]]
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	groups under the reign of global capital.		groups under the reign of global capital.

-	What Constitutes "Open Space~~"T CONSTITUTES "OPEN SPACE~~"	+	What Constitutes "Open Space"
	The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its		The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its
	own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the		own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the

Loyce at 07:08, 1 February 2008

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	fora were held and institutionalized.		fora were held and institutionalized.

-	===The Functions of the WSF====	+	====The Functions of the WSF====
	Since its establishment, the WSF has performed three critical		Since its establishment, the WSF has performed three critical
	functions for global civil society:		functions for global civil society:
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	''* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at http://www.ips-dc.org) Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.''		''* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at http://www.ips-dc.org) Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.''
		+	[[Category:Nairobi WSF2007]]
		+	[[Category:Belem WSF2009]]
		+	Category:Proposals

Loyce at 07:01, 1 February 2008

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New page

===World Social Forum at A crossroad by ''Walden Bello''===

----

Walden Bello wrestles with the question: Has the WSF become simply a
forum of ideas with no agenda for action?

A new stage in the evolution of the global justice movement was
reached with the inauguration of the World Social Forum (WSF) in
Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001.

The WSF was the brainchild of social movements loosely associated
with the Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil. Strong support for the idea
was given at an early stage by the ATTAC movement in France, key
figures of which were connected with the newspaper Le Monde
Diplomatique. In Asia, the Brazilian proposal, floated in June 2000,
received the early enthusiastic endorsement of, among others, the
research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South based in
Bangkok.

Porto Alegre was meant to be a counterpoint to "Davos," the annual
event in a resort town in the Swiss Alps where the world's most
powerful business and political figures congregated annually to spot
and assess the latest trends in global affairs. Indeed, the highlight
of the first WSF was a televised transcontinental debate between
George Soros and other figures in Davos with representatives of
social movements gathered in Porto Alegre.

The world of Davos was contrasted to the world of Porto Alegre, the
world of the global rich with the world of the rest of humanity. It
was this contrast that gave rise to the very resonant theme "Another
world is possible."

There was another important symbolic dimension: while Seattle was the
site of the first major victory of the transnational anti-corporate
globalization movement -- the collapse amidst massive street protests
of the third ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization --
Porto Alegre represented the transfer to the South of the center of
gravity of that movement. Proclaimed as an "open space," the WSF
became a magnet for global networks focused on different issues, from
war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to
alternatives. Regional versions of the WSF were spun off, the most
important being the European Social Forum and the African Social
Forum; and in scores of cities throughout the world, local social
fora were held and institutionalized.

===The Functions of the WSF====
Since its establishment, the WSF has performed three critical
functions for global civil society:

First, it represents a space -- both physical and temporal -- for
this diverse movement to meet, network, and, quite simply, to feel
and affirm itself.

Second, it is a retreat during which the movement gathers its
energies and charts the directions of its continuing drive to
confront and roll back the processes, institutions, and structures of
global capitalism. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, underlined this
function when she told a Porto Alegre audience in January 2002 that
the need of the moment was "less civil society and more civil
disobedience."

Third, the WSF provides a site and space for the movement to
elaborate, discuss, and debate the vision, values, and institutions
of an alternative world order built on a real community of interests.
The WSF is, indeed, a macrocosm of so many smaller but equally
significant enterprises carried out throughout the world by millions
who have told the reformists, the cynics, and the "realists" to move
aside because, indeed, another world is possible�and necessary.

====Direct Democracy in Action====
The WSF and its many offspring are significant not only as sites of
affirmation and debate but also as direct democracy in action. Agenda
and meetings are planned with meticulous attention to democratic
process. Through a combination of periodic face-to-face meetings and
intense email and Internet contact in between, the WSF network was
able to pull off events and arrive at consensus decisions. At times,
this could be very time-consuming and also frustrating, and when you
were part of an organizing effort involving hundreds of
organizations, as we at Focus on the Global South were during the
organizing of the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, it could be very frustrating
indeed.

But this was direct democracy, and direct democracy was at its best
at the WSF. One might say, parenthetically, that the direct
democratic experiences of Seattle, Prague, Genoa, and the other big
mobilizations of the decade were institutionalized in the WSF or
Porto Alegre process.

The central principle of the organizing approach of the new movement
is that getting to the desired objective is not worth it if the
methods violate democratic process, if democratic goals are reached
via authoritarian means. Perhaps Subcomandante Marcos of the
Zapatistas best expressed the organizing bias of the new movements:
"The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN
[Zapatistas] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is
headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an
alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it
apart from that, would be for it to come to power and install itself
there as a revolutionary army." The WSF shares this perspective.

What is interesting is that there has hardly been an attempt by any
group or network to "take over" the WSF process. Quite a number of
"old movement" groups participate in the WSF, including old-line
"democratic centralist" parties as well as traditional social
democratic parties affiliated with the Socialist International. Yet
none of these has put much effort into steering the WSF towards more
centralized or hierarchical modes of organizing. At the same time,
despite their suspicion of political parties, the "new movements"
never sought to exclude the parties and their affiliates from playing
a significant role in the Forum. Indeed, the 2004 WSF in Mumbai was
organized jointly by an unlikely coalition of social movements and
Marxist Leninist parties, a set of actors that are not known for
harmonious relations on the domestic front.

Perhaps a compelling reason for the modus vivendi of the old and new
movements was the realization that they needed one another in the
struggle against global capitalism and that the strength of the
fledgling global movement lay in a strategy of decentralized
networking that rested not on the doctrinal belief that one class was
destined to lead the struggle but on the reality of the common
marginalization of practically all subordinate classes, strata, and
groups under the reign of global capital.

What Constitutes "Open Space"T CONSTITUTES "OPEN SPACE"
The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its
own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the
charge that the WSF as an institution is unanchored in actual global
political struggles, and this is turning it into an annual festival
with limited social impact.

There is, in my view, a not insignificant truth to this. Many of the
founders of the WSF have interpreted the "open space" concept in a
liberal fashion, that is, for the WSF not to explicit endorse any
political position or particular struggle, though its constituent
groups are free to do so.

Others have disagreed, saying the idea of an "open space" should be
interpreted in a partisan fashion, as explicitly promoting some views
over others and as openly taking sides in key global struggles. In
this view, the WSF is under an illusion that it can stand above the
fray, and this will lead to its becoming some sort of neutral forum,
where discussion will increasingly be isolated from action. The
energy of civil society networks derives from their being engaged in
political struggles, say proponents of this perspective. The reason
that the WSF was so exciting in its early years was because of its
affective impact: it provided an opportunity to recreate and reaffirm
solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was
not subjected to the rule of empire and capital. The WSF's not taking
a stand on the Iraq War, on the Palestine issue, and on the WTO is
said to be making it less relevant and less inspiring to many of the
networks it had brought together.

====Caracas Versus Nairobi====
This is why the 6th WSF held in Caracas in January 2006 was so
bracing and reinvigorating: it inserted some 50,000 delegates into
the storm center of an ongoing struggle against empire, where they
mingled with militant Venezuelans, mostly the poor, engaged in a
process of social transformation, while observing other Venezuelans,
mostly the elite and middle class, engaged in bitter opposition.
Caracas was an exhilarating reality check.

This is also the reason why the Seventh WSF held in Nairobi was so
disappointing, since its politics was so diluted and big business
interests linked to the Kenyan ruling elite were so brazen in
commercializing it. Even Petrobras, the Brazilian state corporation
that is a leading exploiter of the natural resource wealth of Latin
America, was busy trumpeting itself as a friend of the Forum. There
was a strong sense of going backward rather than forward in Nairobi.

The WSF is at a crossroads. Hugo Chavez captured the essence of the
conjuncture when he warned delegates in January 2006 about the danger
of the WSF becoming simply a forum of ideas with no agenda for
action. He told participants that they had no choice but to address
the question of power: "We must have a strategy of 'counter-power.'
We, the social movements and political movements, must be able to
move into spaces of power at the local, national, and regional level."

Developing a strategy of counter-power or counter-hegemony need not
mean lapsing back into the old hierarchical and centralized modes of
organizing characteristic of the old left. Such a strategy can, in
fact, be best advanced through the multilevel and horizontal
networking that the movements and organizations represented in the
WSF have excelled in advancing their particular struggles.
Articulating their struggles in action will mean forging a common
strategy while drawing strength from and respecting diversity.

After the disappointment that was Nairobi, many long-standing
participants in the Forum are asking themselves: Is the WSF still the
most appropriate vehicle for the new stage in the struggle of the
global justice and peace movement? Or, having fulfilled its historic
function of aggregating and linking the diverse counter-movements
spawned by global capitalism, is it time for the WSF to fold up its
tent and give way to new modes of global organization of resistance
and transformation?

''* Walden Bello is a senior analyst with Focus on the Global South, the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute, and professor of sociology at the University of the Philippines. Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the International Relations Center (IRC, online at http://www.irc-online.org) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS, online at http://www.ips-dc.org) Copyright © 2007, International Relations Center. All rights reserved.''