Four perspectives on WSF 2003

 Published on Thursday, January 30, 2003 by the Globe & Mail/Canada  
What Happened to the New Left?  
by Naomi Klein 
  
The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday in Porto 
Alegre, Brazil, was "big." Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all! 
Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, 
big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, came 
to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial 
President of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled 
regime was part of the movement.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. Chavez declared, as he pledged 
to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed 
to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel 
Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: How on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a 
showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a 
penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?

Of course, the forum, in all its dizzying global diversity, was not only 
speeches, with huge crowds all facing the same direction. There were plenty of 
circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of 
impromptu gatherings of activists excitedly swapping facts, tactics and 
analysis in their common struggles. But the big certainly put its mark on the 
event.

Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but 
"new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that 
most delegates agreed on (and there wasn't much), it was that the left's 
traditional methods had failed.

This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some 
left-wing parties have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the 
delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labor parties, 
only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, 
throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated 
by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts 
after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or 
racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty to the 
International Monetary Fund for a loan.

Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire 
Communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" 
of Eastern Europe had turned into centralized, bureaucratic and authoritarian 
nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and 
energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians, and 
were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and 
Sao Paulo.

When this global rabble came together under the slogan "Another world is 
possible," it was clear to all but the most rigidly nostalgic that getting to 
this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the 
past, but imagining new movements.

The World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint -- a good start -- 
but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to 
be less about trusting well-meaning leaders, and more about empowering people 
to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more 
participatory. The ideas flying around included neighborhood councils, 
participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative 
farming -- a vision of politicized communities that could be networked 
internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and 
World Trade Organization. For a left that had tended to look to centralized 
state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on 
decentralization and direct participation was a breakthrough.

At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered, too: not as a heroic figure 
who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an 
innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished 
people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and 
democratic empowerment were largely absent from Mr. da Silva's campaign for 
president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could 
trust him because he came from poverty, and knew their pain. But standing up to 
the demands of the international financial community isn't about whether an 
individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that, as Mr. da Silva 
is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

Right now, it looks as if Lula has only two choices: abandoning his election 
promises of wealth redistribution or trying to force them through and ending up 
in a Chavez-style civil war. But there is another option, one his own Workers 
Party has tried before, one that made Porto Alegre itself a beacon of a new 
kind of politics: more democracy. He could simply hand power back to the 
citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of the foreign debt, to 
land reform, to membership in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. There is a 
host of mechanisms that he could use: referendums, constituents' assemblies, 
networks of empowered local councils and assemblies. Choosing an alternative 
economic path would still spark fierce resistance, but his opponents would not 
have the luxury of being against Lula, as they are against Mr. Chavez, and 
would, instead, be forced to oppose the repeated and stated will of the 
majority -- to be against democracy itself.

Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World 
Social Forum by the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. A victory at 
the ballot box isn't a blank check for five years, but the beginning of an 
unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

For some, the hijacking of the forum is proof that the movements against 
corporate globalization are finally maturing and "getting serious." But is it 
really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed, left political projects, to 
believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic 
leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious. 

Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and Fences and Windows, resumes her monthly 
column in The Globe and Mail.

© 2003 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc
 

Porto Alegre Diary IV
Another Left is Possible
By JENNIFER C. BERKSHIRE

Porto Alegre. In the waning days of any large anti-globalization event, talk 
turns naturally to accomplishments: what is it we've done here and where do we 
go next? To this end, reams of documents (fondly referred to as "documentados") 
have been produced, proposals proposed, methodologies reviewed and offical 
texts released. But the real accomplishment of this, the third World Social 
Forum, is not to be found in these words, translated into multiple languages. 
The magic of this gathering has been far more ethereal, the kind of spark and 
energy produced when some 100,000 people come together around an idea.

What was created here was a kind of civil society, a term so often bandied 
about--abused really--but rarely experienced. The overwhelming majority of 
people who came to Porto Alegre were not seasoned veterans of the 
anti-globalization circuit (most were attending their first social forum). Nor 
were they political movers and shakers. They came here out of curiousity and to 
explore a possibility. People packed into theaters to hear streamed testimony 
from newly-freed death row inmates in Illinois. They crammed into classrooms to 
learn about the war on Iraq, the privatization of water, and what globalization 
will mean for them.

It may sound vague ("simpleminded" was the description that one American lent 
to the event) ; far more time was devoted to talking about demands than to 
figuring out how to make them. But for once, the phrase "another world is 
possible" seemed like more than trite globo talk; we were watching it unfold 
here. As in the US, much of public life in Brazil has been eroded by 
privatization, income inequality and a relentless process of malling. There are 
few places where ordinary Brazilians of all walks of life can simply go to 
mingle together. "Public life has moved behind walls and gates," explained my 
friend Gianpaolo, a sociologist who grew up in Porto Alegre and now lives in 
the US. For five days, though, Brazilians and the people who'd traveled from 
countries all over the world to join them took that world back.

Not everyone in attendance was satisfied with the breezy solidarity that ruled 
the day. Some in the crowd wanted rigor, lots and lots of rigor. On the 
Brazilian left, the award for "best display of militancy"goes to the PSTU, or 
the United Socialist Workers Party. The party held hourly rallies during the 
forum condeming Bush and Sharon and effectively utilizing the march as just 
another means of transportation. The PSTU also had one of the best chants of 
the entire event, roughly translated as 'Bush, assassin, go back to the place 
where your whore of a mother gave birth to you.'

From the North American left, the demands for diiscipline came from the Life 
After Capitalism contingent, a forum within the forum organized by Michael 
Albert and Z Magazine. While elsewhere in Porto Alegre, attendees were 
preoccupied with merely describing the world, Life After Capitalism was 
intended to present the way forward: a systematic exploration of what we want 
and how we can get it. The highlight of the gathering was to be a debate 
amongst political perspectives including socialism, anarchism, participatory 
democracy, and something called "par polity." I sided with that, having never 
heard of it before.

But due to organizational snafus--namely that official forum information 
included nothing on the Life After Capitalism confab--few seemed to know how to 
find the way forward. Early sessions took place in cavernous auditoriums, while 
the sessions on political visions and the much anticipated debate took place in 
a location no one connected with official event seemed ever to have heard of.

Meanwhile, life during capitalism continued apace. Tens of thousands of 
forumistas milled about on the campus of Porto Alegre's Catholic University, 
temporary home to perhaps the world's single largest collection of leftist 
swag. Che's visage could be seen everywhere, adorning tiny t-shirts and halter 
tops, buttons and berets. Lula was just as popular. Beautiful women tied their 
hair back with PT headscarves; their boyfriends wore the number 13, signifying 
the PT's spot on the electoral ballot.

"There are so many attractive people on our side here," mused one labor 
activist friend, taking in the scene. I nodded and pointed out that it wasn't 
just the model good looks shared by so many of the "juventud" that 
distinguished the crowd from a left gathering in the US, but that so many 
people were smiling. "Do you think another left is possible?" he asked as we 
prepared to head north. "I hope so," I said. "I really hope so." 

Jennifer Berkshire can be reached at: jenniferberkshire@hotmail.com.

The Promise of Lula
Another World is Possible, and Necessary
by MARK WEISBROT

PORTO ALEGRE. "I will tell the people at Davos that the world does not need 
war, the world needs peace and understanding," said President Lula da Silva to 
a cheering crowd of tens of thousands in this sunny port city in Southeastern 
Brazil. If there is one theme that unified this year's World Social Forum -- 
and captures the irrationality and destructiveness of letting a handful of 
people determine so much of the world's fate -- it is opposition to the looming 
war against Iraq.

The World Social Forum began three years ago -- under the slogan, "Another 
World is Possible" -- as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, an 
exclusive gathering of the rich and powerful held at the same time at the 
mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland.

The WSF has grown enormously, attracting more than 100,000 participants to 
Porto Alegre for this year's series of events. And among the delegates from 126 
countries, the largest contingent outside of Brazil this year is -- to the 
surprise of many -- from the United States.

This, too, is related to the war. While Secretary of State Colin Powell works 
the crowd in Davos in an attempt to bully and bribe other governments into 
going along (e.g. a giant $16 billion IMF loan and $4 billion grant to the 
government of Turkey, where 90 percent of the people oppose the war) the 
sizeable American anti-war movement has also reached out to their counterparts 
around the world.

It is a sad testimony to the state of American democracy that we need the help 
of other countries to stop our President from getting our own people killed -- 
along with thousands or tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- in a war 
that most Americans don't want.

But the war is not the only issue here that brings people throughout the world 
together against American-led policies that cause so much harm throughout the 
world. The largest number of delegates are from Latin America, where the 
profound failure of the policies known here as "neo-liberalism" has become 
painfully obvious. The last 20 years have seen the region's worst performance 
in more than a century, with income per person hardly growing at all. The US 
recipe of substituting the indiscriminate opening of trade and financial flows 
for what used to be development policy, along with punishingly high interest 
rates and budget austerity, has failed miserably even on its own terms.

The rejection of the "Washington Consensus," often imposed on Latin America by 
US-controlled institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, is what brought 
Brazil's President Lula da Silva to power last October. And so he is an 
appropriate symbol of the growing importance of the WSF and its ideas, relative 
to its elite counterpart in Davos. Last year Lula was also welcomed 
enthusiastically by the crowds here, as a genuine working-class hero who 
everyone loved but few thought would actually win. Now he is president of the 
second largest country in the Americas.

But he still has to deal with the unelected "Masters of the Universe" as the 
London Financial Times dubbed the leaders gathered at Davos, where Lula also 
spoke. Chief among these masters is the IMF, which has a program for Brazil's 
government that is literally impossible. The previous government piled up an 
enormous public debt: it swelled from 29 percent to more than 65 percent of GDP 
during former President Cardoso's eight years of office. With domestic interest 
rates at 25.5 percent (as compared to our own Federal Reserve's 1.25 percent), 
this debt burden is not sustainable.

Brazil will have to either lower its interest rates considerably or renegotiate 
its debt, but the IMF and the financial markets are against both of these 
options. Instead they hope to keep squeezing ever larger debt payments out of 
the government budget. This cannot be sustained, and for as long as these 
policies are pursued it will be very difficult for the government to restore 
economic growth or deliver on its other promises to end hunger and help the 
poor. A confrontation is inevitable.

"I was not elected by the financial markets, and I was not elected by the 
powerful economic interests . . . I was elected through the high level of 
consciousness of Brazilian society," Lula told the crowd in Porto Alegre.

The people here seem to agree. A banner at one of the big marches here said 
"Give it up, Davos: Lula is one of us."

Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 
Washington D.C. and the co-author of Social Security: the Phony Crisis.

Stronger than ever 

Far from fizzling out, the global justice movement is growing in numbers and 
maturity 

George Monbiot
Tuesday January 28, 2003
The Guardian 

Mr Bush and Mr Blair might have a tougher fight than they anticipated. Not from 
Saddam Hussein perhaps - although it is still not obvious that they can capture 
and hold Iraq's cities without major losses - but from an anti-war movement 
that is beginning to look like nothing the world has seen before. 
It's not just that people have begun to gather in great numbers even before a 
shot has been fired. It's not just that they are doing so without the 
inducement of conscription or any other direct threat to their welfare. It's 
not just that there have already been meetings or demonstrations in almost 
every nation on Earth. It's also that the campaign is being coordinated 
globally with an unprecedented precision. And the people partly responsible for 
this are the members of a movement which, even within the past few weeks, the 
mainstream media has pronounced extinct. 

Last year, 40,000 members of the global justice movement gathered at the World 
Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, more than 100,000, from 150 
nations, have come - for a meeting! The world has seldom seen such political 
assemblies since Daniel O'Connell's "monster meetings" in the 1840s. 

Far from dying away, our movement has grown bigger than most of us could have 
guessed. September 11 muffled the protests for a while, but since then they 
have returned with greater vehemence, everywhere except the US. The last major 
global demonstration it convened was the rally at the European summit in 
Barcelona. Some 350,000 activists rose from the dead. They came despite the 
terrifying response to the marches in June 2001 in Genoa, where the police 
burst into protesters' dormitories and beat them with truncheons as they lay in 
their sleeping bags, tortured others in the cells and shot one man dead. 

But neither the violent response, nor September 11, nor the indifference of the 
media have quelled this rising. Ever ready to believe their own story, the 
newsrooms have interpreted the absence of coverage (by the newsrooms) as an 
absence of activity. One of our recent discoveries is that we no longer need 
them. We have our own channels of communication, our own websites and pamphlets 
and magazines, and those who wish to find us can do so without their help. They 
can pronounce us dead as often as they like, and we shall, as many times, be 
resurrected. 

The media can be forgiven for expecting us to disappear. In the past, it was 
hard to sustain global movements of this kind. The socialist international, for 
example, was famously interrupted by nationalism. When the nations to which the 
comrades belonged went to war, they forgot their common struggle and took to 
arms against each other. But now, thanks to the globalisation some members of 
the movement contest, nationalism is a far weaker force. American citizens are 
meeting and de bating with Iraqis, even as their countries prepare to go to 
war. We can no longer be called to heel. Our loyalty is to the principles we 
defend and to those who share them, irrespective of where they come from. 

One of the reasons why the movement appears destined only to grow is that it 
provides the only major channel through which we can engage with the most 
critical issues. Climate change, international debt, poverty, the hegemony of 
the G8 nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the depletion of natural resources, 
nuclear proliferation and low-level conflict are major themes in the lives of 
most of the world's people, but minor themes in almost all mainstream political 
discourse. We are told that the mind-rotting drivel which now fills the pages 
of the newspapers is a necessary commercial response to the demands of younger 
readers. This may, to some extent, be true. But here are tens of thousands of 
young people who have less interest in celebrity culture than George Bush has 
in Wittgenstein. They have evolved their own scale of values, and 
re-enfranchised themselves by pursuing what they know to be important. For the 
great majority of activists - those who live in the poor world - the movement 
offers the only effective means of reaching people in the richer nations. 

We have often been told that the reason we're dead is that we have been 
overtaken by and subsumed within the anti-war campaign. It would be more 
accurate to say that the anti-war campaign has, in large part, grown out of the 
global justice movement. This movement has never recognised a distinction 
between the power of the rich world's governments and their appointed 
institutions (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation) to wage 
economic warfare and the power of the same governments, working through 
different institutions (the UN security council, Nato) to send in the bombers. 
Far from competing with our concerns, the impending war has reinforced our 
determination to tackle the grotesque maldistribution of power which permits a 
few national governments to assert a global mandate. When the activists leave 
Porto Alegre tomorrow, they will take home to their 150 nations a new resolve 
to turn the struggle against the war with Iraq into a contest over the future 
of the world. 

While younger activists are eager to absorb the experience of people like Noam 
Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Lula, Victor Chavez, Michael Albert and Arundhati Roy, all 
of whom are speaking in Porto Alegre, our movement is, as yet, more eager than 
wise, fired by passions we have yet to master. We have yet to understand, 
despite the police response in Genoa, the mechanical determination of our 
opponents. 

We are still rather too prepared to believe that spectacular marches can change 
the world. While the splits between the movement's marxists, anarchists and 
liberals are well-rehearsed, our real division - between the diversalists and 
the universalists - has, so far, scarcely been explored. Most of the movement 
believes that the best means of regaining control over political life is 
through local community action. A smaller faction (to which I belong) believes 
that this response is insufficient, and that we must seek to create 
democratically accountable global institutions. The debates have, so far, been 
muted. But when they emerge, they will be fierce. 

For all that, I think most of us have noticed that something has changed, that 
we are beginning to move on from the playing of games and the staging of 
parties, that we are coming to develop a more mature analysis, a better grasp 
of tactics, an understanding of the need for policy. We are, in other words, 
beginning for the first time to look like a revolutionary movement. We are 
finding, too, among some of the indebted states of the poor world, a new 
preparedness to engage with us. In doing so, they speed our maturation: the 
more we are taken seriously, the more seriously we take ourselves. 

Whether we are noticed or not is no longer relevant. We know that, with or 
without the media's help, we are a gathering force which might one day prove 
unstoppable.

· www.monbiot.com