|
The World Social Forum at the Crossroads in Caracas:
The Solidarity Economy and Other Options
By Betsy Bowman and Bob Stone
The 6th World
Social Forum held January 24th -29th in Caracas was the
highlight of our recent tour of newly democratized enterprises in Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. We had been to the first regional social forum, the European
Social Forum, in 2002. Our first World Social Forum was at once festival
and oversized university, all aspiring to be the “world parliament in exile.”
We made our way to many stuffy rooms around town, some calmed by academics,
others apulse with the energy of pioneers. The largest delegations came from Venezuela, Brazil, and Colombia, but it felt exhilaratingly global. We walked into a Forum that is
debating its future, and we developed some opinions on the subject of our own.
But first some history.
The slogan of the World
Social Forum movement -- “another world is possible” -- is not universally
loved. “Another Slogan is Possible” some signs had said at the European
forum. Yet it has stuck since the first World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January, 2001. It all started in February, 2000 when French and
Brazilian opponents of the free-market policies of neo-liberal globalization
met in Paris to maintain the momentum of the great 1999 Seattle protest against
the World Trade Organization -- which first uncovered a global movement
against globalization. They settled on a social forum to oppose the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland every January, where
neo-liberalism set global economic policy: privatize public goods, stop social
spending, and let “free trade” be regulated by treaties favoring transnationals.
Porto Alegre, Brazil, cradle of “participatory budgeting,” was chosen since
this solidarity economy practice was evidence that “Another World is Possible.”
Participatory
budgeting, is simple: a city’s citizens, not just its politicians, get to help
allocate its capital expenditures. All sorts of civic groups in a neighborhood
send representatives to regular meetings to prioritize spending on streets,
education, whatever. The core theme in the new “alternative” economic forms
was local, in-person, democratic control of all units of economic life, be they
neighborhoods, producer or consumer co-ops, credit unions, or media. The aim is
a solidarity economy run on this principle. Whatever such an economy’s
goal might be it could not be profit, simply because that goal would have been
set by human decision.
Participatory
budgeting reveals a capacity in government to strengthen civil society without
favoring some private interests over others, as Len Krimerman has argued on
GEO’s pages. It sets in relief non-market voluntary associations and their social
property -- the middle term between individual property and public property
that is neither. The long-occluded power of social property to meet needs and
build communities, two important public goods, is on display in
participatory budgeting. Government and private enterprise are not after all
the only two ways to realize those goods. And
vampiric sucking by multinationals of the value created by a community is
short-circuited when its plain citizens construct such solidarity-based
economic power.
Not only is it revolutionary, it works! Porto Alegre’s practice has
generated: a new fiscal transparency and regular budget surpluses; scores of
successful new worker co-ops; UNESCO designation as a model city; and
emulation in some 200 cities all over Brazil
and in Canada, Scotland and elsewhere.
Except for one in Mumbai, India, all WSFs up to 2006 have been in Porto Alegre. The 2005 leaders, aiming at
greater inclusiveness, set up a “polycentric” forum this year. The first such
“center” was in Bamako, Mali, January 19-23,
then 24-29 in Caracas, and then March 24-29 in Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing about 10k, 70k and 30k participants, respectively, this year’s
total equaled the roughly 100k of each of the last four forums. In an
important first, the 2007 Forum will be in Nairobi, Kenya, the first
single-centered WSF to take place in Africa. We’ve noted a
radicalization. When we asked those who had been to the first two forums what
the forums’ adversary was, they often answered: “globalization,” or “corporate
globalization.” When in Florence in 2002 we asked similar participants, they
were likely to designate “capitalism” as adversary. New first-world/third-world
and North/South alliances against the same system -- however it is described
-- is also part of this radicalization.
The WSF was initiated by and remains in the hands
of social movements separate from political parties. For example, prominent
among founders of the forums in 2000 were ATTAC and MST. In France, the
Association for Taxation of Transactions to Help Citizens (Association pour la Taxation des Transactions pour
l'Aide aux Citoyens) advocates, among other reforms, taxation on all
international capital transfers. In Brazil the MST, the Movement of Landless
Workers (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra) occupies unused land so
as to establish producer cooperatives. But today hundreds of social movements
animate the forum, including advocates for: women, workers, peace, the
unemployed, the indigenous, rain forests, bio-diversity, immigrants,
alternative media, access to water and food, and of course the solidarity
economy.
“Solidarity economy” names not just participatory
budgeting but any economic activity -- co-ops, fair trade, ethical
consumption, credit unions, local currencies, micro-finance, socially conscious
investment -- that democratizes an economy, subordinating profit to human
ends. It includes: ethical consumption, fair trade, local currencies, micro-finance
and credit unions, socially conscious investment, and co-ops of all kinds. Organizational forms seen at the WSF include: think
tanks, civic and solidarity economy associations, advocacy groups, and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). While there are many socialists and
anarchists, the WSF is as a matter of principle independent of all governments,
political parties, and ideologies (see the WSF website at www.forumsocialmundial.org.br).
This independence
also frees participants from the burdens of partisanship. And not being tied to
nation-based parties, WSF social movements find it easier to think globally
“from below.” The Forums’ guiding International Committee is open to
all. A regular participant, Alexander Buzgalin, a Moscow University economist,
told us that at the meetings one’s party’s position -- most present are
members of one party or another -- gets left at the door. Focus can then be
solely on what’s best for the WSF. This is a liberation, he said, not to be
lightly discarded.
The Options being Debated
Yet before and at Caracas the feeling was widely expressed that the WSF was at a crossroads and needed to
evolve in new directions. Around the Caracas forum the debate over which
direction to take appears to be the start of a wrestling match for the very
soul of the forum itself. Unfortunately we can only summarize it here.
The need for change
had originated among some of the forums’ strongest supporters. Referring to the
2005 forum, Ignacio Ramonet of Le Monde Diplomatique wrote: “One could
see in it a sort of exhaustion of the initial formula: because of the number
of participants, the forum couldn’t go on being just a space of meeting and
debate which didn’t give rise to action…[If it does not,] it runs the risk of
depoliticization and turning into folklore.”
Explaining why she had declined to participate in the Karachi part of the
recent WSF, Arundhati Roy said the forum “has now become very NGO-ized and…it's
just become too comfortable a stage. And I think it's played a very important
role up to now, but now I think we've got to move on from there….I think we
have to come up with new strategies.”
Many at Caracas concluded that the forum should now “get political.” But what exactly would that
mean? One answer came from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Having
taken on hosting of the Forum, he also challenged it to "draw up
strategies of power in an offensive to build a better world,” forming a
socialist “front.” Speaking at the Assembly of Social Movements, a coalition of
300 networks central to the Forum, Chavez
explained “We cannot allow [the WSF] to become a folkloric and touristic
event….We must have diversity and autonomy, but also unity in a great anti-imperialist
front.” Atilio Boron, an Argentine theorist who directs an alliance of Latin
American social scientists and participates in the International Council, even
asked that the WSF convert itself into “a new international to counter the
international of the bourgeoisie.”
But one Forum
organizer said that to undertake global action through political parties, on
the model of the series of socialist “internationals,” would require a
uniformity of ideology that could be fatal. WSF activist Candido Gryzbowski
warned: “If you look at the history of the left, these are the debates that
happened in the internationals, and they explode when they try to impose that
unity on everyone.” He
added "there should not and cannot exist an Inquisition or Politburo to dictate
what is correct and what is erroneous.” Created
by social movements, the Forum has stuck to its founding charter and should not
now abandon it, Gryzbowski contended. The charter prescribes “an open meeting
place where social movements, networks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world
dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue
their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, to formulate proposals, share
their experiences freely and network for effective action.” But is the WSF now so “NGO-ized” and
shy of joint action as to require the charter be changed to allow
representation by political parties as such? Gryzbowski
defends founding principles. But he offers (to our knowledge) no clear
alternative to proposals for a “front” or “international.”
The World Social Forum’s Power as Organizer
of Global and Regional Action
Some distinctions would help this debate. It is
one thing for a world-wide network of equal movements
to organize joint, even massive actions; it is another to initiate an
“international” or alliance of national political parties bound by ideology and
a central bureaucracy. One can do the former without doing the latter. Even
global action by such a network needs no advance doctrinal agreement. A prime
example was the global anti-Iraq war protest of February 15, 2003. Called at
the November 2002 European Social Forum, planned at that January’s World Social
Forum, this global protest set the nakedness of the U.S. aggression in stark
relief, a perception that endures today.
It was the largest demonstration in history and the
first global one. Main streets of 800 cities on all continents were filled in
answer to a WSF call. San Miguel had a bi-cultural crowd of about 1000, Atencion
reported. Astonished at the scale, a New York Times writer said: “there
may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public
opinion.”
Both sides in the debate above assume collective action demands
uniformity of ideology. But February 15 built on and did not negate the vast
variety of regions, nations, languages and cultures of the WSF itself. It
proved that the WSF needs no uniform beliefs in order to stimulate the appearance
of the “new superpower.”
Such global organizational
power was never attained by any party-based international. On February 15
when, on a scale never before seen, millions acted in person and not
through representatives, the Forum was no longer a mere platform but a movement
capable of indefinite expansion. Some argue that it failed: the war started
on March 20. But February 15 was meant to consolidate global opposition, which
it did more quickly and thoroughly than opposition to any previous war. For a moment, the Forum’s
participants and collaborators became “a new popular and historical subject.” The day allowed us to imagine a
future when humanity itself and in person consciously makes its history.
And there are other cases
of successful international collective actions that arguably were due to or
coordinated by World Social Forum participants and collaborators, animated by
Forum meetings. These include:
- Massive protests outside
all free trade meetings, organized at Forums, allowed emergence of new voting
blocks within the World Trade Organization that deadlocked its Cancun meetings in 2003.
- The spawning of regional
and local social forums (Europe, Mediterranean, Latin American, even the New York City social forum) that have taken on their own life in seeking grassroots system
change.
- When Argentine president
Nestor Kirchner, not the IMF, set terms of debt restructuring, “the aura of
invincibility surrounding the Fund was dispelled.” Such defiance was
unthinkable before Forums had mobilized Latin American public opinion against
IMF imposition of economic policies (on penalty of frozen credit).
- The act of Latin American
leaders who, as one, blocked Bush and his FTAA at Mar del Plata in 2005, was politically
possible due to the strong presence in their countries of the global movement
consolidated by the forums.
- Recent left-ward
elections in Bolivia, Chile and Peru would have been highly unlikely had Porto
Alegre Forums not fostered a continent-wide unity against neo-liberalism that
connected struggles in a mutually empowering way.
- The threat of being cast
into even deeper odium by “the other superpower” of world public opinion, may
have helped protect the Chavez government to date against overt U.S.
attack on the model of Chile in 1973 (see our “Reflections on Venezuela’s
Bolivarian Revolution”).
- And finally the global
opposition to “free trade” that the Forums have both generated and legitimized
has stymied trade negotiations globally and may stop Doha Round progress this
year.
These are six
extraordinary accomplishments. Go political”? Become a platform for political
action? February 15 and these other large-scale attainments are already
major political actions. They eclipse the World Economic Forum in direct
political effects, bringing off in a few years what would take a “front” or
“international” a decade. They are no less political for being effected by
social movements instead of parties. Gustavo Codas of the Central Unica dos Trabalhadores, Brazil’s largest trade union federation, may have had the accomplishments in
mind when he observed: “There is no contradiction between maintaining the
Forum as an open space for discussion and using it to build alliances and
platforms for action.”
But then how should it be used now?
This major political
impact of WSF-linked social movements indicates that for now “going political”
in the partisan/electoral sense is unneeded. Take Evo Morales’s electoral
victory. In a way that a party sponsoring him could not, the indigenous
movements that made it possible remain independent, standing ready to challenge
Morales if he deviates from the revolutionary path. Building an international alliance
of parties might even dampen these political effects by suspending forward
motion for debate. Or take the recent upsurge of the so-called “new European
left” against the neo-liberalism that is decimating Europe’s retirement funds
and labor regulations. Hilary Wainwright points out that the more left parties
in Norway and Italy ally as equals with the huge non-partisan social movements
opposed to globalization, the more elections they win. And this despite
doctrinal differences. Social movements, she shows, have influenced electoral
politics without yielding their political autonomy, instead bending political
parties to their ends.
Most political parties are globally mistrusted for yielding to neo-liberalism,
which suggests that the political successes we’ve listed may not have been in
spite of the Forums’ non-partisan character but because of it.
So the issue is not whether
to “go political” but how. There are at least two options: invent new
non-partisan global actions that build on past political successes, or build
linked parties aimed at electoral victory in order to gain and wield state
power?
The ascents of Chavez and Morales to state power
were certainly celebrated in Caracas. Old hands said it was as much a big party
as the Porto Alegre meetings but less organized and centered. Oddly, the
thronged Hilton lobby became a mini-center. Amidst potted palms an anti-Bush
Canadian posed in a Condy costume. A fit Tom Hayden strode by. We carved out a
program from 2000 events around town, accessible by subway (gratis to all
registrants). We missed session with Gore Vidal, Cornell West, and Cindy
Sheehan. Fearing Chavez’s domination, an “alternative world social forum” was
set up -- with government help. Its fears proved groundless. The day after
Chavez’s socialist “front” appeal, an open leadership session roundly rejected
a proposal to make a statement in the name of the Forum, precisely what a front
would do. A Nation writer was told: “It makes sense that a political
leader like Chavez would make that appeal, but even though we admire him, we
can’t repeat the mistakes of the past century.” Yet such defenders of independence
are weak on what to do.
As a resource, the political successes
listed, especially February 15, have been passed over. As a result, deepening
the Forums’ proven capacity for such success has not appeared in the debate as
a political option alongside of the “front” proposal. Examples of such
“deepening” might be:
- Following start of the Iraq war a large,
spontaneous boycott of products of US multi-nationals such as Coca-Cola and
McDonalds spread and was sustained for months, especially in the Middle East
and Europe. A global boycott organized by the WSF in advance and held at the
ready, could be so planned as to be triggered, say, by invasion of Iran,
attempts to unseat President Chavez, or other imperialist aggressions.
Multi-nationals that have been so far unhurt by purely political protest might
in this case act quickly to restrain such aggressions.
- A global “buy co-op, boycott multi-nationals” day
or days would withdraw spending from the capitalist economy and at the same
time build the solidarity economy. Such a conversion boycott, effected
world-wide, could start the shift away from capitalism to a more democratic
alternative such as worker, not state, control socialism.
- A global “economic democracy” day would be one in
which workers would divert their labor away from the capitalist economy and
toward building a democratic economy. Instead of working to profit others,
they would stay home to set up participatory budgeting in the neighborhood, a
local currency, a credit union, a child or elder-care co-op, or a politically
aware investment group.
- A global “general strike” might be undertaken in
which workers confront the inherent injustice of wage labor and a system that
pits classes against each other, in order to initiate a more equitable,
cooperative way of meeting needs.
Such actions could be coordinated by the World
Social Forum and regional forums. The aim would be to replace a system that
subjects all humans to itself, with a collective practice in which system as
such is demoted to the status of instrument of human needs. Inspired by
February 15, the Forum movement can foster such a shift away from capitalism.
But then it must make sure an alternative economy exists that can be
strengthened and shifted to.
The World Social Forum as Workshop of the Solidarity Economy
As it happens, besides the Forums’ function as
coordinator of global and regional political actions, the other ongoing role
they have played, also often unnoticed, is precisely as builder of the
solidarity economy. Francois Houtart of the Third World Forum remarked: “If
the Forums don’t want to become the Fifth International, they should also avoid
becoming a social Woodstock. Therefore other initiatives must be taken.” We agree, their role as debating
platform is not enough. However, Forums have all along also been fulfilling
the charter’s prescription of a “network for effective action.” Besides global
coordinating agent, the Forums’ other “effective action” is as workshop in
which “another world” is no longer debated but constructed. Cross-border
economic organizing is an ever-expanding activity conducted by social movements
in the Forums’ basement, as it were. National solidarity economy organizations
are forming regional ones for mutual aid, commerce, and intercooperation. Such
construction avoids both Houtart’s “international” and his “Woodstock” perils.
Most important: regional networks are now connecting with larger South-South,
North-South, and global networks -- thanks to the WSF “switchboard.”
Here are some of the international solidarity
economy groups that are holding working meetings at the Forums:
The Ibero-american Network for Integration of
Cooperatives and Organizations of Social Production (Red Iberoamericana de
Integracion de Cooperativas y Organizaciones de Produccion Social, http://www.encuentrocooperativas.org
) was formed only in late 2005 in Caracas. Most delegates from the networks
represented had occupied and cooperativized their workplaces. This network is
parallel to but separate from the respective “official” national bodies for
producer co-ops and democratic enterprises -- though the latter very often go
to Forums too. The Red’s leaders were from networks in Venezuela, Argentina,
Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Ecuador. Its work was “integration” of Latin
America: continent-wide cooperation instead of competition in education,
communication, commerce, and finance. The principle that had initially brought
individuals into co-ops was now bringing co-ops as such together: a co-op is individually
more effective as a member of the Red than on its own.
The
International Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy,
(RIPESS www.ripess.net) coordinates
solidarity economies globally. Delegates from national and regional solidarity
economy organs -- especially in Europe and Africa -- share problems of
advocacy and markets at the Forums.
Another is the
Workgroup on a Solidarity Socio-Economy (WSSE, www.socioeco.org ), a mostly South-South
network for mutual aid and strategizing among actors and researchers. As part
of Alliance 21, a major group, it seeks to integrate initiatives in fair trade,
social money, solidarity finance and co-ops in workable cross-border and
cross-sector relationships.
These were just
the meetings we attended. Many other working groups use the Forums to network
and cooperate in production, supply, and marketing -- always for need more
than for profit.
This is far from the “revolutionary tourism” that Chavez fears if Forums do not
form political parties.
These two
under-emphasized functions of the World Social Forum movement could be combined
to initiate the biggest political action of all: direct transformation of the
current system. The Forums’ capacity to organize millions in global and
regional actions could be put to turning the solidarity economy into a real alternative
to capitalism.
Here is one
scenario for how this might unfold: as humans awaken to the transformatory
possibilities of the solidarity economy in their midst, an awakening mediated
by the Forums, growth in demand will elicit more democratic production
capacity. At the same time it will push neighborhoods to intensify
participatory organizations that meet needs without going through the commodity
form. As the conversion boycott spreads, preparations will be needed for even
larger increases in capacity and local organization. World and regional forums
and newly invented organizations could then be used to address problems of
credit, reorganization of production, and technical assistance. Satisfying
these higher-order needs stemming from inter-cooperation among cooperatives
would elicit either new cooperatives in those areas or cooperativization of
existing enterprises.
The Forum’s capacities for global
action and development of the solidarity economy are available for other uses.
Debate is needed. We insist only that these powerful capacities exist,
and that there is a new way to use them. This third way is an alternative both
to organizing an alliance of political parties and to resting content with the
non-partisan and somewhat static forum function. It is also best suited to a
still-growing movement
To be sure, if this third way is
successful, organizing to take state power will ultimately be inevitable. After
an occupation strike had seized 40% of French industry in May 1968, the French
non-Communist Marxist philosopher, Lucien Goldmann, remarked: "It is
false to say, as is often done, 'self-management is not possible except in
socialism,' because generalized self-management is socialism."
We are less optimistic. Generalized worker control is for us a necessary first
step in order to abolish the labor market and exploitation, but it does not by
itself attain other aspects of socialism such as replacement of markets by
production for need and democratic control of planning.
First things first. Just as the bourgeoisie’s economic ascent preceded its
political consolidation of power in the French revolution, so worker control of
the economy will likely prepare a corresponding ascendancy into and
transformation of, political life. But our point is to grant political power
its place, not to pursue controversial views of our own.
The Chavez government, for example,
is empowering its electorate and the solidarity economy and an alliance with
Bolivia’s new socialist government could have similar effects regionally. But
we are discussing options for a global movement that is rooted in civil
society and whose distinctive contribution so far has been to foster highly
varied economic experimentation. If this movement narrows itself by the
ideological uniformity required to enter electoral politics, without first
establishing the viability of global economic alternatives, much is
risked, while little is risked by postponing that entry so as to deepen that
work. For it is precisely the exclusion of party politics that has given the
social forum movement the freedom which allows it, on globally shared issues
like opposing the Iraq war, to engage millions in world-wide actions. This
prodigious capacity has had much swifter and more global impacts -- including
political impacts (witness February 15, and halting of the WTO and FTAA) --
than did Vietnam war resistance or than could a front of new national parties.
But underpinning such effectiveness has been the WSFs’ non-partisan and oblique
relation to state power. This has lent its actions a moral side.
Arundhati Roy called the global protest of February 15: “The most spectacular
display of public morality the world has ever seen.”
Once lost by recruiting to take power, the legitimacy of this enormous power
will be hard to recover. By contrast, a use of it that would be compatible
with its civic and economic roots would be to foster a global shift from the
capitalist to the solidarity economy.
What is so special about the World
Social Forum is that in the social movements it brings together, unlike a front
or international of political parties, ideological variety is a strength,
not an impediment. This comes out in the slogan “one no, many yes’s” by which
participants refer to the WSF “movement of movements.” It implies that the
yes’s can proceed down the same path together, perhaps a very long way,
before diverging. And as struggle nears the “yes’s,” their realizations may
turn out to be less incompatible than thought. And since divergence may
ultimately prove to be unnecessary, postponing it can only help.
A global debate is needed between
social forums. A detailed action proposal has finally emerged from some WSF
leaders. Called “the Bamako appeal” it was drafted by some 80
researcher/activists just before this year’s Bamako, Mali meeting (www.forumtiersmonde.net). It calls
for dismantling all U.S. bases not on U.S. soil, suppression of tax havens,
cancellation of Third World debt, resumption of national control of national
economies, and study of how capitalism reproduces itself. It devotes sections
to environmental issues, women’s rights, food sovereignty, media reform, and
international legal reform. It calls for “a world-wide anti-imperialist network
that could coordinate a variety of mobilizations throughout the planet” and “a
workers’ united front” of new transnational trade unions independent of “the
traditional trade-union structure or a specific political party.” It envisions
transcending capitalism but does not mention the solidarity economy and
democratizing production as tools for overcoming wage-labor. Nor does it say
how production for markets is to be replaced by production for needs. It
prepares for transformation but is short on strategies of transformation. An
excellent dialogue has grown up around it on the Open Space Forum website (www.openspaceforum.net ).
While overall we welcome it, the
Bamako appeal’s omissions in content are related to the procedure that
generated it. Derived by its authors from a survey of past forums and from
their own intellectual resources, it proposes a consensus so WSF
constituencies, presumably by agreeing, can move ahead together. It does not
start with the ongoing struggles and movements and, examining their practices
and stated aims, describe the visions implicit (or explicit) in them, so that
those so engaged might try to make them compatibile. For a movement which
still does not include large sectors of humanity affected by globalizing
capitalism, we think the latter procedure is indicated. Consensus statements
are premature.
Africa, for example, has been
underrepresented in the WSF for various reasons. The strongest argument for
postponing consensus-building is that none can be complete without this major
part of humanity - perhaps the one most affected by neo-liberalism. At the
Nairobi forum in January of 2007 many more of Africa’s peoples will at last
speak. All manifestos will need re-writing after voices of a new spectrum of
social movements struggles are heard.
As advocates for the solidarity
economy that was the original root of the forums, we were inspired by the
Caracas Forum. Its under-appreciated powers raised our hopes and drew us into
debating its direction. We hope many others will join in. While this debate is
only starting it already belongs to all of us.
Gianpaolo Baiocchi, “The Citizens of Porto Alegre, In
which Marco borrows bus fare and enters politics” by Gianpaolo Baiocchi, in The
Boston Review,
Remarks
made on the TV show “Democracy Now,” as reported by Ingmar Lee, “Reflections On Karachi World
Social Forum” 28 March, 2006, Countercurrents.org
Raúl
Zibechi, “El Otro Mundo es el ‘Adentro’ de los Movimientos,” Volver atrás,
26-07-2004.
Include the citation below and GEO Newsletter grants
permission to copy, use, and distribute this article.
Permission not for commercial or for-profit use.
©2006 GEO, P O Box 115, Riverdale MD 20738
http://www.geo.coop
|
|
.
|