BUILDING UTOPIA

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 1 2003 (IPS) - The World Social Forum grew directly out of the economic, social, and political conditions of the opening of the 21st century, writes Candido Grzybowski a sociologist, director of IBASE (Brazilian Institute for Socio-economic Analysis) and member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum. Vast numbers of people remain trapped in profound desperation, in the deep crisis of a global capitalism that in its neo-liberal form is even more savage and destructive. Others face the even worse prospect of bombs and death, the fruits of a logic of terror and war. While it isn\’t yet clear how we can exit this crisis, what is clear is that it is time to act, the author writes in this article for IPS. The WSF is an initiative designed to overcome neoliberal globalisation and bring about a globalisation based on solidarity, democracy, and sustainability. It establishes that political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum.

The World Social Forum (WSF) grew directly out of the economic, social, and political conditions of the opening of the 21st century. For Brazilians, it was this reality that incubated now president Lula and his project of hope.

But one needn’t look far to see how elsewhere vast numbers of people remain trapped in profound desperation, in the deep crisis of a global capitalism that in its neo-liberal form is even more savage and destructive. Others face the even worse prospect of bombs and death, the fruits of a logic of terror and war.

While it isn’t yet clear how we can exit this crisis, what is clear is that it is time to act.

It is important to understand the central role in this crisis played by neoliberalism and its fundamentalist conception of the market. In the name of the market, all human relations are commercialised — even life itself, the biodiversity of nature, water, knowledge, faith. The market demands subjugation of all human, civil, economic, cultural, and political rights. The term ”free market” is a deceptive euphemism for a market for the strongest, namely the major financial-economic corporations. The world and all the people in it seem to be up for sale.

Making matters worse, one power, the United States, is claiming the right to decide alone what is good for all of the people of the earth, sending the already ailing multi-lateral system into crisis and plunging us into a new era of warring imperialism.

These conditions generated a widespread sense of rejection that reverberated through people around the world and provided part of the foundation of the WSF. Neo-liberal globalisation brought forth and is actively feeding a powerful reaction against globalisation.

The first challenge of the WSF is to extract from this opposition the potential to create another world based on new dreams and utopias of freedom.

Our version of globalisation, embodied in civil actors who believe that ”another world is possible”, takes a number of forms. First, there are the movements that were born global, like those focusing on the environment, the condition of women, and human rights. Then there are the international networks and campaigns, which, dedicated to specific causes –foreign debt, trade, emergency solidarity, anti-war, etc –, are taking on the structures and processes of globalisation and accumulating an extremely important body of knowledge.

Another form, particularly common in the 1990s, was the organisation of parallel meetings held at the same time as –and in reaction against– major international conferences of the UN, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation, G-7/8, the European Union, Free-Trade Area of the Americas, and others. What we saw in recent instances –Durban, Monterrey, Johannesburg– was the exhaustion of this strategy. But we have learned from these experiences.

The most recent form of civil globalisation is the mega-marches, which bring together both traditional social movements and new ones drawn from many countries, giving these gatherings a distinctive multi-cultural, multi-national, truly global character. This mode has grown considerably from Seattle, in late 1999, to the most recent demonstration against the war in Florence, Italy, in November 2002.

The WSF must be seen as an initiative designed to overcome neoliberal globalisation and bring about a globalisation based on solidarity, democracy, and sustainability. This universal planetary citizenry draws its inspiration from the ethical principles set out in the Charter of the WSF, the only parameter for the new way of thinking, which rejects the principles of the market as the foundation of society, denounces violence as a form of political action, and says no to a single way of thinking and yes to equality and diversity. It establishes that political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum.

The WSF is an occasion for civil society to work out its agenda together. It involves, of course, that part of civil society that adheres to the Charter of Principles. In practice, we are facing, to begin with, those elements of civil society that have other perspectives on neoliberal globalisation. In this way the forum will realise itself in the creation of a powerful planetary opinion movement, formulating and carrying forward dreams and social projects, analysis and predictions, alternatives and strategies for the ‘here and now’.

The WSF is expanding rapidly across the world — it is, in other words, globalising. Based on the Charter of Principles, the number of initiatives is growing, addressing more and more subjects, both regional and national. The message that ”another world is possible” is reverberating in many worlds, and all believe that in their country or region things can be different. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)