By Cândido Grzybowski and - -
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 22 2010 (IPS)

The secret of the vitality of the World Social Forum (WSF) lies in the fact that it is organised as an open space which, without renouncing its original mission of challenging neoliberalism, proposes to recharge the batteries of citizen activism, which is now necessary on a planetary scale if the earth is to move beyond the current mode of extreme capitalism. This process is underway and is following its own course, led by organisations and social movements and networks around the world.

The WSF is inspiring the construction of a collective political intelligence to address the problems, challenges, and possibilities of the fights that we are undertaking, each in its own manner and area, yet interdependent, insofar as we share this world in order to transform it into “another world”.

The WSF provides an open space that can accommodate our great diversity of identities and cultures and the plurality of our visions and perspectives. It constitutes a sort of workshop to forge a new political culture in which we recognize each other as equals in humanity and participants in a single planetary system.

I will not attempt to set out here the history of the WSF. That we can leave to history itself. Suffice it to say, however, that the cultural, political, and economic context has changed considerably between 2001 and 2010.

The numerous recent crises are expressions of the contradictions and limitations of the form of global capitalism that has been imposed on humanity and threatens the sustainability of life on earth.

The assertion that “another world is possible” is now an absolute necessity. Because of this, I prefer to focus on the challenges from this point forward, beyond the WSF. This does not imply that the WSF itself must change, because I believe that its original inspirational mission must be advanced.

The WSF meetings are still a source of hope for many. However, the world is immense in comparison with the size of the Forum thus far. Many seeds must be sown in many parts of the world to generate a powerful will to change. The WSF must continue to build its capacity to mobilise people, especially the young, as we saw in January 2009 in Belem. I am one of those who believe that this “wave of humanity” is unstoppable, since the Forum no longer depends at all on the old group of founders (almost all men, moreover).

The three most inspiring functions of the Forum are reviving hope and putting history in its proper place, as something humans make, not a metaphysically-determined quantity; questioning the determinism and leadership of the culture of the left; and cultivating the energy of the diversity of organisations and movements.

But these are also its limits. It cannot be ignored that the Forum is primarily a process of events that awaken consciences and generate the will for a new project. However, this project is still not the construction of another world. It is just a step, a fundamental beginning, an opening of doors. I see the Forum as a necessary but insufficient condition for the evolution of the new. In order for transformative forces to emerge it is necessary to forge a path beyond the WSF, not as a forum but as a generator of movements that take concrete actions to affect the many facets of a power structure that is in crisis though still alive and dominant.

These are challenges that the WSF recognises. Addressing them will require innovative political-cultural creativity. The dilemma lies in the fact that as a space, the WSF remains indispensable yet at the same time urges us to transcend it and jump from the local to the global level.

We should recognise the absolute necessity of organising the forces driving the agenda in new forms. The WSF will serve yet again as a source of inspiration, but it does not have as its objective the more difficult and continuous task of organising movements, weighing political opportunities, and entering fights.

I will make just a few points regarding the way forward. The first step should be an agreement on the agenda that, however broad, concerns only those who sign on to it, and therefore involves moving beyond the WSF. The most delicate question is creating coalitions of citizen activist movements and organisations with the highest common denominator in terms of agenda and political action (in contrast with the lowest common denominator of various generic and empty declarations).

Thus far the WSF has been relatively successful in issue-based campaigns. What is needed now are coordinated actions of citizen activist groups that take on the existing power structures.

The crucial issue regards the dispute over the political-cultural construction of hegemony in the Gramscian sense, which I loosely define as “large, irresistible citizen movements”. How can we succeed despite the competition for leadership that characterises the left? The secret seems to lie in the formation of open coalitions built on the recognition that they are indispensable to one another, and that their agenda and the creation of a means to achieve it depends on all of them. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Candido Grzybowski is director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE) and a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum (WSF).

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By Cândido Grzybowski
BELEM, Brazil , Jan 27 2009 (IPS)

Thanks to the deepening global financial crisis, capitalism will never be the same again, according to the director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBase) and one of the main organisers of the World Social Forum (WSF), in an interview with Radio Tierra of Chile (a member of Amarc).

Cándido Grzybowski Credit: IPS/TerraViva

From what I’ve been able to ascertain, because we’re still finalising the programme for the Forum, it looks like climate change and the environment, along with food, are going to receive more focus that other areas, although all aspects will be dealt with.

IPS: A lot of people in the business world are saying that this crisis doesn’t threaten the market or cast doubts on the neoliberal model, and that all that is needed is regulation: does this create an opportunity for the Forum to improve its anti-globalisation proposals to governments and international organisations? CG: As always this is a social dispute. What’s new today is that the governments have finally taken the initiative; this means that what we were demanding, from the perspective of civil society, which was more subordination of the economy to political considerations, meaning public intervention in the economy, is now happening. Maybe the essence of neo-liberal capitalism isn’t going to change, but it’s not going to be like before, when companies would say what needed to be done, and demanded total freedom and an open market, without any controls, to do it.

That’s all changed and now the system is going to have increased State oversight and supervision, with greater importance given to public policies. Will it go beyond that? Will we be able to change the course of things in order to install a humanitarian priority, an environmental priority, to attend to the needs of the people and make economic and financial considerations subsidiary? That all depends on our strength.

What is clear, though, is the amazing victory of the social movement. Ten years ago, when we first started discussing the idea to set up a Forum, it was almost impossible to think about alternatives and people just thought we were mad. Now the alternative is growing not just because we demand it, but also because this system can’t sustain itself any longer, and has no viable future.

IPS: Were the business people, economists and experts really so unaware? CG: The only, or the first big financial speculator to state that this system doesn’t work was, surprisingly enough, George Soros back in 2002. He wanted to come to the WSF to claim that the free market worked, but not the State, and that we needed more State (intervention), which is strange coming from a speculator.

Although in general, the financial system, all the multilateral financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, the WTO, all these bodies thought this (the free market) was the best bet for economic growth. Now we can see that it was no more than a casino economy, a betting economy, with no real wealth behind the charade, rather an awful lot of suffering for all the people who weren’t invited to this outrageous banquet of financial transfers from poor to rich countries. World inequality grew at a staggering rate.

IPS: Some South American presidents have been invited to the Forum in Belém do Pará. Can you tell us anything about this: will they take part? And which presidents have confirmed their participation? CG: I know that Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Fernando Lugo (Paraguay) were invited by Vía Campesina to events organised by that particular group. I don’t think Lugo is coming, but Chávez and Evo have said they would be here.

IPS: In this version of the Forum how can we expect the two approaches within the WSF to manifest: one that defends the Forum as an opportunity for social movements, and another that seeks greater political leverage, and to create a political organisation? CG: We’re certainly going to have an important debate about the Forum and its future. This movement was created to counteract neoliberal globalisation, which now that it’s in crisis changes our whole outlook. So we have to move forward, that’s certain, although the debate is if we do so as a political organisation or as an open space. That’s the discussion. I think that the group, or groups and organisations that defend the nature of the open space are in the majority.

You can also see that we’re talking about the challenge of constructing a new political culture, and opportunities to deal with issues that the Left in general, which is still a Left founded on an international socialist movement, didn’t have access to, such as considering diversity as a cornerstone of the Forum. This involves women and the issues of indigenous communities, which are not the past but rather may be the future.

Or the issue of climate change, for example, and the environmental crisis, or ethnic problems such as in Brazil, where half the population is condemned to extreme poverty due to very strong racial prejudices. This isn’t admitted but it exists.

IPS: Lastly, I’d like you to tell me about the relationship between this WSF and the mass media, because there’s going to be a considerable coverage by the community media and media linked to the movements going to Belém do Pará, however: what impact can we expect on the editorial content of large circulation newspapers and on world television and radio channels and networks? CG: The point of making an impact on the mainstream media and large media outfits is to reflect an event of international importance that is held in a far-off city that not everyone can go to: however, the community radio and alternative media and newspapers that we have do offer a public and alternative space for such dissemination. We’re not organized well enough to compete against the dominant forces of the media, so we need to create events that are able to encroach into the mass media and create a news impact, such as the good news about what we’re doing so that people in the outside world know that there are people just like them thinking about real alternatives.

This is really difficult, though, because right from the beginning, the mass media was in Davos and was not on our side. It forms part of the World Economic Forum, which we oppose. Maybe now with the crisis they’re going to pay more attention to us.

(*This story was published by the independent daily TerraViva of IPS at the World Social Forum in Belem.)

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