WSF, necessary shifts
02/03/2004
- Opinión
The World Social Forum emerged as a result of the mobilizations
against neoliberal globalization and as an international space for
reflection and organization of those who oppose to neoliberal
polices or are building alternatives to prioritize human development
and the overcoming of market supremacy in each country and in the
international relations and, at the same time, a space for the
coordination of struggles and movements.
Four years later, both the WSF development and the coordination of
struggles and movements have put on the table the need for
reflection on the WSF itself and its relation to the social
movements. A reflection that, though it has been part of the debates
at the International Council, has gained public projection both in
the last European Social Forum and the WSF celebrated in Mumbai.
The debate on the Forum is part of a more general reflection on how
to generate, from the common perspective of radical criticism to
neoliberalism, spaces of inclusion that could be useful both to go
deepen in the reflection and better definition of our critic,
alternatives and strategy against the neoliberal model, and to make
the WSF an useful tool to advance in the coordination among
movements and struggles to oppose neoliberalism and war.
These two sides of the equation are indisociable: the WSF only makes
sense and has a future in the sense that it feedsback the struggles
against neoliberal globalization and is a relief to them, allowing
to mix in its interior non deliberative spaces, such as the
Conferences, seminars, panels, etc, with other more deliberative
ones as the selforganized activities within the WSF, promoted by
diverse social movements. Amogst them is the Social Movements
Assembly, which has bee a reference mark in the struggle against
neolibreal globalization in the past years, because from it have
been promoted the mobilizations sich as Quebec against the FTAA, or
the one in Cancun agaist the WTO, besides Genoa and the February
15th , and that after all, have been one of the central aspects of
legitimation of the WSF as a reference in the struggle against the
system.
There are many questions that the four years experience of the WSF
raise; however our intention is not to make a detailed assessment,
but to focus on what we consider the main three points towards the
future of the WSF: the ones that refer to the WSF structure, its
periodicity and the role fo the International Council, which is the
permanent structure between forums.
I
The experience in Mumbai has been useful to prove that the WSF is
possible out of Porto Alegre, that its open character facilitates
the integration of a broad plurality of many social movements, feeds
the social mobilization and makes clear that the WSF globalization
is not only possible but also necessary. Besides, it has made clear
that the organization of the WSF is possible with distinct
parameters in relation to those that had been used in Porto Alegre:
to have a presence and visibility of the most oppressed social
sectors, to block the space for sources of money that compromise the
Forum, etc. Mumbai has also showed that there are movements that
oppose neoliberalism but do not feel comfortable with the working
and acting procedures of the WSF and that there are many spaces to
be built in order to integrate as much movements as possible.
But the four years experience also makes clear that the structure of
the WSF presents some deficiencies and needs some shifts:
* In the first place, with relation to the Conferences,
seminars and panels spaces. By the general rule, in these four
years, there hasn't been many advances further than the critic to
neoliberalism (with no built record of it so far), and we carry a
huge deficit regarding the reflection and confrontation around the
strategies of struggle in order to oppose the system and, besides,
the elaboration of alternatives, not understood as an intellectual
exercise of experts, but rather, as a process of reflection and
contrast built from the dynamics of the social movements struggles.
The process of building alternatives as the "food sovereignty" can
serve as reference to this matter, that we should start by defining
those issues in which, because of the urgency of the problems, as
well as because of the movements developments, could be approached.
In this sense, the Conferences, seminars or debate panels, would
have to combine both the reflection on the more actual issues or
non-approached aspects of reality (such as the cast system this
year…) form Forum to Forum, such as the confrontation on strategies
and alternatives of the movements.
Because as much as we go forward in the confrontation with the
system the debate on the alternatives, struggles strategies,
building of alliances and form of action gains an urgency and a
greater relevance; and the WSF can not turn its back on this
reality. If we do not want the WSF to exhaust in a repetitive
formula, its necessary that its activity is linked to the real
dynamics of the social movements and social struggles and that is
useful to advance in this areas.
Its not a matter of turning the WSF into a deliberative space that
decides among options under debate, nor of approaching the
alternatives elaboration through academic meetings that submit to
WSF a proposal to conclude as a alternative paradigm, the "Porto
Alegre consensus" against the "Washington consensus", but that,
preserving the open and plural character of the WSF, to begin a
common reflection on the concrete problems that the struggle against
neoliberalism and war faces and to move to the WSF the debates
present in the real dynamics of the movements, as way to move
forward in the building of alternatives in the distinct scales in
which this movement is expressed: global and local.
Alternatives based on the radical confrontation of the neoliberal
model that sacrifices the lives of peoples and the future of the
planet to benefit private property and god money in the name of free
market, and that avoid to be co-opted by the system.
This implicates, also, that the physic spaces, the Conference rooms,
should have a limited size and that to facilitate the participation
of people, its necessary that the proposals can circulate before the
Forum.
* Second, the notion that the conferences should be the
space for the presentation of personalities, makes a series of
unbalances that need correction to consolidate within the Forum.
From those related to personalities and movements activists to those
that exist among men and women, and those among the less represented
young generations, the invisibility of the social sectors most
affected by the system, the almost complete inexistence of certain
continents…, what makes that, with unlikely frequency these central
spaces within the Forum are converted into private space for
intellectuals and academics, that submerge into invisibility the
most affected social sectors and that kidnaps the participation of
social movements.
* Lastly, the relation with politics and the space to
political parties has been a field in which theory has not much to
do with reality.
Therefore, whereas the "Charter of Principles" excludes explicitly
the participation of political parties, the presence of the PT, of
institutional or government employees and, also, heads of state… and
a media overexposed projection have been a reality within the WSF.
It's clear that it's no longer possible to keep living this
contradiction and that it's necessary to coordinate a space of the
political parties and institutions in the framework of the WSF.
In those countries where the social mobilizations have shaken the
society the most, or the antiwar mobilizations, have put politics
and the relation among the social and the political in the first
place, and the relation among social movements and political parties
and the institutions in the center of the debate. This is a reality
to which one can not turn its back, but it's necessary to approach
it in a way that does not hurt the identity of the WSF.
II
The WSF periodicity and the location or, what is the same, where and
when it will occur is another of the key points towards its future.
Until now, it has been taking place every year, and despite the fact
that in the beginning the conclusion was that the Forum would
"circulate" throughout the planet, the reality is that the Forum
seems to be "attached" to Porto Alegre.
Nevertheless, the Mumbai experience has contributed to the future of
the WSF: contact with other realities, inclusion of social
movements, new dynamics; also, new problems (Mumbai Resistance, The
II People's Movements Encounter…), etc. and to this end it points
out the path to follow. The best is when the new culture that
presumes the accomplishment of the Social Forums (horizontality,
consensus, open and plural space…) allows to generate unified and
working dynamics and to feedback the mobilizations among the social
movements, as has occurred in India this year.
These are the reasons why it worries that, after a four years
trajectory and a broad umbrella of social movements actively and
stably participating in the WSF, the decision concerning where to
hold the Forum is limited to the framework of the International
Council, from which results incomprehensible that whenever the move
of the WSF to Mumbai was decided it was only with the condition to
go back to Porto Alegre, when this decision could have been left
open and/or directed to other continent and other country.
But besides this debate, which points out to us the need to
democratize the structure on which the World Social Forum is based,
is the debate of periodicity. To this end, we'd like to point out
that:
1. The extension, since a couple of years, of the WSF to the
Regional, Continental and Thematic Forums, in a tendency to ramify
to the local scales, exposes the problem of how to coordinate a
working dynamics between the distinct Forums. And in the present
context there is no reasons that justify the undertaking of many
annual Forums of different scales; otherwise, what is on the table
is the need to coordinate an agenda that is capable of linking the
different dynamics. Nowadays, the criteria of annual Forums results
in a overwhelming and unbearable amount of work to those local
social movements (right when the role of the Forums is to facilitate
their development), and can only be satisfactory to those who live
of, for and to the Forums.
2. The second and still in the sense of what has been said in
relation to the Forum structure, that we need to move forward
towards a debate on alternatives and strategies and a more
participatory Forum, that is capable of integrating new problems and
issues – the ones that emerge from one edition to another, but also
those that have not been approached yet –, to build such a Forum
demands a previous work of articulation and elaboration that can not
be accomplished in the present periodicity of the Forum.
3. Lastly, from the interest in moving the Forum to different
continents and countries (for what it means of enrichment to the WSF
itself as well as to the country where it takes place), to its
accomplishment it takes time (to establish relations with the local
social movements, to facilitate their integration dynamics…); and,
here as well, the periodicity of one year is a too short deadline.
For all this reasons we consider that the WSF should be celebrated
from 3 to 3 years. It would allow us to approach in better
conditions the Forums objectives, it would avoid that in some
continents (Europe) in few months we have to attend three Forums
(European, Mediterranean and World) and would allow to coordinate an
integrated agenda of Forums, from the WSF to the Forums in each
country. It's clear that this alternative includes the need to
promote these spaces both in the continental and in the many
national levels.
III
Regarding the International Council that tutors the undertaking of
the WSF with all the legitimacy granted by its history, it must not
be converted neither in a private space of those who constitute it
at the moment, nor in a closed space where what happens and what is
to happen in the WSF is dissolved. Otherwise, after four years, it's
time to create spaces of democratic participation, both in the
reflection on the future of the Forum (how to move forward in the
consolidation of this process), and in the decision making process
on the issues that affect it. And concerning these issues it results
a contradiction that the social movements, who constitute the spine
of the Forum, at the same time, except for some networks and some
very concrete social movements (Via Campesina, World March of Women,
CUT) are marginalized in these processes of refletion and decision
making.
Even more in moments when by the time that has passed and the
consolidation of the WSF itself, its future is under debate and in
which the International Council has been given executive functions
that deeply contrast with its central role: to facilitate the
accomplishment of the WSF and its development based on the criterias
with which it has been created and respecting the Charter of
Principles.
It's not a matter of questioning the representativity of those who
constitute the Council, but to coordinate a participatory process in
the definition of criterias to the WSF procedures (periodicity,
country, form, structure…), and to integrate in its structure the
assemblies and organizing committees of those Forums that have been
constituted during the past years, to integrate these experiences in
the building of the WSF. In any case it seems obvious the members of
Organizing Committees should be integrated that in the IC, and note
that this situation has not been acepted regarding the Indian
Committee, after the success of Mumbai.
To this point it results a countersense that one of the main demands
of this "another world possible" is the participatory democracy, and
at the same time in the preparatory meetings of the WSF we have
advanced very little in building this participatory democracy.
To conclude
We are all conscious that as time goes by and the more the Forum
consolidates itself, the risks of institutionalization and
instrumentalization raises. That's why the evolution and the future
of the WSF, its role in the struggle against neoliberal
globalization, its relation to the social movements and the role of
them in its development have to be permanet preocupation amongst us,
but avoiding to fall in the temptation to change its open and plural
character.
There are many aspects of this four years experience that would
deserve a more specific approach and many others that refer to its
future that would demand more time and space to be approched; in
this contribution we wanted to focus on those three points that seem
to us the most central to the immediate future. Knowing that the
important is not much if we are right or wrong in the presented
proposals, but that they contribute to promote the debate among the
social movements and to succeed that it flows to the International
Council and influences the future of the Forum.
But our attention can not be focused only in the future of the
Forum, because the Social Movements Assembly that occurs during it
has built and builds a central reference not only to those who
attend the Forums, but also to the push forward in the struggles and
in the development of new initiatives. And, to a large extent, one
of the WSF sources of legitimacy is found in the fact that the
agreements reached during this assembly have served to show the
utility of the Forum as a framework to develop in practice the
confrontation to neoliberalism, from a perspective of radical
proposals and the flexibility at the time of building alliances.
There is no dout that the reiforcement of the assembly, the steps
that we'll undertake in the building of ther social movements
international network and the correspondence of our agreements in
the global level to the local and regional spaces, are the best
guarantee to maintain the Forum in good road.
Because only as far as its development has as reference the social
struggles and approches the problems that the movements bring into
it, the Forum will not be at risk of atrophy, but it's also clear
that its opening to an umbrella of more broad and diverse social
forces will, at the same time, be source of contradictions and
tensions.
https://www.alainet.org/es/node/109527?language=es
Del mismo autor
- El Foro no es un fin en si mismo 28/01/2005
- FSM, cambios necesarios 02/03/2004
- WSF, necessary shifts 02/03/2004
Clasificado en
Clasificado en:
![Suscribirse a America Latina en Movimiento - RSS](https://www.alainet.org/misc/feed.png)