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Choices for the World Social Forum

by John L. Hammond*
City University of New York, U.S.A.

Draft: Please do not cite, quote, or duplicate without author's permission.
Comments invited

Abstract: After six annual meetings, the World Social Forum is divided about its future. Some insist on maintaining the present structure and focus on the forum as a space for dialogue and an expression of civil society, without any program outside the meetings themselves. Others want to take advantage of the forum's size and energy for specific political action. This article examine two issues which underlie the debate: the value of organizing on the terrain of civil society and the functions and powers of the state in the globalized world.

After six annual meetings, the World Social Forum faces major decisions about its future. Especially since 2004 the forum has seen vigorous debate about what it should be and how it should engage the world to realize its slogan "Another World is Possible." It was founded as a space for dialogue and debate, not a movement, and the founders explicitly foreswore any drive for programmatic unity. But many activists have grown impatient with the idea of a mere debating society or a bazaar of progressive causes and are calling for something more: a unified body to undertake coordinated political action.

The forum has met in Porto Alegre , Brazil , in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2005; in Mumbai , India , in 2004; and in a "polycentric" meeting intended to take place simultaneously in Caracas , Venezuela ; Bamako , Mali ; and Karachi , Pakistan in 2006. The meetings are held in January to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos , Switzerland , which the social forum was created to challenge. Every year it has brought together tens of thousands of people (155,000 in 2005) from the world's social movements and nongovernmental organizations, pursuing many agendas, whether for women's equality, small-scale worker-controlled enterprise, public health, community-controlled schools, or any of a host of other causes.

Attending the WSF is an invigorating experience. The scene bursts with energy as people who work on particular causes at home compare notes and strategies, managing to communicate across barriers of language, political orientation, and issue emphasis. Musicians and other performers entertain in the open air during the breaks, and dozens of organizations and publishers promote their projects and publications. The forum meetings are highly disorganized, probably inevitably with such large crowds (always bigger than expected) and the short time for planning and holding the meetings, but despite the frustrations, the disorganization intensifies the feeling of spontaneity and dynamism.

The assembled forces have been dubbed the "antiglobalization movement" by much of the press, but they reject the label. Opposed to neoliberal corporate globalization, they prefer to be thought of as the global justice movement. They favor a unified world, but one unified around common human values and respect for diversity rather than trade. They reject the dictation by international financial institutions (IFIs) and transnational corporations in the affairs of their countries. As the forum's Charter of Principles says, the WSF is

opposed to neoliberalism and to the domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism. . . . The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations' interests, with the complicity of national governments.

They join in opposition to the proliferation of the misnamed "free" trade agreements which, they believe, subject underdeveloped economies to unfair economic competition; more than that, many fear that free trade will cement US political control over their countries, exacerbating the pressure from the IFIs and US-based corporations. Combined with the subjection of domestic policy to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), critics fear that free trade threatens their national sovereignty.

Labor's representatives have been present every year, but they have not played a major role in the forum's debates. The Unified Workers' Confederation (CUT) of Brazil , linked to the Workers Party (PT), is part of the committee that has organized the Porto Alegre meetings. Trade unions and international organizations, notably the ICFTU and its affiliates, have used the forum as a venue for their own networking activities. But labor takes part in the forum in more or less the same way as did AFL-CIO unions at the Seattle protests in 1999: uncomfortably. The international trade union movement has had difficulty defining its relation to globalization and thus to the antiglobalization movement. The industrial and public employee unions which are its main components have been weakened by state shrinkage and industrial downsizing, and the union movement has yet to discover how to respond to the growth of informal and casualized employment that accompanies globalization.

The forum does highlight the "solidary economy," the many small, self-managed enterprises created by workers as an emergency response to unemployment but which also embody their urge to exercise control over their work. But these small shops do not have the funding or institutional support they would need to take a more active part in the forum.

Cross-cutting the specific issues is a commitment to the public good. Rejecting Margaret Thatcher's oft-repeated dictum that "there is no alternative" to transnational capitalism, they insist that another world is possible. These movements are dedicated to the proposition that the world's poor can only improve their condition through collective effort, not individually. At the forum they discuss strategies and programs for collective action.

But diversity itself is also a point of unity among the participants. They celebrate the fact that the forum brings together so many different people and groups, they proclaim their respect for the varying opinions expressed and for the many cultures visibly present, and they defend the right of all to differ with each other.

These events bear fruit afterward in regional, national, and local social forums and in international meetings of special interest groups organized around particular themes. Major international protests against war and capitalist-dominated global institutions have been planned at the forum's sessions. While the social forum does not have a monopoly on either of these causes, it has offered an occasion for meeting, strategizing and laying the groundwork for massive demonstrations.

The idea of a world conclave was hatched in Paris in 2000 when two Brazilian activists, Francisco ( Chico ) Whitaker and Oded Grajew, met with Bernard Cassen. Whitaker, of the Justice and Peace Service, an arm of the Brazilian Catholic Church, and Grajew, an industrialist and children's rights advocate, were close to (but did not represent) the Workers' Party, while Cassen was a member of the editorial collective of the monthly Le Monde Diplomatique and a leader of the Association for the Tobin Tax to Aid Citizens (ATTAC, later renamed Action for the Taxation of International Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens), an international movement based in France to promote the Tobin tax, a proposed tax on international capital movements that would make southern countries less vulnerable to capital flight. Together they came up with the idea to bring together all the forces opposed to neoliberal globalization around the world.

They decided to hold the meeting in Porto Alegre , famous for its participatory budget pioneered by the PT city government (in office from 1989 to 2004). In Porto Alegre , local community assemblies debate the allocation of public investment and elect delegates to a citywide council which sets priorities for the city's capital budget and recommends specific projects to the city council. Whitaker and Grajew invited eight Brazilian organizations to join an Organizing Committee to plan the first forum. It was far more successful in attendance and enthusiasm than its organizers had dared to hope. The Organizing Committee (later renamed the Secretariat) then created an International Council of leading activists and intellectuals, mostly to the left of the Organizing Committee. These two bodies are the maximum authority of the social forum and have laid the plans for the subsequent meetings, but they have not always agreed.

Contradictions of Global Organizing

Even though the people and organizations represent a broad array of sectors and issue emphases, there is very little disagreement among them about what they stand for: opposition to war and corporate domination of the global economy, social justice for the world's poor, authentic participation by all in governance, and cultural diversity. But there are deep divisions over what the World Social Forum itself should be‑-a space open to all comers, a prefiguration of the possible future world, or a united and militant political force. In the years after the first meeting, many activists complained that the forum was organized from the top down. They demanded that it practice internal democracy so as to realize in its own councils and deliberations the participatory model that it called for in the governance of countries and global institutions.

But the social forum poses an organizational problem. Size and format conspire against democracy. The issues are not only logistical but political. A global movement has to be big, but the social forum bursts at the seams. It is a challenge for tens of thousands of people to come together in the same space for a short time and accomplish anything. The plenaries held in a stadium seating 15,000 people at the early meetings only allowed one-way communication. Even many of the smaller workshops held in classrooms and tents followed a hierarchical model: a panel faces an audience, gives prepared talks, and leaves little time at the end for the audience to respond.

In response to accusations of political insensitivity and monopolizing the event, the Organizing Committee has made some changes meant to decentralize and democratize the proceedings. Since 2005 it has not sponsored sessions; rather, other groups, organizations, and movements have been invited to organize sessions on the themes and with the speakers that they chose. It erected a "Wall of Proposals," a bulletin board where any individual or group could tack up a proposal to be considered by the entire group. The decision to meet on three continents in 2006 was also meant to bring the forum closer to its constituents. Over time the debate about internal democracy has been sidelined, partly because the forum has to some degree reformed and decentralized its structure, partly because many of the more vigorous advocates of participatory democracy have stopped attending.

The debate about political action, on the other hand, has become more intense. In 2003 some did not welcome the newly elected President Lula of Brazil because his presence signalled too much entanglement with state-level politics. In each of the subsequent three years, the defenders of political action have made what others have seen as power plays to move the forum more toward political action.

As early as the second Porto Alegre meeting, the "Social Movements' Manifesto" issued by some of the major social movements participating in the forum called for demonstrations around the world on May Day, International Women's Day, and other major commemorations and at several scheduled meetings of world leaders and international institutions scheduled for 2002. At the Mumbai forum, the Assembly of Social Movements‑-created to take the very political stands that the forum as a whole foreswore‑-resolved to organize political actions with its "Call of Social Movements and Mass Organizations." A ringing declaration of principles on many fronts, it invoked Chiapas, Seattle, Genoa, and Cancún, and issued a call to "all people," "all citizens of the world," and "everybody" to join mobilizations against the war in Iraq and to support other causes promoted at the Mumbai forum.

Chico Whitaker, cofounder of the forum, accused the authors of a "coup," seizing the microphone at the closing plenary, attempting to "reduc[e] the whole richness and diversity of the forum to a single proposition," and presenting the assembly to the media as if it were authorized to speak for the forum as a whole. He tried to get the International Council to declare that the call did not represent the whole World Social Forum, but the council made no such pronouncement. Whitaker, probably the most vocal advocate for keeping the forum an open space, insists that it has never adopted and should not adopt a final document at any session to avoid the freezing of positions or the appearance of obligating participants to any specific follow-up action.

In 2005 nineteen prominent participants published a new call for action in Porto Alegre on January 29, the next to last day of the forum. Most of the signers were members of the International Committee, and all but one were men. They called their statement the "Porto Alegre Consensus," but it turned out to be anything but. Few of the planks of their platform were controversial among forum participants‑-in the economy, they demanded debt cancellation for developing countries, full employment, fair trade, food sovereignty, and no privatization of water; in politics, they called for full democratization of international organizations, the dismantling of foreign military bases, and an end to destruction of the environment, especially action to prevent climate change. But the signers evidently hoped it would be endorsed by the forum and would become the basis of political action.

Most of the gossip on the last day was about this declaration. It divided the forum along the already well-known lines and many who resisted the suggestion that the forum should be reorganized as a militant, coordinated body resented that a self-designated group should declare a "consensus" (Terra Viva, 2005).

The debate continued in 2006. Even before the forum met, Ignacio Ramonet, a leader of ATTAC, argued that a move to coordinated political action was necessary to maintain momentum:

One could see [in Porto Alegre in 2005] 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 create the conditions to move on to political action,] it runs the risk of depoliticization and turning into folklore.

The debate flared at the Bamako and Caracas sessions of the polycentric forum this year. In Bamako , the day before the forum opened, a group of European and African intellectuals held a seminar to commemorate last year's fiftieth anniversary of the Bandung Conference where the movement of nonaligned nations was born. They issued a statement they called the "Bamako Appeal" and sought to have it adopted by the Bamako forum, but without success. Like the Porto Alegre "Consensus," its principles were unassailable and its proposals for action somewhat vague, but it was regarded by its opponents as a heavy-handed attempt at usurpation.

The calls for political action at Porto Alegre and Bamako came from self-selected groups of intellectuals who have been prominent and vocal at the social forum. At Caracas , the call arose more from the grass roots, especially the supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. The political context favored the advocates of action: the recent string of leftist electoral victories in Latin America --culminating in the election of Evo Morales, inaugurated as president of Bolivia two days before the opening of the forum --gave new impetus to the demand to organize common political action.

Meeting in the home of Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution also favored their cause. Some organizers, wary of Chávez's populist rhetoric and military background, had been reluctant to hold the meeting there. But his supporters presented his welfare-oriented social programs and anti-imperialism as a model for the policies they wanted to promote in other countries. The Chávez government subsidized the Caracas forum heavily, offering meeting space, sound equipment, and even free subway fare to participants displaying their forum badges, and used the event to show off its progressive measures.

The debate over the future of the forum was laid out in a major session where Cândido Grzybowski, a member of the Brazilian Organizing Committee and the director of the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE), a leading NGO, faced off against Jacobo Torres, chair of the Venezuelan facilitating committee for the Caracas meeting and international coordinator of the Bolivarian Labor Force, the pro-Chávez trade union federation. Grzybowski argued that the forum should not try to exert authority centrally over the actions of its participants, while Torres said that social movements pursuing the offensive against neoliberalism, war, and militarization must consolidate their successes and link up with the processes on the ground that are producing progressive governments.

The Assembly of Social Movements sponsored several sessions in Caracas and laid out a program of struggle for 2006, calling for an international day of protest against the Iraq war in March and major demonstrations at the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg in August and the September annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF in Washington. Because the assembly held a well-attended session to adopt the program on Sunday morning, the last day of the Caracas meeting, it could have been taken as the closing plenary and the adoption of a final declaration by the forum as a whole.

The Underlying Issues

As I have said, participants in general have similar views on most of the issues before the forum, although the vague wording of some statements of political position may cover divisions over some of these issues. There are deep differences, however, over the nature of the forum itself. The question is usually framed in terms of practical programs, but positions seem to reflect two important underlying differences of principle which are not always clearly articulated. One has to do with the nature of civil society, and the other with the relevance of the state in a globalized world. Both these issues raise strategic questions for social movements within and outside of the social forum.

For some, the social forum represents the apex of global civil society; the principal virtue of civil society is its autonomy from state structures. Progressives around the world rediscovered civil society organizations in the late twentieth century when they were prominent in struggles to confront and overthrow dictatorial regimes in Latin America and the former Soviet bloc. Many advocates view civil society as the terrain in which citizens can debate and deliberate, free of the constraints imposed by the struggle for power. Civil society is plural, open to all comers. Political action would necessarily entangle them with the state and would violate the principles of free discourse that should prevail. Even after the dictatorships have fallen, they remain wary that their organizations (including the NGOs that are the most active participants and promoters of the WSF) will be coopted by too close identification with any government, however progressive. They believe that their movement should be independent of the state‑-if not antagonistic.

The second issue has to do with the relevance of the state. Some argue that globalization has steadily eroded its power. In this view, the state, having lost power to international financial institutions and multinational corporations, is on the verge of becoming obsolete.

Some who hold this view conclude that international institutions exercise so much power that they must become the real target of attack; others, that struggle should shift out of the political sphere to cultural contestation. But the common premise of these different strategic implications is that political attack targeted on the state is increasingly irrelevant. Rejecting the state as a target of action also reinforces the emphasis on the voluntaristic, decentralized organizations of civil society, rather than the coordinated, top-down structure of political parties which mirrors the organization of the state and seems to be required to confront it.

The logical conclusion, for those who embrace civil society and dismiss the state, is that the forum should steer clear of overtly political action. But others challenge both the autonomy of civil society and the demise of the state. Advocates of independent action in civil society appear not to offer a clear strategic alternative, and to ignore the fact that many nongovernmental institutions (including some that are active in the social forum) are thoroughly entangled with the state, whether as lobbyists, channels for state-funded social programs, or antagonists.

Perhaps more important, organizations claiming the civil society label are also claiming to be legitimate representatives of the population as a whole‑-in the rhetoric of some, their claim is superior to that of the state. But it seems to be based on little more than self-appointment.

Not only is the legitimacy of their self-selection questionable; it obscures an important aspect of social relations inside the social forum. The discourse of civil society implicitly claims that all are equal, but in fact people do not associate as equals. The forum is pervaded by class differences. Though the elites within the movement place themselves in solidarity with the oppressed, the forum reproduces the hierarchy that it fights against on a world scale. The divide is in part mapped geographically between North and South. The cost of attendance introduces an obvious bias -- only some can afford a plane ticket. There is also a striking gender imbalance at the forum's sessions -- not in participants but in featured speakers.

If differences of ethnicity, culture, and gender are held to be legitimate bases for diversity of orientation and interest, class differences are not. It is paradoxical, of course, that class-based divisions should be so stark within a broad global movement dedicated to equality and to a better life for the planet's poor majority. And the affluent northerners who claim to side with the poor regard themselves as oppressed, beleaguered, and lacking the economic resources they need to carry out their work. But they are clearly privileged relative to those in whose name they wish to act. With better access to the media and to funding, they can more easily promote their views and define the meaning and political direction of the forum.

The alleged obsolescence of the state can also be challenged. Global processes have indeed weakened the power of states, but some argue that the state, far from being eclipsed, is still the locus for the major policy decisions. In particular, the world's sole superpower is a state exercising dominance over other states‑-sometimes precisely through the global institutions which, far from demonstrating the eclipse of the state, are its instruments. As the United States' push for world domination is increasingly undisguised and increasingly unilateral, it must be confronted as a state‑-which means it must be confronted by other states (though not only by other states).

Nation states negotiate to shape the international institutions. But opposition must also come from concerted popular action. States opposing US-dominated globalization defend their own national sovereignty, but not necessarily the interests of their people. For that reason the state too must be a target of political action and movements must be organized at the national level to confront the state. Furthermore, the state is potentially more responsive to the pressure of popular movements than are the international institutions, and struggle must therefore be waged on the terrain of state power. Just as locally- and nationally-based social movements must target the state, so the global social movement represented at the forum must take common action against the states of its constituents.

The opponents of political action, however, counter that the forum cannot become the instrument for concerted action because it has no authority to give orders to its constituents. It is heterogeneous and determinedly pluralistic; all those who agree with the principles of the Charter are entitled to participate without taking on any further obligations. Chico Whitaker has often proclaimed that the forum's great virtue is that it issues no final, binding document.

A more practical objection to converting the forum into a unified political instrument is that different national contexts require different strategies and different forms of action. Advocates of common political action have not offered a clear strategy or shown how the international instrument‑-to be forged‑-should act when it confronts state governments of different political leanings. As I have shown, the major calls for political action issuing from the sessions of the forum (such as the Porto Alegre Consensus and the Bamako Appeal), beyond calling for internationally coordinated antiwar protests, do not spell out how they want the international political force to act.

Yet even some who are uncomfortable with the calls to militant action are palpably dissatisfied with the present limits. They want to go beyond being a "space." Hilary Wainwright, editor of the British left journal Red Pepper, noted "a profound political frustration" after the 2005 forum and asked, "How could the strength of moral arguments and the movements behind these arguments be turned into effective sources of transformative power?" Others who resist some of the more radical proposals for political action are nevertheless also clearly not satisfied that the forum should merely be a "space." The challenge is to find ways to struggle collectively while preserving individual groups' autonomy.

So there is a tension that François Houtart, director of the Tricontinental Center in Louvain , Belgium , and a member of the forum's International Committee, has semiseriously characterized as between "an activists' Woodstock " and the "fifth international." But no one wants to destroy what the forum has become. The debate will probably go on, without any resolution except compromise and indecision. It would be difficult to combine the heady, open-ended experience of the forum with concerted political action. The loosely structured but invigorating experience has inspired the enthusiasm of many who have attended, whereas firm political stands might disaffect many of them and undercut the openness and pluralism that have been the forum's hallmark.

The procedure adopted in recent forums attempts to satisfy all parties: the Assembly of Social Movements, functioning inside the forum, issues calls for action, and the forum serves as a central place for political debate and organizing. Meanwhile the advocates of civil society deny that the Assembly represents the forum as a whole, allowing the forum to maintain its pluralist character and avoid formally taking stands that might alienate some participants.

It may not really matter, in any case, because many who draw so much inspiration from participating do not have to pay attention to this debate that goes on at the summit. The debate mainly engages participants from the North, or others who are in close contact with them through international NGO network connections. Despite high-profile encounters in some forum sessions, it is mostly waged in print and on the Internet before and afterward, and does not much affect the thousands of participants who come from smaller grassroots organizations or who simply show up on their own.

Those who come moved by a single issue can give their presentations, compare notes with others from other countries who share their concerns, and be satisfied. What goes on in the small workshops (and in the corridors) is far more important to them than the decisions made ahead of time or the disputes in the large plenaries. And those who come on their own, of whom there are many, come primarily as consumers of information. They have no opportunity to deliberate or influence decisions, but neither do they have an ongoing organizational commitment which would give them a stake in the forum as an expression of global civil society.

Neither group has much need to take sides, and ambiguity is probably the best way for the forum to retain their loyalties. Accordingly, there will be sessions to discuss political action but the forum will maintain its neutrality and welcome all who endorse a few basic principles. That way, all participants can rejoice in the forum's heady experience of interaction, learning, and networking, charge their batteries and return home to continue to fight their many battles independently. They are happy to live the exhilarating experience of global solidarity, tangible in their interaction with others from around the world. They get energized to continue spreading the message and fighting against war and for social justice and popular sovereignty in their communities and in their countries.

* John L. Hammond is the author of Fighting to Learn: Popular Education and Guerrilla War in El Salvador (Rutgers University Press, 1998) and Building Popular Power: Workers' and Neighborhood Movements in the Portuguese Revolution (Monthly Review, 1988). He teaches sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center , City University of New York. jhammond@hunter.cuny.edu

NOTES

. The Karachi meeting was postponed to March because Pakistani NGOs were too busy providing relief for the victims of the Kashmir earthquake in October to organize it by January.

. World Social Forum. Charter of Principles. <http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.php?id_menu=4&cd_language=2>.

. Santos , Boaventura de Sousa. 2003. The World Social Forum: Toward a Counter-Hegemonic Globalization. www.ces.fe.uc.pt/bss/documentos/wsf.pdf

. Cassen, Bernard. 2004. Inventing ATTAC. In A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible? Edited by Tom Mertes, 152-74. London : Verso; Whitaker, Francisco. World Social Forum: origins and aims. 2002. http://www.tni.org/socforum‑docs/origins.htm

. John L. Hammond, "Another World Is Possible: Report from Porto Alegre ." Latin American Perspectives, 30, No. 3 (May, 2003), 6.

. Hammond , "Another World is Possible", 10.

. William F. Fisher and Thomas Ponniah, editors, Another World is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum ( London : Zed Books, 2003), 346-53.

. Assembly of the Social Movements, Call of Social Movements and Mass Organisations. Mumbai , India , January 2004. http://www.attac.info/mumbai2004/index.php?NAVI=1016‑115440‑14e6E

. Heikki Patomäki and Teivo Teivainen, "The World Social Forum: An Open Space or a Movement of Movements?" Theory, Culture & Society 21, No. 6 (2004), 148-49.

. Whitaker, World Social Forum: origins and aims; interview, March 9, 2006 .

. Manifiesto de Porto Alegre : Doce Propuestas para Otro Mundo Posible. http://www.llacta.org/organiz/coms/2005/com0049.htm

. Ramonet, Ignacio. 2006. Caracas . Le Monde Diplomatique, January.

. The Bamako Appeal. February 13, 2006 . http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bamako.html

. Hammond, John L. The Possible World and the Actual State: The World Social Forum in Caracas . Latin American Perspectives. 33, No. 3 (May, 2006), 122-131.

. Call from the Social Movements Assembly, January 29, 2006 . http://www.alternatives.ca/article2395.html

. Kenneth Anderson and David Rieff, "'Global Civil Society': A Sceptical View." In Global Civil Society 2004/5, edited by Helmut Anheier et al. London : Sage Publications, 2005, 29-30.

. Hilary Wainwright, "World Social Forum on Trial." Red Pepper (March, 2005). http://www.redpepper.org.uk/socialforum/x-mar2005-wainwright.htm

. Patomäki and Teivainen, 151; Heather Gautney, WSF  Left Forum Discussion. Left Forum, New York , March 10, 2006 .

. François Houtart, "Changed Landscape of the Campaign for Social Justice." Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2003.

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