Should the World Social Forum get political?
By Betsy Bowman & Bob Stone (April 21, 2006)

The 6th World Social Forum held January 24-29 in Caracas, Venezuela, was the highlight of our recent turn through Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela as "revolutionary tourists" (a phrase of Chavez's we explain below). Our first Forum-a combined festival, reunion and "world parliament in exile"-felt truly global, even if the largest delegations came from Venezuela, Brazil and Colombia.

DANCING AT CARACAS WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 2006: Spontaneous celebrations, such as this one outside the modern Teatro Teresa Carreño, took place every day of the Forum and into the nights.

The slogan of the World Social Forum (WSF) movement-"another world is possible"-is not universally loved. "Another Slogan is Possible" said some signs at the European Social Forum in Florence in 2002. But it has stuck since the first WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001. French and Brazilian opponents of corporate globalization, meeting in Paris in February 2000, needed to maintain momentum after the great 1999 Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization-the event that first focused world attention on alter-globalization struggles." How about a counter to the January World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland?" they asked. They chose Porto Alegre, birthplace of "participatory budgeting," since it showed that "Another World Is Possible." 

Participatory budgeting is a simple idea: a city's citizens, not just its politicians, get to help allocate each year's capital expenditures budget. Delegates from all sorts of neighborhood associations and civic groups meet regularly to prioritize spending on streets, education, whatever. Before and since 2001, the core concept of such budgeting-local, in-person, democratic control of the pertinent group's economic life-has permeated "alternative" economics.

Such budgeting shows that government can support civil society without favoring private interests. And it allows the non-market social property typical of voluntary associations-that is, the middle term between individual and public property-to prove that it can meet needs and empower communities. Multinationals are short-circuited when ordinary citizens get such solidarity-based economic power. And it works! Porto Alegre's practice has led to budget surpluses, scores of successful worker co-ops, UNESCO designation as a model city, and emulation in Canada, Scotland and elsewhere.

Except for one in Mumbai, India, and excluding the many regional forums, all previous WSFs have been in Porto Alegre. To emphasize the movement's global inclusiveness, the 2005 leadership decided to have a "polycentric" forum this year. The first such "center" for the forum was in Bamako, Mali, January 19-23, then 24-29 in Caracas, and then March 24-29 in Karachi, Pakistan. Drawing about 10,000, 70,000 and 30,000 participants, respectively, this year's total equaled the roughly 100,000 attendance at 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.

Should the WSF become political? Venezuela demonstrates that global justice movements can leave society's margins and take state power. In part because of Venezuela's hosting, a key debate at this WSF was over whether (and how) to "draw up strategies of power in an offensive to build a better world," as Venezuelan President Chavez proposed. It would be a new turn. 

CANADIAN PEACENIKS IN CARACAS: Wearing a Condoleeza Rice mask and posing for photos in the crowded Hilton Hotel lobby, the pink slip of the person on the left reads: "Drop Bush not bombs www.pinkslipbush.org "

Created by social movements, not political parties, the WSF has stuck to its founding charter as "an open meeting place where social movements, networks, 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 too "NGO-ized" and shy of joint action, as Ahrundati Roy complains? 

Chavez, speaking at the Assembly of Social Movements, a coalition of 300 groups and networks central to the WSF, said "it [the WSF] must not become an activity for revolutionary tourists. We must have diversity and autonomy, but also unity in a great anti-imperialist front." Opposing politicization, WSF activist Candido Gryzbowski warned "there should not and cannot exist an Inquisition or Politburo to dictate what is correct and what is erroneous." 

We find this debate misplaced. Granted: "drawing up strategies … for an offensive" is a military project when a social one is needed. But Gryzbowski imagines the worst: that the "front" Chavez urges might tragically repeat authoritarian socialism. It might. But forewarned is forearmed. The WSF has already taken big joint actions. The global anti-Iraq war protest of February 15, 2003, the largest demonstration of any kind in history, was called and planned in social forums, and it effectively delegitimated the war. Some want to debate how social movements can keep their autonomy while pursuing political ends. But the issue seems settled. The so-called "new European left" is currently showing how, succeeding at political projects while rooted in social movements. The debate should not be over whether to take joint-and inevitably political-action, but over what kind of such action to take. 

The best use of the WSF, it seems to us, is not as forum for social movements, or as a springboard for a "new international" that can take state power-though we do not oppose those uses-but as an ever-expanding workshop that is actually constructing "another world." 


This applies especially to the coordinating of solidarity economies. The new solidarity economies have developed to the point where they are forming regional organizations for mutual aid and connecting with both South-South and North-South movements, some existing, some in formation. 

For example, the Ibero-American Network for Integration of Cooperatives and Organizations of Social Production (Red Iberoamericana de Integracion de Cooperativas y Organizaciones de Produccion Social) had just formed in Caracas in late 2005. Parallel to but separate from national bodies for co-ops, fair trade, social currencies, credit unions and micro-credit, many Red members at the WSF had recently cooperativized investor-owned firms. The main committee had delegates from networks in Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador.

Delegates from national and regional solidarity economy organs-especially in Europe and Africa-meet at all WSFs to share problems of advocacy, markets and the like. Their International Network for the Promotion of the Social Solidarity Economy, RIPESS; www.ripess.net  is one of the main global coordinators of solidarity economies. Another is the Workgroup on a Solidarity Socio-Economy (WSSE), a network mostly in the global South for mutual aid among grassroots actors and researchers who generate "strategies for socio-economic transformation." It is part of Alliance 21, a major global justice movement player.

These were just the meetings we attended. There were many others. The WSF has become, in short, a solidarity economy alternative to Davos and the capitalist economy. The WSF even stands a chance to become what George Monbiot calls "the world parliament in exile," a growing workshop of the world's peoples that will not need the investment bankers.