Post-Marx From Mumbai

MUMBAI, India. -- The World Social Forum successfully channeled the energies of global justice and anti-war forces last week, while continuing to struggle toward a positive alternative that gives meaning to the phrase, "another world is possible."

The Forum was born in opposition to the entire alphabet soup of neo-liberal institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank, and the imposition of those neo-liberal policies by force in Iraq. It serves as a crucial outreach venue, or space, for action networks like Our World Is Not for Sale, which has led recent campaigns in Cancun and Miami against proposed trade agreements.

In addition, the Forum has touched a deep chord of global solidarity, as shown by the enthusiastic dancing, chanting and marching through Mumbai's streets at the close of this year's event. It is a rare achievement to bring together cosmopolitan intellectuals from the New Left Review with traditionally voiceless Dalits (untouchables), Adivasis (indigenous), and Brazil's landless movement.

The Forum seemed to realize, however awkwardly, that it cannot create a better world and once again leave out the Dalits or Adivasis, or demand that they change their cultural traditions as a condition for participating. In turn, the Dalits and Adivasis seemed to know from experience that there is another world filled with potential friends who support their survival. The result was a solidarity that went beyond the usual speeches and resolutions, a solidarity -- between the privileged and the damned, between people who might have inhabited different planets yet whose fates are inter-connected -- that seemed too fragile to maintain, yet too precious to give up.

The fact that the Forum, which originated in Brazil, could plant itself in the center of South Asia was an achievement in itself. The WSF organizers plan to return to Porto Alegre, Brazil, next year as the controversial deadline for concluding the Free Trade Zone of the Americans (FTAA) nears. The following year, the WSF expects to meet in Africa, perhaps in Egypt.

A New International

Since its inception, the Forum has raised expectations that it might become a "new international" replacing the traditional parties of the left, or a coordinating center for solidarity campaigns with workers, the landless, and indigenous groups excluded from the benefits of neo-liberalism.

Now the criticism is becoming public. From the ideological left comes the claim that the WSF has "no ideology, no organization, no alternative, no militant struggle, no programme," and is a tool of the Ford Foundation (which provided $500,000 to the first Forum and $300,000 for the second, but was rejected by the Indian organizers this year). Whatever their impatience with the Forum, however, most participants seem deeply averse to slipping into doctrinaire Marxism.

A wider criticism is that the new world is being made with too many old world habits. Speeches are invariably pedantic and too long, the ground covered is already familiar to the audience, and the time allotted for questions inevitably evaporates. Some leading Forum participants, like Naomi Klein, who did not attend this year, have proposed that anyone who speaks at a Forum should be forced to be a listener at the next one.

Others, like Vandana Shiva, complain that the WSF is beginning "to imitate the giganticism and centralized control of the dominant structures being challenged by citizens." Still others question the dominance of well-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) compared to struggling but effective grass-roots organizations. Many assert that the annual nature of the Forums drains and diverts resources from their local campaigns. They are promoting regional forums on every continent.

The most tender issue is how to manage the differences between those who ultimately favor political action with all its contradictions, like Brazil's triumphant Workers Party which grew out of social movements, and those who identify with the forces of direct action, land seizures and road blockades for the homeless, and disruptions of the WTO, FTAA and other bodies considered illegitimate.