Given the mixed evaluations of the Nairobi Forum and the prospect for the first time in eight years of no international WSF meeting in 2008, legitimate questions arise about whether the Social Forum phenomenon is beginning to stall. This roundtable comes at an opportune time, then, to reflect on the state of the Forum.
Among its great achievements is the fact that the WSF has served both as the object of investigation and the subjective agent for some of the most provocative and forward-looking debates of contemporary Left politics, focusing critical attention on relationships among capitalism, neoliberalism, imperialism, militarism, racism, casteism, sexism and the like. Again, as both example and agent it has contributed to analyses of the nation state, civil society, and social movements; it has theorized (and been theorized as) new modes of sovereignty, subjectivity, collectivity and resistance.
Moreover, without shielding its eyes to the contemporary realities of oppression and immiseration, the WSF has refused to adopt a pragmatist “realism” that understands the common sense of global capitalism as inevitable and eternal, but has instead set its gaze toward a utopian horizon of possibility. Compelling as both slogan and organizing principle, this critical utopic project lies at the heart of the WSF’s rapid global ascendancy. Entirely without irony, though not without humor, the address to other possible worlds has produced a space and an ideal of collective participation that continues to draw together some of the most creative, committed activists and intellectuals working today.
This commitment to reflection, debate, and self-critique continues to flourish, as exemplified by the rich reader/sourcebook A Political Programme for the World Social Forum? Compiled recently by Jai Sen and others at the India Institute for Critical Action: Centre in Movement (CACIM), the volume serves as a framework for ongoing dialogue about the Bamako Agreement, itself an ambitious attempt to articulate a political platform for the WSF spearheaded by Samir Amin and the World Forum for Alternative (WFA).
In assessing the Forum’s greatest disappointments, many will point justifiably to the failure of “world public opinion” to stop the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or the inability of the social movements to hold the once-saintly Lula accountable to the needs of poor and working peoples during his uninspiring term as Brazilian president. Although such grand defeats surely sting forumistas, they can hardly be laid at the feet of the WSF alone.
I am more concerned about the capacity of the WSF’s organizing model to contribute substantively to the local struggles for justice and equality that underpin its broader critical-theoretical project. Undoubtedly some of the “star” social movement actors such as Movimiento Sem Terra, Via Campesino, Narmada Bachao Andolan, or the campaign for the Tobin Tax have gained increased (and warranted) global visibility and clout from their prominence within the WSF. I am less confident, however, that there are many concrete benefits of WSF participation for smaller organizations (particularly those unable to return annually), or that meaningful connections are being made between distinct issues and campaigns. (This segregation was given spatial form by the Thematic Terrains of the 2005 WSF.)
The decision to move to a two-year interval between international meetings reflects a wise concession to the resource strains placed on social movement actors who participate in the annual gatherings, not to mention those involved in organizing the complex logistics of such enormous events. I applaud the WSF’s decision to privilege the material concerns of this core social movement constituency. Nevertheless, unless those smaller local organizations are able to engage meaningfully with the ongoing reflective and organizing processes of the WSF during the intervals between events, a two-year cycle may only serve to exacerbate the disconnection between work “on the ground,” and the Forum.
The open space versus movement debate figures an irresolvable antinomy within the WSF. I recognize the deep appeal of horizontal collectivities and understand that within the WSF there will be inevitable resistance to the merest hint of a party platform delivered from on high. Nevertheless I think many within the WSF would eagerly throw their weight behind a shared political project. To my mind, the Bamako Appeal, with its strong but nuanced anti-capitalist critique, offers an excellent starting point for such a project, particularly if it can be opened for debate and amendment in the ways that CACIM suggests. Patrick Bond’s clear-eyed and persistent calls to build upon the coherent political platforms and expertise of established social movements in the Global South strikes me as a necessary first step for revising Bamako.
One hopes, then, that the antimony need not be disabling; that a double vision might yet emerge that is capable of envisioning both totality and particularity, both the ideal of horizontal, non-representational collectivity and the tactical efficacy of mass action. Here the WSF sails in uncharted waters. While it can surely draw inspiration and insight from earlier revolutionary movements -- CACIM offers one useful genealogy, from Marx’s Manifesto to Bandung to the Zapatistas -- no obvious precedents exist for the WSF’s unique amalgam of conceptual, geographical, organizational, and political ambitiousness.
The two-year cycle for international meetings may benefit not only those social movements stretched thin by the burdens of yearly meetings but also the institutionalization of the WSF itself. Longer periods between events may allow for more local collaboration and consultation, avoiding some of the divisions between organizers and local constituents that appear to have marred this year’s meeting in Nairobi. Less frantic conference planning cycles may also make it easier for the WSF to address its persistent issues with transparency in decision making and fundraising, something that will be necessary to ensure its institutional stability over the long haul. I would suggest as well, that the WSF consider returning to both Mumbai and Nairobi for future meetings. With a presence now established in Asia and Africa, it may be more useful to grow roots in these two global cities, connecting in a more sustained manner with the municipal, national, and regional infrastructures in a way that mirrors the WSF’s more “organic” connection with Porto Alegre.
The slow-down that the WSF is currently experiencing may indeed suggest a withering of the phenomenon, pressured by the burdens of institutional bureaucratization or political diffusiveness. Conversely -- and let us hope that this is the case -- a shift in the pace or time of the Forum process may offer an opportunity to set down deeper roots within local struggles, a parallel or supplemental organizing strategy that might productively ground the more spectacular, and spectacularly successful, forms of political mobilization that have been the Forum’s hallmark.
Bret Benjamin is an associate professor of English at SUNY Albany, author of Invested Interests: Culture, Capital, and the World Bank, and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org).
