---

Report to ISA, RC10 and RC20 concerning Session on 24 February 2021 at the International Forum of Sociology

 @1 background - @2call for abstracts - @3 according to E Wallerstein abstract -@4 according to E Wallerstein paper - @5 a movement or a space -@6  politics and utopian laboratory -  @7  according to Ashish - @8 transformative entrepreneurship - @9 dialogue as a problem in wsf - @10 online lexicon workshop  - @11  24th second discussion session - @1  chico 004  Gina 008 -  Chico 009 @15  Gina 017  Pierre 022 - @25   - @35 - @45 Ashish- Pierre

@1Background

The background of the RC10/RC26 session intersects with the history of the WSF. Walter Frantz and myself had mandate from RC10 to organize session sessions during the WSF events in 2001 and 2002. In fact, this session is one among several RC10 sessions organized by Erik and myself, in the context of ISA’s world congress of sociology with a focus on the WSF. The immediate background of the RC10/RC26 session of the future of the WSF was our concern about the observed shift from a situation of different opinions about the character of the WSF (open space - vs - action space) - to a situation of polarization, confrontation, polarization and group rivalry, which reached a point of virulence and power struggle. The previous lines provide a background to the organization and aim of this particular session, namely, to explore the possibility to solve this issue via dialogue - as opposed to confrontation.

This was and remains our motivation and objectives with this session. In this light, we invited ALL voices and key players to join this session, even though provisions were taken not to have them sit next to each other. Some said yes! and other key players refused to partake in this session, and went on to organize other sessions on "the future WSF." We were fortunate in our session to benefit from the participation and contributions from different views on the matter.

This happened to the extent that we organized an extended session out of the program. These two sessions lasted for about 4 hours, making it most likely the longest session in the whole program of the International Sociology Forum .

The proposal was made at the end of these sessions to compile and try to publish the proceedings, and to continue with this dialogue on the future of the WSF. This invitation remains open to persons willing to contribute to solve this pending issue in the spirit of dialogue based on truth, humbleness, and reconciliation. 

The report also includes the summary of the session in the program + the list of participants in both sessions + the 5 abstracts received for the original session + the materials sent by Vera (written document + power point) - Gabriela (video on her experience with dialogue at the first Virtual WSF 2021), Thomas (video), Ashish (2 written statements), Chico (10 pages in French), Pierre's notes from the extended session + Gina's recent written contribution. The floor is open if you wished to add more to this schema.

Azril, Uppsala 28 March 2021.

But not just a report, since the background of the RC10/RC26 session intersects with the history of the WSF since its very beginning in 2001, a documented fact that even some key players in RC10 would prefer to neglect.

 

@2 Session J-13 the Future of the World Social Forum. Call for Papers

24 February 2021 (18.15-19.45)
RC10 Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management (host committee)
RC26 Sociotechnics and Sociological Practice
Language: Spanish and English
Session Type: Oral

Since the beginning of the WSF as an alternative gathering of civil society (focused on the common good) to the WEF in Davos (focused on the neoliberal project of capitalist globalization), there was a tension between two visions on how to proceed: One advocating an "Open Space" and the other a more "organizational and movement of movements approach." This tension has not yet been resolved and the internal debate has become virulent. Thus, the WSF process which is more needed than ever, given the current crisis of democracy and the return of fascism, is nowadays being threatened not only by ideological dispute but also by polarization and personal rivalries between key historical actors. The question up for discussion in this session deals with the future of the WSF as a vital alternative to neo-liberal globalization and neofascism, in the context of the world crisis of the 21st century: dramatic climate warming, environmental devastation due to extractivism, militarism, accelerated global inequality, a vast migratory crisis and humanitarian catastrophe, crisis of democracy, growing xenophobia, racism and neo-fascism, and other matters that impinge on: planetarian survival and the construction of other possible worlds, in the era of Anthropocene?
Session Organizers:
Azril BACAL ROIJ, Uppsala University, Sweden, bazril@gmail.com
Erik LINDHULT, Sweden, erik.lindhult@mdh.se

 

 

@3  "The Future of the World Social Forum and other anti-systemic movements according to Emmanuel Wallerstein

Vera Vratuša – Belgrade University

 

This paper reconstructs the answer of Emmanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), sociologist, political economist and historian, theoretician of the world system of capitalist economy, empirical researcher of complex social problems like wars, education, health…,  as well as the spiritus movens of political activism in the realm of class fight for alternative and better human society, (dis)armament, ecology…, in short, Gramscian and Wright Millsian public intellectual, on the future of anti-systemic movements in general, and of the World Social Forum in particular. The main method used to achieve as much as possible exhaustive reconstruction of Wallerstein’s answer to the title question concerning the Future of the World Social Forum, presents the qualitative analysis of 500 Wallerstein’s commentaries which he planned and wrote twice monthly from Commentary No. 1, Oct. 1, 1998 to Commentary No.500,  some three months before his death. This paper is written in tribute to Emmanuel Wallerstein. Its main aim will be fulfilled if it induces like – thinking people to carry on to best of our ability immense theoretical, empirical and activist heritage Emmanuel Wallerstein bestowed us.    

Key Wards Wallerstein, World Social Forum, world system of capitalist economy, anti systemic movements

Vera Vratuša-Žunjić, Belgrade University, Faculty of Philosophy, Dpt. of Sociology

." El Futuro del Foro Social Mundial y otros movimientos antisistémicos según Immanuel Wallerstein (es)

 

Este artículo reconstruye la respuesta de Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), sociólogo, economista político e historiador, teórico del sistema mundial de economía capitalista, investigador empírico de complejos problemas sociales públicos como guerras, educación, salud ..., así como El espírituS movens del activismo político en el ámbito de la lucha de clases por una sociedad humana alternativa y poscapitalista, (des) armamento, ecología. En resumen, un  intelectual relacionado com Gramsci y Wright Mills, sobre el futuro de los movimientos antisistémicos en general, y del Foro Social Mundial en particular. El método principal utilizado para lograr, en la medida de lo posible, una reconstrucción exhaustiva de la respuesta de Wallerstein a la pregunta del título sobre el futuro del Foro Social Mundial, presenta el análisis cualitativo de 500 comentarios de Wallerstein que planeó y escribió dos veces al mes desde el Comentario No. 1, Oct 1, 1998 al Comentario No.500, 1 de julio de 2019, cuando decidió que sería el último comentario, unos tres meses antes de su muerte. Este artículo está escrito en homenaje a Immanuel Wallerstein. Su objetivo principal se cumplirá si induce a personas con ideas afines a continuar y desarrollar lo mejor que podamos nuestra inmensa herencia científica, empírica y activista social que Emmanuel Wallerstein nos otorgó, como unas especies de armas de investigación teórica y metodológica en la batalla por el mundo no capitalista, más justo, emancipado, democrático, inclusivo, igualitario, autogestionado y ecológicamente sostenible.

Palabras clave: Movimientos antisistémicos, Immanuel Wallerstein, Foro Social Mundial y Sistema Mundial de Economía Anticapitalista

 

@4 Vera’s Complete Paper, with an overview of the WSF from the perspective of I. Wallerstein

 

The Future of the World Social Forum and other anti-systemic movements according to Emmanuel Wallerstein

This paper reconstructs the answer of Emmanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019), sociologist, political economist and historian, theoretician of the world system of capitalist economy as well as the spiritus movens of political activism in the realm of class fight for alternative and better human society, (dis)armament, ecology…, in short, Gramscian and Wright Millseian public intellectual, on the future of anti-systemic movements in general, and of the World Social Forum in particular.

The main method used to achieve as much as possible exhaustive reconstruction of Wallerstein’s answer to the title question concerning the Future of the World Social Forum, presents the content analysis of 500 Wallerstein’s commentaries which he planned and wrote twice monthly from Commentary No. 1, Oct. 1, 1998 to Commentary No.500,  some three months before his death.

This paper is written in tribute to Emmanuel Wallerstein. Its main aim will be fulfilled if it induces like – thinking people to carry on to best of our ability immense theoretical, empirical and activist heritage Emmanuel Wallerstein bestowed us.    

Key Wards E.Wallerstein, World Social Forum, world system of capitalist economy, anti systemic movements

 

Wallerstein’s blog containing his bimonthly analyses of current events archived at the Fernand Braudel Center of the Binghampton State University in New York, presents rich source for research of application of Wallerstein’s theory of world capitalist economy in the analysis of actual historical phenomena within the context and global tendencies of the structural transformation of the world. Several times Wallerstein’s attention caught the appearance and the development of the World Social forum (WSF in future text).

The  first observations on the WSF Wallerstein published in the  Commentary No. 57 (Feb. 1, 2001), to which he gave catchy title "Davos vs. Porto Alegre: The World Soccer Cup?"

Wallerstein starts out from reconstruction of the social and historical context within which the WSF appeared. He begins by reminding readers that the grand neo-liberal global offensive against the gains that had been made by the world's populations in the post-1945 period in terms of social safety nets of the welfare state began in early 1970’s.

Since 1971 Davos, a Swiss ski resort, presents the symbol of this offensive of the world capital. In Davos yearly take place meetings of the rich and powerful, presidents, prime ministers, and CEOs of transnational corporations along with Establishment intellectuals and newspaper pundits, to discuss the economic state of the world. The people who came to Davos tended to agree with one another that the future bode well, if only everyone eliminated all barriers to the free movement of capital across the world. This so-called World Economic Forum is a privately-sponsored, profit-making enterprise so that it costs quite a bit of money to attend these meetings. The main purpose of Davos meetings is according to Wallerstein consulting with each other, creating the proper rhetoric, coordinating strategy, mutual self-congratulation and a vast propaganda operation via the world media.

Wallerstein demonstrates that this neoliberal wave had been successful since by the mid-1990s the principal Soviet regimes had been dismantled and the historic national liberation movements discredited or diminished. The rhetoric of development (not to speak of that of socialism) had been replaced throughout the world by the rhetoric of globalization to which, it was said, there was no alternative. The world's communist parties had become social-democratic parties, and the world's social-democratic parties now espoused a market liberalism that was only mildly watered down from that espoused by conservative parties.

Wallerstein however points out that neo-liberalism from the late 1990s was no longer quite as fashionable or as self-assured as it was before. The forces of Davos suddenly ran into trouble. The secretly-discussed Multilateral Accord on Investments, which would have made national legislation restraining foreign corporations illegal, was scuttled in 1998, in part by French opposition.

The following year, at Seattle, an unexpected coalition of environmentalists, the U.S. trade unions AFL-CIO and anarchists  demonstrated so massively  and vigorously against the launching of a new trade round by the World Trade Organization. so  that WTO could not proceed in November 1999. There followed then a series of demonstrations against WTO: Quebec, Nice, Gothenburg, Genoa - all successful according to Wallerstein.

Some people had the idea of organizing anti-Davos meetings simultaneously with Davos, and some others thought of disrupting the Davos meetings. In January 2000, group of some 50 intellectuals from around the world organized an "anti-Davos at Davos," seeking to get anti-neoliberal arguments a world press. The Davos meetings were also considerably disrupted by hostile demonstrators in 2000 and 2001 so that the Swiss police was mobilized in force, attempting to keep potential demonstrators from even reaching Davos. Since this effort was only partially successful, the police erected barbed-wire fences to seal off the conference center. The International Herald Tribune (IHT) published a picture of a Swiss policeman next to the barbed wire with a machine gun. And the correspondent of the Guardian exclaimed: "For several days, the 'Spirit of Davos' trumpeted by the organizers of the elite international business community resembled East Germany in the 1980s." In order to avoid demonstrations, organizers decided to move their meetings to safer places - to Doha in the United Arab Emirates for the World Trade Organization, to a remote Canadian mountain location for the G8, and to New York City from Davos for the World Economic Forum.

Wallerstein underlines that neo-liberal policies have been coming under some criticism not only from the left but from the right since the end of 1990s. He points out in the  commentary No. 34, (Feb. 15, 2000): "The Head of the IMF: A Secret Radical?", to the nervousness of some leading right-wing figures about the exaggerations of the International Monetary Fond economic policies like forced privatization, state  deregulation and trade liberalization, since they caused major social inequalities and the political restlessness in many countries. The last Director-General of the IMF himself indicated that they may have over-pressed their case. According to Wallerstein even the conservative IHT published a text headlined "The Specter of Social Accountability Hovers Over Davos." The World Bank which also played the major role in imposing devastating ”structural economic reforms” to debtor countries released a report entitled "From Safety-Net to Springboard," in which they advocated a social protection strategy for the world poor. Wallerstein compares such writings on the need for overcoming the world “divides” with a damaged ship throwing ballast overboard, but in order to keep the capitalist ship afloat.

Wallerstein points out as well to the changing relationship of economic forces in the western geopolitical arena where EU begins to rise in comparison to declining USA. This theme in Davos was well resumed by the text in the IHT entitled  " This is the Year of Europe." The Wall Street Journal Europe topped that with the title "Will This Be the European Decade?" This was not just an invention of the journalists. Republican Jim Leach (Iowa) was taken a bit aback by the sense of "equaling" between US and EU. The German Deputy Minister of Finance talked of Europe's "quiet self-confidence." And the Finnish commissioner for new technology and enterprise in the European Union practically gloated that the Americans are finding that "it's good to listen sometimes." Considering that in years past the Americans were noted (politicians, intellectuals, and journalists alike) for lecturing Europeans and Japanese on how they should be copying U.S. patterns faster than they were doing, this year's meeting is quite a turn around. In any case, in 2000, Bill Clinton attended Davos in person. Not only did George W. Bush not come in 2001 but he didn't send any of his new cabinet.

After the demonstrations against the WTO from 1999.  a momentum built up in the world struggle against neo-liberalism. And in February, 2000, two Brazilian leaders of popular movements, Chico Whitaker and Oded Grajew, went to Paris to talk to Bernard Cassen, Director of Le Monde Diplomatique and the president of Attac-France. The two Brazilians suggested to Cassen that they join forces and launch a world meeting that would combine mass protest and intellectual analysis. They convened this in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the same time as the 2001 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called this the World Social Forum, and Cassen said the object was to "sink Davos."So in 2001 there were not only anti-Davos meetings in Switzerland, but a worldwide World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. 

Wallerstein offers two explanations why the wsf was held right in Porto Alegre. First reason is that Porto Alegre is in the South, not the North, known for the innovative participation of the population in local budgeting.  Also the mayor of Porto Alegre, as well as the governor of the state in which it is located, were from the Labor Party (PT), Brazil's leading left party, supported by most movements, whose leader Lula was soon to be running for President of Brazil again with improving chances to win the elections.

The World Social Forum met in Porto Alegre in 2001 at the same time as the World Economic Forum met at Davos. Persons attended from around the world, from all kinds of organizations, to insist that "another world is possible." Porto Alegre in 2001 expected some 1500 participants. Some 10,000 came, a truly extraordinary number, considering that for the most part they were paying their own way or it was being paid by relatively poor organizations.. The bulk of the participants in 2001 were from Latin America, France, and Italy. The basic principles of the WSF were that it was an "open meeting place" for "groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism." Its theme was "another world is possible." It was a "process," not an organization. It would not take positions as such, or make proposals for action, but it might generate such positions and proposals by some or all of those taking part in the WSF. It was "plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party" and acted in a "decentralized fashion." In short, there was to be no hierarchy or organizational discipline.

The formula was original and quite different from the historic antisystemic movements, including Communist and other Internationals. And it caught fire.
The press of the western world remained skeptical, but the people of Davos were troubled.

For an entire week, the world press has had an opportunity to report the two forums so diametrically set against each other, like a world soccer match. Wallerstein on the basis of the press clips and personal experience depicts the atmosphere at the Porto Alegre meeting and what has been said.

At the Brazilian forum, Walden Bello, Asian intellectual and militant, launched the slogan, "Davos is the past, Porto Alegre the future." At Porto Alegre, the delegates were working away in the belief and expectation that "another world is possible." Some politicians were there  - the French government divided its ministers between both meetings - but the bulk of the attendees were militants and intellectuals tied to the movements. They opened with a carnival, and went on to debate how this other world could be constructed.

While they were at it, some were inspired to engage in the direct action for which they were famous. The MST, the Brazilian movement of the landless peasants, decided to destroy some transgenic plants on a plantation controlled by Monsanto, a multinational that has been specializing in transgenic agriculture. The MST enlisted the help of José Bové, the French leader of a populist movement in the rural areas devoted among other things to halting the spread of transgenic food. The Brazilian police decided to arrest him and expel him (he would have been leaving in a day in any case), but a Brazilian court promptly decided that the police had acted illegally. The Brazilian police were clearly on the same transnational wave length as the Swiss police.

Wallerstein comments Walden Bello’s slogan. To the question whether  “Davos is the past?” Wallerstein answers that the Davos meetings may well be the past. Their utility has been diminishing, and the difficulties involved in holding them have been going up. Wallerstein however adds that of course the "spirit of Davos" - that is, world capitalism - is scarcely about to give up the ghost. They will however have to face up to a steadily increasing U.S.-Europe tension, made more dramatic by the potential serious downturn in the U.S. economy.

Is Porto Alegre the future? Well, they've begun the task of mobilizing worldwide, and of creating alliances. But, if the spirit of Porto Alegre is to prevail, these militants still have a lot of work to do to flesh out a concrete strategy and a concrete program. Still, they are energized at the moment.

In the Commentary No. 82) Wallerstein comments "Porto Alegre, 2002"

 Wallerstein  first considers the historic context. The terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001 served the interests of the forces of Davos well according to Wallerstein. Large-scale demonstrations, with their risks of violence, seemed threatened by the accusation of terrorism. However, almost five months later comes Porto Alegre II. This time, the advance figures were four times greater than for the first meeting. This time, the world's press was paying more attention to Porto Alegre than to Davos, except of course in the U.S.

The second meeting at Porto Alegre attracted 40,000 participants, including now a large group from North America. (The third meeting of WSF in Porto Alegre, in 2003, had 70-80,000 participants=. Every conceivable kind of movement, reformist and revolutionary, every variety of oppressed or marginalized persons, the Old Left and the New Left, social movements and NGOs, came. So did an increasing number of political figures. The world press paid increasing attention.

Second WSF in Porto Alegre is according to Wallerstein a moment to take stock. What have been the strengths of the anti-globalization coalition? The first is that it has demonstrated a breadth and depth of popular support across the world which makes it clear that there is indeed an alternative to the neoliberal agenda of the forces of Davos.

Secondly, the coalition has demonstrated that the new antisystemic strategy is feasible. What is this new strategy? To understand this clearly, one must remember what was the old strategy. The world's left in its multiple forms - Communist parties, social-democratic parties, national liberation movements - had argued for at least a hundred years (circa 1870-1970) that the only feasible strategy involved two key elements - creating a centralized organizational structure, and making the prime objective that of arriving at state power in one way or another. The movements promised that, once in state power, they could then change the world.

This strategy seemed to be very successful, in the sense that, by the 1960s, one or another of these three kinds of movements had managed to arrive at state power in most countries of the world. However, they manifestly had not been able to transform the world. This is what the world revolution of 1968 was about - the failure of the Old Left to transform the world. It led to 30 years of debate and experimentation about alternatives to the state-oriented strategy that seemed now to have been a failure. Porto Alegre is the enactment of the alternative. There is no centralized structure. Quite the contrary. Porto Alegre is a loose coalition of transnational, national, and local movements, with multiple priorities. They are according to Wallerstein united primarily in their opposition to the neoliberal world order, even though some environmentalists criticize the anti-capitalist orientation of WSF. Wallerstein also underlines that these movements, for the most part, are not seeking state power, or if they are, they do not regard it as more than one tactic among others, and not the most important.

So much for the strengths of Porto Alegre. Wallerstein believes that the strengths of WSF are its weaknesses. The lack of centralization may make it difficult to coordinate tactics in the more difficult battles that are ahead. And it remained to be seen how great is the tolerance among the many interests represented, tolerance of each other's priorities.

And if taking state power is not the primary object, then what is? So far, the forces of Porto Alegre have been fighting mainly defensive battles - stopping the forces of Davos from pursuing their agenda. This is important, useful, and has been more successful than many would have predicted a few years ago. But soon this will begin to seem not enough. There will have to be a serious positive agenda. The Tobin tax (to fight speculation in capital flows), eliminating tax shelter arrangements, canceling Third World debt are all useful proposals. But none is enough to change the fundamental structure of the world-system.

What the forces of Porto Alegre need to do more clearly is (1) to analyze where the capitalist world-economy is going structurally, and what are its inherent weaknesses; and (2) begin to outline an alternative world order. In a sense, the world left is back to where it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, with this one advantage. It has the experience of the wisdom and the errors of the past 150 years behind it. So another world is possible. But it is by no means certain.

In the Commentary No. 83, (Feb. 15, 2002Davos vs. Porto Alegre: Game Two, Wallerstein reiterates that In contrast to the First meeting of the WSF in Porto Alegre, when many of the world's progressive movements failed to show up and the press remained skeptical, in 2002, in spite of the  expectation that the effect of September 11 would have been to intimidate the anti-globalization movement, already in February, 2002, everything had changed. Porto Alegre II had at least 50,000 participants. The atmosphere at Porto Alegre was sober, analytical, and at the same time festive. It was a serious conference, and the world press took it seriously. The process of organizing an elaborate and comprehensive counter-program to that of Davos and the old Washington consensus is well under way.

On February 5 2002 The financial times reported from the World Economic Forum in New York that: "This year, the mood was far more subdued....In today's uncertain world, Davos no longer provides answers."

Wallerstein summarizes that three things have been happening in the world capitalist system. First, the United States is beginning to overplay its hand badly. It is getting the backs up of even its former best friends, like Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. The US is being openly criticized by the British Secretary-General of NATO (former U.K. defense minister), Lord Robertson. Europeans (and of course almost everyone else) are by and large quite upset by the speech about the "axis of evil." This opposition won't slow down U.S. armaments expansion but it may slow down the intent to use them.

Secondly, the anti-globalization movement, the spirit of Porto Alegre, is trying to go beyond demonstrations and defensive actions to put forward credible alternative propositions, and to mobilize world sentiment for them. Even the Financial Times (of London) headlined its report on Porto Alegre on Feb. 5 "Serious ideas behind the theatrics." The subheadline was "Anti-globalisation lobby has recovered its momentum."Porto Alegre still has a long way to go to attain the political weight it needs to impose its views. But it has moved beyond the gadfly phase.

The great uncertainty is according to Wallerstein the attitude of the world political center. Basically, they have been totally involved in Davos, and most of them still are. However in 2002, Davos tried to sound like Porto Alegre - a far cry from the rhetoric of the 1990's. Imitation is, they say, the greatest flattery. Wallerstein met at least one former Prime Minister at Porto Alegre who told him that normally he would go to Davos, but this year he decided to come see what Porto Alegre had to offer. He did not seem unhappy with what he found. U.S. liberals are still intimidated by the impact of Sept. 11. But for the first time, after the "axis of evil" speech, a member of Clinton's cabinet, Madeleine Albright, openly criticized Bush's foreign policy. And the Europeans are manifestly beginning to feel the need to assert themselves more strongly.

The politics of the world-system is still in uncertain evolution in the coming few years. The world economic situation will play a big role. And it is still possible that U.S. hawks (and Israeli hawks) will do something dangerous. But if the forces of Porto Alegre do nothing more than put their shoulders to the wheel they should do very well in the decade to come.

In Commentary No. 130, Feb. 1, 2004 Wallerstein describes "The Rising Strength of the World Social Forum". The 4th meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai (India) - Jan. 16-21, 2004 - was a big step forward in the steadily rising strength of the World Social Forum. In five years, it has become a major actor on the world scene, according to Wallerstein.

This formulation most of the supporters of the original Charter of the WSF principles would not accept, underlying that WSF is the free space for the meeting of different nongovernmental organizations and movements. and not an actor.

Wallerstein points out to some problems of the WSF. The three biggest ones were according to Wallerstein: (1) a tension between those who insisted on retaining the formula of an open forum and those who wished to see the WSF become a "movement of movements," perhaps eventually another "International"; (2) debates about the internal structure and the funding of the WSF - how democratic and how independent was it as a structure? (3) an inadequate degree of participation from Asia, Africa, and east-central Europe;  All three problems were tested at the Mumbai meeting, the first to be held other than in Porto Alegre.

The concept of the open forum is seen by the original founders as the key element that provides the strength of the WSF. They argue that any deviation from that formula will lead to exclusions and turn the WSF into one more sectarian movement. To guarantee the openness of the forum, the charter of principles had barred "party representations" and "military organizations." It was hard to enforce since both parties and guerilla movements came anyway, through front organizations. And it was controversial since many participants saw no reason to bar party structures as long as any one of them was not in a controlling position. And guerilla organizations included the Zapatistas as well, who claim to be a military organization, even if their military action has been virtually nil, and of course most participants were highly sympathetic to the Zapatistas, even considering them a model movement fighting for the autonomy of indigenous peoples. 

When the Forum moved from Brazil to India, from a country in which most movements had more or less supported the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and therefore didn't need the actual formal presence of the PT to a country in which the movements were divided among many parties and where the parties were key mass organizations, the Indian organizing committee dropped the provision about parties. Still, the proscription against violence led to a split among the Indians. A small Maoist movement organized a counter-Forum, called Mumbai Resistance-2004, on grounds across the road from the WSF. And they denounced the WSF as a combination of Trotskyites, Social-Democrats, reformist mass organizations, NGOs financed by transnationals - in short, a stalking-horse for quietism and counter-revolution. They specifically attacked the concept of the open forum (merely a talk show, they said), the slogan (not "another world," but socialism as the objective), and the financing of the WSF (the fact that some money had come in the past from the Ford Foundation). But Mumbai Resistance proved to be a minor sideshow, stimulating some good discussion in the WSF .

 Wallerstein summarized that everyone seemed to agree that WSF should retain the concept of the open forum but perhaps find some way to accept and institutionalize groups that wished to take common actions. There already is an assembly of movements, who meet together at the time of the WSF, and do pass resolutions and propose concrete actions.

The wish to expand the geographic scope of the WSF which was behind the move to Mumbai, was a spectacular success. In 2002, according to the chief Indian organizer, not 200 people in India had even heard of the WSF. In 2004, hundreds of organizations, and more than 100,000 Indians alone attended it, coming from every conceivable social group - at least 30,000 dalits (untouchables), adivasi (tribal peoples), and women everywhere. Furthermore, against all of previous Indian political culture, they represented a wide range of political views, working together. The WSF will return to Porto Alegre in 2005 and is planning to go to Africa in 2006.

Finally, the internal structure of the WSF was a subject openly debated. An international council had been founded in 2001, with some 150 members, all co-opted. It is broadly representative, but certainly not elected. For were it to be elected, the WSF would become a hierarchical structure. But is this "democratic"? The international council makes real decisions - where the meetings are held, who will speak at the plenary sessions (the "stars"), and who may or may not be excluded from attendance. To be sure, most of the sessions are organized from the bottom up. In Mumbai, there were 50 or so such simultaneous "seminars" at every meeting-time, all in effect autonomous. In the sessions analyzing the structure of the WSF, the push was for more openness of decision-making, a way for participants to have input on the decisions. And all this, without turning the WSF into a hierarchical structure. Not easy, but at least publicly debated.

One should not miss the evolution of the thematic emphases. At Seattle, the drive was to stop the WTO. After Cancun in 2003, the WTO has receded as a major threat. Indeed, while the WSF is still fighting neoliberalism, the sense is that the WSF has made a real difference, that if Brazil and India are now pushing a different line, it is in large part because of the presence of the WSF. The Davos gathering was hardly mentioned at this year, but if there was one villain on all the posters this year, for all the marchers at Mumbai, it was George W. Bush. The poster of a Pakistani women's organization captured the sentiment: "When Bush comes to shove, resist."

The leading participants in the WSF are aware that riding the WSF is like riding a bicycle - keep going forward or fall off. Wallerstein assesses that for the moment, the WSF is riding well.

In Commentary No. 202, Feb. 1, 2007 "The World Social Forum: From Defense to Offense" Wallerstein comments the WSF that met in Nairobi, Kenya from January 20-25. The organization, founded as a sort of anti-Davos, has matured and evolved more than even its participants realize asserts Wallerstein. From the beginning, the WSF has been a meeting of a wide range of organizations and movements from around the world who defined themselves as opposed to neo-liberal globalization and imperialism in all its forms. Its slogan has been "another world is possible" and its structure has been that of an open space without officers, spokespeople, or resolutions. The WSF has been against neo-liberal globalization and the term alterglobalists has been coined to define the stance of its proponents - another kind of global structure.

In the first several WSF meetings, beginning in 2001, the emphasis was defensive according to Wallerstein. Participants, each time more numerous, denounced the defects of the Washington Consensus, the efforts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to legislate neo-liberalism, the pressures of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on peripheral zones to privatize everything and open frontiers to the free flow of capital, and the aggressive posture of the United States in Iraq and elsewhere.

In this sixth world meeting, this defensive language was much reduced - simply because everyone took it for granted. And these days the United States seems less formidable, the WTO seems deadlocked and basically impotent, the IMF almost forgotten. The New York Times, reporting on this year's Davos meeting, talked of the recognition that there is a "shifting power equation" in the world, that "nobody is really in charge" any more, and that "the very foundations of the multilateral system" have been shaken, "leaving the world short on leadership at a time when it is increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic shocks."

In this chaotic situation, the WSF is presenting a real alternative, and gradually creating a web of networks whose political clout will emerge in the next five to ten years predicted Wallerstein. Participants at the WSF have debated for a long time whether it should continue to be an open forum or should engage in structured, planned political action. Quietly, almost surreptitiously, it became clear at Nairobi that the issue was moot. The participants would do both - leave the WSF as an open space that was inclusive of all those who wanted to transform the existing world-system and, at the same time, permit and encourage those who wanted to organize specific political actions to do so, and to organize to do so at WSF meetings.

The key idea is the creation of networks, which the WSF is singularly equipped to construct at a global level. There is now an effective network of feminists. For the first time, at Nairobi, there was instituted a network of labor struggles (defining the concept of "worker" quite broadly). There is now an ongoing network of activist intellectuals. The network of rural/peasant movements has been reinforced. There is a budding network of those defending alternative sexualities (which permitted Kenyan gay and lesbian movements to affirm a public presence that had been difficult before). There is an anti-war network (immediately concerned with Iraq and the Middle East in general). And there are functional networks on specific arenas of struggle - water rights, the struggle against HIV/AIDS, human rights.

The WSF is also spawning manifestos: the so-called Bamako Appeal, which expounds a whole campaign against capitalism; a feminist manifesto, now in its second draft and continuing to evolve; a labor manifesto which is just being born. There will no doubt be other such manifestos as the WSF continues. The fourth day of the meeting was devoted essentially to meetings of these networks, each of which was deciding what kinds of joint actions it could undertake - in its own name, but within the umbrella of the WSF.

Finally, there was the attention turned to what it means to say "another world." There were serious discussions and debates about what we mean by democracy, who is a worker, what is civil society, what is the role of political parties in the future construction of the world. These discussions define the objectives, and the networks are a large part of the means by which these objectives are to be realized. The discussions, the manifestos, and the networks constitute the offensive posture.

It is not that the WSF is without its internal problems. The tension between some of the larger NGO's (whose headquarters and strength is in the North, and which support the WSF but also show up at Davos) and the more militant social movements (particularly strong in the South but not only) remains real. They come together in the open space, but the more militant organizations control the networks. The WSF sometimes seems like a lumbering tortoise. But in Aesop's fable, the glittering speedy Davos hare lost the race.

 In Commentary No. 299, Feb. 15, 2011 (https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/299en.htm ) The World Social Forum, Egypt, and Transformation, Wallerstein reports on The World Social Forum held in Dakar, Senegal from Feb. 6-11.

Wallerstain starts with the estimation that the WSF “is alive and well”.  By unforeseen coincidence, this was the week of the Egyptian people's successful dethroning of Hosni Mubarak, which finally succeeded just as the WSF was in its closing session. The WSF spent the week cheering the Egyptians on - and discussing the meaning of the Tunisian/Egyptian revolutions for their program of transformation, for achieving another world that is possible - possible, not certain. Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 people attended the Forum, which is in itself a remarkable number. To hold such an event, the WSF requires strong local social movements (which exist in Senegal) and a government that at least tolerates the holding of the Forum.

The Senegalese government of Abdoulaye Wade was ready to "tolerate" the holding of the WSF, although already a few months before the WSF meeting, it reneged on its promised financial assistance by three-quarters. Then came the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, and the government got cold feet. What if the presence of the WSF inspired a similar uprising in Senegal? The government couldn't cancel the affair, not with Lula of Brazil, Morales of Bolivia, and numerous African presidents coming. So it did the next best thing. It tried to sabotage the Forum. It did this by firing the Rector of the principal university where the Forum was being held, four days before the opening, and installing a new Rector, who promptly reversed the decision of the previous Rector to suspend classes during the WSF so that meeting rooms be available. The result was organizational chaos for at least the first two days. In the end, the new Rector permitted the use of 40 of the more than 170 rooms needed. The organizers imaginatively set up tents across the campus, and the meeting proceeded despite the sabotage. Was the Senegalese government right to be so frightened of the WSF? The WSF itself debated how relevant it was to popular uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere, undertaken by people who had probably never heard of the WSF? The answer given by those in attendance reflected the long-standing division in its ranks. There were those who felt that ten years of WSF meetings had contributed significantly to the undermining of the legitimacy of neoliberal globalization, and that the message had seeped down everywhere. And there were those who felt that the uprisings showed that transformational politics lay elsewhere than in the WSF.

Wallerstein himself found two striking things about the Dakar meeting. The first was that hardly anyone even mentioned the World Economic Forum at Davos. When the WSF was founded in 2001, it was founded as the anti-Davos. By 2011, Davos seemed so unimportant politically to those present that it was simply ignored. The second was the degree to which everyone present noted the interconnection of all issues under discussion. In 2001, the WSF was primarily concerned with the negative economic consequences of neoliberalism. But at each meeting thereafter the WSF added other concerns - gender, environment (and particularly climate change), racism, health, the rights of indigenous peoples, labor struggles, human rights, access to water, food and energy availability. And suddenly at Dakar, no matter what was the theme of the session, its connections with the other concerns came to the fore. This it seems to Wallerstein has been the great achievement of the WSF - to embrace more and more concerns and get everyone to see their intimate interconnections.

There was nonetheless one underlying complaint among those in attendance. People said correctly we all know what we're against, but we should be laying out more clearly what it is we are for. This is what we can contribute to the Egyptian revolution and to the others that are going to come everywhere. The problem is that there remains one unresolved difference among those who want another world. There are those who believe that what the world needs is more development, more modernization, and thereby the possibility of more equal distribution of resources. And there are those who believe that development and modernization are the civilizational curse of capitalism and that we need to rethink the basic cultural premises of a future world, which they call civilizational change.

Those who call for civilizational change do it under various umbrellas. There are the indigenous movements of the Americas (and elsewhere) who say they want a world based on what the Latin Americans call "buen vivir" - essentially a world based on good values, one that requires the slowing down of unlimited economic growth which, they say, the planet is too small to sustain. In several commentaries Wallerstein underlines the importance of the alternative model of development offered by the Zapatista fight for autonomy of self-rule in Chiapas, Mexico ever since Jan.1 1994, just at the moment when after the collapse of USSR anti-systemic movements were in growing disarray. Indigenous movements center their demands around autonomy in order to control land rights in their communities. There are also urban movements in other parts of the world who emphasize the ways in which unlimited growth is leading to climate disaster and new pandemics. And there are feminist movements who are underlining the link between the demands for unlimited growth and the maintenance of patriarchy. This debate about a "civilizational crisis" has great implications for the kind of political action one endorses and the kind of role left parties seeking state power would play in the world transformation under discussion. It will not be easily resolved. But it is the crucial debate of the coming decade. If the left cannot resolve its differences on this key issue, then the collapse of the capitalist world-economy could well lead to a triumph of the world right and the construction of a new world-system worse even than the existing one.

In Commentary No. 436, November 1, 2016 Wallerstein summerizes his view on the WSF by claiming that it "Still Matters". Wallerstein reminds that the World Social Forum (WSF) has met regularly since its first meeting in Porto Alegre in 2001. And just as regularly, there have been analysts who have announced its demise as a relevant expression of the Global Left. And nonetheless, somehow, it continues to matter in the struggle for global justice.

 The most recent meeting was in Montreal, Quebec on August 9-14, 2016. This meeting was in some ways different from previous ones. It was the first one held in the Global North. The decision to hold it there was a deliberate attempt to demonstrate the globality of the WSF.

 This decision came at a price. The Canadian government refused visas for a significant number of prospective attendees coming from the Global South. The cost of travel and lodging for attendees was relatively high. The result was a meeting with a reduced number of participants, and one that was tilted more than previously to persons coming from the Global North. This was no surprise to the organizers. The belief was that the price was worth the positive side of the decision. In some ways, the meeting was like all previous meetings of the WSF. On the one hand, there was an immense range of themes under discussion. And participants tended to attend those thematic panels that were of greatest interest to them. The result was a network of thematic ghettos, and an insufficient amount of trans-communication between the range of different worldwide political struggles. On the other hand, there was a major debate about the validity of the "horizontal" manner in which the WSF was organized. Its critics argued that the WSF was not (or no longer) relevant, as a result, to the real political struggles going on everywhere. This debate has been held repeatedly, but this time it was perhaps more intense, and even angry. Nonetheless, its essence remained the same.

 The major new argument among those who were unhappy with the "horizontalist" mode of organization was that we should not be looking at who is now attending the WSF but at those who are no longer attending it because they have come to see it as an expensive waste of time, since it did not further the actual political struggle. The counter-argument is that the WSF has shown itself to be a powerful brand name. There are now an ever-growing number of countless regional, national, and local social forums. There are endless thematic forums at all geographical levels. These forums, as the global WSF itself, are self-organizing. The WSF has proved to be a bottom-up concept, not a top-down one. And this remains its essential strength.

 Of course, none of us has quantitative data to back up these assertions, one way or the other. It is a battle of one set of intuitive and genuinely subjective judgments against another. If it has become more intense, it is largely because the global political struggle that seemed so relatively favorable to the Global Left a decade ago now seems to have been reversed. The resulting pessimism within the global justice movement has led to the harsher internal debate of the WSF.

It is not the WSF that has caused this worldwide greater difficulty for the Global Left. Rather, it is this reversal that has led to more internal debate within the WSF.  Wallerstein stresses that his own sense is that we have to keep our eye on the global struggle, and the role that the WSF can play in it. If we were to hold no more WSF meetings, it might liberate some money, energy, and time for other activities. But these "other activities" might never occur, as pessimism leads to withdrawal from activism. The meetings of the WSF, however imperfect, are acts both of renewal and optimism. The leaders of two major organizations in the Tunisian struggles - the FTDES (Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights) and the UGTT (Tunisian General Labor Union) - have written a very critical paper analyzing the failings of the Montreal meeting. Nonetheless, they end their paper by saying that, despite the flaws, the meeting was a success because it preserved le sillon de l'espoir ("the trace of hope").

 One very positive aspect of the Montreal meeting was that the sessions devoted to the future of the WSF were massively attended. The debates were fierce, but what it showed that the attendees wanted to debate. They were seeking ways to strengthen their struggles. They thought that how the WSF was organized might be part of the answer. The secret of the WSF from the outset has been that it sought to be widely inclusive of all the tendencies within the Global Left. It sought to be mindful of the historic failures of the Global Left over the past two centuries. It has been a plus, not a minus, in the worldwide struggle to transform the world-system and to replace it with a relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian one. Let us not waste our time throwing stones at each other. Let us continue to talk to each other and learn from each other.

Conclusion:

During the 20^th anniversary of the WSF in Porto Alegre, held on line due to the Covid 19 epidemic,  all strengths, weaknesses and internal debates within wsf to which Wallerstein pointed out in his Commentaries, resurfaced, especially two visions of wsf  and the ways of political action, one stressing the importance of sticking to the principles of the original charter that defined wsf as an open discussion space, on the one side, and the other stressing the urgency of the renovation of the wsf in the direction of action orientation.

If Immanuel Wallerstein was alive, he would probably repeat his conclusions from one of his last commentary No. 491 on ways of fighting a class struggle (February 15, 2019). In it Wallerstein emphasizes that class struggles are eternal, but how they are fought depends on the ongoing state of the world-system in which they are located.

World-systems have three temporalities. They come into existence. Secondly, they are stabilized structures and operate according to the rules on which they are founded. And thirdly, the rules by which they maintain their relative stability cease to work effectively and they enter a structural crisis. According to Wallerstein, we have been living in the modern world-system, which is a capitalist world-system. We are presently in the third stage of its existence, which is that of structural crisis. During the previous phase, that of stabilized structures or normality, there was a grand debate within the left about how one could achieve the objective of destroying capitalism as a system. This debate occurred both within movements created by the working class or proletariat (such as trade-unions and or social-democratic parties or communist parties) and within nationalist parties or national-liberation movements. Each side of this grand debate believed that its strategy and its alone could succeed. In fact, while each side created zones in which it seemed to succeed, neither did. The most dramatic examples of presumed success stories that turned out to be unable to avoid the pull to a return to normality was the collapse of the Soviet Union on the one hand and the collapse of the Maoist cultural revolution on the other.

 The turning point was the world-revolution of 1968, which was marked by three features: It was a world-revolution in that analogous events occurred throughout the world-system. They all rejected both the state-oriented strategy and the transformative cultural strategy. It was a matter they said that was not either/or but rather both/and.

 Finally, the world-revolution of 1968 also failed. It did however bring to an end the hegemony of centrist liberalism and its power to tame both the left and the right, which were liberated to return to the struggle as independent actors. At first, the resurrected right seemed to prevail. It instituted the Washington Consensus and launched the slogan of TINA (or there is no alternative). But income and social inequality became so extreme that the left rebounded and constrained the ability of the United States to maintain or restore its dominance.

 The return of the left to a premier role also came to a swift end. And thus began a process of wild swings, a defining feature of a structural crisis. In a structural crisis, the left needs to pursue a policy of seeking in the very short run both state power in order to minimize the pain for the lower 99 percent of the population AND in the middle run to pursue a cultural transformation of everyone.

 

‘These seemingly contradictory pursuits are very disconcerting. They are however the only way in Wallerstein’s opinion to pursue the class struggle in the remaining years of the structural crisis at the point of bifurcation – a moment that typically occurs in systems that are far from their point of equilibrium – where the smallest change may have disproportionate consequences as in a “butterfly effect”. Wallenstein concludes that we are all butterflies. Thus, predicting what is to come becomes even more difficult than it normally would be.  

True to his anti-systemic activism, Wallerstein insists that if we can pursue simultaneously a policy of seeking  both state power AND a cultural transformation, anti systemic movements gathered within wsf can win. “If not, we shall lose”, concludes Wallerstein: instead of the co-creation of a more equal and authentically democratic world, inequality and authoritarianism will increase.

 

 REFERENCES/ ЛИТЕРАТУРА

Wallerstein, I. (Feb. 15, 2000). The Head of the IMF: A Secret Radical? http://www2.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/index.html

Wallerstein, I. (Feb. 1, 2001). Davos vs. Porto Alegre: The World Soccer Cup? https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/57en.htm

Wallerstein, I. (Feb. 1, 2002). Porto Alegre, 2002.(https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/82en.htm

Wallerstein, I. (Feb. 15, 2002). Davos vs. Porto Alegre: Game Two. https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/83en.htm

Wallerstein, I. ( Feb. 1, 2004). The Rising Strength of the World Social Forum. https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/130en.htm

Wallerstein, I. (Feb. 1, 2007). The World Social Forum: From Defense to Offense. https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/202en.htm

Wallerstein, I.( Feb. 15, 2011). The World Social Forum, Egypt, and Transformation. (https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/299en.htm

Wallerstein, I.( November 1, 2016). "WSF Still Matters".  https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/archive/299en.htm

Wallerstein, I.( (February 15, 2019). How to fight a class struggle. https://www.binghamton.edu/fbc/commentaries/archive-2019/491en.html

 

 

@5 Chico:"Would the WSF be a Movement - or a Space?"

 

At the end of last year, during the electoral campaign in Brazil that led to the sad situation we are living here now, I wrote a long text about the WSF’s future, to be published in a collective book of Globalizations, of Finland, by Routledge, to be presented soon. In this text I tried to identify the divergences existing about the WSF as it was conceived by the WSF Organizing Committee in its first edition in 2001, and why this Committee decided to give to the WSF the character of an space and not a movement, this decision leading to a growing interest of people in the WSF all over the world. This first edition had 20.000 participants and not only 2.000 as expected by us, till the ones of Porto Alegre in 2005 and Belem in 2009, each one with 150.000 participants. I tried to show in the text that this Organizing Committee decision was not a previous theoretical one but a result of a process of discussion on the special exigencies of creating a new tool of the planetary civil society as a political actor facing capitalism as an economic and cultural regime. The text presents propositions on the WSF future considering the still absolute necessity of as many as possible open critical spaces - at all levels as well as on specific themes - where to reflect on the action in course and to inspire and create conditions to launch as many and diverse as possible civil society and parties new actions and movements, to face the the capitalism monster that Is menacing more and more the continuity of life in our planet. Spaces and movements are both necessary, as reflection and action must coexist, linked to each other, in the struggle for change.

Keywords: World Social Forum future, capitalism, civil society and space 

 

¿El FSM debe ser un Movimiento - o un Espacio?

 

A fines del año pasado, durante la campaña electoral en Brasil que condujo a la triste situación en que vivimos aquí ahora, escribí un largo texto sobre el futuro del FSM, que Routledge publicará en un libro colectivo de Globalizaciones en Finlandia. (que esta accesible aqui  http://openfsm.net/projects/gti-and-wsf/gtiandwsf-farewelltowsf-discussion-input11a-es) En este texto intenté identificar las divergencias existentes sobre el FSM tal como fue concebido por el Comité Organizador del FSM en su primera edición en 2001, y por qué este Comité decidió darle al FSM el carácter de un espacio y no de un movimiento, esta decisión llevando a un creciente interés de las personas en el FSM en todo el mundo. Esta primera edición tuvo 20,000 participantes y no solo 2.000 como esperamos, hasta las de Porto Alegre en 2005 y Belem en 2009, cada una con 150,000 participantes. Traté de mostrar en el texto que esta decisión del Comité Organizador no fue teórica previa, sino el resultado de un proceso de discusión sobre las exigencias especiales de crear una nueva herramienta de la sociedad civil planetaria como actor político que enfrenta al capitalismo como un régimen  económico. y cultural  El texto presenta propuestas sobre el futuro del FSM considerando la necesidad absoluta de la mayor cantidad posible de espacios críticos abiertos, en todos los niveles también como en temas específicos: dónde reflexionar sobre la acción en curso e inspirar y crear condiciones para lanzar la mayor cantidad y diversidad posible de acciones y movimientos de la sociedad civil y los partidos, para enfrentar el monstruo del capitalismo que amenaza cada vez más la continuidad de la vida en nuestro planeta. Los espacios y los movimientos son ambos necesarios, ya que la reflexión y la acción deben coexistir, vinculadas entre sí, en la lucha por el cambio.

Palabras clave: Futuro del Foro Social Mundial, capitalismo, sociedad civil y espacio.

 

 

@6 Thomas Ponnia, "Politics and the Utopian Laboratory"

 

The modern philosopher G. W. F. Hegel once noted that the political process that embodies a new universal impulse often perishes while its principle persists. What is the principle that the World Social Forum brought forward? My book (co-edited with William F. Fisher) Another World is Possible—published at the beginning of 2003—was the first book in English on the World Social Forum (WSF), the first to contend that the common theme that threaded through all of the alternatives proposed at the WSF was a call for a participatory, radical democracy, and the first to argue that the Forum represented the initial steps for building a new left and a new global civilization. Over the years, there have been a number of insightful interpretations of the WSF process: it embodies resistance to globalization; it epitomizes the latest struggle against imperialism; it manifests the power of identity; it is an insurgency against all forms of hierarchical discrimination, including patriarchy; it exemplifies the “movement of the multitude,” or articulates the emergence of the epistemologies of the South. The interpretation that I offered did not and does not exclude any of the others but encompasses them within a common overlapping framework: the “alternative globalization,” or “global justice,” movements that emerged from the WSF at minimum call for a radically participatory democratic process to be integrated into all major economic, political, cultural, or ecological decisions. Social movements around the planet are too diverse to fully develop—at this time—a common substantive notion of the good but instead, for the first time in history, bring forward a shared principle of the process of emancipation, that is, the call for a global radical democracy that extends across all social domains.

Keywords: Utopian laboratory, World Social Forum, globalization and movements 

Thomas Ponnia, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences George Brown College, Toronto, Canada 

(Spanish)

Política y el laboratorio utópico

El filósofo moderno G. W. F. Hegel señaló una vez que el proceso político que encarna un nuevo impulso universal a menudo perece mientras persiste su principio. ¿Cuál es el principio que presentó el Foro Social Mundial? Mi libro (coeditado con William F. Fisher) Another World is Possible, publicado a principios de 2003, fue el primer libro en inglés en el Foro Social Mundial (FSM), el primero en afirmar que el tema común que surgió a través de Todas las alternativas propuestas en el FSM fue un llamado a una democracia participativa y radical, y el primero en argumentar que el Foro representaba los pasos iniciales para construir una nueva izquierda y una nueva civilización global. A lo largo de los años, ha habido una serie de interpretaciones perspicaces del proceso del FSM: encarna la resistencia a la globalización; personifica la última lucha contra el imperialismo; manifiesta el poder de la identidad; es una insurgencia contra todas las formas de discriminación jerárquica, incluido el patriarcado; ejemplifica el "movimiento de la multitud" o articula el surgimiento de las epistemologías del Sur. La interpretación que ofrecí no excluyó ni excluye a ninguna de las otras, sino que los abarca dentro de un marco común superpuesto: los movimientos de "globalización alternativa" o "justicia global" que surgieron del FSM, como mínimo llaman a un proceso democratico  radicalmente participativa  para integrarse en todas las decisiones económicas, políticas, culturales o ecológicas importantes. Los movimientos sociales en todo el planeta son demasiado diversos para desarrollar plenamente, en este momento, una noción sustantiva común del bien, pero en cambio, por primera vez en la historia, presentan un principio compartido del proceso de emancipación, es decir, el llamado a Una democracia radical global que se extiende a todos los dominios sociales.

Palabras clave: Laboratorio utópico, Foro Social Mundial, globalización y movimientos.

Thomas PEscuela de Artes y Ciencias Liberales George Brown College, Toronto, Canadá

 

@7  Ashish Kothari 

'The WSF has been the most important forum for progressive movements across the world to come together. It needs to re-invent itself in context that is both vastly different, but also essentially similar, to when it started 20 years ago. To do this, it must become a forum that both provides an open space for a pluriverse of movements, ideologies, ways of thinking/being/doing/dreaming can interact with each other with mutual respect, as also a space where these movements can collectively become a subject, a common voice that can be heard worldwide, that can provide global solidarity to the movements for ecological justice, against discrimination and exploitation, for equality and dignity, and much else. And for this, we must all open up our personal spaces and comfort zones, learn to collaborate with others who we may not be comfortable with, work with plurality, with perhaps a common thread of basic ethics and values of solidarity, love, peace, interconnectedness, dignity, equality, autonomy, and the rights of both people and the rest of nature. On behalf of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, we will continue to do what we can to contribute to such a re-invigoration of the WSF.'

 

 

@8 "The World Social Forum as a Transnational Agency and Process? - from a perspective on transformative entrepreneurship"

Azril & Erik

The World Social Forum (WSF) emerged as an alternative response and project to the World Economic Forum. It is envisioned and mobilized to construct “Other Possible Worlds,” thereby advocating a planetarian alternative to neoliberal globalization.The WSF is made of a great variety of alternative and grass roots movements, associations and peoples coming together in an “open space.” Seeking and constructing alternative ways to deal with the ongoing world global crisis, which include alternative lifestyles and systemic changes to effectively confront and solve the global climate crisis.This is why it can be linked to recent development in entrepreneurship research and practice, beyond its conventional scope, seeking to enlarge and broaden its conventional view. By so doing, entrepreneurship is reclaimed as a vital societal phenomenon and as a social force for change in our times (Steyaert & Katz, 2004, Spinosa, Flores&Dreyfus, 1997, Berglund, Johannisson&Schwartz, 2012).

Our aim with this paper, based on extensive experiences from participation in WSF activities, is to identify entrepreneurial dimensions and features observed in World Social Forum, and identify potential future WSF developments. To achieve this research objective, we focus on types and levels of interaction and networking taking place within the World and European Social Forum processes. WSF can be approached as a social space, as an organization, as a process and/or as a movement of movements, exhibiting a very extensive and activist-oriented kind of entrepreneurship (Gawell, 2004), that might entail a number of different balancing acts. For instance, between an open and democratic process at the grassroots level, while being also partially centralized and restrictive in various ways. From the perspective of entrepreneurship theory and praxis, one finds a delicate balance between concerted attempts to construct collective entrepreneurship to achieve greater impact, while also trying to act as a venue for a variety of distributed entrepreneurial initiatives, innovations and interactions. We argue that this dynamic balance points to different future developments of WSF process to enrich its agency and force for change.

Keywords: World Social Forum, entrepreneurship

Azril  Uppsala University,
Erik  Mälardalen University,

 

 

 

@9 DIALOGUE AS A PROBLEM IN THE WSF PROCESS  

To begin with, the Coordinadora de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Oriente del Estado de México en Defensa de la Tierra, el Agua y su Cultura-CPOOEM (Original inhabitants and NGOs eastern State of Mexico coordination in defense of land, water and its culture), joined the initial preparatory activities of the Mexican local facilitating/organizing committee organizing the WSF 2021 in Mexico, which was forced to become virtual due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In this process we learned about the nature, history, aims, and process of the WSF, and its motto: “Another World is Possible”. In this light, we realized that without the participation and contribution of the Ancestral Original Peoples, Another World was not Possible. This realization led us to organize a thematic space of Ancestral Original Peoples, that developed various activities parallel and convergent to the workings of the Mexican organizing committee.

From this vantage point, we became aware about different opinions concerning for example the Charter of Principles of the WSF, which we adopted, and also various attempts to interfere with our attempts to organize the virtual WSF 2021 on open, democratic and dialogic bases. At one time, it looked as if there were two parallel organizing process, the one that we had constructed in the past two years and another organized by a small group of intellectuals and self-appointed reformers. From an organizational perspective, this was and remains a rich learning process. We learned for example that some sister organizations and movements supported our objective to constitute a thematic space on Ancestral Original Peoples, while others objected and laid obstacles in this respect. We reflected about what was behind these opposing views. In the end, while we have managed to articulate together with the IC-WSF a process of construction of the first virtual WSF 2021 during the last week in January 2021, it is important to have all the cards on the table, not an easy task. Given that we are a plurality of actors and agents, representing not only different social movements and civil society organizations, but also different politics and ideologies trying to get the upper hand. In the presentation of our paper, we wish to share with you a couple of videos we have produced from our encounters so far with indigenous peoples from North, Central and South America. We applaud this bridge between engaged academics and grassroot social movements.  

Gabriela Vega-Téllez, 

Co-founder of the Coordinadora de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Oriente del Estado de México en Defensa de la Tierra, el Agua y su Cultura – CPOOEM (Original inhabitants and NGOs eastern State of Mexico coordination in defense of land, water and its culture) 

 

EL DIÁLOGO COMO UN PROBLEMA EN EL PROCESO DEL FSM 

Para empezar, la Coordinadora de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Oriente del Estado de México en Defensa de la Tierra, el Agua y su Cultura-CPOOEM, se unió a las actividades preparatorias iniciales del comité local mexicano de facilitación y organización del FSM 2021 en México, que se vio obligado a convertirse en virtual debido a la pandemia de Covid-19. En este proceso aprendimos sobre la naturaleza, historia, objetivos y proceso del FSM, y su lema: “Otro mundo es posible”. A la luz de esto, nos dimos cuenta de que, sin la participación y la contribución de los Pueblos Originarios Ancestrales, Otro Mundo no era posible. Esta realización nos llevó a organizar un espacio temático de Pueblos Originarios Ancestrales, que desarrolló diversas actividades paralelas y convergentes al funcionamiento del comité organizador mexicano. Desde este punto de vista, tomamos conciencia de las diferentes opiniones sobre, por ejemplo, la Carta de Principios del FSM, que adoptamos, y también de los diversos intentos de interferir en nuestros intentos de organizar el FSM virtual 2021 sobre bases abiertas, democráticas y dialógicas. En un momento dado, parecía que había dos procesos organizativos paralelos, el que habíamos construido en los dos últimos años y otro organizado por un pequeño grupo de intelectuales y reformistas autoproclamados. Desde una perspectiva organizativa, este fue y sigue siendo un rico proceso de aprendizaje. Aprendimos, por ejemplo, que algunas organizaciones y movimientos hermanos apoyaban nuestro objetivo de constituir un espacio temático sobre los pueblos originarios, mientras que otros se oponían y ponían obstáculos a este respecto. Reflexionamos sobre lo que había detrás de estas opiniones opuestas. Al final, si bien hemos logrado articular junto con el CI-FSM un proceso de construcción del primer FSM-virtual durante la última semana de enero de 2021, es importante tener todas las cartas sobre la mesa, lo cual no es una tarea fácil, dado que somos una pluralidad de actores y agentes, que representamos no sólo a diferentes movimientos sociales y organizaciones de la sociedad civil, sino también a diferentes políticas e ideologías que tratan de tomar la delantera. En la presentación de nuestra ponencia, deseamos compartir con ustedes un par de vídeos que hemos producido de nuestros encuentros hasta ahora con los pueblos indígenas de América del Norte, Central y del Sur. Aplaudimos este puente entre los académicos comprometidos y los movimientos sociales de base. 

Gabriela Vega-Téllez, Co-fundadora de la Coordinadora de Pueblos y Organizaciones del Oriente del Estado de México en Defensa de la Tierra, el Agua y su Cultura 

 

@10 Stimulating Visions of the WSF Open Space Process Future through an Online 'Lexicon Workshop' between Facilitators

Pierre George, Caritas international 

Since the declared start of World Social Forum process, its original facilitators have presented it, through the publication of WSF charter of principles, as a global counter hegemonic dialogic “open space process”, not as a periodic face-to-face “event”, and neither as a global “movement". 20 years after its inception, even though it has grown less than could be anticipated, the global WSF open space process is relevant in a significant number of socially active citizen minds, and visible through various “manifestations” ( social forum events and SF extension dynamics). It can be viewed as made up of independent social forum processes, interrelated horizontally, around the vision proposed by the WSF charter

Facilitators active in the facilitating committee of a "WSF process manifestation" have the permanent options to :

o   1/ Quit or continue, as facilitators, according to the relevance they see for the WSF open space process

o   2/ Involve, or not, other people from their respective organizations, in facilitation and in participation

o   3/ Resist, or not, for a variety of subjective reasons, the temptations of “making the open space speak” like spokegroup-ism, assembly-ism, agenda-ism, ventriloquism

 

The coming paper proposes to facilitators of "WSF process manifestations" of some size, some elements of formalization, notions, diagrams, (such as Disk and circles diagram  or Layers and phases diagram,)   vocabulary about WSF openspace process. It extends an invitation to start a “WSF lexicon online workshop“, where to work on a formal common view of WSF process, with diagrams and lexicon. Here are some examples of lexicon ( the idea appeared at the moment when the methodology commission in WSF international council stopped working) 

o   http://openfsm.net/projects/ic-methodology/wsf11-evalreco-disseminate-lexicon

o   http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo26  (spanish) 

o   http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo70  (spanish)  http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo70-en (english)

 

Social forum process Facilitators coming in the online workshop group, after exchanging their practical experiences, will comment and hopefully agree on a list of entries and their description for a “lexicon of WSF process”. They can communicate this lexicon to groups of WSF participants and invite them to a/ Discuss and comment them with them b/ Assess how they would use those elements to spread around them the idea of the WSF The paper will also replace this concrete proposal in the current context of discussions about WSF future.

Keywords: Lexicon , WSF, facilitators and workshop

 

Estimulando visiones del futuro del proceso de espacio abierto de la FSM a través de un "Taller de léxico" en línea entre facilitadores

Pierre George, Cáritas Internacional

Desde el comienzo declarado del proceso del Foro Social Mundial, sus facilitadores originales lo han presentado, a través de la publicación de la carta de principios del FSM,  http://openfsm.net/projects/ic-methodology/charter-fsm-wsf-es como un "proceso de espacio abierto" dialógico contra hegemónico global, no como un "evento" de cara a cara periódico , y tampoco como un "movimiento" global. 20 años después de su creación, a pesar de que ha crecido menos de lo que se podría anticipar, el proceso mundial de espacios abiertos del FSM es relevante en un número significativo de mentes ciudadanas socialmente activas, y visible a través de varias "manifestaciones" (eventos de foros sociales

http://openfsm.net/projects/wsf2012-support/wsf2018-calendar y dinámicas de extensión de SF http://openfsm.net/projects/dynex1-fsmwsf) )

Puede verse como un proceso de foros sociales independientes, interrelacionados horizontalmente, en torno a la visión propuesta por el estatuto del FSM

Los facilitadores activos en el comité facilitador de una "manifestación del proceso del FSM" tienen las opciones permanentes para:

1 / Renunciar o continuar, como facilitadores, de acuerdo con la relevancia que ven para el proceso de espacio abierto del FSM

2 / Involucrar, o no, a otras personas de sus respectivas organizaciones, en la facilitación y en la participación.

3 / Resistir, o no, por una variedad de razones subjetivas, las tentaciones de "hacer que el espacio abierto hable" com-ismo, asamblea-ismo, agenda-ismo, ventriloquismo

 

El próximo documento propone a los facilitadores de "manifestaciones del proceso del FSM" de cierto tamaño, algunos elementos de formalización, nociones, diagramas, (como el diagrama de disco  http://openfsm.net/projects/metodologia/possible-fsm-wsf-process-event-space-diagram/#ES y círculos o el diagrama de capas y fases) http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo58-en/#3 vocabulario sobre el proceso de espacio abierto del FSM. Extiende una invitación para comenzar un "taller en línea del éxico FSM", donde trabajar en una visión común formal del proceso del FSM, con diagramas y léxico. Aquí hay algunos ejemplos de léxico (la idea apareció en el momento en que la comisión de metodología en el consejo internacional del FSM dejó de funcionar)

http://openfsm.net/projects/ic-methodology/wsf11-evalreco-disseminate-lexicon

http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo26 (español)

http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo70 (español) http://openfsm.net/projects/pfsm20/pfsm20-insumo70-en (inglés)

 

Les facilitadores de Proceso de foro social que ingresan al grupo de taller en línea, después de intercambiar sus experiencias prácticas, comentarán y, con suerte, acordarán una lista de entradas y su descripción para un "léxico del proceso del FSM".

Pueden comunicar este léxico a grupos de participantes del FSM e invitarlos a Discutirlos y comentarlos con ellos

b / Evaluar cómo usarían esos elementos para difundir la idea del FSM El documento también replazará esta propuesta concreta en el contexto actual de discusiones sobre el futuro del FSM.

 Palabras clave: Léxico, FSM, facilitadores y taller.

 

EXTENDED SESSION OUT OF PROGRAM (19.45 – 22.45) PIERRE’ NOTES (I raise the question about editing – or not the flow of dialogue? Azril).

Hello   Azril,  Chico, Erik,  Gina,  Tatiana, Vera 

One month after the session  ISAoff   RC10  we had on february 24th  - here are the notes i could take of the 40+ intervention discsussion we had 

You can complement correct them with   comments inlink i sent

Let us have another week  to collect  inputs   /complements  notes links related to this discsussion

Pierre

 

@001 Azril - video de thomas Ponniah  

Vera made a ppt presentation “The Future of the World Social Forum according to
Immanuel Wallerstein” available at  ISARC10: abs Vera: "The Future of the World Social Forum and other anti-systemic movements according to Emmanuel Wallerstein" eng; El Futuro del Foro Social Mundial y otros movimientos antisistémicos según Immanuel Wallerstein (es) Pierre gave archive of wsf - in this we read a statement we wanted dialogue

@002 Erik we can discuss forever in this room 

@003 Vera  (developped) I would not like to repeat the entire powerpoint presentation I have made during the regular 10 to 15 minutes of allotted time for the session on the future of the World Social Forum. Now I would try just to summarize Wallerstein’s stand on the future of the World Social Forum, closely interlinked with the future of the world system of capitalist economy which finds itself at present, according to Wallerstin, in the third period of bifurcation between progress to socialism or regress to even worse world system. . According to him, we should be able to combine both the action, fight against imperialism and the take over of power in the state in the last instance, in order to alleviate the condition of 99% of population, on the one hand, and the cultural  directly democratic transformation from the bottom up, on the other hand. Now I would like to give the floor to other session participants and to listen to their arguments on the future of the WSF and the need for dialoguing within it.

@004 Chico   my position is very simple 

People say the world has changed and we do not want to change anything - our idea of wsf is a political strategy work at level of praxis of people knowing that capitalism has permeated culture - the big problem is changing government kiilng nature institution etc - people do not react to much because they accept to earn money with competition and we need to use all possibilities for this consumerism they need to buy 

WSF create a space to learn together another culture - this must be done in parallel with direct action - the “rear guard” is planning the action and not acting - those in the front are movements, parties and organizations with direct objective they need a rearguard to come and discuss with others if their strategy is ok – My position is that wsf must stay as a Permanent rearguard - the fight to overcie - WSF is a space to prepare action not a space for action - wsf exist if helps the action - reflection to help support action - not direct action –i put these ideas in a paper about 17th february webinar - the paper is in PT FR https://senospermitemsonhar.wordpress.com/2021/02/22/et-maintenant-fsm-chico-whitaker/ we must give efficiency conditions to action and continue ecological disaster short term issue 

@005  vera  ( reviewed) I would be  glad if I would have heard  that  colleague Chico does  not separate preparation for action from action itself. Instead colleague Chico in an elitist manner of a self-appointed professor claims: “the “rear guard” is planning the action and not acting - those in the front are movements, parties and organizations with direct objective they need a rearguard to come and discuss with others if their strategy is ok –”

Comment Vera: It seems to me that if colleague Chico in earnest wants the realisation of another possible and needed world, “by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society centred on the human person” (part of the first paragraph of the ORIGINAL WORLD SOCIAL FORUM CHARTER OF PRINCIPLES - APRIL 2001 VERSION, available at http://www.universidadepopular.org/site/media/documentos/WSF_-_charter_of_Principles.pdf) then he should not propose that wsf remains “Permanent rearguard”,  permanently devoted just to theoretically preparing  action, completely separated from or parallel with  the realisation of the proposed action. Who would in this case perform the action which the "rearguard" thought through and articulated? It seems to me that such permanent separation of theory and practice, rearguard and social movements and parties,  just strengthens the existing status quo of the capitalist world economy. 

@006 erik am outside the process- Boaventure want both action and reflection too - what is it really that cannot be resolved?

@007 chico point of disagreement is to replace wsf as openspace by a political subject - if we transform open space into political  subject it will be become action space with a leadership

@008 Gina  ( developped) 

This discussion come from 2005 manifesto of Porto Alegre. I am referring here to an article I wrote in 2006, after the Hemispheric Forum, held in Caracas:  An immediate antecedent that constitutes an important reference for this positioning, and a certain political style, is what has been called the 'Bamako Appeal' promoted by some institutions such as the World Forum for Alternatives, Third World Center, Third World Forum, among others. The Bamako Appeal is a manifesto drawn up at a meeting prior to the Bamako Polycentric Forum, which is currently being circulated for signatures.

This initiative is a continuation of the Porto Alegre Declaration at the WSF 2005 and was drawn up by 19 intellectuals (most of them men, most of them white, most of them quite adult). Undoubtedly all expressions, political reflections and manifestos (and there are many in the different Forums) are important. The problem, as Peter Waterman rightly points out, is not the content, with which many of us can agree (although the women's side is markedly poor and the sexual diversity side is non-existent), but rather the procedure: produced by a small group, supplemented by the audience invited to the meeting, edited by the original group, and circulated as if it were a product of the Bamako Forum (see comment from vera) 

In Caracas, the discussion began with one of Hugo Chavez's statement in relation to the WSF: stating that there was a risk that the WSF "will become an annual festival of revolutionary tourism". And that it was time for revolutionary action.  “This opinion is on the horizon of a central discussions that the Forum is currently experiencing: between those who aspire to a Forum with decision-making capacity, with collective declarations and positions on the major problems of the current world context, with a more active relationship with political parties and governments of a leftist nature. …..  others, such as the prestigious intellectual Ignacio Ramonet of Le Monde Diplomatique, or Samir Amin, from Africa, maintain that the Forum has already completed one stage, and must give way to another moment, of building the collective revolutionary subject…. Atilio Borón celebrates this "turn" as a positive change because the movements discussed urgent issues "instead of wallowing in their narcissism, exploring the infinite gradations and nuances conferred by their unique identity, completely disregarding the challenges posed by the national, regional and international situation" (Borón, 2006). For his part, Emir Sader, in a recent article, warns of the risk of the Forums being "inconsequential" if they do not move from resistance to the struggle for a post-neoliberal world, i.e. limiting their action to the level of "civil society", without participating in the struggle for a different political power (Sader 2006) “.

15 years after, the tension is still there. In one of the meeting of the IC, during 2020, trying to renew the composition of the International Council with new movements, networks, young collectives, etc. the proposal to invite an organization (Group Puebla) where the ex-presidents and ex ministers belongs, originate the reaction of the feminist’s organizations. “The question we ask ourselves is whether we want the future perspectives of the WSF to be defined by social movements, from the strengthening of their autonomy, or for these perspectives to be defined by former political officials? Especially when several of them have had strong conflicts with indigenous populations, with feminisms, and with undemocratic procedures”. It is a practical sense of the necessity and importance of the autonomy of social movements, which must be preserved in all forms of action and political articulation that are forged at national and international level.

@008C1( Pierre commenting on this porto alegre 2005 manifesto - imagining what it would have been if the fomat of participation initiative had been implemented at that time http://openfsm.net/projects/dibco1/dibco1-2020-discusionfsm-input26-comment1-en )

@008C2 Vera:(  question to Gina: Was not the original Charter of Principles as well “produced by a small group, supplemented by the audience invited to the meeting, edited by the original group, and circulated as if it were a product of the” Porto Alegre 2001 Forum? .

@009 Chico - why are we divided - those who speak about action they want statements declaration from the forum - you give priority it gives the direction of the action – “this is important the other will have to wait” as movement our strategy - the rest is not important - but people going to the forum want to discuss another things - this is the point of divergence - the way of decision - consensus and not vote - - consensus obliges to dialogue and does not imply that you are all in acceptance not agreement - if we vote those who do not agree go away and create another movement - "need to overcome consensus system - IC montreal IC was impeded to make statement about the putch in brazil because 1 person  was against" -What i said no to was to the fact it was a IC statement – because there should not be declaration of IC - this is a point in practice 

@010 Pierre - about the consensus - difference between facilitation and participation

@011 Chico what is the international council? - two very different positions - - expansion of the wsf - what communication what to say about what is decided in the forum - methodological - we adapt the methodology – financing -  strategy was misunderstood no strategy of the movement rather  how to continue the space - The other position - we define a strategy for the movement struggle of capitulemen  - This was not clear for us when we started the wsf - Many people wanted to enter in the IC 170 organizations  they thought this is the place of power to define the action let IC us go inside - then these people abandonnned and now we are 50

@012 Pierre – interesting to review history of ALCA coalition  that was powerful enough not to pressure that its statements would become WSF statements  IC must govern - iC to help - - 

@013  Erick wsf action generating

@014 Chico - articulate they did in the first years against a treaty AMI and they won because a campaign - the WSF was the place where the idea was discussed and the articulation made and the action was for them

 

@015  Erik there are word for this .... citizen meet on free and equal terms - 

@016  Pierre -  there are vocabulary issues   speak as a space where actors articulate   do not actorize the forum

@017  Gina (developped) 

Undoubtedly, the dialogue between progressive governments, leftist political parties and social movements is crucial in this process of wanting to change the world. However, the starting point is different. What is risky about these views lies both in the attempt to reduce the Forum to one of its multiple expressions.  The risks of supplanting - in their image and likeness - the critical views and autonomous proposals of the social movements, eliminates one of the founding democratic political dimensions of the WSF, that of strengthening the associative and countercultural fabric, confronting the anti-democratic social, sexual and economic arrangements also present in the forces of change, including the progressive governments themselves.   The critical political action of social movements, and their capacity to elaborate the issues at stake in conflicts for social justice, is a central dimension in the correlation of forces that must be established in society and create favorable conditions for the advancement of democracy.  

The question we ask ourselves is whether we want the future perspectives of the WSF to be defined by the social movements, based on the strengthening of their autonomy, or whether we want these perspectives to be defined by former political officials? Especially when several of them have had strong conflicts with indigenous populations, with feminisms, and with undemocratic procedures.  

This is a discussion that we would like to frame in terms of the type of transformation horizon, in the type of left-wing orientation we want to contribute to: without extractivismo, without repression of indigenous, environmental and feminist organizations, without macho jokes, and with the capacity to renew or multiply their leadership. So, I think that dialogue between political parties and social movements is only possible in terms in which autonomy and the capacity for conflict are possible as democratic praxis

@018  erik i did action research in Scandinavia where democratic dialog has been one concept - open decision on equal terms - you have a sense for what the forum can be - sounds reasonable - azril has a strong sense for WSF - but i would like a way forward -

 That is why he is organizing how could you see the way forward for you? stand points and forces 

@019  Gina - discussion always has been there - the space is there and  there is closeness of the positions - we have to continue to give the struggle that wanted to stop change in the charter - we have new movements - i m fond of boaventura - we did a lot of things together – he is aggressive against chico and pierre 

@020  Chico - actor and space good direction continue to be a space actors are civil society more articulated - parties governement are the actors - new instruments that are assemblies (  world assemblies  for the amazon) Alliance of inhabitant ( created assemblies ) - wsf on justice and democracy  In Brazil they would do the forum soon  - discuss governing direction and structure eill not be possible - restructuring the council people who are in the action or those that are preparing the forum. Many problems  we need to  make this discussion as clear as possible for as many people as possible 

 021 erik pierre is having several roles - jurgen habermas connective action and strategic action - 

@022  Pierre - it is a cultural struggle -intellectual struggle on vocabulary - on the participation narrative making the forum more accessible - and more understandable and more empowering and separate participation and facilitation

I call this “ intellectual hubris” - the initiative of 2005  manifesto – I have made a comment on this  fiction of what would have happened in 2005 if the format of participation “ initiative of action “  had been implemented in the forum as it has been implemented in wsf 2020 virtual?  http://openfsm.net/projects/dibco1/dibco1-2020-discusionfsm-input26-comment1-en

The proposed option to keep the WSF an open space is Be innovative in terms of proactivity and formats of participaiton  (  covering dialogue ( activity)   action ( initiative) and communication ( news from the forum)  is a way to propose an implementation of forum vision as a dialogic space where articulation for effective action is stimulated as a bottom up practice

@023 azril why reformers want the wsf to become a subject - create something valuable for their goals 

@024 Tatiana :the forum has to talk about the narrative - People say a lot of things something they are so conservative - sadly in the forum - am 50 and we need more young people - think future another world - we have old discourse and people do not come because the form means something - have space to talk - included in the GF is difficult - people who are so many time monopolize the talk they do not want to listen and make a space to listen - Pierre is resisting and I do not always agree with him ( Tatiana has the experience of Facilitation group GF no the experience  of IC)

 

@025 Erik interesting and revealing maybe we close 

@026 Vera ( revised)  combining thinking and acting is an eternal problem - I began thinking about wsf through the content analysis of 500 Wallerstein’s bimonthly commentaries from Oct. 1 1998 to July 1 2019   . In the commentary No. 82, Feb. 1, 2002: "Porto Alegre, 2002“ Wallerstein points out that strengths of the wsf,  the alternative strategy, open space without officers, spokespeople or resolutions, are simultaneously its weaknesses:: the lack of centralization may make it difficult to coordinate tactics in the more difficult battles that are ahead; lack of tolerance of each other’s priorities among many interests represented; undefined primary objective : if taking state power is not primary objective, what is?) - If he were alive he would probably repeat his conclusion from the commentary no.436  that  the dilemmas wsf finds itself confronted with today should be overcome through listening to each and learning from each other and not “waiting time” through throwing stones at each other.

@027 PIerre about Wallerstein : I came to meet him in the forum – and my last short talk with him was in Montreal- ( link)  where he was clear that IC had no condition to be a political body  there is no anti intellectualism -  in my view  intellectuals have not an individual status in the forum, and  they should act collectively in collectives that bring ideas and material   

@028 Azril there is a danger that “am smarter than you” - earth is flat 

to listen you need to have a space to listen from said freire - freire we can learn from each other if i know everything  why would i bother listening to you - humbleness to learn from other people - hope and humility is a political variable

@029 erik listening is the important thing more than speaking

@030 azrl something i found missing quite a conglomerate of people trying to think about how to go about other possible word - no much effort in counteracting in sweden and brazil - trump is influence 70 millions of people Banon is active qanon conspiracy theory is gaining roots - lepen granddaughter is pinin in Galicia - they have learnt to make courses in Honduras Paraguay and i do not see us counteracting cultural war we are not there 

@031 Pierre - intellectual could endeavor to do this collectively 

@032 erik  could you invite bannon to world social forum ?

@033 Chico - forum do not invite people to come if people agree with first article thaty acon - we excluded violence and government the others if they agree with our objectives bannon will never come - if he comes he is lying 

@034 azril - monological communication want to persuade you already know - education can be oppressive in that sense - gandhi has ahimsa - truth with non-violence - when you see your own people lying - be decently honest – “hey adolf let us have a beer”: it does not work like this

 

@035 Chico in the wsf a group of people had a self organized activity they organized a  tv debate with davos it is not the forum that did that - we said to them it was not a good idea - but you are free to do it - but was not a real debate was good in term of communication - later we had people from world bank - you can come as observers you cannot participate - 2 of them came – that is a different between a movement and a space - you cannot organize activities 

@036 Azril you need mediation that can create a space for dialogue and people start listening 

@037 chico - we had experience with group of farc - you cannot come because your political option is violence and an intellectual organized an activity nearby the forum and they came -

@038 erik so a surrounding of extra forum activities 

@038 Chico in 2003 MST did not agree you must invite revolutionary they did another forum and invited those they wanted - in India  there was “mumbar resistance “ just across the street- they   did  self criticism “it was foolish we had a space just for us and did not have contacts with others mst did the same in 2009  in belem -  it is a cultural problem in mubmai  the two spaces operated  just across the street

@039  azril john holloway Marxist libertarian works with zapatistas - listening to by them like Wallerstein views adopted by Ocalan - how to change the word without taking power - zapasite did popular political education - san diego social forum zapatistas were there- lived in Puebla - should be put back in the discussion Aril -how do we go from there? we have not found how to invite dialogue we have heard different voices spiritual dimension is missing  Listening teivo Ashish thomas how do we proceed - i was in the margin of IC and it is ok - am still alive after 20 years we were a tribe - something new is brewin the wsf - and with this discussion it faded away  Can you foresee do you want to continue along this lines

@040  Pierre –up as a contribution i set  up Dibco initiative  - discussion based on comments   getting to grips with the text of others paragraph after paragraph  dibco initiative=updated with 80 documents http://openfsm.net/projects/dibco1/dibco1-2020-discusionfsm/#EN 

@041 vera - These texts are also available in the moodle forum dialogue form at "The texts on the past, present and future perspectives of the World Social Forum, http://moodle2.f.bg.ac.rs/mod/forum/view.php?id=2996

@042  Azril bannon guys read sorel citizen.org extreme right - if it happens in sweden can happen anywhere

I  propose this lien of dialogue inside RC10 ISA  - Azril i invited boa from the beginning  - to deconstruct the discourse -  people stop thinking in Nazism -primordial messages immigrants’ refuges criminalizing - it is not rational dialogue  -Teivo and thomas - we should gather

@043 vera (revised as not significant)

@044 Azril we could collecto this an publish - john foran a decent complication of thoughts --Erick and myself got the abstracts - we did not develop them -business meeting tomorrow - would RC10 endorse - have done this in the past - and is available for people wanting to read and discus - proceeding of RC10- final paper to azril and erick- by late may ashish will contribute - homework to contextualize 2 weeks 

 

@045 Pierre  (post session)   here is a comment on a note i found by Ashish

 NOTE1( Ashish)  

'The WSF has been the most important forum for progressive movements across the world to come together. It needs to re-invent itself in context that is both vastly different, but also essentially similar, to when it started 20 years ago. 

To do this, it must become a forum that both provides an open space for a pluriverse of movements, ideologies, ways of thinking/being/doing/dreaming can interact with each other with mutual respect, as also a space where these movements can collectively become a subject, a common voice that can be heard worldwide, that can provide global solidarity to the movements for ecological justice, against discrimination and exploitation, for equality and dignity, and much else. 

And for this, we must all open up our personal spaces and comfort zones, learn to collaborate with others who we may not be comfortable with, work with plurality, with perhaps a common thread of basic ethics and values of solidarity, love, peace, interconnectedness, dignity, equality, autonomy, and the rights of both people and the rest of nature. On behalf of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, we will continue to do what we can to contribute to such a re-invigoration of the WSF.'

Pierre: my comment  about this note from Ashish is  focusing on his expression  “A space where movements can  collectively become a subject” :  that is an expectation that can be potentially consistent  with the nature of space of encounters of

 -  Now  two questions :   what does “collectively” mean?   through which “acts of participation” can these movements become a subject inside the WSF space of encounters ?   

This is about  concrete  implementation. I would submit that formulating  in the  WSF open space concrete “initiatives  of actions”,  assumed as  broad  explicit articulations of movements, as has been started to be explored in wsf 2021 virtual,  could help  make those articulacions  grow into subjects.See here the incipient implementation of  a  calendar of dates of actions fed by articulations of participants in WSF . This can come in several stages  of growing articulations,  identifying “proximities” between themselves  and working on more articulation   through activities of dialogue  etcs etc  which can evolve in a ‘mesh of interconnectedness’

 

@046 (post session) Ashish: I mean, for instance, at each physical/virtual WSF, there can be a set of global issues on which positions can be articulated by one or more participants, and all participants could agree (or not) on them; if there is agreement, the position could be taken as a WSF one. The same could apply for the time in between WSF sessions, e.g. when there is a global day of action called by a particular movement like a climate strike, or a workers’ strike, then through some process of quick consultation WSF could issue a statement of solidarity, as also facilitate actions simultaneously around the world. I recognise that these could be logistically difficult, and also pose challenges to get agreement across such a broad spectrum of movements, but it needs to be tried, and processes worked out. Another (alternative or additional) possibility is that WSF becomes, or joins, a broad People’s Assembly of some kind, and takes positions in this form in association with other global movements. There is some ongoing disucssion on whether consensus, significant majority, or some other form of decision-making can be tried out; this needs to be figured out over the next few months and decided on at the 2022 presential WSF. 

 

@047 ( post session) Pierre:  Ashish’s welcome clarification paragraph helps to take the discussion  on his view  a step further.  

1/ “a set of global issues on which positions can be articulated by one or more participants” . This sounds like a declaration produced through interaction between participating organizations. For instance in an assembly and open to support by signature -  This is being concretely implemented - then it is up to each initiative promoting group to update a list of signatories  as as been concretely done in wsf 2021  in some cases - see https://join.wsf2021.net/initiatives/9140  and see https://join.wsf2021.net/initiatives/13998  . I quote those two because they have a “proximity” which is calling for action in august about a same theme - see here  https://join.wsf2021.net/?q=%2Factions-calendar&action_name_1=davos so their respective promoting groups are liable to enter in a conversation about articulating their efforts

2/ “and all participants could agree (or not) on them; if there is agreement, the position could be taken as a WSF one” -  Here i must say that according to my understanding of the nature of open space of WSF, it  is impossible both logistically and conceptually  to hold a list of *all* the participants.and give this unanimity a specific recognition. At the same time  it is possible to show the strength of dynamics  of the articulations that shape in the space of encounters.

logistically    WSF is a space not an organization In this modest  WSF 2021 implementation there were 1300 very diverse  organizations and 9500 individual participants  and  these figures can change permanently . So it is impossible to set up a logistics about this  “all agreeing” since the list of participants is constantly evolving conceptually the WSF space is open meaning that is is through respect acceptance  adhesion to wsf principles which are ideologically positionning the space that participant come to participate, without any other comittment implied by their participaiton.  So if there were something link “WSF positions” on a series of issues ,another principle would have to be added  to the simple enunciation of principles -  the participants are supposed to support the list of  WSF positions accssible here  

(comment not finished - will resume it)  

@048 NOTE2 ( Pierre- post meeting )

The WSF process “actually existing” has been a series of implementation in concrete circumstances, spanning over two decades, and with specific actors involved, of a generic vision, with principles formulated after a first implementation in porto alegre in 2001.

It is instituted as an "open space of encounters" with a series of purposes ( cultural dialogue) including the one of "articulating for effective actions" – 

This self-organized articulation function has been historically under equipped in the politico-methodological implementation, which has hindered the development of practices related to this articulation inside the space and  stimulated ambitions to regressively come back to "speaking in the name of the forum" with the argument that  declaring something as forum is an action made by a meta-holistic subject , 

A formal approach of WSF as organizational novelty proves useful as it allows to focus on find formats of participation that make “articulations for action” more visible, strengthening political subjects ,while keeping the space horizontal and without instituted political leadership. (as some participants would like the international council to be turned into) 

The potential of this orientation of equipping the wsf process to deal with action as a dialogic space, while not being a “space of action”, is visible, with the implementation of the format of self-organized "initiative of action" and " calendar of WSF participants action dates- always in the name of determined groups - " in the recent virtual implementation of the wsf 2021 last January –  https://wsf2021.net/gtagora-calendario1-fechas-de-accion/   

After “dialogue oriented participation” ( activities)  and “action oriented participation” ( iniaitives) , another way forward  for participants empowerment  can be  communication  oriented participation   in WSF  , developing format and  practice of giving access to participants to equitatively produce and spread “news from the forum”-

Also  a clarifying dialogue can be held about  the notion of articulation and  the notion of convergence -  remembering a discussion in octobre 2017  in IC salvador de bahia ( to be documented)