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wsmdandwsf input3
last modified May 30, 2020 by facilitfsm
Looking ahead : Revisiting the World Social Forum
Meeting on the Viral Open Space - May 23 2020
INTRODUCTION TO THE DEBATE ( PDF)
gustave massiah
The introductory note that we have circulated so far on the WSMDiscuss list1 was not a
complete elaboration. In fact, it was at first only an answer to Jai, emphasizing some
considerations, because he asked me about my opinion on the situation of the WSF,
and after discussion we arrive at the common note that you received as an introductory
paper for the discussion on the WSMDiscuss list.
The only thing that I know for sure in these times of great uncertainty is that
contradictions will be growing and that we have to identify, understand, and analyse
these contradictions.
I will just, in the ten minutes I have, present five reflections :
First,
The WSF is the third phase of Alterglobalism. The fourth phase will be reinvented
The alterglobalist movement, is the anti-systemic movement around and against
neoliberal capitalist globalisation. As such, the movement extends and renews historical
movements fighting for workers’ rights, peasants’ rights, women’s rights, and
decolonization.
It has - since the end of the 1970s – known three phases : From the end of the 1970s to
1989, the struggles against debt and structural adjustment programmes, especially in
the Global South; from 1989 until Seattle in 1999, the large demonstrations against the
IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the G7; from 2000 on, the World Social Forums and
a wide range of global direct actions; Since the financial crisis of 2008 and the
movements that took shape in 2011, we are in the midst of a fourth phase of
alterglobalism, that is presently taking shape, under historically new circumstances – of
which we are a part and which we must invent.
The 2008 financial crisis revealed the exhaustion of neoliberalism and the fragility of
financial capitalism. Ecological awareness, particularly with regard to climate change,
unmasked the limits of capitalism and productivism. Post-crisis policies, such as
austerity plans, have exacerbated inequalities and fostered distrust of politicians.
Starting in 2011, insurgencies broke out in dozens of countries as millions of people
1 Gustave Massiah and Jai Sen, May 2020a – ‘A Note towards opening fresh discussion on the future of the World
Social Forum, at this world-historical juncture’. Discussion Note posted on WSMDiscuss for online meeting on Viral
Open Space on May 23 2020, announced at https://www.viralopenspace.net/en/activities/looking-ahead-revisiting-theworld-social-forum (accessed js on 23.05.2020)
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occupied the streets and public squares. The same watchwords were present
everywhere: the rejection of poverty, inequality, discrimination, and repression, and the
demand to reinvent democracy and take bold action to address the ecological crisis.
Everywhere, new challenges arise, such as combatting corruption and rejecting the
political influence of the financial classes. Although these movements were not in
contradiction with the World Social Forum, they did not identify with it.
The years after 2013 have seen the emergence of counterrevolutions rooted in racist,
xenophobic, and security-based ideologies, and a wave of decentralized wars.
Neoliberalism in an austeritarian phase, is hardening its domination and reliance on
repression, with coups d'état elevating reactionary governments into power in several
countries. Several conservative counter-revolutions are underway. These developments
have put social and citizen movements in a defensive posture. The situation requires a
new wave of social, democratic, political, ideological, and cultural resistance.
Second
The challenge of the new alterglobalist phase is to include all the different sets of
social and citizen movements
We need to recognise that the WSF as a space for alterglobalism has not included all
the movements; even if it has been accepted and recognized by several of them, they
have not really appropriated it. This was clear with the movements of 2011 (occupy,
indignados).
Currently, we can identify five sets of movements that present different cultures of
mobilization and elaboration :
- The social movements that represent the social struggles of working class, salaried,
peasants, students and also part of the feminist movements, the defence of rights
movements, the international solidarity movements – all these constitute the essential
part of the anti-globalization movement.
- The movements of the popular suburbs, the racialized and part of the feminist
movements that define themselves against discrimination and that have an
intersectional approach reaffirm their autonomy and claim their recognition. (Some of
them, particularly Afro-Brazilian women, have played a role in the forums. But on the
whole, they have stayed away from the forums.)
- The climate urgency and ecological priority movements have worked with the forums
several times but have developed autonomously.
- Movements since 2011, in response to the 2008 financial crisis, have been extended
and gained in magnitude with major demonstrations in 47 countries in 2019. Many of
their active activists have participated at the Social Forums, but they refused to join them
as a movement;
And in addition,
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- Since the beginning of the pandemic crisis in 2020, we have seen the rise of new local,
national, and international solidarity movements experimenting with new forms of
intervention.
The renewal of the alterglobalist movement does not pass through a simple
convergence of struggles.
It requires acknowledging the diversity of cultures of social movements and building
unity in projects and in the definition of strategies.
Third
Pandemic and climate change reveal a crisis of civilization
The exacerbation of ecological, social, democratic and geopolitical contradictions
reinforces the hypothesis of a crisis of civilisation. What the covid19 coronavirus
pandemic reveals is the low resilience of the international system, particularly the
occidental one, to an unforeseen event of such magnitude. Pandemic and climate
participate to a crisis of civilization. The ecological rupture leads us to reflect on what a
crisis of civilization implies, without falling into millenarianist fears, but by taking the
measure of the upheavals that result.
In 2019, 47 countries, a quarter of the world's countries, experienced civil revolts and
massive demonstrations that continue into 2020. Let us recall Gramsci's premonitory
sentence in 1937, the old world is dying, the new world is slow to appear, and in this
chiaroscuro the monsters are rising.
Profound changes are building the new world and prefiguring the contradictions of the
future. Let us propose to identify five mutations in progress. The women's rights
revolution challenges millenary relationships of domination. The rights of peoples, the
second phase of decolonization, after the independence of States, emphasizes the
liberation of peoples and questions the multiple identities and forms of the nation-state.
The ecological awareness is a philosophical revolution, which publicly rests on the idea
that we live in a time and space that are no longer unlimited. Digital technology is
renewing language and writing, and biotechnologies are questioning the limits of the
human body. The upheaval in the world' s population is in progress; migration is one
aspect of a global demographic revolution. These are unfinished and uncertain
revolutions. There is no guarantee that they will not be crushed, deviated, or
recuperated. But there is also no reason to say that they will be. For the time being, they
are provoking rejection and great violence and allowing monsters to emerge.
Fourth
The challenge of alterglobalism is to define a strategy taking into account the new
period and the evolution of contradictions.
It is on this issue that we must open the debate and confront the options. As we leave
the confinements, the contradictions will sharpen.
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Proposals depend on the situation, but they also require horizontal strategic thinking on
a global scale. The approach is to articulate three strategic moments according to time
horizons.
Resistance to the shock strategy
Evolution from the austeritarian neoliberalism after 2008 to a dictatorial néoliberalism
and to the multiplication of wars, decentralized wars and civil wars
The immediate strategy is that of urgency and resistance to the dominant racist,
securitarian and xenophobic ideology. It proposes the contestation of capitalism,
including green capitalism and austeritarian neo-liberalism, the rejection of the
merchandisation of Nature and Life, and the effectiveness of rights and freedoms.
It is not excluded that The resistance on social, ecology, democracy and geopolitics
could create contradictions in the dominant block, between the extractivist and the
GAFAM, between state politics and multinationals, between emerging countries and
occidental block
Definition of alternatives
The challenge is not to define the perfect model of socialism or communism. It is to enter
in the cultural hegemonic battle define by Gramsci
And on this we have some news proposals emerging from the pandemic situation. It is
the progress in the perception of rights. For example, health rights, educational rights,
income rights
The need of relocation, the ecological imperatives, the legitimacy of public actions in
front of the market hegemony
The long-term strategy is that of alternatives, for another possible world, involving the
overcoming of capitalism. This involves access to fundamental rights for all and a coconstruction of a new universalism. It is based on the concepts in definition, common
goods, buen-vivir, social and collective property, free and public services, radical
democratisation of democracy, etc. It is a project to be invented so that the overcoming
of capitalism does not result in new forms of domination.
The third level of strategy is the midterm strategy
It depends of regional and national situations. The medium-term strategies for the
coming decades define the stages for social, ecological, democratic and geopolitical
transformation and the policies to be undertaken. It may be that of prosperity without
growth and the Green New Deal. It includes a new international system and can be
adapted to different situations. One example is the Green New Deal proposal
developed, in the case of the United States, by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes for a
democratic socialism.
In the immediate term, there is an urgent need to link alterglobalism and
internationalism. Alterglobalism is built by the diversity and convergence of social and
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citizen movements; it needs to enter in a new phase. Internationalism was concerned
with organizational capacities, the specificity of politics, and the articulation of the local,
national and global levels. It needs to be reinvented.
This strategic approach recalls the importance of revolutionary periods but is not
expecting a magical change. Revolutions can accelerate evolution, they invent new
ways, they do not eliminate the long time of history.
Fifth
In conclusion
What can we say about the WSF ?
The proposal is to start from the social movements, in their diversity
To ask each movement to define its strategy taking into account the new period and the
new contradictions, to define the international dimension of this strategy, and to
participate to the building of an unified common international strategy.
The new form of the new phase of the alterglobalist movement will be defined by the
new movements that will emerge. The WSF could be part of it, as a step of the evolution
and the invention of the new movements