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Social Forums: Learning from Each Other
Hilary Wainwright
TNI Website, 20 January 2005
(This article was published in italian translation in il manifesto, January 2005)
On the morning after the 25,000 strong European Social Forum in London, the Guardian newspaper described 'the emergence of a genuine new politics of the European Left'. In English `emergence' suggests a smooth transition from old to new. There were indeed signs of the new. But signs of the old remained, challenging us strengthen our ability to innovate. I want to sketch the relation of problems to achievements, not as a balance sheet, but to understand the dynamics in flow: do the resources and momentum generated by the ESF process provide means to overcome the diffculties it now faces? How can the ESF experience be consolidated in order to move to a new phase in this radical European convergence?
One set of problems lies in the organisation of the infrastructure of the Forum - the physical environment, the food, the translation, the web-site and media facilities and so on. In London, this was dominated by the Greater London Authority whose approach was highly instrumental, contrary to the ESF's spirit of trying to fuse means with ends and make the organisation of the Forum consistent with its goals.
Another set of problems concerns decisions about the core programme. The present system of national bargaining, weighted in favour of the host country, is not producing creative outcomes - on the contrary it is leading to repetition and tedium. Underlying these `organisational' issues are political dilemmas. The Social Forums promise space for Social movements to meet autonomously from political parties and state institutions; how is that autonomy to be sustained ? And what kind of relation with party and state is envisaged, since autonomy does not mean the absence of a relationship? Social Forums are both a product and a means of extending horizontal networks across borders. The process reflects new forms of self-organisation, how are they to be structured? How do we avoid the problem posed by the women's movement in the 1970's - an earlier phase of horizontal self-organisation - namely 'the tryanny of structurelessness'?
There were many signs in London, of the ESF process having a momentum of its own, whatever the problems. The Forum reached deeper into European society, inspite of a lower attendance than previous ESF's. There was an unprecedented participation of Muslim activists, radicalised by their involvement in the anti-war movement, especially in Britain. The seminars conceming Islam did not do justice to the new dimensions, and tensions, which this brings to the formation of a new European left. But a foundation stone has been laid and a challenge posed for the future.
A further challenge comes from the significant increase in delegates from Russia and central and eastern Europe. At times, they felt ghettoised. The Western left has been slow to listen to the emerging new left in the East, thereby missing a vital ingredient in building a European left. As Peter Damo from the Romanian Social Forum put it: `The crisis of the left in Europe is our common problem. We can't resolve the situation without each other. It is important that the West understands the complexity of our situation and that we work together so that there are no new divisions in Europe.' Miroslav Prokes from the Czech Social Forum reinforced his point. 'We need the support of the West European left, but they also need us. If the left in the East cannot modemise, nationalists wilt occupy this political space.'
A further development which could give a new dynamic to the Forum was paradoxically a product of a creative response to problems encountered with the undue domination of the Greater London Authority. Instead of sulking, frustrated activists created, across London, a web or 'galaxy' of autonomous, spaces, connected by common publicity and by participants whose eclectic political desires gave them the energy to criss-cross the city in pursuit of ideas and connections.
The momenturn behind the ESF, however, is not inevitable. If the expenditure of energy needed to overcome the obstacles becomes greater than the chance for creative, practical outcomes people wilt retreat and the momenturn wilt be lost. How can the problems encountered in London be turned into a stimulus to renew our vision of this radical European convergence; a spur to make us more innovative in our ways of organising? Possible solutions lie in making the ESF more explicitly a process, rather than simply an event, in making this process more European - rather than leaving so much with the host country - and in opening the decision-making more radically to networks and initiatives, especially the growing number of those organised on a Europe wide basis. It has also become more important after London to address explicitly the character of the Forum's autonomy from state and party organisations. On all these issues, there is much we can learn from the way that Forum activists across the world are preparing for the 5th World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre at the end of January.
The WSF is learning some hard lessons in organising in ways which reflect its goals. The catalyst was Mumbai - the 2004 WSF. Organising the 130,000 WSF without any state backing - on the contrary, vicious hostility - meant that the Indian organising committee had to look to the resources of the movements, to voluntary labour and to the social economy rather than buying in services or using public infrastructure as they had in Porto Alegre - governed as it then was by the Workers Party, one of the instigators of the WSF.
Mumbai exemplified another innovation: extensive consultation on the programme. The result, universally welcomed, was more focus, less repetition, less pontification, and a programme which favoured practical outcomes. The Indians brought a constructively questioning approach to the International Committee (IC) of the WSF, whose members recognised the need for innovation. The result is dramatic in every way. Physically: instead of taking over the big Catholic University in the suburbs of Porto Alegre, creating a little town of its own separate from the local people, WSF delegates wilt talk alongside local participants in tents by the side of the river Guaiba that runs through the heart of the city. Politically: the programme is being decided through a six month process of consultation involving all the campaigns, networks and projects who have participated in the WSF. Over 1,500 organisations have responded with the themes around which they want the Forum's activities to be organised. The method is co-ordination without centralisation.
Without romanticising this process, there is much that we Europeans can learn from it. Behind the energy and enthusiasm in the WSF organising office in Sao Paulo, there is still a little apprehension, a fear of chaos, but that's inevitable with any experiment. Anxiety is reinforced by the absence of a supportive municipal government . At the municipal elections last month, the PT after over 15 years in government, was defeated by a motley alliance of parties of the left and the right. Although the federal government is providing some financial support, it looks like the WSF started to innovate its way out of dependence just in time. What will it take for the ESF to do the same?
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