Federico Fuentes
A manifesto proposed by 19 intellectuals created a stir at this year's World Social Forum. The 12-point platform of proposals is designed to make concrete the slogan "Another World is Possible".
Circulated in order to gain the support of all WSF participants, the initial signatories of the "Porto Alegre Manifesto" include WSF founders and Le Monde Diplomatique editors Bernard Cassen and Ignacio Ramonet, as well as long-time WSF supporters such as Argentine Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Uruguay historian Eduardo Galeano, Walden Bello from Focus on the Global South and Pakistan-born author Tariq Ali.
Not all have been so enthusiastic. Brazilian WSF International Committee members Candido Grzybowski and Francisco (Chico) Whitaker, for example, attempted to downplay the document, liking it to "dozens, maybe hundreds of other proposals", according to Inter Press Services.
Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a member of the India Organising Committee for last year's Mumbai WSF meeting, told Terraviva: "As for this document I would consider it a declaration from inside the forum but not of the forum. Even if 3000 organisations sign it, it will not be a WSF declaration."
It is not the content of the Porto Alegre Manifesto that has created controversy. Far from putting forward radical ideas, the declaration proposes a series of mild reforms which most, if not all, WSF participants would find hard to disagree with: debt cancellation, a tax on financial speculation, dismantling of tax havens, fairer trade practices, end to environmental destruction, implementation of anti-discrimination policies and the democratisation of international institutions such as the United Nations to name a few.
In fact, as Flavio Lotti from Italian non-government organisation Tavola della Pace pointed out to Terraviva, "the document misses an important issue: that of peace and war, that is dominant nowadays in the international agenda."
The problem — for some — is that the WSF has always explicitly stated in its charter that although it is an "open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action" against neoliberalism, neither it nor its participants will "be called on to take decisions as a body".
The manifesto represents a break from this philosophy. As Ricardo Petrella, one of the signatories, explained at the press conference to announce the initiative "it's not possible to continue to say 'another world is possible' if we do not make some proposals about how to reach this other world."
For many, the WSF's inability to make proposals, which would undoubtedly carry enormous weight, along with the attempts to sidestep or downplay crucial debates at the forums is beginning to cost the WSF its radical profile.
Lee Sustar, writing about this year's WSF in Socialist Worker, the paper of the US International Socialist Organization, noted: "the decision to hold more numerous and smaller meetings on the war had the effect of sidelining important arguments within the movement... In fact, the WSF at times seemed more like a series of parallel conferences than a single event. Well-endowed NGOs were much more prominent than in the past, using the forum to hold events that were really policy workshops for professionals, rather than strategy sessions for global justice activists."
James Petras in an interview with Indymedia Peru in December last year noted "in the beginning the social forums were positive, coming together, discussing, meeting each other, forming networks, approving a few declarations, but it has almost turned into a ritual, more like a social gathering, where people get together, invite a few personalities, have a march and then everyone 'goes home'".
That is why, although the declaration is far from perfect, many have supported it as a move to turn the WSF into what Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago described as "an instrument for action". In this light the document should be seen as a small, but positive step forward.
[Fred Fuentes is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, an affiliate to the Socialist Alliance in Australia.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 9, 2005.
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