By Dave Silver
                                
The coming together in Porto Alegre of representatives of Indigenous
Peoples, workers, peasants, and intellectuals was an inspiring event for
national liberation struggles as well as against exploitation, oppression
and racism worldwide.   Nearly 50,000 people and several thousand delegates
from South Africa to the Philippines, from Argentina, Cuba and Mexico as
well as Paris, Berlin and New York to mention where just some of the
participants came from to share ideas at the second World Social Forum.
(WSF)  They came together, thanks in large measure to efforts of the host
Workers Party of Brazil.  All were agreed that the primary mission of this
Forum would be to share ideas as to the most effective way of confronting
global capital and its “structural adjustments” demanded by the IMF and
World Bank.

Permeating the deliberations were calls for sustainable development, for
struggles against racism and sexism, grassroots organizing, the preservation
of indigenous land while developing a consensus that there is indeed a
common enemy-transnationals and banks that unites all of the struggles to
better the human condition.  The Manifestum of the WSF says it will “provide
space for building economic alternatives” and develop a more  democratic
ruling class bodies such as the WTO, IMF and World Bank.”  There were calls
for a “solidarity economy” in effect saying that the “traditional” or
“orthodox” Marxism/socialism has to be replaced by an “ecological
 socialism.”  The Philippine economist Walden Bello expressed these
sentiments when he equated as twin evils “centralized socialism and
corporate capitalism.”

They like their forerunners in the Marxist-Humanist movement, in the
Frankfurt School, “Euro-communist” and the“new thinking” have all proclaimed
that “traditional” Marxism must be rejected because it is outmoded for a
complex society and no longer the best guide for struggle and the
achievement of a socialist society.  At the heart of the matter is that the
“neo-marxists” no longer accept the fact that the main contradiction is
between capitalist imperialism and socialism (however decimated) but rather
it is to be found in various national conflicts and therefore not
international in scope.  Needless to say that feeding such illusions has an
extremely negative impact on the development of a people’s Resistance since
any organization is as effective as the consciousness that informs it.
Progressive reforms must not be confused with wielding state power or
revolution.  Just as the IMF or the Democratic Party can’t be “reformed” and
thought of as being part of a people’s solution we cannot delude ourselves
that there is a third or hybrid vision neither socialist nor capitalist.
While there are variants within each road such as for example dependent
capitalist states (Mexico) and the Cuban model-there are only two roads- the
social or private ownership of the means of production.
(dm.silver@verizon.net)
 

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