WORLD SOCIAL FORUM—CONCLUSIONS AND NEXT STEPS
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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