Fernand Braudel Center,
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Commentary No.
299, Feb. 15, 2011
"The
World Social Forum, Egypt, and Transformation"
The World Social Forum (WSF) is alive and
well. It just met in Dakar, Senegal from Feb. 6-11. By unforeseen coincidence,
this was the week of the Egyptian people's successful dethroning of Hosni
Mubarak, which finally succeeded just as the WSF was in its closing session.
The WSF spent the week cheering the Egyptians on - and discussing the meaning
of the Tunisian/Egyptian revolutions for their program of transformation, for
achieving another world that is possible - possible, not certain.
Somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 people
attended the Forum, which is in itself a remarkable number. To hold such an
event, the WSF requires strong local social movements (which exist in Senegal)
and a government that at least tolerates the holding of the Forum. The
Senegalese government of Abdoulaye Wade was ready to
"tolerate" the holding of the WSF, although already a few months ago
it reneged on its promised financial assistance by three-quarters.
But then came the
Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, and the government got cold feet. What if the
presence of the WSF inspired a similar uprising in Senegal? The government
couldn't cancel the affair, not with Lula of Brazil, Morales of Bolivia, and
numerous African presidents coming. So it did the next best thing. It tried to
sabotage the Forum. It did this by firing the Rector of the principal
university where the Forum was being held, four days before the opening, and
installing a new Rector, who promptly reversed the decision of the previous
Rector to suspend classes during the WSF so that meeting rooms be available.
The result was organizational chaos for at
least the first two days. In the end, the new Rector permitted the use of 40 of
the more than 170 rooms needed. The organizers imaginatively set up tents
across the campus, and the meeting proceeded despite the sabotage.
Was the Senegalese government right to be so
frightened of the WSF? The WSF itself debated how relevant it was to popular
uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere, undertaken by people who had
probably never heard of the WSF? The answer given by those in attendance
reflected the long-standing division in its ranks. There were those who felt
that ten years of WSF meetings had contributed significantly to the undermining
of the legitimacy of neoliberal globalization, and
that the message had seeped down everywhere. And there were those who felt that
the uprisings showed that transformational politics lay elsewhere than in the
WSF.
I myself found two striking things about the
Dakar meeting. The first was that hardly anyone even mentioned the World
Economic Forum at Davos. When the WSF was founded in
2001, it was founded as the anti-Davos. By 2011, Davos seemed so unimportant politically to those present
that it was simply ignored.
The second was the degree to which everyone
present noted the interconnection of all issues under discussion. In 2001, the
WSF was primarily concerned with the negative economic consequences of neoliberalism. But at each meeting thereafter the WSF added
other concerns - gender, environment (and particularly climate change), racism,
health, the rights of indigenous peoples, labor struggles, human rights, access
to water, food and energy availability. And suddenly at Dakar, no matter what
was the theme of the session, its connections with the other concerns came to
the fore. This it seems to me has been the great achievement of the WSF - to
embrace more and more concerns and get everyone to see their intimate
interconnections.
There was nonetheless one underlying
complaint among those in attendance. People said correctly we all know what
we're against, but we should be laying out more clearly what it is we are for.
This is what we can contribute to the Egyptian revolution and to the others
that are going to come everywhere.
The problem is that there remains one
unresolved difference among those who want another world. There are those who
believe that what the world needs is more development, more modernization, and
thereby the possibility of more equal distribution of resources. And there are
those who believe that development and modernization are the civilizational curse of capitalism and that we need to
rethink the basic cultural premises of a future world, which they call civilizational change.
Those who call for civilizational
change do it under various umbrellas. There are the indigenous movements of the
Americas (and elsewhere) who say they want a world based on what the Latin
Americans call "buen vivir"
- essentially a world based on good values, one that requires the slowing down
of unlimited economic growth which, they say, the planet is too small to
sustain.
If the indigenous movements center their
demands around autonomy in order to control land rights in their communities,
there are urban movements in other parts of the world who emphasize the ways in
which unlimited growth is leading to climate disaster and new pandemics. And
there are feminist movements who are underlining the link between the demands
for unlimited growth and the maintenance of patriarchy.
This debate about a "civilizational
crisis" has great implications for the kind of political action one
endorses and the kind of role left parties seeking state power would play in
the world transformation under discussion. It will not be easily resolved. But
it is the crucial debate of the coming decade. If the left cannot resolve its
differences on this key issue, then the collapse of the capitalist
world-economy could well lead to a triumph of the world right and the
construction of a new world-system worse even than the existing one.
For the moment, all eyes are on the Arab
world and the degree to which the heroic efforts of the Egyptian people will
transform politics throughout the Arab world. But the tinder for such uprisings
exists everywhere, even in the wealthier regions of the world. As of the
moment, we are justified in being semi-optimistic.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein,
distributed by Agence Global. For rights and
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the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact
author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on
the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate
headlines but of the long term.]
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