Dear Peter,

As always, it is a pleasure to read your analyses. This time it has been a particular pleasure to be honored by your insightful and provocative comments on the article "The World Social Forum: An Open Space or a Movement of Movements?" written by Heikki Patomäki and myself, published in the most recent issue of Theory, Culture and Society.

As so many times before, I share most of what you say, including many of your critical comments on our article. In particular, I self-critically share your general concern about the all-too-widespread tendency to avoid discussing capitalism in analyses of the WSF. Point well taken. Nevertheless, I think your speculations on our motivations in this regard were not totally fair.

Heikki and I, either separately or together, will probably have more comments on your comments. Let me now make a couple of initial observations to avoid some misunderstandings.

First of all, our text was not intended to be a general analysis of the WSF, but a much more specific commentary on the debate concerning whether the WSF is a "space" or a "movement". We have both separately and together analyzed some other, and more general, aspects of the WSF process in earlier publications. You pointed out that apart from the lack of analysis of capitalism in this particular text we make almost no direct reference to "globalization", which for people (like both Heikki and myself) who generally focus much of our work on capitalist globalization means the focus has been on something quite specific.

My first main comment now is about your speculation of the possible motives that may have led to the lack of explicit analysis of capitalism in this short article. I felt that your comments might lead someone draw incorrect conclusions about our particular attitude toward capitalism as a system and capitalism as a c-word.

You speculated that we avoid the term capitalism because of its "past association with Marxism, Communism and strategies of insurrection, and its current use, in the archaic, schematic and reductionist manner, by Simplistic Workers Parties". Another possible motive you mention is "to avoid frightening off present or potential sponsors, allies or partners - such as even the international trade unions - that are against globalisation (or its 'bad' aspects) but in favour of a gentler, kinder globalised capitalism".

This may not be the proper space or moment to enter into detailed analysis of what anyone of us may have argued about capitalism. In any case, I would like to make it clear that in various earlier publications I have analyzed the WSF in the context of the authoritarian tendencies of capitalism.

In one earlier publication I also expressed a similar concern that you make, i. e. that "it is not always easy to see the differences [of] the 'alternative' globalisation proposals with the idea of many business leaders that some democratisation is necessary in order to make the global expansion of capitalism acceptable". In a collection co-edited by you, I also pointed out that in the WSF we should pay more attention to the fact that while anti-globalization people can be pro-capitalist, pro-globalization people may be anti-capitalist. In more normative terms, I have repeatedly argued that it is increasingly important for participants of the WSF to envision what a post-capitalist world may look like.

In our book A Possible World: Democratic Transformation of Global Institutions (Zed 2004) Heikki and I discuss the WSF in the context of the critical "global civil society" and argue that "To the extent that there is a unifying adversary, it is not 'globalisation' per se but rather the unleashed capacity of capitalist corporations and banks to operate freely across borders and regions, creating new undemocratic and unaccountable mechanisms of global control and power".

I am not sure if these scattered references suffice to make the point that we have not generally tried to avoid critically discussing capitalism, quite to the contrary, even if in this short article you comment the focus was somewhat different than in some other texts of ours.

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There exists another part of your comment where I feel you arguments are as such very solid but when directed as criticism toward our article, once more, slightly misleading and unfair. You seem to claim that we rely on a very traditional notion of politics, and state that:

"The parameters of this paper are determined by a particular understanding of 'politics' laid down during earlier phases of capitalist development. The references here are to nation-states, inter-state institutions and political parties".

I find this comment somewhat strange, because in our article we explicitly state that

"one should be cautious about simplistic dichotomies of political party/social movement that have been reproduced and to a certain extent useful in the national contexts. It is equally important to try to avoid the reproduction of the categories of Western national politics of the late 20th century."

Your claim is probably motivated by the fact that we do discuss the possible emergence of transnational and global political parties. This does not mean that we would claim that such parties, or nation-states, would be the only "political" organizations of today or future. We state in the article:

"Can transnational civil society organisations and movements accomplish anything efficacious to bring about "another world"? This question may also be detached from the abstract possibility of constructing a global party in some unspecified sense. For now, at least, the focus could perhaps be on how different kinds of transnational political actors and alliances could be empowered to contribute to democratic transformations of our world."

In this picture, the "social" is not simply breathing new life into the "political", as you claim we claim, but the social can and should be political in itself. In any case, in our article the arguments on the possibility of global parties have not been fully developed, and many of your comments are very valuable for deepening the discussion.

Your comments on the limitations of the WSF forms of communication are very important. These issues should be debates much more. As an anecdote, related to the main theme of our article, I remember a discussion during the meeting of the WSF International Council's strategy commission in November 2003 in Paris.

In the meeting Roberto Savio gave a longish speech on the importance of communication, making many good points on how to create a better system of communication for the WSF. As in another meeting we had just debated the fact that the WSF does not issue political statements or declarations, I commented to Roberto: "this all sounds very good, all these ideas on HOW to communicate, but taking into account that we are not really supposed to declare anything, WHAT exactly is it that we should communicate". I will be very happy to further discuss this issue, which (paraphrasing Spivak) could be also formulated as "can the WSF speak?"

On the tension between "amelioration and emancipation", I agree with most of what you say. Nevertheless, I think your categorization of the WSF and the Network Institute for Global Democratization (NIGD) as "lean[ing] heavily in the ameliorative direction", as opposed to the emancipatory direction, is slightly unfair. It may be strange to talk about such parallels between a huge process (WSF) and a relatively small critical think tank that forms part of its International Council (NIGD), but in any case I would argue that both contain elements that are not within the parameters of the capitalist world. This is something I am sure we will discuss more.

Even if I think that some of your comments contain simplifications and rely on straw-man arguments, they helped me see various limitations of our article. Let us continue our dialogue.