Otto Bruun and Elisa Lipponen

On Monday, the 4^th of December, one of the founding fathers of the World Social Forum, Francisco “Chico” Whitaker from Brazil participated in an open panel discussion in Helsinki, Finland at the Old Students house.

Francisco Whitaker was awarded the “alternative Nobel”, The Right Livelihood award for 2006, In recognition of his work for grassroot democracy and the World Social Forum process.  The session in Helsinki was co-organized by Attac, NIGD, Independent Left, and democracy forum Vasudhaiva Kutubakam. Along with Whitaker, other invited panel speakers were from the newly created Finnish think tanks associated with political parties; Ruurik Holm (Vasemmistofoorumi), Juha Eskelinen (Kalevi Sorsa Säätiö) and Ville Ylikahri (ViSiO). The purpose of the session was to discuss the possibilities of global governance and alternatives to neo-liberal capitalism after the strengthening of leftist movements in Latin America, and the role of European Union in this process.

Former NIGD chair Thomas Wallgren was moderator of the session. He started out by pointing out a couple of things as a background: First, globalization in a neo-liberal sense is penetrating all areas of our societies. Second, growing military aggression dominated by the U.S. is something that we should really be concerned about. At the same time as these worrying developments are taking place, progress is happening. The examples of, the rejection of the European constitution in France and the Netherlands, and Lula Da Silva´s mandate for a second term, are clear signals of success for the movement against neo-liberalism. Wallgren passed the discussion to Chico Whitaker by posing a few open challenges: we need to figure out what use we can make of these victories. Have they given any solutions or do they help further our common task in some way? Moreover: can we build winning coalitions, in a broader sense, to be able to achieve sustained political victories?

The Challenge of Politics in the 21^st century

Chico Whitaker underlined the historical development of capitalism and globalization; neoliberalism is just the current phase of this development. Forces concerned with capitalism have existed for a long time. When Whitaker was exiled in Europe in the 1980s he visited the Soviet Union and travelled around freely. After his return to Brazil he was told not to share his experience, no-one in the left wanted to hear about the actual problems associated with existing socialism. The fall of the Berlin wall provided widespread disillusionment in Brazil. Whitaker concludes that seizing the power in itself is not sufficient, as it can go wrong. The century finished with doubts: is changing the world actually possible? Resistance to capitalist domination reappeared in the late 1990s. It was present in Seattle in 1999, and was evident in struggles against the MAI-deal, and in critical campaigns on the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO.

Whitaker shared Wallgren's concerns concerning the neo-liberal logic; today competition dominates almost all areas of life, and ever increasingly, the minds of the people. Still, Whitaker was convinced of the possibility of change. As the WSF has shown, instead of just protesting against something, people have started a search for concrete alternatives to neo-liberal domination. The WSF participation has increased significantly in numbers showing, from 20000 participants in Porto Alegre in 2001 to 120000 participants in Mumbai 2004. How has this success story come about? Whitaker argued that a new way of doing politics was discovered within the WSF: instead of concentrating on divergences between movements the WSF provided a platform for searching convergences, without a search for final documents or chiefs. Horizontality and diversity are essential elements of this process of building visions; pyramid-like power structures must be avoided. In Whitakers opinion, previous political movements that have claimed power, such as socialists around the world, have failed fundamentally because change has been driven from above; a narrow social elite. The question of the WSF is not only seizing power through progressive movements, but rather about changing society and politics fundamentally. The WSF has already proved its force in bringing together different forces and allowing for new coalitions to be formed, as in Mumbai 2004 when different leftist groups found each other.

Nothing can make up for a strong autonomous civil society

Whitaker was quite skeptical about the real significance of Lula Da Silva's second mandate in office in Brazil; if the first term in power did not make a thorough difference, why would the second one be any different? At this point he called on an active civil society. Even though Lula won the election, he needs to be pressured to fight against neo-liberal dominance. If the civil society will not do it, the multinational corporations and other agents of neo-liberalism will be the only ones pressuring government. Even Lula himself has urged people to take action and pressure him. All of society should be involved in the task, not just political parties and other powerful actors.

Outside pressuring government, Whitaker also thought that consumer choices and consumer power should be taken seriously in the debate on how to improve, for instance, working conditions and environmental protection. Stella Whitaker raised the point of solidarity economy and local money in Sao Paolo as a way of increasing solidarity and equality in everyday life, locally. Encouraging examples of solidarity economy exist all around the globe.

The role of political parties in the WSF is very complicated and delicate, according to Whitaker. If the parties would participate as parties in the WSF, he fears that it would risk diminishing the space of civil society. Whitaker welcomes parties' individuals, and politicians' can help and support for the WSF as long as they do not interfere as parties. Nonetheless, all panelists agreed that more cooperation is needed in many sectors in order to actually achieve political goals and renew trust for the WSF as such. Juha Eskelinen from the Social Democratic Sorsa Foundation think tank suggests that parties should learn from the open method used in the WSF. Since the strength of civil society should not be underestimated, he sees the openness as a useful tool for building broad coalitions and joint opinions. Eskelinen also elaborated the possibility of building global cooperation around the concept of “Decent Work”, which would be defined differently in different contexts. Ruurik Holm, on his behalf, stressed the importance of intellectual co-operation. He also claimed that "what kind of world is possible" has to be determined; in the long run just claiming “another world is possible” can not be the base for a sustained movement. We have to start a thorough discussion on the content of change, and not only concentrate on the method, even if it is very important. Holm named The European Transform Network as one setting, where a debate on the content of the politics is currently elaborated, for instance through a project on economic democracy. Ville Ylikahri from ViSiO pointed out that despite an emerging need for co-operation, who we are working with and why is an important question. For example, China claims to be a friend of Chavez and the WSF while the capitalism it pursues is simply bad and regressive. Ylikahri also pointed out, that we need to move quickly, as environmental degradation in e.g. China is already unsustainably extensive. A question concerning the digital revolution was raised from the audience as a tool for civil society deliberation. Whitaker pondered the idea of allowing for a constant virtual World Social Forum on the internet.

Next steps and challenges ahead

The conclusion of the nearly three-hour discussion was that an active and horizontal civil society is one of the keys to "another world". According to Whitaker, in order to pursue the task of strengthening this civil society, there will and must be other kinds of activities all over the world, even if the WSF will not be arranged in 2008. After all, the WSF is a process, but making groups and individuals understand this is no easy task. Whitaker was convinced that by being active we are able to continue a North-South dialogue, participate in agenda setting, and show the world that there are alternatives to be articulated. He also raised the idea of Paolo Freire that we all should pursue being both teachers and pupils in all contexts. No one owns the truth alone, and the WSF should be a field where this idea is accepted.