Volume 4, No. 11, November 2003

As we had noted in the foregoing, the decade of the 1990s witnessed a massive movement against imperialist globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation, first in the countries of Latin America and then throughut the world. As the imperialists were determined to carry out their plan for opening up every country to their globalisation offensive, they had also to think of ways and means to contain the people’s struggles against globalisation by channelising them into peaceful path. The massive demonstrations in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America that spread to the imperialist countries themselves by the end of the 90s as witnessed in Seattle, Prague and elsewhere, made the imperialists think of a worldwide forum to channelise this wrath into a manageable way.

The plan for WSF was first floated in the year 2000 by Bernard Casen of ATTAC. In that year, eight Brazilian organisations came together to form a Brazilian Forum in Sao Paulo. They decided to hold a conference in Porto Alegre where some more organisations joined them in March 2000. Later in June of the same year, they attended the anti-Copenhagen plus five conference in Geneva where several European organisations agreed to join the proposed WSF.

There were actually two parallel meets of the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre at that time. The official congregation of the WSF consisting of NGOs could gather only 10,000 people while the parallel meet of WSF attracted more than 50,000 people. This fact, however, was suppressed by the organisers of WSF. Finally, the official conference of the WSF released an 18-point Manifesto.

The COB (Organising Brazilian Committee) acts as the International Secretariat of the WSF and is dominated by the social democratic trend of PT which is linked to its European counterpart—ATTAC (Action for Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens) The International Council is comprised of some 80 organisations, including ATTAC, Genoa Social Forum, a section of the Trotskyite Fourth International (Revolutionary Communist League), American Council of Social Sciences, Samir Amin’s World Forum of Alternatives, and the Communist Refoundation from Italy.

Among the French delegates to the Second WSF at Porto Alegre in Jan 2002 was a high-level government delegation sent by the French President Jacques Chirac and the Prime Minister Lionel Jospin that included six government ministers and four top presidential aides. Also part of the delegation was the mayor of Paris, three French presidential election candidates and the general secretary of the Centre-Right RPR. Then there was the Prime Minister of Belgium, and the ex-President of Portugal who had overseen the implementation of the neo-liberal policies in his country in the midst of fierce opposition from the working class.

With the presence of such a delegation at the WSF one can easily imagine the nature and the outcome of the debates on matters such as Third World debt, privatisation, liberalisation, etc. Needless to say, hardly anyone would take the discussion on these matters seriously since the delegates such as those mentioned above were the very ones who represented governments that fleeced the people of the Third World in the most rapacious manner. For instance, Charles Josselin, the Minister for Cooperation of France, is directly responsible for dealing with the foreign debt of the African countries. And France expropriates, in the form of interest payments, a sum representing over 60 % of the national budgets of the former French colonies in North Africa thereby pushing the vast majority of the masses of these countries to grinding poverty and miserable living conditions.

Firstly, as we had seen in the foregoing, the WSF is a loose congregation of various NGOs, mass organisations and trade unions of the social-democratic variety, sectional organisations and groups, some Trotskyite elements and even mayors, administrators, ministers and local administrators representing the interests of imperialist plunderers mainly of the European Union. Such a hotchpotch congregation is the logical outcome of the politics on which the WSF was built. And the constituents, in turn, further manipulate the Forum to their ends.

What are the declared aims and objectives of the WSF? It says it is an "open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas....and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism....." and that it "brings together and interlinks only organisations and movements of civil society from all countries in the world..."

The actual trap is in the key concept of "civil society" that transcends all class differentiation and lumps together capital and labour, oppressor and the oppressed, imperialist-backed NGOs and genuine people’s movements. This concept has become the most fashionable, attractive, and populist one especially after the setback to socialism. It is being promoted by the liberal bourgeois classes and also by the imperialist agencies like the World Bank and the United Nations. The concept of civil society helps to obfuscate the reality of the existence of classes, class contradictions and class exploitation. It preaches for a dialogue between the oppressors and the oppressed and to resolve the mutually irreconcilable contradictions in an amicable way, which means to give up the basic class interests of the working class for the sake of a few reforms. And for achieving this objective, the WSF will provide space for debate and discussion to both sides. That is why it invites the representatives of the governments and the associations of businessmen along with trade unions and other organisations involved in mass movements. But even on this ground the WSF is not sincere. Its hypocrisy is revealed in its attempt to prevent the revolutionary forces from participating in the Forum while inviting representatives of governments, bourgeois political parties and even of the UN. It had refused to invite the FARC of Columbia (thought it had expressed its willingness to attend the WSF meeting), the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (mothers of the disappeared in Argentina), or the Basque groups from Spain.

Point 9 of the Charter says that "Neither party representations nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures who accept the commitments of this Charter may be invited to participate in a personal capacity". The room is thus made for the participation of the representatives of the ruling classes and the imperialists while debarring the revolutionary parties and military wings from attending the Forum.

The question that naturally arises is: How can the WSF boast of being a meeting place for free exchange of experiences when the experiences of committed and serious organisations conducting armed struggles are not even taken into account? How can it remain a body that is committed to fight neo-liberalism, war, all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another when it rejects the participation of those who are fighting these in all earnestness? Its talk of the "means and actions to resist and overcome the domination" (by capital) while closing its doors to armed means of resistance only shows its true character of disarming the people and maintaining the staus quo. Point 13 of the Charter makes this very clear when it asserts: "the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new national and international links among organizations and movements of society, that - in both public and private life - will increase the capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanization the world is undergoing and to the violence used by the State, and reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these movements and organizations."

The WSF thus seeks to resist brutal state violence and the process of dehumanisation in the world with non-violent social resistance—the most Utopian of dreams. One wonders at the audacity of the authors of these principles of the WSF Charter to preach non-violent social resistance to the fighting people in the killing fields of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, Kashmir, Afghanistan or Iraq. Their means will end up, whatever their intentions be, in helping the ruthless violence and plunder by the Israeli Zionists, the Indian ruling classes, and the blood-thirsty American mercenaries.

The WSF proclaims that "the meetings of the WSF do not deliberate on behalf of the WSF as a body. No one, therefore, will be authorised, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the paarticipants in its meetings."

The above only shows the ineffectiveness of the WSF as a body since it cannot take any decisions that are binding on the members. It thus becomes a mere debating club that deliberates on issues but does not go into action.

Another point in the Charter of Principles of the WSF indirectly attacks the Marxian political economy and the Marxist concept of social development by saying that the WSF is "opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development and history and the use of violence as a means of social control by the State (what it means here is the socialist state—editors)."

Then it talks of upholding "respect for Human Rights, the practices of real democracy, participatory democracy" and so on. Its example of participatory democracy is the one practised in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul and, particularly in its capital, Porto Alegre.

Half of the organisations in the WSF are imperialist-funded NGOs. The Ford Foundation had given a grant of about $3,28,000 during the years 2001 and 2002 to the Brazilian Association of NGOs for conducting the WSF conference and seminar as well as for strengthening the International Council of the WSF as a policy-making body. (Of this amount $65,000 was granted to the Feminist Studies and Assistance Centre). These funds were alloted by Ford Foundation in the name of ‘Peace and Social Justice’. Thus in the eyes of Ford the WSF was supposed to bring in peace and social justice even as the MNCs and TNCs like his continue to plunder the world without any hindrance.

The facts regarding funding by the Ford Foundation were refuted by the organisers of ASF in Hyderabad when it was raised by some people. That this was a blatant lie was proved incontrovertibly by a critic who brought out the facts by digging them from the website of Ford Foundation. In fact, after the ASF conference in Hyderabad, the Ford Foundation had granted another $5,00,000 to the Brazilian Association of NGOs claiming that it was meant for the WSF conference of 2003. This is clearly mentioned in its website. Thus the denials by some of the organisers that the Ford Foundation does not fund the WSF is only meant to dupe the people.

Another important constituent of WSF—Oxfam—has a long history of being funded by several imperialist agencies. Oxfam or the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, was formed during the Second World War in Britain. It spread to several countries during the 1960s and 70s. Oxfam International is formed with 12 Oxfam organisations and have activity in almost every country in the world. In Iraq, it is involved in providing clean drinking water to the citizens after the American bombardment of Iraq’s basic infrastructure. It is well known for its lobbying with the UN agencies and various governments to bring about laws that will alleviate the conditions of the people. It claims that after its work in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, it had "become aware that the fundamental causes of poverty are to be addressed. As a result, development programming was directed toward self-realisation and community action". It claims to tackle the "root causes for poverty, social injustice and inequalities" (!).

The Heinrich Boll Foundation is another partner in the WSF. This NGO claims it is fighting for social justice, gender democracy, ecology, sustainable development, and so on. It is affiliated to the Green Party-a partner in the ruling coalition in Germany, has offices and networks in several countries of the world and runs several institutes such as the Feminist Institute.

The ICCO(Inter Church Co-ordination Committee for Development Projects), another partner of the WSF, is a Protestant NGO funded almost entirely by the Netherlands government.

ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Assistance to Citizens), one of the main founders and organisers of the WSF, was formed first in France in 1998 in the name of James Tobin, a Nobel laureate in economics and a fervent advocate of corporate "free trade". ATTAC was later developed on an international scale. One of its goals is the establishment of a Tobin Tax of 0.05-0.1 per cent on international transactions and the amount thus collected would be used as an international fund to aid in "development" and the "struggle against poverty". ATTAC thinks "another world is possible" through "better control over globalisation". ATTAC received grants from the European Commission of the EU, the French government’s Department of Social Economy, the National Ministry of Education and Culture and some local governments.

According to the daily Le Monde, "ATTAC and Le Monde Diplomatique received 80,000 Euros from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them organise the World Social Forum."

And, simultaneously the same Ministry was whole-heartedly supporting George Bush Jr’s so-called "war on terrorism". No wonder, the spokespersons of ATTAC like Susan George, are the most vehement opponents of direct action in the form of big protests but also campaign for excluding those who engage in such tactics.

It is due to the financial support from these NGOs that the ASF could spend eight crores of rupees for its jamboree in Hyderabad.

While imperialist-funded Foundations and imperialist-backed NGOs are one face of the WSF, the other face is the social-democratic one. All these social-democratic parties—whether it is the Brazilian PT, the French ATTAC, the German Greenpeace, India’s CPI and CPI(M)—are vigorous champions of globalisation. They only talk of neutralising its negative impact on the masses or advocate ‘globalisation with a human face’. Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, claimed to be building bridges between Davos (World Economic Forum of international predatory capital) and Porto Alegre (WSF). Hence he flew to Davos directly from the WSF meeting in Porto Alegre in Jan 2003 to impress upon the imperialist sharks to make globalisation more humane and advised the imperialist countries to do away with protectionism and promote ‘free trade’. He became a spokesman for so-called ‘free trade’ which had delighted the imperialist representatives who attended the WEF meet at Davos. The comprador character of Lula is further revealed in the deal he had recently struck with Bush even after the brutal US invasion of Iraq and butchering thousands of Iraqi people.

The CPI(M), the Indian counter-part of Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT), is actively implementing the World Bank-dictated policies in West Bengal.

That is why the ASF meet in Hyderabad was silent about the devastation wrought by the WB-IMF-WTO policies in India and more specifically in the state where the Conference was held. The brutal repression and human rights violations in Kashmir find no mention. The ruthless onslaught by the World Bank’s most loyal stooge in India, Chandrababu Naidu, on the people of AP and the daily killings of revolutionaries and their sympathisers in the state is glossed over. It is not that the organisers were incapable of understanding the link between globalisation and state terror; it is their political standpoint that had prevented them from spelling out the truth. Its slogan of "Another Asia is possible!" or the WSF slogan of "Another World is possible!" is vague and abstract, not addressing the question of what is the nature of that another world, what are the means to achieve it, and how is it possible to achieve another world without eliminating imperialism completely. But the rhetoric and the slogans of the WSF and the ASF are appealing to the liberal intelligentsia, the petty-bourgeois radicals and elitist sections of society who see no other alternative to capitalism and hence think of reforming it from within. It is also appealing because people are disillusioned by all political parties and the WSF poses itself as an alternative to political parties. The social-democrats strengthen these illusions.

One should not be misled by the harsh words used by the WSF against the US. Its silence with regard to European imperialists is a reflection of the inter-imperialist contradictions as explained earlier. Even the anti-US stand is not anti-imperialist but only against some policies of the US. Europe has been a stronghold of the Social-Democratic parties since several decades. They have been wielding state power in several countries for long periods after the Second World War. As a result of the long history of working class struggles in Europe, and the spectre of socialism due to the proximity of the socialist countries in the aftermath of the Second World War, the ruling classes in the European countries had to accede to the demands of the workers and initiate several social welfare measures. Hence the workers in most countries of Europe enjoy better working conditions—shorter working week, higher pay, and better social welfare benefits—when compared to the workers in the US. Faced with strong resistance from the workers the ruling classes in the European countries are finding it quite difficult to push through the policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization with the same ease as carried out by the American ruling classes. Hence even some ruling class parties talk of ‘globalisation with a human face’, ‘sustainable growth’, ‘environmental protection’, or ‘protecting bio-diversity’, and so on.

The mouthing of these phrases is not due to any compassion for the suffering humanity or genuine philanthropy, but is meant to get an edge over the US in the cut-throat competition for the limited market. Hence these governments have been funding the NGOs, and some governments like the French had extended their support to the WSF. Most of the European NGOs adopt an anti-US stance but remain silent about the exploitation and oppression carried out by their own respective governments. This factor has also set the framework for WSF’s agenda of reform within the existing system. The politics of Social Democracy that has been a significant factor in European politics has become the dominant trend in the WSF too. The campaign of the NGOs against the deteriorating working conditions and living standards of the working masses in the US, against the protectionism practiced by the American ruling classes, and against the wars of aggression led by the US reflect the interests and the standpoint of the countries in Europe. Hence the close collaboration between these groups of ‘civil society’ and their respective governments.

These facts were brought out by several trade union leaders of Brazil in their ‘Open Letter to the Trade Unionists and Activists Participating in the World Social Forum 2002 in Porto Alegre, Brazil’, that starts with the thought-provoking question "Is it possible to put a human face on globalization and war?" It says:

And further:

Exposing the hoax of the so-called ‘participatory democracy’ so vigorously promoted at the WSF gatherings and propagated by the media, the open Letter states:

"The World Bank has just created an international department charged with overseeing the implementation of "participatory democracy" in 26 countries. It has also translated, published and distributed the book "The Participatory Budget: The Experience of Porto Alegre," written by Tarso Genro [former mayor of Porto Alegre] and Ubirata de Souza.

It goes on to explain how the so-called ‘participatory democracy’ and ‘participatory budget’ of Porto Alegre is a farce. It shows how it is only a small portion of the municipal budgets, which amounts to 17 % in the case of Porto Alegre, is earmarked for discussion and allocation by the assemblies of representatives of popular organisations while the bulk of the budget money falls outside any discussion as it goes to pay back the foreign debt and other expenses. And how even the meagre amount that is to be allocated by the popular organisations (civil society!) after discussion, is manipulated and who benefits ultimately from this, is also exposed in the Open Letter.

The signatories also stated why they cannot attend the WSF:

The Second WSF also held a special session under the appealing banner "A world without war is possible". But it did not even have the bombing of Afghanistan in the agenda thus condoning the US-led imperialists for their barbaric deeds in Afghanistan and lulling the world people into passivity regarding the diabolic schemes of the imperialists, particularly the US imperialists, for recolonising the world. The Palestinian issue was discussed without going into the root causes for the problem, the Zionist expansionism and the imperialist support to the Israeli ruling classes, but went all out in stressing on the UN-sponsored "peace plan". The WSF aspires to establish a world without war not by fighting imperialism but by preaching to the imperialists and bringing pressure on them.

La Haine, an Argentine organisation, issued a fitting reply to the invitation to the Third WSF that was held in Porto Alegre again in Jan 2003. Entitled "We cannot participate in the Porto Alegre World Social Forum because we do not believe that another world is truly possible unless capitalism is destroyed", La Haine made a scathing attack on the class collaborationist politics of the WSF in the folowing words:

"Our relationship to the capitalists resembles the relationship that a herd of docile sheep entertains with an insatiable wolf pack. The WSF pretends to convince us that, somehow, we can change the skewed relationship into one of cooperation and equality; that the wolves will act like sheep.

It thus concluded the role of the WSF: "The Forum’s role, a well known one now, is to deactivate real resistance by promising changes that, appealing as they may seem, even in the best of cases, do anything to alter the essential injustices that we struggle against."

Thus, after the euphoria created by the Social-Democratic-NGO-establishment media over the emergence of an alternative to the present system of globalisation, war and neo-liberalism of the imperialists (and to which even some revolutionary organisations fell prey), we find a large number of progressive and revolutionary organisations in various countries realising the true character and aims of the WSF.

We have seen from the foregoing analysis that the WSF is basically an amalgamation of NGOs and social-democratic organizations, that it aims at maintaining the status quo while chanting radical rhetoric, that it strives to hush up class contradictions in society and in the capitalist system and promotes a non-class approach to the problems confronting the contemporary world in the name of ‘civil society’, that it strives to divert the people from militant revolutionary struggles by channelising their wrath and disenchantment with the system into peaceful ways, that it creates illusions on bourgeois democracy and that the ills afflicting the society can be cured from within by means of so-called ‘participatory democracy’, and that it seeks to replace the revolutionary political parties by forming thousands of social forums at various levels with vague programmes thereby leaving the masses leaderless and disorganised. An entire generation of rebellious workers, student, youth, women, intellectuals and other oppressed sections is sought to be pacified, neutralised and rendered impotent by confining these people to peaceful channels of protest. Thus depoliticisation and demobilisation of the masses by way of institutionalisation of their dissent, thereby rendering the masses impotent and disarmed in the face of the growing offensive by the imperialists and local reactionaries, is the inevitable result of the politics of the WSF. This poses a great threat to the genuine people’s movements and to the struggles led by the revolutionaries for the establishment of socialism and working class dictatorship. All this has to be exposed thoroughly before the masses.

Reaffirmation of the proletarian world outlook and the ideology of Marxism and communism among the various oppressed classes becomes a task that is all the more pressing before the revolutionaries. We must strive to break the ideological shackles placed by the NGOs and the WSF on the oppressed, educate them regarding the true character of imperialism and lead them into militant revolutionary class struggles to completely root out imperialism, feudalism and all the reactionary filth that is blocking the progress of the society. Various fashionable theories such as post-structuralism, post-modernism and their numerous variants that are attracting the intellectuals and the middle classes should be ideologically exposed. We must specifically target, ideologically and politically, the social-democrats, revisionists of various hues, and the so-called revolutionaries, who form part of the WSF and promote illusions on NGO-type activity. And in carrying out this task, we must strive to unite with all those forces that adopt a consistent anti-imperialist approach and a correct standpoint towards the WSF.

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