I will not be able to come to Tunis but wish you all good luck. Below
you find my contribtuion to the debate on the Furture of WSF which
will be discussed at several workshops, at least „The future of ESF“
and „Decoloniliazation of WSF“, If anyone goes to these seminars I am
interested in any comments.:
Social movements and the future of antineoliberalism and WSF
The debate on several issues and especially the future of WSF has been
intensive on the WSF discuss list. Jai Sen with his effort to keep the
list alive is to congratulate. Maintaining a vital discussion on a
global level is not an easy task.
I tried to contribute earlier on by criticizing the dichotomy in the
way WSF is discussed in the perhaps most referred book on the subject,
Challenging empires edited by Jai Sen and Peter Waterman. Via
Campesina and their Brazilian member MST is excluded from this effort.
Their strong criticisms from the very start of WSF does not fit into
the scheme of dogmatic authoritarian left wing forces opposing open
space against all the others that in different ways support this
formula. When Sen strongly criticized the lack of response on his
questioning of WSF as being a tool for coopting insurgence I did point
at this lack in his own edited book and received no response. Nor did
I get any response from NIGD who is organizing the workshop on the
future of WSF. As I regard Sen as one of the most important persons in
discussing the future of WSF and not even he is interested in the
issue of how social movements like Via Campesina have a distinctively
different viewpoint from what many academicians and activists
promoting horizontalism have, I could not find enough time for getting
the resources to go to Tunis. Hopefully there will be possibilities to
continue the discussion afterwards also for those unable to come.
In his remarkable effort to describe the history of the Climate
Justice movement (not yet published but distributed on this list)
Patrick Bond makes the same mistake as Sen and Waterman and excludes
Via Campesina from his account. The reason as I see it is the same.
Via Campesina does not fit into traditional academic ways in
describing neither WSF or global social struggles. The overemphasis on
horizontalism and open space or ideological well developed positions
makes a mass movement as Via Campesina with its strong efforts of
being built on traditional representative democracy seemingly
obsolete. That in fact Via Campesina more than most organizations are
capable of building some of the strongest antineoliberal alliances
both nationally and globally also on climate justice issues without
many of the mistakes of the authoritarian left of the past does not
count as this would need rethinking.
Via Campesina/MST challenging the WSF discussion again
In the recent mailing on the issue of the future of WSF and ending of
the International Council Via Campesina and their mass social movement
allies again intervenes in the issue of how antineoliberal struggles
should be discussed and how such a discussion at the global level can
be organized. They do this by emphasizing that political content can
not be separated from the discussion on form and that the dismantling
of the IC is no way forward. We will see if this means that now the
case is closed or if something else will happen.
An interesting aspect of their intervention is that Via Campesina and
their allied social movements were recently showing that the WSF open
space formula is obsolete even in Brazil on an issue regarded by many
globally as important, that of social and environmental justice. In
direct conflict with many among the Brazilian academicians and NGOs in
the WSF they organized the Peoples Summit at the UN conference on
Sustainable Development in Rio last year with the notion convergence
as central instead of open space. Open space was part of their
convergence with some 1000 seminars but the core was a joint
declaration and actions by the whole peoples summit with 5 two main
demonstrations, one general and one against the oppression of women
and several direct actions. It was a success.
So the Brazilian social movements have a well developed critique of
the WSF model when it comes to critical global social and
environmental struggles while at the same time intervening and
safeguarding the IC. A critique that would do well for many to listen
to who find that WSF tend to foster cooptation and passiveness. That
their position seams contradictory is more a question of lack of
interest of what mass social movements have to say than the actual
quality in their arguments. The discussion on the future of WSF would
do well in bringing to more attention the critique from mass social
movements and the experience of the Peoples Summit in Rio.
As a contribution to this discussion I include my working paper on the
Peoples Summit. What to me is historical is the way Via Campesina and
their social movement allies were able to win over the international
trade union movement on the anti neoliberal side and how this
marginalized the open space NGOs with their formula for endless
fragmentation of struggles and discussions.
Decolonialization of WSF
The text on how the WSF formula was defeated in Rio can also be seen
as a contribution to the workshop on Decolonialization of WSF. The
purpose of the workshop is promising: ”Participants will examine the
political economy of knowledge production and -publication, including
the role of academia and the knowledge industry, and discuss
possibilities for inclusive and collaborative forms of knowledge
production – of which communities and movements can become the primary
beneficiaries – offered by practices of shared communication, popular
education and open publishing.” More problematic is that the
organizers are reflecting the kind of hierarchic tendency that
seemingly is built into the WSF open space structure and maybe also
into extreme horizontalism as that of the now past and gone Peoples
Global Action (PGA) or the representative democracy of some mass
social movements. They all to my knowledge are not activist movements
but specialized organizing the debate which mainly others are supposed
to follow.
This may be because of understandable pragmatic reasons. It may also
be because of disinterest in organizing sustained global efforts when
it comes to more developed exchange of experience as PGA showed with
its extreme horizontalism with noone given the mandate to make such
more lasting efforts. Or for the matter the globally organized mass
movements who similarly to PGA are too occupied by their daily
struggle and at the same time to anxious in controlling the result
that they rather become objects to be studied than take over the power
of knowledge production themselves.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. My own experience is
that there is a systematic attempt by academicians and think tank
style organizations dependent on donors to avoid cooperation on equal
level with social movements or that they tend to foster fragmentation
instead of convergence as in the case of the discussion on open space.
In the process towards the Peoples Summit the NGOs and their allied
academicians were strongly advocating that there should be many
assemblies and not only the five that the social movements suggested.
To democratically chose only a few subjects and a few demonstrations
and actions to do in common goes against the fragmentation needs of
the present professional intellectuals who prefer yet one more
discussion rather than united action now. This is maybe the reason why
the Peoples Summit experience and the role of Via Campesina in WSF and
the Climate Justice movement is so easily left out.
But there is hope. That the mass movements of Brazil are interested in
WSF is of importance. The Peoples Summit did well in bringing the
social and environmental antineoliberal struggle forward, but there
were no sustained follow up at the global level. It is fully possible
to be critical to some aspects of the open space formula while at the
same time see that WSF can be a useful tool to many different anti
neoliberal forces. One way forward would be to promote alliance
building between the kind of organizers of the Decolonializing WSF
workshop and the global mass social movements in sustained experience
exchange. This would need to bring in not only the experience of WSF
but also other forms of antineoliberal expression internationally as
the climate justice struggle or other forms of global campaigning and
cooperation.
Waterman in his recent postings helps us with this in his mapping of
global unionism and feminism. Only when there is an acceptance of that
it is both action and thinking that is necessary and that this linkage
is crucial to the future of both the global antineoliberal struggle
and WSF is it possible to bring the discussion forward. It is not
enough to repeat the formula open space or for that matter convergence
or horizontalism.
Via Campesina in Sweden
Instead of going to Tunis I will continue the struggle together with
Via Campesina in Sweden. Some organizations cooperate with them to
stop the depopulation of the countryside in Sweden which is more
severe here than in any other OECD country. At the same time our food
self sufficiency is the lowest in EU. The food will last for three
days if the borders are closed. Small farmers are with some few
exceptions wiped out. Friends of the Earth Sweden has a long standing
cooperation with Via Campesina. While others often find them
uninteresting as they do not represent any significant electoral base
(far less then 1 percent) nor members to mobilize, they do not have an
office or even a working web site with no presence in social media
many see them as obsolete. Many of them are old and their knowledge is
literally on the way to be extinct.
Their role in the material struggle against antineoliberalism and the
efforts by capitalism to expand into land grabbing and privatizing the
social welfare services is crucial. Without small farmers there will
be no cooling of the planet and no class alliance which can build
solidarity which must be built on both rural and urban forces. In
Sweden the last seven years Via Campesina with their 100 members have
been the crucial force in building an anti neoliberal alliance on
climate justice issues and in general in fundamental opposition
against the whole neoliberal paradigm institutionalized by IMF, WTO
and EU. This alliance was strengthened when FoE Sweden opposed the
fragmentation efforts by open space promoters among trade unions and
others during European Social Forum 2008. We successfully organized
convergence as well as open space by simultaneous direct action
against petrol station (against biofuel), car traffic, asylum for
refugees and weapon factories during ESF. This convergence continued
afterwards and has become stronger and stronger. By k´now some 40
organizations have joined the Global Justice Now network supporting
several activities as climate justice campaigning on the streets,
summer camps and gatherings to reclaim power of the use of nature on
the countryside. 5 – 7 April will be the fourth in a row of meetings
in the periphery.
I wish you all good luck in Tunis and look forward to read the results.
Yours
Tord Björk