positional goods problem redux
>Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 17:16:51 -0800
>
>Cut the strings
>
>The new grassroots politics needs more democracy - not more political strongmen
>
>Naomi Klein
>Saturday February 1, 2003
>The Guardian
>
>The key word at this year's World Social Forum, held this week in Porto Alegre,
>Brazil, was "big". Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all. Big speeches:
>more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky. And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio
>Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed
>75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a
>"surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement
>as the forum itself.
>
>"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Chavez declared, as he pledged to
>vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's
>election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity
>in Cuba.
>
>But wait a minute: how on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for
>new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour
>speeches about smashing the oligarchy?
>
>Of course the forum, in all its dizzying, global diversity, was not only speeches,
>with huge crowds all facing in one direction. There were plenty of circles, with small
>groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of
>activists from opposite ends of the globe excitedly swapping facts, tactics and
>analysis in their common struggles. But the "big" certainly put its mark on the event.
>
>Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new":
>new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates
>agreed on (and there wasn't much) it was that the left's traditional methods had
>failed, either because they were wrong-headed or because they were simply ill-equipped
>to deal with the powerful forces of corporate globalisation.
>
>This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some parties
>of the left have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that
>first forum had spent their lives building labour parties, only to watch helplessly as
>those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and
>implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates
>came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free
>their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated
>land hand its sovereignty away to the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a
>loan.
>
>Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire communist
>parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of eastern Europe
>had turned into centralised, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And
>outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of
>young people who had never trusted politicians and were finding their own political
>voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.
>
>When this global rabble came together under the slogan "another world is possible", it
>was clear to all but the most rigidly nostalgic minority that getting to this other
>world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the past, but
>imagining new movements that drew on the best of these experiences while vowing never
>to repeat their mistakes.
>
>The original World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint - a good start -
>but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be
>less about trusting well-meaning leaders and more about empowering people to make
>their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory.
>The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets,
>stronger city governments, land reform and cooperative farming - a vision of
>politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further
>assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. For a left that
>had tended to look to centralised state solutions to solve almost every problem, this
>emphasis on decentralisation and direct participation was a breakthrough.
>
>At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered too: not as a heroic figure who
>vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator
>whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet
>their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment
>were largely absent from his campaign to be president. Instead, he told and retold a
>personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty and knew
>their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community
>isn't about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that,
>as Lula is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.
>
>Right now, it looks as if Lula has only two choices: abandoning his election promises
>of wealth redistribution or trying to force them through and ending up in a
>Chavez-style civil war. But there is another option, one his own Workers party has
>tried before, one that made Porto Alegre itself a beacon of a new kind of politics:
>more democracy. He could simply refuse to play the messiah or the lone ranger, and
>instead hand power back to the citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of
>the foreign debt, to land reform, to membership of the Free Trade Area of the
>Americas. There are a host of mechanisms that he could use: referendums, constituents'
>assemblies, networks of empowered local councils and assemblies. Choosing an
>alternative economic path would still spark fierce resistance, but his opponents would
>not have the luxury of being against Lula, as they are against Chavez, and would
>instead be forced to oppose the repeated and stated will of the majority - to be
>against democracy itself.
>
>Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social
>Forum by big men and swooning crowds is that there isn't much glory in it. To work, it
>requires genuine humility on the part of elected politicians. It means that a victory
>at the ballot box isn't a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an
>unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.
>
>For some, the hijacking of the World Social Forum by political parties and powerful
>men is proof that the movements against corporate globalisation are finally maturing
>and "getting serious". But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed left
>political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the
>latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get
>serious.
>
>· Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows
