[PEN-L:34254] positional goods problem redux

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

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