People's Democracy

 THINKING TOGETHER

We further continue the question-answer series in this column on World Social Forum (WSF), which is meeting in Mumbai in January 2004.

Role of “Violence”

ANOTHER contentious issue within the WSF has been the role of violence. The WSF charter says: “The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the state.” Further: “The meetings of the World Social Forum are always open to all those who wish to take part in them, except organisations that seek to take people's lives as a method of political action.”

These positions articulated in the charter raise two kinds of questions. Does the charter exclude those who believe in countering the violence of the oppressing classes? Moreover, what of violence by states against other states, does a state under attack have the right to defend itself? The bourgeois state uses violence to perpetuate its existence, to retain the hegemony of the ruling classes. The oppressed classes, in situations that may so require, counter this violence not because they see violence as a primary political tool, but because of the need to defend themselves against violence by the ruling classes. As Lenin wrote:

“We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organised and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination” (V I Lenin, Marxism and Revisionism, 1908).

It may be argued that the charter is ambiguous in this respect. Perhaps it is, and this is really an illustration of the fact that the WSF space is a contended space. There can be different views of what constitutes a “reductionist view of history.” It is for all those who make use of this space to decide how interpretations will be made in the future.

Role of Political Parties

The WSF charter of principles states:

“The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that, in a decentralised fashion, interrelates organisations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels --- from the local to the international --- to build another world.”

The fact that political parties are not part of the WSF process has been pointed out by some as an example of its “non-partisan” character. This is absolutely correct. The WSF is a non-partisan platform. By not having political parties as part of the WSF, the WSF space can be effectively used to attract the widest sections who are opposed to imperialist globalisation. But this does not mean that the WSF space cannot be utilised to conduct political debates. Nor does it mean that people who work with or are members of political parties, are barred from the WSF. To the contrary, a large number of persons who work closely with political parties participate in the WSF. The difference is that in the space provided by the WSF, they do not represent a particular political party. The WSF itself, of course, not being an organisation, cannot be seen as a political or a non-political entity. It is just a space, but a space nevertheless where political positions can be articulated and political alliances forged. In today’s world it would have been inconceivable for such a large and wide ranging mobilisation to be possible if the WSF was seen as an alliance of political parties. By keeping the WSF space distinct from alliances of political parties, it has been possible to bring together groups and individuals who would not otherwise come together on a platform as political parties.

Funding of the WSF

The WSF has been criticised for the funds it receives from international organisations. It is true that the WSF accepts funds from donor organisations. What needs to be understood is that, given the scale of the event, direct funds that are used to organise the WSF is actually not very large. The WSF, for example, pays for the participation of a hundred or less delegates --- the rest of the tens of thousands who participate pay for themselves or raise resources that are not linked with WSF finances. On who the donor organisations will be, from whom the WSF can accept funds, the WSF India committee has had a clear position. To recapitulate, the position has been the following:

• Being an international event, it is not possible to avoid sourcing international funds to help support the event. However, care needs to be exercised that such funds are not from sources that are clearly aligned to forces that promote globalisation. Funding agencies that will NOT be approached to fund the WSF in Mumbai include DFID (British government funding agency), USAID, and corporate controlled funding agencies such as Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

• Funding from large corporates in India aligned to imperialist globalisation to be avoided.

•  The event itself should be modest and ostentations should be avoided.

• Attempt should be to access solidarity funding from organisations, individuals opposed to globalisation.

Here it may be noted that the Indian committee has departed from the practice of the previous editions of the WSF, where funding from Ford was accepted. This reflects the Indian committee’s acceptance of misgivings within the country about the past role of Ford in aligning with imperialism and doubts about its present sincerity in supporting a forum that stands against imperialist globalisation. It needs also to be noted that the costs of the WSF event in Mumbai in 2004 is likely to be less than half of the costs incurred for the Porto Alegre event in 2003.

There still, however, remain questions about the funding of WSF. It must be understood that the WSF process includes organisations who accept foreign funding, as well as those who do not. It should be clear that the fact that the WSF receives foreign funding, in no way endorses the acceptance of foreign funding by organisations who have a position against acceptance of such funds. They can, and continue to hold their individual positions vis-à-vis foreign funding.

But given the highly dispersed nature of resources that go towards the organisation of the WSF --- the bulk of which is made up of a large number of individuals and organisations --- it is difficult for a handful of donor agencies to direct the trajectory of the WSF. Donor agencies have their individual agendas. We may like to believe that their agenda is co-terminus with the stated objective of the WSF. It is possible that in some cases it may not be so. But the dispersed nature of funding, and the fact that most of the WSF events are not organised by the WSF organisers, make it difficult for a donor agency to subvert the WSF.

This does not mean that there is no need to be vigilant about the source of funding. Or, for that matter, look for means to make the WSF less dependant or even independent of donor funding. The participation of large mass movements provides us today to look for alternative methods of funding that are even more dispersed.

(To Be Continued)