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Historical challenge
Alejandro Kirk (*)
The capitalist crisis and five presidents gathering in Belem, attest to the big challenge before this Forum: become an effective global force for change, says TerraViva editor Alejandro Kirk.
Available data suggests that there is no historical social purpose after all. A 'Heaven on Earth', a planet ruled by the elementary principles of justice and equality is not inevitable: anything can happen, including the self-inflicted end of human life.
Yet, this is the time when the instinct of self-preservation precedes any other consideration. At this stage of our world's degradation, the WSF carries a heavy responsibility, which is also a duty to humankind. Brazilian theologist Frei Betto gave a powerful and simple answer to this dilemma at a Liberation Theology gathering in Belem last week: either there is socialism or human race will be no more.
But not all are grasping the signal of the times, perhaps underestimating the dimensions of the capitalist meltdown. Some, including early WSF followers, had described not long ago the Forum as a dead-man-walking of sorts: "it failed in providing new paths to global change as many of us expected," the head of an international communications NGO said to me last December, when the crisis had already unleashed.
Instead, those who quickly grasped the situation were the commanders of capitalism. Filippino sociologist Walden Bello has warned that a "Global Social Democratic" response is under way, implementing many of the demands long sought-after by the global social movements and developing countries.
Portuguese sociologist Boaventura Santos told me at a radio interview that they are doing exactly what they have flatly rejected as unacceptable over the last 30 years, through global cops such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. This crisis, he added, is what developing countries have been enduring for decades.
These moves Bello says, should fool no one: it is not a new world of fair trade, equality, true democracy and extended welfare what they are looking for, but save the transnational corporate system with public money, much of which comes from developing countries through unfair trade and financial practices.
Five progressive Latin American presidents -those of Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Venezuela- also believe that this edition of the Forum has special connotations and are thus attending. It has been anticipated that they will sign, right here in the Brazilian Amazon basin, a political pact. Would they choose this venue for it if the WSF were a dead man walking?
Whatever their many differences on priorities and methods for change, the presidents' signal is clear. The old debate on the WSF's character and mission seems to have been overtaken by current urgencies. Several of the WSF's elders believe now that the Forum, born as an act of resistance when neoliberalism seemed eternal, has now the responsibility of becoming an agent for change, not in the extended sense provided by debates and exchanges, but by adopting stands and plans of action for the one common achievable global target, as described by Bello: widening democracy, reforming the United Nations and its global bodies such as the IMF and WB, enhancing people's control of the economy and the state everywhere.
The ultimate aim, as put by supporters of Bolivian president Evo Morales' constitutional draft, is not to "develop" in the model of Northern countries, but live well. Such is the new global paradigm and the ground upon which this Forum kicks off.
(*) Alejandro Kirk is the Managing Editor of IPS-TerraViva. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of IPS-TerraViva.
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 Historical challenge
The capitalist crisis and five presidents gathering in Belem, attest to the big challenge before this Forum: become an effective global force for change, says TerraViva editor Alejandro Kirk. |
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 Story of An Indian Lost in Brazil
Journalist Rahul Kumar travelled all the way from India to find out that he looks local in the Amazonian region, where heat and mangoes resemble home. |
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