Anti-capitalist ideology/strategy

Sader and Wallerstein on Porto Alegre and anti-capitalist ideology/strategy 
 
(Sader is one of the gurus on the Worker's Party. This first is an excellent
materialist analysis, but maybe more importantly it poses the brutal
challenge to those of us oriented to anti-capitalist "civil society" in
these lines: "The second, exclusive aspect of the emphasis on 'civil
society' lies in its rejection of parties and governments, its embrace of
the civil society/state opposition. This is more serious, not only because
it means rejecting a potential weapon in a radically unequal contest but
also, and more importantly, because the movement thus distances itself from
the themes of power, the state, public sphere, political leadership and
even, in a sense, from ideological struggle-elements that were essential to
the choice of Porto Alegre as the Forums' venue." I don't think this is at
all true in SA, but possibly is to some extent in Brazil... And I think
Wallerstein puts it extremely well in this three considerations at the end
of the second article, especially the third on decommodification.)

New Left Review 17, September-October 2002

A Brazilian view of the World Social Forum, in its regional and
international context. How the landscape of the world's Left has changed,
and whether the ideologies of non-governmental organization and civil
society are capable of resisting what they criticize.

EMIR SADER

BEYOND CIVIL SOCIETY

The Left after Porto Alegre

The geography of the current anti-globalization protests signals a new
world-political landscape for the Left. In a sense, this is a reversal of
that historic shift of which Isaac Deutscher spoke-the relocation of the
anti-capitalist movement from its nineteenth-century origins in Western
Europe to Russia, then China. Behind this millennial transformation, of
course, lies the earthquake that brought down the Soviet bloc; set China on
course for a pragmatic integration with the capitalist market; provoked an
identity crisis-and then a political one-in social democracy and the old
mass Communist Parties; and led to the selective immiseration of the Third
World. An entire topography of the Left was obliterated in that upheaval.
From its ruins-in Chiapas or Porto Alegre, Seattle, Genoa, Barcelona and
elsewhere-have grown the groups and networks that are now questioning
neoliberal globalization. They point towards an entirely new ideological,
political and geographical design.

Chiapas: an impoverished region of southern Mexico. Seattle: symbol of the
microchip and American postmodernity. Porto Alegre: a 'European' city in
Brazil's deep south, run by a party that claims to represent its workers.
What kind of movement can arise from such social and geographic diversity?
In a country not known for its leftist traditions, Porto Alegre has suddenly
emerged as the emblem of the new groupings, the point at which a host of
hopes and fears, illusions and questions converge.

I

The development of the Brazilian Left was delayed relative to that of other
countries in the region. Although its Communist and Socialist parties were
founded at roughly the same time, the late 1910s or early 1920s, Brazil's
socio-economic formation-its coffee economy and low level of
industrialization-made it impossible for these forces to acquire the
critical mass of those in Argentina, Chile or Uruguay. A comparison between
the national-populist programmes of Vargas in Brazil and Perón in Argentina
points up the distinction. In response to the devastating consequences of
the Wall Street crash, Vargas took power in 1930-overthrowing a
conservative, primary-exporting government-in an essentially agrarian
country. The state had little difficulty in harnessing, both politically and
institutionally, the syndicalist structures through which he promoted the
rights of a limited urban working class. In Argentina, by contrast, it was a
progressive, Radical government, which had played a leading role in
university reform in Córdoba in the late 1910s, that fell victim to the 1929
disaster. A military regime that would renegotiate Argentina's dependency on
regressive terms was in place throughout the thirties and early forties.
When Perón seized power in 1943 it was at the head of a socially constituted

working class, with a clear political and ideological trajectory and a
distinct set of traditions-Perón had to defeat socialist and communist
influence in order to project himself as the people's leader. Vargas had far
less difficulty in imposing his rule (as dictator, from 1930-45; as elected
president, 1950-54), due to the weakness and political backwardness of the
Brazilian working class.

One of the consequences of this fragility was that the nationalist
labour-communist coalition that had backed Vargas virtually disappeared
after the military coup in 1964. The trabalhistas, who owed their strength
entirely to the state apparatus, the Labour Ministry in particular, ceased
to exist once this had been taken over by the junta, whose first measures
decreed the military supervision of all trade unions, a wage freeze, and
police persecution of working-class leaders. The Communists' strategy of
subordinate alliance with the 'national bourgeoisie' collapsed in ruins, and
the Party effectively disappeared.

Thanks to its important geostrategic position, the sixties' coup in Brazil
occurred relatively early compared to others in Latin America-1964, the same
year as Bolivia's; 1966 saw a failed putsch attempt in Argentina,
successfully pushed through ten years later; the military seized power in
Chile and Uruguay in 1973. Although the Left was weaker in Brazil than
elsewhere, ferment in the countryside on a hitherto unseen scale and the
politicization of lower-ranking army officers was considered a risk to
national security both by Washington and by the upper echelons of the armed
forces, concentrated in the Escola Superior de Guerra.

Coming at this stage, the Brazilian coup allowed the military dictatorship a
honeymoon period during the final years of the long postwar boom. An influx
of surplus dollars funded economic expansion, albeit based on exports and
the luxury-goods sector. [1] Growth rates exceeded 10 per cent per year,
right up to the international capitalist crisis of 1973. Even then, while
practically every other economy was entering recession, Brazil's rates
merely decreased to between 5 and 7 per cent. The expansionist momentum was
maintained up to the end of the seventies by loans and dubious public-works
projects-football stadiums, the still unfinished Transamazonian highway,
large hydroelectric plants and other grandiose affairs. At this point the
boomerang of borrowing and state spending came back, bringing to a close
five decades of continuous growth that had transformed the country in almost
every respect, while leaving it choked with debt, inflation and public
deficits. This crisis resulted not just in a 'lost decade', but an era of
virtual stagnation, with indices of economic expansion barely exceeding
demographic growth.

Left resistance to the military coup mostly took the desperate route of
armed struggle between 1967 and 1971, all other methods being ruled out by
the repression. Despite a few spectacular actions, this strategy proved
unable to accumulate forces on a mass level. Following the Left's defeat
there was a broad liberal hegemony over the opposition to the dictatorship,
ideologically oriented by the 'authoritarianism' theses of Fernando Henrique
Cardoso-then gaining prestige as an intellectual trying to start a political
career. This force crystallized in a broad party-the Movimento Democrático
Brasileiro (MDB)-grouping together all elements of the legal opposition.
Alongside it, a grass-roots trade unionism began to develop from the
devastation of the earlier syndicalist tradition.

The old unions had been based in state enterprises-oil, transport and public
services-with Rio de Janeiro, the former capital, their focal point. The
core of the new worker militancy lay in the automobile plants on the
outskirts of São Paulo-socio-economically, by this stage, Brazil's most
important city. Car production has driven Brazilian industrial growth since
the fifties, and still accounts for a quarter of the country's GDP. With
their strong class-consciousness and visceral hostility to a military regime
bent on wage-freeze policies, these unions would forge the nucleus of the
largest new party of the Brazilian Left, the Partido dos Trabalhadores.
Their leader, Luis Inácio da Silva, known as Lula, a migrant from the
impoverished, rural northeast, would be its head.

The PT brought together progressive elements of the Catholic
Church-transformed, under the influence of liberation theology, from
component of the military regime to haven for social activists-with
civil-rights campaigners, Trotskyists, Maoists and former guerrillas, under
the hegemony of Lula's militant trade unionists. Since its foundation, the
PT has been the major player on the Brazilian Left. Its role has changed
from that of a party of resistance to the dictatorship-and to the subsequent
transition to a partial democracy that maintained the world's highest income
disparity-into a national alternative to government. Lula has been runner up
in every presidential election since 1989, with the PT consistently gaining
a plurality-30 per cent-of the vote; by the time this appears, he could be
President-elect of Brazil. The PT has won a series of municipal elections,
and has a record of successful local administrations marked by their social
policies, their transparency, their engagement with popular movements and,
above all-as in Porto Alegre-their participatory budgets.

II

Porto Alegre is the capital of Brazil's southernmost state, Rio Grande do
Sul, abutting on Uruguay and Argentina. This frontier character gives it a
special status. Despite Brazil's vast territories, debouching onto every
country in South America save Chile and Ecuador, nearly all its borders are
impassable. Jungle and mountain block the route to Bolivia, Colombia, Peru
and Venezuela. The Paraná crossings to Paraguay are the only other
exception. Early on, then, Rio Grande do Sul became a military stronghold
and, once the Brazilian army began intervening in government, shortly after
the vicious war of the Triple Alliance in 1865-70, an important power base
in national politics. Many of the country's leading figures have come from
here-Getúlio Vargas himself, João Goulart, president from 1961-64, Leonel
Brizola, ex-state governor and currently leader of the Partido Democrático
Trabalhista-not to mention several high officials of the military
dictatorship, including three presidents: Costa e Silva, Garrastazu Médici
and João Figueiredo.

The PT has inherited the state's politicized tradition, in a more radical
form. In 1988, Olívio Dutra-trade unionist, bank employee and founder member
of the PT-was elected mayor of Porto Alegre. His deputy, Tarso Genro-lawyer
and ex-militant of the clandestine opposition, now standing as the PT
candidate for state governor-developed the concept of the participatory
budget. This consists of shifting decisions on how to allocate municipal
resources from the City Council to popular assemblies. The process has
politicized budgetary debates, taking them out of the technocratic and
legislative sphere, allowing broad public debate about funding priorities
and their social and political implications. Throughout the year, a series
of assemblies decide where the money should go, follow up on implementation
and make a balance sheet of the results. This process has become the PT's
trump card, differentiating and legitimizing its administration through
mobilizing its citizens-to the extent that the other parties now include a
diluted version in their programmes.

III

When the idea of holding a Social Forum, in opposition to the Economic Forum
in Davos, was first floated, Bernard Cassen of Le Monde diplomatique
suggested it take place in Porto Alegre-a city on the periphery, whose
participatory budgets had become emblematic of an alternative approach. In
other words, it was the success of specific political measures, implemented
by a Left party through a process of democratic state reforms involving a
strengthening of the public domain, that initially attracted the moving
spirits of the Social Forum to Porto Alegre. In spite of this, the
Organizing Committee of both the first and second Social Forums was mainly
composed of NGOs, with only minority representation for the country's two
main social movements-the CUT trade union federation, under the central
leadership of the PT, and the Sem Terra, identified with the Party's more
radical base. It was due to this central role of NGOs that the Forum assumed
the function of a meeting place for 'civil society'-a key notion for the new
movements-with all the multiple and diverse meanings this concept provides.
This is not the place to explore their genealogy, but two features-one
inclusive, one exclusive-need to be pointed out. The first relates to the
use of NGOs as agents for neoliberalism within civil society-particularly
through the World Bank's tactic of using these organizations to implement
its social-compensation policies. Mexico has been a test-site for these
attempts-increasingly so, under Fox. The NGO practice of entering into
'partnerships' with big business-though never announced as such-is another
aspect of the same problem. The ambiguities this overlap has created have
not, as yet, had a negative impact on the anti-neoliberal character of the
Forum, established under the strong propulsion of another founding element,
the anti-WTO demonstrations in Seattle.

The second, exclusive aspect of the emphasis on 'civil society' lies in its
rejection of parties and governments, its embrace of the civil society/state
opposition. This is more serious, not only because it means rejecting a
potential weapon in a radically unequal contest but also, and more
importantly, because the movement thus distances itself from the themes of
power, the state, public sphere, political leadership and even, in a sense,
from ideological struggle-elements that were essential to the choice of
Porto Alegre as the Forums' venue. The result of this exclusion of parties
and state, if pushed through, would severely limit the formulation of any
alternatives to neoliberalism, confining such aspirations to a local or
sectoral context-the NGOs' mantra, 'Think global, act local'; proposals for
fair trade; 'ecologically sustainable development'-while giving up any
attempt to build an alternative hegemony, or any global proposals to counter
and defeat world capitalism's current neoliberal project. These limitations
were acutely embodied in the structure of the first two Forums, organized,
respectively, into twenty-four and twenty-seven round-table discussions on
extremely fragmented themes which tended to dissipate still further-giving
the whole an academic overtone, with a corresponding intellectual division
of labour. The general lectures were more like testimonies from people
connected in some way to the movement-and the most successful, at the first
Forum, were all made precisely by leaders of parties or social
movements-Lula, João Pedro Stedile, José Bové or Eduardo Galeano.

The very act of defining themselves as 'non-governmental' explicitly rejects
any ambition on the NGOs' part for an alternative hegemonic project, which
would, by its nature, have to include states and governments as the means
through which political and economic power is articulated in modern
societies. They therefore either insert themselves, explicitly or
implicitly, within the liberal critique of the state's actions, or else
limit their activity to the sphere of civil society-which, defined in
opposition to the state, also ends at the boundaries of liberal politics. In
fact, the very concept of 'civil society' masks the class nature of its
components-multinational corporations, banks and mafia, set next to social
movements, trade unions, civic bodies-while collectively demonizing the
state. The leading role of NGOs in the resistance to neoliberalism is a sign
of the movement's defensive character, still unable to formulate an
alternative hegemonic strategy. A move that brought together the struggle
against US imperial dominance with the anti-capitalist elements of the
movements would mark the beginning of an offensive, politicized phase in its
development.

As the old Left got weaker, lost its mass base or deserted the field, the
space of anti-neoliberal resistance was occupied by NGO-type groupings,
deliberately distanced from the political arena and thus from any serious
reflection on strategy; it was as if this whole area had been abandoned to
the enemy. A new class of global citizenship was proposed, transcending
national frontiers-the loss of power and political debility of the
nation-state were simply taken for granted. Thus the Zapatistas gained
international recognition, on the internet and through the global media,
which was then projected back into their country of origin. At national
level, they are still fighting for an acknowledgement of their right to
exist. On the other hand, in a way that differs somewhat from liberalism,
the idea of civil society has been used by social movements, NGOs and
civil-rights groups that still proclaim their opposition to the state,
governments, parliaments and political parties, while searching for
'partnerships' with multinational corporations.

IV

The new is always hard to grasp, especially when it emerges within a
landscape transformed from that in which the previous events occurred. The
picture presented by the Social Forums would be incomprehensible within the
frameworks that have characterized earlier attempts at international
co-ordination-that of the Internationals, for example, or the Third
World-dominated Non-Aligned Movement. The world of work intrinsic to the
First International, in particular-where solidarity was premised on the
universalized exploitation of labour-has been transformed. Not industrial
workers but farmers' unions, from peripheral or semi-peripheral countries,
have a significant presence at the Forums. They are held in the Third World,
and a large fraction of the participants are from the South, but the
movement's largest demonstrations since Seattle have been in countries of
the core-Genoa, Barcelona-where the young subproletariat has played a
central role. Comparisons with the Internationals, the Bandung Conference or
Woodstock-the media's favourite-can thus fail to capture the historical
specificity of the Forums, and the very different set of elements that are
combining here to construct a new subjectivity in the fight for a
post-neoliberal order. [2]

It was the mass working-class movements of the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries that provided the basis for the Internationals, throwing up
Socialist and Communist parties, trade unions, workers' representatives in
parliament and manifold forms of cultural expression. Politically, the
scenario is now quite different. The long-established parties of the
European Left were largely absent from the first Forum, and had only a
minimal presence at the second. The reasons for this lie both in the
ideological crisis caused by social democracy's conversion to neoliberalism
and in the declining weight, or real implantation, of these currents.
Labour-movement concerns were raised instead by the new trade unions of the
semi-periphery-South Africa, Korea, Brazil. If common motifs can be traced
between the Forum and the First International-the insurgent, pluralist,
libertarian, highly ideologized character of the mobilizations; social
heterogeneity; internationalism; opposition to a liberal free-trade order-it
is impossible to grasp the meaning of the new forms without an examination
of the historical rupture that divides them. For what splits the two asunder
is the defeat and disappearance of all that once constituted 'actually
existing socialism', and the transformation this has wrought upon the Left.

From the moment of the Bolshevik revolution-and especially since the Second
World War-the world stage was polarized by the socialist/capitalist
opposition, determining relatively fixed ideological and political reference
points. While the Left proclaimed a struggle between the two systems, the
Western superpowers called for a battle of 'democracy' against
'totalitarianism'. This was the determining contradiction of the epoch. With
the fall of the USSR and the 'socialist bloc', capitalism was once again
sole ruler of the world scene. The remaining post-capitalist countries
reinvented themselves. China opted for a form of market economy-as in all
likelihood will Vietnam. Cuba sought to defend the basic gains of the
previous period rather than advance towards socialism. The radical shift in
the balance of forces reverberated through the social and political
movements. With growing unemployment in Europe, unions were thrown onto the
defensive, mounting at best a partial resistance to 'flexibilization' while
rapidly losing members. In the increasingly informal and heterogeneous world
of labour that was emerging, traditional methods of organizing had ever less
effect. Parties had to confront the universalization of neoliberal policies.
European social democracy adapted to this at the very moment when, for the
first time, the Centre-Left was in power in nearly every EU state; the
Communist parties of the region shrivelled, or vanished altogether. A
similar scenario was enacted in Eastern Europe, where former Communist
parties took up a radicalized neoliberalism or local versions of the Third
Way.

The magnitude of this defeat for the Left-its depth and reach-has not been
sufficiently evaluated. Its principal component is the victory of
liberalism, on both the economic and political planes. Economically, the
expansion of the financial sphere, deregulation and the market-led annulment
of social benefits have dissolved the foundations of the welfare state.
Commercialization has absorbed and penetrated the field of social relations,
daily practice and consciousness, becoming the lodestone of ideological
life. The corporation now plays a leading role in determining economic
processes, to the detriment of social forces-unions, parties-premised on
more associative forms of life and opposed to the unlimited extension of the
market. Politically, with the displacement of the 'capitalism/socialism'
binary by that of 'democracy/totalitarianism', liberalism conquered hitherto
undreamt-of areas of the Left. Neoliberal economics and representative
democracy were embraced as the definitive form of politics by huge swathes
of the traditional Left. Parallel to this, 'imperialism' as current
historical reality disappeared from the political lexicon, enabling the US
to impose its international hegemony, as the model of both 'democracy' and
economic success-its deregulated 'Anglo-Saxon' system triumphantly
counterposed to the remnants of the European welfare state. Economic
progress was identified with free capital flows; levels of deregulation
became the measure of potential growth. The process took 'globalization' as
its logo, to underline its distinction from 'backward' national models,
asserting the international movement of capital as the only possible
paradigm.

The combination of these elements has resulted in a deep and wide-ranging
hegemony, consolidated at the ideological and cultural level, unlike any
that capitalism has previously enjoyed. In the aftermath of the Second World
War, Japan-despite its cultural distinctiveness-embraced the basic
assumptions of Western capitalism, adapting the system to the national
context. In the last two decades China, undefeated in war, has taken on the
same priorities, transforming its social habits, customs and values at a
pace previously unseen in Eastern culture. In Western Europe social
democracy has become the main mouthpiece of neoliberalism. In Latin America,
traditional populist tendencies-always characterized by a real or rhetorical
nationalism-have played the same role, here opting for extreme variants of
neoliberalism, with the PRI in Mexico and Menem in Argentina as the prime
examples.

With the disappearance of socialism from the current historical horizon-and
with it, all discussion of capitalism as a historically determined social
system-the Left was disarmed in face of the conservative counter-offensive
launched by Reagan and Thatcher, and continued by Clinton and Blair. It has
abandoned strategic programmes for the construction of a new type of society
and turned to defending the rights of the oppressed, or to creating local
and sectoral sites of resistance. The proliferation of alternative municipal
governments and NGOs are the best examples of this.

The project of building an alternative to capitalism was abandoned in favour
of resistance from within-opposition to neoliberalism rather than to the
overall system. 'Anti-totalitarianism' now mutated into an antagonism
towards any overarching analysis-any attempt to see historical processes as
a whole. These would inevitably result in reductive programmes with the
state as their monolithic agent. Pluralist democracy demanded more 'complex'
diagnoses, irreducible to the 'economism' attributed to (actually existing)
Marxism, and would therefore renounce 'grand narratives'.

It was in this context that local and sectoral forms of
resistance-ecological, feminist, ethnic, human rights, municipal
democracy-combined to form the movement that, together with union
organizations and anti-WTO groups, would surface so explosively in Seattle
in November 1999. If they represent an advance, in creating new spaces in
which opposition forces can come together, many of them also implicitly
renounce any attempt to construct an alternative society: as if our
indefinite confinement within the limits of capitalism and liberal democracy
was accepted as fact.

V

The Social Forum is a unique meeting place for anti-systemic forces to
gather at a world level. It is unprecedented both in its diversity-bringing
together not only parties and political currents but social movements, NGOs,
civil-rights groups, unions-and in its own non-state, non-partisan
character. It proposes to formulate global alternatives to current
capitalist practices, and strategies for their implementation. In this
sense, by its very existence the Forum creates a space in which the
anti-neoliberal struggle can escape the narrow limits of the globalization
vs nation-state binary, in which its opponents seek to imprison it. Basic to
the Forum is the idea that alternatives to neoliberalism need to move beyond
it, and therefore have to operate at the international level. The role of
the nation-state in these proposals varies, but the common framework is an
alternative globalization-not that of capital and the multinational
corporations.

Secondly, the Forum recreates the possibility of an alliance between radical
forces in the periphery and those in the core-a connexion sundered by the
triumph of neoliberalism and the fall of the USSR. During the 1990s, the
largely Centre-Left governments of the core redefined the regions of world
power and influence, abandoning the periphery to its fate as privileged
victim of capital's new offensive. Thirdly, the Forum allows theoretical,
social and political contributions to the project to converge in the same
space, without a hierarchy being defined-recovering, in a sense, the legacy
of the historical Left, by addressing the themes of an alternative
globalization.

The movement reflects both the strengths and weaknesses of the struggle
against neoliberalism. Its virtues include the high level of some of the
theoretical contributions, whether global or sectoral analyses; the social
heterogeneity-trade unions, environmental, gender and ethnic groups
alongside political, intellectual and cultural figures; and the moral
certainty that the great themes confronting humankind at the beginning of
the twenty-first century will be discussed here, not at Davos. Deficiencies
include the inability to convert these benefits into political
strength-whether at the level of governments and parliaments, or as mass
mobilizations-that could effectively exercise a veto on the reigning
neoliberal policies, or take other innovative forms of political action.
There is also a weakness in the whole field of economics. The movement lacks
any strategy for transforming the growing feelings of exasperation and
distrust of neoliberal dogma into an alternative policy, or at the very
least a project to curb the speculative movement of capital and point
towards new forms of international trade. Another shortcoming is the uneven
participation in the Forums, with very poor representation from some of the
core countries-the US, Germany, Japan, Britain-or emerging superpowers such
as China and India.

VI

Important steps were taken to address the Forums' weaknesses at the seminars
held by the WSF's International Committee in Barcelona, in April, and
Bangkok, in August this year. One of their main decisions was to transfer
the political leadership of the Forum from the original organizing
committee-consisting of Brazilian organizations, for the most part NGOs-to
the International Committee. This is made up of around sixty international
networks from all continents, with a fairly representative range. The
Committee decided on a more concentrated format for the Forums, with an
agenda of five basic themes around which all others would be grouped, in
order to move towards a more decisive way to formulate comprehensive
political proposals, and strategies to fight for them. It had already been
decided that the Forums were not events, but a process of elaborating
alternatives, and of struggle for their realization. With this in mind,
continental and sectoral Forums will take place before the Forum of 2003, as
before, in Porto Alegre.

The Social Forum represents a milestone, marking the shift from a period of
fragmented, defensive resistance to a phase of accumulating forces, while
looking towards the stage at which an international articulation of
political, social and cultural movements can confront neoliberalism and
overcome it. The first decades of the new century are the setting for that
challenge, to be taken up in full awareness of its complexity and of the
huge discrepancy in relative scale that still exists.

***

New Left Review 18, November-December 2002

The longue durée of resistance to the established order: after a hundred and
twenty years of socialist and nationalist revolts, does the World Social
Forum represent a qualitatively new alignment of forces and strategies for
change?



IMMANUEL WALLERSTEIN

NEW REVOLTS AGAINST THE SYSTEM



I coined the term 'antisystemic movement' in the 1970s in order to have a
formulation that would group together what had, historically and
analytically, been two distinct and in many ways rival kinds of popular
movement-those that went under the name 'social', and those that were
'national'. Social movements were conceived primarily as socialist parties
and trade unions; they sought to further the class struggle within each
state against the bourgeoisie or the employers. National movements were
those which fought for the creation of a national state, either by combining
separate political units that were considered to be part of one nation-as,
for example, in Italy-or by seceding from states considered imperial and
oppressive by the nationality in question-colonies in Asia or Africa, for
instance.

Both types of movement emerged as significant, bureaucratic structures in
the second half of the nineteenth century and grew stronger over time. Both
tended to accord their objectives priority over any other kind of political
goal-and, specifically, over the goals of their national or social rival.
This frequently resulted in severe mutual denunciations. The two types
seldom cooperated politically and, if they did so, tended to see such
cooperation as a temporary tactic, not a basic alliance. Nonetheless, the
history of these movements between 1850 and 1970 reveals a series of shared
features.

Most socialist and nationalist movements repeatedly proclaimed themselves to
be 'revolutionary', that is, to stand for fundamental transformations in
social relations. It is true that both types usually had a wing, sometimes
located in a separate organization, that argued for a more gradualist
approach and therefore eschewed revolutionary rhetoric. But generally
speaking, initially-and often for many decades-those in power regarded all
these movements, even the milder versions, as threats to their stability, or
even to the very survival of their political structures.


Secondly, at the outset, both variants were politically quite weak and had
to fight an uphill battle merely to exist. They were repressed or outlawed
by their governments, their leaders were arrested and their members often
subjected to systematic violence by the state or by private forces. Many
early versions of these movements were totally destroyed.


Thirdly, over the last three decades of the nineteenth century both types of
movement went through a parallel series of great debates over strategy that
ranged those whose perspectives were 'state-oriented' against those who saw
the state as an intrinsic enemy and pushed instead for an emphasis on
individual transformation. For the social movement, this was the debate
between the Marxists and the anarchists; for the national movement, that
between political and cultural nationalists.


What happened historically in these debates-and this is the fourth
similarity-was that those holding the 'state-oriented' position won out. The
decisive argument in each case was that the immediate source of real power
was located in the state apparatus and that any attempt to ignore its
political centrality was doomed to failure, since the state would
successfully suppress any thrust towards anarchism or cultural nationalism.
In the late nineteenth century, these groups enunciated a so-called two-step
strategy: first gain power within the state structure; then transform the
world. This was as true for the social as for the national movements.


The fifth common feature is less obvious, but no less real. Socialist
movements often included nationalist rhetoric in their arguments, while
nationalist discourse often had a social component. The result was a greater
blurring of the two positions than their proponents ever acknowledged. It
has frequently been remarked that socialist movements in Europe often
functioned more effectively as a force for national integration than either
conservatives or the state itself; while the Communist parties that came to
power in China, Vietnam and Cuba were clearly serving as movements of
national liberation. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, the process
of mobilization forced both groups to try to draw increasingly broad sectors
of the population into their camps, and widening the scope of their rhetoric
was helpful in this regard. But secondly, the leaders of both movements
often recognized subconsciously that they had a shared enemy in the existing
system-and that they therefore had more in common with each other than their
public pronouncements allowed.


The processes of popular mobilization deployed by the two kinds of movement
were basically quite similar. Both types started out, in most countries, as
small groups, often composed of a handful of intellectuals plus a few
militants drawn from other strata. Those that succeeded did so because they
were able, by dint of long campaigns of education and organization, to
secure popular bases in concentric circles of militants, sympathizers and
passive supporters. When the outer circle of supporters grew large enough
for the militants to operate, in Mao Zedong's phrase, like fish swimming in
water, the movements became serious contenders for political power. We
should, of course, note too that groups calling themselves 'social
democratic' tended to be strong primarily in states located in the core
zones of the world-economy, while those that described themselves as
movements of national liberation generally flourished in the semiperipheral
and peripheral zones. The latter was largely true of Communist parties as
well. The reason seems obvious. Those in weaker zones saw that the struggle
for equality hinged on their ability to wrest control of the state
structures from imperial powers, whether these exercised direct or indirect
rule. Those in the core zones were already in strong states. To make
progress in their struggle for equality, they needed to wrest power from
their own dominant strata. But precisely because these states were strong
and wealthy, insurrection was an implausible tactic, and these parties used
the electoral route.


The seventh common feature is that both these movements struggled with the
tension between 'revolution' and 'reform' as prime modes of transformation.
Endless discourse has revolved around this debate in both movements-but for
both, in the end, it turned out to be based on a misreading of reality.
Revolutionaries were not in practice very revolutionary, and reformists not
always reformist. Certainly, the difference between the two approaches
became more and more unclear as the movements pursued their political
trajectories. Revolutionaries had to make many concessions in order to
survive. Reformists learned that hypothetical legal paths to change were
often firmly blocked in practice and that it required force, or at least the
threat of force, to break through the barriers. So-called revolutionary
movements usually came to power as a consequence of the wartime destruction
of the existing authorities rather than through their own insurrectionary
capacities. As the Bolsheviks were reported to have said in Russia, in 1917,
'power was lying about in the streets'. Once installed, the movements sought
to stay in power, regardless of how they had got there; this often required
sacrificing militancy, as well as solidarity with their counterparts in
other countries. The popular support for these movements was initially just
as great whether they won by the bullet or by the ballot-the same dancing in
the streets greeted their accession to power after a long period of
struggle.


Finally, both movements had the problem of implementing the two-step
strategy. Once 'stage one' was completed, and they had come to power, their
followers expected them to fulfill the promise of stage two: transforming
the world. What they discovered, if they did not know it before, was that
state power was more limited than they had thought. Each state was
constrained by being part of an interstate system, in which no one nation's
sovereignty was absolute. The longer they stayed in office, the more they
seemed to postpone the realization of their promises; the cadres of a
militant mobilizing movement became the functionaries of a party in power.
Their social positions were transformed and so, inevitably, were their
individual psychologies. What was known in the Soviet Union as the
Nomenklatura seemed to emerge, in some form, in every state in which a
movement took control-that is, a privileged caste of higher officials, with
more power and more real wealth than the rest of the population. At the same
time, the ordinary workers were enjoined to toil even harder and sacrifice
ever more in the name of national development. The militant, syndicalist
tactics that had been the daily bread of the social movement became
'counter-revolutionary', highly discouraged and usually repressed, once it
was in office.


Analysis of the world situation in the 1960s reveals these two kinds of
movements looking more alike than ever. In most countries they had completed
'stage one' of the two-step strategy, having come to power practically
everywhere. Communist parties ruled over a third of the world, from the Elbe
to the Yalu; national liberation movements were in office in Asia and
Africa, populist movements in Latin America and social-democratic movements,
or their cousins, in most of the pan-European world, at least on an
alternating basis. They had not, however, transformed the world.

1968 and after

It was the combination of these factors that underlay a principal feature of
the world revolution of 1968. The revolutionaries had different local
demands but shared two fundamental arguments almost everywhere. First of
all, they opposed both the hegemony of the United States and the collusion
in this hegemony by the Soviet Union. Secondly, they condemned the Old Left
as being 'not part of the solution but part of the problem'. This second
common feature arose out of the massive disillusionment of the popular
supporters of the traditional antisystemic movements over their actual
performance in power. The countries in which they operated did see a certain
number of reforms-usually there was an increase in educational and health
facilities and guarantees of employment. But considerable inequalities
remained. Alienating wage labour had not disappeared; on the contrary, it
had increased as a percentage of work activity. There was little or no
expansion of real democratic participation, either at the governmental level
or in the work place; often it was the reverse. On the international scale,
these countries tended to play a very similar role in the world-system to
that which they had played before. Thus, Cuba had been a sugar-exporting
economy before the revolution and remained one after it, at least until the
demise of the Soviet Union. In short, not enough had changed. The grievances
might have altered slightly but they were as real and, generally, as
extensive. The populations of these countries were adjured by the movements
in power to be patient, for history was on their side. But their patience
had worn thin.

The conclusion that the world's populations drew from the performance of the
classical antisystemic movements in power was negative. They ceased to
believe that these parties would bring about a glorious future or a more
egalitarian world and no longer gave them their legitimation; and having
lost confidence in the movements, they also withdrew their faith in the
state as a mechanism of transformation. This did not mean that large
sections of the population would no longer vote for such parties in
elections; but it had become a defensive vote, for lesser evils, not an
affirmation of ideology or expectations.

From Maoism to Porto Alegre

Since 1968, there has been a lingering search, nonetheless, for a better
kind of antisystemic movement-one that would actually lead to a more
democratic, egalitarian world. There have been four different sorts of
attempt at this, some of which still continue. The first was the
efflorescence of the multiple Maoisms. From the 1960s until around the
mid-1970s, there emerged a large number of different, competing movements,
usually small but sometimes impressively large, claiming to be Maoist; by
which they meant that they were somehow inspired by the example of the
Cultural Revolution in China. Essentially, they argued that the Old Left had
failed because it was not preaching the pure doctrine of revolution, which
they now proposed. But these movements all fizzled out, for two reasons.
Firstly, they quarrelled bitterly among themselves as to what the pure
doctrine was, and therefore rapidly became tiny, insulated sectarian groups;
or if they were very large, as in India, they evolved into newer versions of
the Old Left movements. Secondly, and more fundamentally, with the death of
Mao Zedong Maoism disintegrated in China, and the fount of their inspiration
disappeared. Today, no such movements of any significance exist.

A second, more lasting variety of claimant to antisystemic status was the
new social movements-the Greens and other environmentalists, feminists, the
campaigns of racial or ethnic 'minorities', such as the Blacks in the United
States or the Beurs in France. These movements claimed a long history but,
in fact, they either became prominent for the first time in the 1970s or
else re-emerged then, in renewed and more militant form. They were also
stronger in the pan-European world than in other parts of the world-system.
Their common features lay, firstly, in their vigorous rejection of the Old
Left's two-step strategy, its internal hierarchies and its priorities-the
idea that the needs of women, 'minorities' and the environment were
secondary and should be addressed 'after the revolution'. And secondly, they
were deeply suspicious of the state and of state-oriented action.

By the 1980s, all these new movements had become divided internally between
what the German Greens called the fundis and the realos. This turned out to
be a replay of the 'revolutionary versus reformist' debates of the beginning
of the twentieth century. The outcome was that the fundis lost out in every
case, and more or less disappeared. The victorious realos increasingly took
on the appearance of a species of social-democratic party, not too different
from the classic variety, although with more rhetoric about ecology, sexism,
racism, or all three. Today, these movements continue to be significant in
certain countries, but they seem little more antisystemic than those of the
Old Left-especially since the one lesson the Old Left drew from 1968 was
that they, too, needed to incorporate concerns about ecology, gender, sexual
choice and racism into their programmatic statements.

The third type of claimant to antisystemic status has been the human-rights
organizations. Of course some, like Amnesty International, existed prior to
1968, but in general these became a major political force only in the 1980s,
aided by President Carter's adoption of human-rights terminology in dealing
with Central America, and the signing of the 1975 Helsinki Accord regarding
the Communist states of East and Central Europe. Both gave Establishment
legitimacy to the numerous organizations that were now addressing civil
rights. In the 1990s, the media focus on ethnic cleansing, notably in Rwanda
and the Balkans, led to considerable public discussion of these issues.

The human-rights organizations claimed to speak in the name of 'civil
society'. The term itself indicates the strategy: civil society is by
definition not the state. The concept draws upon a nineteenth-century
distinction between le pays légal and le pays réel-between those in power
and those who represent popular sentiment-posing the question: how can civil
society close the gap between itself and the state? How can it come to
control the state, or make the state reflect its values? The distinction
seems to assume that the state is currently controlled by small privileged
groups, whereas 'civil society' consists of the enlightened population at
large.

These organizations have had an impact in getting some states-perhaps all-to
inflect their policies in the direction of human-rights concerns; but, in
the process, they have come to be more like the adjuncts of states than
their opponents and, on the whole, scarcely seem very antisystemic. They
have become NGOs, located largely in core zones yet seeking to implement
their policies in the periphery, where they have often been regarded as the
agents of their home state rather than its critics. In any case, these
organizations have seldom mobilized mass support, counting rather on their
ability to utilize the power and position of their elite militants in the
core.

The fourth and most recent variant has been the so-called anti-globalization
movements-a designation applied not so much by these movements themselves as
by their opponents. The use of the term by the media scarcely predates its
reporting of the protests at the Seattle WTO meetings in 1999.
'Globalization', as the rhetoric of neoliberal advocates of free trade in
goods and capital, had of course become a strong force during the 1990s. Its
media focus was the Davos World Economic Forum, and its institutional
implementation was brought about via the Washington Consensus, the policies
of the IMF and the strengthening of the WTO. Seattle was intended as a key
moment in expanding the role of the WTO and the significant protests, which
actually disrupted its proceedings, took many by surprise. The demonstrators
included a large North American contingent, drawn from the Old Left, trade
unions, new movements and anarchist groups. Indeed, the very fact that the
AFL-CIO was ready to be on the same side as environmentalist groups in so
militant an action was something new, especially for the US.

Following Seattle, the continuing series of demonstrations around the world
against intergovernmental meetings inspired by the neoliberal agenda led, in
turn, to the construction of the World Social Forum, whose initial meetings
have been held in Porto Alegre; the second, in 2002, drew over 50,000
delegates from over a thousand organizations. Since then, there have been a
number of regional meetings, preparing for the 2003 WSF.

The characteristics of this new claimant for the role of antisystemic
movement are rather different from those of earlier attempts. First of all,
the WSF seeks to bring together all the previous types-Old Left, new
movements, human-rights bodies, and others not easily falling into these
categories-and includes groups organized in a strictly local, regional,
national and transnational fashion. The basis of participation is a common
objective-struggle against the social ills consequent on neoliberalism-and a
common respect for each other's immediate priorities. Importantly, the WSF
seeks to bring together movements from the North and the South within a
single framework. The only slogan, as yet, is 'Another World is Possible'.
Even more strangely, the WSF seeks to do this without creating an overall
superstructure. At the moment, it has only an international coordinating
committee, some fifty-strong, representing a variety of movements and
geographic locations.

While there has been some grumbling from Old Left movements that the WSF is
a reformist façade, thus far the complaints have been quite minimal. The
grumblers question; they do not yet denounce. It is, of course, widely
recognized that this degree of success has been based on a negative
rejection of neoliberalism, as ideology and as institutional practice. Many
have argued that it is essential for the WSF to move towards advocating a
clearer, more positive programme. Whether it can do so and still maintain
the level of unity and absence of an overall (inevitably hierarchical)
structure is the big question of the next decade.

A period of transition

If, as I have argued elsewhere, the modern world-system is in structural
crisis, and we have entered an 'age of transition'-a period of bifurcation
and chaos-then it is clear that the issues confronting antisystemic
movements pose themselves in a very different fashion than those of the
nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries. The two-step, state-oriented
strategy has become irrelevant, which explains the discomfort of most
existing descendants of erstwhile antisystemic organizations in putting
forward either long-term or immediate sets of political objectives. Those
few who try meet with skepticism from their hoped-for followers; or, worse,
with indifference.

Such a period of transition has two characteristics that dominate the very
idea of an antisystemic strategy. The first is that those in power will no
longer be trying to preserve the existing system (doomed as it is to
self-destruction); rather, they will try to ensure that the transition leads
to the construction of a new system that will replicate the worst features
of the existing one-its hierarchy, privilege and inequalities. They may not
yet be using language that reflects the demise of existing structures, but
they are implementing a strategy based on such assumptions. Of course, their
camp is not united, as is demonstrated by the conflict between the so-called
centre-right 'traditionalists' and the ultra-right, militarist hawks. But
they are working hard to build backing for changes that will not be changes,
a new system as bad as-or worse than-the present one. The second fundamental
characteristic is that a period of systemic transition is one of deep
uncertainty, in which it is impossible to know what the outcome will be.
History is on no one's side. Each of us can affect the future, but we do not
and cannot know how others will act to affect it, too. The basic framework
of the WSF reflects this dilemma, and underlines it.

Strategic considerations

A strategy for the period of transition ought therefore to include four
components-all of them easier said than done. The first is a process of
constant, open debate about the transition and the outcome we hope for. This
has never been easy, and the historic antisystemic movements were never very
good at it. But the atmosphere is more favourable today than it has ever
been, and the task remains urgent and indispensable-underlining the role of
intellectuals in this conjuncture. The structure of the WSF has lent itself
to encouraging this debate; we shall see if it is able to maintain this
openness.

The second component should be self-evident: an antisystemic movement cannot
neglect short-term defensive action, including electoral action. The world's
populations live in the present, and their immediate needs have to be
addressed. Any movement that neglects them is bound to lose the widespread
passive support that is essential for its long-term success. But the motive
and justification for defensive action should not be that of remedying a
failing system but rather of preventing its negative effects from getting
worse in the short run. This is quite different psychologically and
politically.

The third component has to be the establishment of interim, middle-range
goals that seem to move in the right direction. I would suggest that one of
the most useful-substantively, politically, psychologically-is the attempt
to move towards selective, but ever-widening, decommodification. We are
subject today to a barrage of neoliberal attempts to commodify what was
previously seldom or never appropriated for private sale-the human body,
water, hospitals. We must not only oppose this but move in the other
direction. Industries, especially failing industries, should be
decommodified. This does not mean they should be 'nationalized'-for the most
part, simply another version of commodification. It means we should create
structures, operating in the market, whose objective is performance and
survival rather than profit. This can be done, as we know, from the history
of universities or hospitals-not all, but the best. Why is such a logic impo
ssible for steel factories threatened with delocalization?

Finally, we need to develop the substantive meaning of our long-term
emphases, which I take to be a world that is relatively democratic and
relatively egalitarian. I say 'relatively' because that is realistic. There
will always be gaps-but there is no reason why they should be wide,
encrusted or hereditary. Is this what used to be called socialism, or even
communism? Perhaps, but perhaps not. That brings us back to the issue of
debate. We need to stop assuming what the better (not the perfect) society
will be like. We need to discuss it, outline it, experiment with alternative
structures to realize it; and we need to do this at the same time as we
carry out the first three parts of our programme for a chaotic world in
systemic transition. And if this programme is insufficient, and it probably
is, then this very insufficiency ought to be part of the debate which is
Point One of the programme.