What happened to the new left?

What happened to the new left?

By NAOMI KLEIN

Thursday, January 30, 2003 - Print Edition, Page A17

 The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday 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
 movement.

 "The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. 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 the same direction. There were plenty
 of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were
 thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists 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.

 This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if
 some left-wing parties 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 to the International Monetary Fund 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 centralized, 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 that getting to 
this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of 
the
 past, but imagining new movements.

 The 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 co-operative farming -- a vision of politicized communities
 that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the
 IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organization. For a left that had
 tended to look to centralized state solutions to solve almost every problem,
 this emphasis on decentralization 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 Mr. da
 Silva's campaign for 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 Mr. da Silva 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 hand power
 back to the citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of the
 foreign debt, to land reform, to membership in the Free Trade Area of the
 Americas. There is 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 Mr. 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 the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. 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 forum is proof that the movements against
 corporate globalization 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, author of No Logo and Fences and Windows, resumes her monthly 
column in The Globe and Mail.