[R-P] PORTO ALEGRE

[Mario Jose de lima]

MICHAEL HARDT
PORTO ALEGRE: TODAY'S BANDUNG?


Rather than opposing the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre to the World
Economic Forum in New York, it is more revealing to imagine it as the
distant offspring of the historic Bandung Conference that took place in
Indonesia in 1955. Both were conceived as attempts to counter the dominant
world order: colonialism and the oppressive Cold War binary in the case of
Bandung, and the rule of capitalist globalization in that of Porto Alegre.
The differences, however, are immediately apparent. On one hand the Bandung
Conference, which brought together leaders primarily from Asia and Africa,
revealed in a dramatic way the racial dimension of the colonial and Cold War
world order, which Richard Wright famously described as being divided by the
'colour curtain'. Porto Alegre, in contrast, was a predominantly white
event. There were relatively few participants from Asia and Africa, and the
racial differences of the Americas were dramatically underrepresented. This
points toward a continuing task facing those gathered at Porto Alegre: to
globalize further the movements, both within each society and across the
world-a project in which the Forum is merely one step. On the other hand,
whereas Bandung was conducted by a small group of national political leaders
and representatives, Porto Alegre was populated by a swarming multitude and
a network of movements. This multitude of protagonists is the great novelty
of the World Social Forum, and central to the hope it offers for the future.
The first and dominant impression of the Forum was its overflowing enormity;
not so much the number of people there-the organizers say 80,000
participated-but rather the number of events, encounters and happenings. The
programme listing all the official conferences, seminars and workshops-most
of which took place at the Catholic University-was the size of a tabloid
newspaper, but one soon realized that there were innumerable other
unofficial meetings taking place all over town, some publicized on posters
and leaflets, others by word of mouth. There were also separate gatherings
for the different groups participating in the Forum, such as a meeting of
the Italian social movements or one for the various national sections of
ATTAC. Then there were the demonstrations: both officially planned, such as
the opening mass May Day-style parade, and smaller, conflictual
demonstrations against, for example, the members of parliament from
different countries at the Forum who voted for the present war on terrorism.
Finally, another series of events was held at the enormous youth camp by the
river, its fields and fields of tents housing 15,000 people in an atmosphere
reminiscent of a summer music festival, especially when it rained and
everyone tramped through the mud wearing plastic sacks as raincoats. In
short, if anyone with obsessive tendencies were to try to understand what
was happening at Porto Alegre, the result would certainly have been a
complete mental breakdown. The Forum was unknowable, chaotic, dispersive.
And that overabundance created an exhilaration in everyone, at being lost in
a sea of people from so many parts of the world who are working similarly
against the present form of capitalist globalization.
This open encounter was the most important element of Porto Alegre. Even
though the Forum was limited in some important respects-socially and
geographically, to name two-it was nonetheless an opportunity to globalize
further the cycle of struggles that have stretched from Seattle to Genoa,
which have been conducted by a network of movements thus far confined, by
and large, to the North Atlantic. Dealing with many of the same issues as
those who elsewhere contest the present capitalist form of globalization, or
specific institutional policies such as those of the IMF, the movements
themselves have remained limited. Recognizing the commonality of their
projects with those in other parts of the world is the first step toward
expanding the network of movements, or linking one network to another. This
recognition, indeed, is primarily responsible for the happy, celebratory
atmosphere of the Forum.
The encounter should, however, reveal and address not only the common
projects and desires, but also the differences of those involved-differences
of material conditions and political orientation. The various movements
across the globe cannot simply connect to each other as they are, but must
rather be transformed by the encounter through a kind of mutual adequation.
Those from North America and Europe, for example, cannot but have been
struck by the contrast between their experience and that of agricultural
labourers and the rural poor in Brazil, represented most strongly by the MST
(Landless Movement)-and vice versa. What kind of transformations are
necessary for the Euro-American globalization movements and the Latin
American movements, not to become the same, or even to unite, but to link
together in an expanding common network? The Forum provided an opportunity
to recognize such differences and questions for those willing to see them,
but it did not provide the conditions for addressing them. In fact, the very
same dispersive, overflowing quality of the Forum that created the euphoria
of commonality also effectively displaced the terrain on which such
differences and conflicts could be confronted.
Anti-capitalism and national sovereignty
The Porto Alegre Forum was in this sense perhaps too happy, too celebratory
and not conflictual enough. The most important political difference cutting
across the entire Forum concerned the role of national sovereignty. There
are indeed two primary positions in the response to today's dominant forces
of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of
nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and
global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the
present form of globalization that is equally global. The first poses
neoliberalism as the primary analytical category, viewing the enemy as
unrestricted global capitalist activity with weak state controls; the second
is more clearly posed against capital itself, whether state-regulated or
not. The first might rightly be called an anti-globalization position, in so
far as national sovereignties, even if linked by international solidarity,
serve to limit and regulate the forces of capitalist globalization. National
liberation thus remains for this position the ultimate goal, as it was for
the old anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles. The second, in
contrast, opposes any national solutions and seeks instead a democratic
globalization.
The first position occupied the most visible and dominant spaces of the
Porto Alegre Forum; it was represented in the large plenary sessions,
repeated by the official spokespeople, and reported in the press. A key
proponent of this position was the leadership of the Brazilian PT (Workers'
Party)-in effect the host of the Forum, since it runs the city and regional
government. It was obvious and inevitable that the PT would occupy a central
space in the Forum and use the international prestige of the event as part
of its campaign strategy for the upcoming elections. The second dominant
voice of national sovereignty was the French leadership of ATTAC, which laid
the groundwork for the Forum in the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique. The
leadership of ATTAC is, in this regard, very close to many of the French
politicians-most notably Jean-Pierre Chevènement-who advocate strengthening
national sovereignty as a solution to the ills of contemporary
globalization. These, in any case, are the figures who dominated the
representation of the Forum both internally and in the press.
The non-sovereign, alternative globalization position, in contrast, was
minoritarian at the Forum-not in quantitative terms but in terms of
representation; in fact, the majority of the participants in the Forum may
well have occupied this minoritarian position. First, the various movements
that have conducted the protests from Seattle to Genoa are generally
oriented towards non-national solutions. Indeed, the centralized structure
of state sovereignty itself runs counter to the horizontal network-form that
the movements have developed. Second, the Argentinian movements that have
sprung up in response to the present financial crisis, organized in
neighbourhood and city-wide delegate assemblies, are similarly antagonistic
to proposals of national sovereignty. Their slogans call for getting rid,
not just of one politician, but all of them- que se vayan todos: the entire
political class. And finally, at the base of the various parties and
organizations present at the Forum the sentiment is much more hostile to
proposals of national sovereignty than at the top. This may be particularly
true of ATTAC, a hybrid organization whose head, especially in France,
mingles with traditional politicians, whereas its feet are firmly grounded
in the movements.
The division between the sovereignty, anti-globalization position and the
non-sovereign, alternative globalization position is therefore not best
understood in geographical terms. It does not map the divisions between
North and South or First World and Third. The conflict corresponds rather to
two different forms of political organization. The traditional parties and
centralized campaigns generally occupy the national sovereignty pole,
whereas the new movements organized in horizontal networks tend to cluster
at the non-sovereign pole. And furthermore, within traditional, centralized
organizations, the top tends toward sovereignty and the base away. It is no
surprise, perhaps, that those in positions of power would be most interested
in state sovereignty and those excluded least. This may help to explain, in
any case, how the national sovereignty, anti-globalization position could
dominate the representations of the Forum even though the majority of the
participants tend rather toward the perspective of a non-national
alternative globalization.
As a concrete illustration of this political and ideological difference, one
can imagine the responses to the current economic crisis in Argentina that
logically follow from each of these positions. Indeed that crisis loomed
over the entire Forum, like a threatening premonition of a chain of economic
disasters to come. The first position would point to the fact that the
Argentinian debacle was caused by the forces of global capital and the
policies of the IMF, along with the other supranational institutions that
undermine national sovereignty. The logical oppositional response should
thus be to reinforce the national sovereignty of Argentina (and other
nation-states) against these destabilizing external forces. The second
position would identify the same causes of the crisis, but insist that a
national solution is neither possible nor desirable. The alternative to the
rule of global capital and its institutions will only be found at an equally
global level, by a global democratic movement. The practical experiments in
democracy taking place today at neighbourhood and city levels in Argentina,
for example, pose a necessary continuity between the democratization of
Argentina and the democratization of the global system. Of course, neither
of these perspectives provides an adequate recipe for an immediate solution
to the crisis that would circumvent IMF prescriptions-and I am not convinced
that such a solution exists. They rather present different political
strategies for action today which seek, in the course of time, to develop
real alternatives to the current form of global rule.
Parties vs networks
In a previous period we could have staged an old-style ideological
confrontation between the two positions. The first could accuse the second
of playing into the hands of neoliberalism, undermining state sovereignty
and paving the way for further globalization. Politics, the one could
continue, can only be effectively conducted on the national terrain and
within the nation-state. And the second could reply that national regimes
and other forms of sovereignty, corrupt and oppressive as they are, are
merely obstacles to the global democracy that we seek. This kind of
confrontation, however, could not take place at Porto Alegre-in part because
of the dispersive nature of the event, which tended to displace conflicts,
and in part because the sovereignty position so successfully occupied the
central representations that no contest was possible.
But the more important reason for a lack of confrontation may have had to do
with the organizational forms that correspond to the two positions. The
traditional parties and centralized organizations have spokespeople who
represent them and conduct their battles, but no one speaks for a network.
How do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do
exert their power, but they do not proceed through oppositions. One of the
basic characteristics of the network form is that no two nodes face each
other in contradiction; rather, they are always triangulated by a third, and
then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in the web. This
is one of the characteristics of the Seattle events that we have had the
most trouble understanding: groups which we thought in objective
contradiction to one another-environmentalists and trade unions, church
groups and anarchists-were suddenly able to work together, in the context of
the network of the multitude. The movements, to take a slightly different
perspective, function something like a public sphere, in the sense that they
can allow full expression of differences within the common context of open
exchange. But that does not mean that networks are passive. They displace
contradictions and operate instead a kind of alchemy, or rather a sea
change, the flow of the movements transforming the traditional fixed
positions; networks imposing their force through a kind of irresistible
undertow.
Like the Forum itself, the multitude in the movements is always overflowing,
excessive and unknowable. It is certainly important then, on the one hand,
to recognize the differences that divide the activists and politicians gathe
red at Porto Alegre. It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to try to
read the division according to the traditional model of ideological conflict
between opposing sides. Political struggle in the age of network movements
no longer works that way. Despite the apparent strength of those who
occupied centre stage and dominated the representations of the Forum, they
may ultimately prove to have lost the struggle. Perhaps the representatives
of the traditional parties and centralized organizations at Porto Alegre are
too much like the old national leaders gathered at Bandung-imagine Lula of
the PT in the position of Ahmed Sukarno as host, and Bernard Cassen of ATTAC
France as Jawaharlal Nehru, the most honoured guest. The leaders can
certainly craft resolutions affirming national sovereignty around a
conference table, but they can never grasp the democratic power of the
movements. Eventually they too will be swept up in the multitude, which is
capable of transforming all fixed and centralized elements into so many more
nodes in its indefinitely expansive network.