São Paulo,

The world-wide context remains marked by the consequences of the militarization of international relations imposed by Bush’s government after the attacks of september 11^th, which started a new phase of neo liberal globalization, and by a continuous and diffuse contestation of neo liberalism’s legitimacy, without a clear alternative. World economy’s growth rates show that the crisis linked to the collapse of the 1990’s speculative bubble was left behind and even some peripheral countries (such as China and India) have found their space within the current economic con-figuration - paying, of course, a high social price for it. But for the ones who fight for a progres-sioninst alternative to neo liberalism and imperial domination, the general situation is better than in previous phases - be it in its initial phase, in the 1980’s, in which the new pattern was aggressively established, under Reagan and Thatcher, or in the phase that started after Soviet Union’s collapse, with its multilateral emphasis marked by the suffocating predominance of a “single thought”, under Clinton, in the 1990’s.

In this third moment, Washington has been accounting for all impasses accumulated by capitalism in its previous phase through the increasing incorporation of a military component, gen-erating, therefore, new contradictions. Since the end of the 1980’s, the United States have been applying again its warlike power in order to maintain a dominant position, but now “humanitarian” interventions are being substituted by neocolonial invasions - clearly present at occupations in Af-ghanistan and in Iraq. A series of initiatives which aimed to give a multilateral treatment to global problems - such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court - were abandoned by Bush. Hence, not only capitalism’s characteristics of being unfair, unequal and excluding become more evident, but also that its maintenance demands a domination based on military intervention or pressure.

Due to the high level of confrontation, the global movement (or alter-globalization), which structured itself as from the Seattle protests, is facing - since mobilizations against the Iraq invasion on February 15^th, 2003 - difficulties regarding political initiatives and is aware that international initiatives, which structure the movement, are dispersed. Mobilizations that are centralized for “counter-summits” such as the ones that occurred parallel to the WTO in Cancun (August, 2003) and Hong Kong (December, 2005) were very limited and had little effect on the events’ dynamics; the same occurred during the 4^th Summit of the Americas, in Mar del Plata (November, 2005). The evaluation of the protests that took 250 people to the streets against the G8 in Edinburgh is an ambiguous one, but it does not repesent the Seattle-Geneva cycle’s recovery. The result brought by these meetings was determined by disputes among governments and groups of governments.

But this must not neglect neither the globalizing project’s legitimacy crisis before important sectors of the world population, nor the existence of a movement which is capable of maintaining a dialogue with different worldwide leftist components seeking through struggles and initiatives, to build a different world - in this sense, the World Social Forum in more than five years of existence, is already being successful. Nowadays, the ones who oppose themselves to the system have a place where they can move; a growing audience listening to their ideas and they are starting to test their different proposals for changes.

Thus, contradictory dynamics are a trace of the international situation, tendencies whose limits may be visualized through the reassertion of the desire for changes in South America, which became more evident after the election of governments born in the midst of popular disruptions and committed to social change, and through the increasing military confrontation in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, pressure over Iran). But we can already feel that Bush’s government is getting fragile, mainly due to the impasse in Iraq, with a big number of dead American sol-diers in the country. This is also noticeable in the accommodation towards North Korea’s nuclear capacity and in the abandoning of FTTA in the format it was initially proposed. In an scenario of imperial initiatives hyperextension all over the world (as Walden Bello names it), in which local problems deteriorate US’s domination and put tension on its forces, the Middle East is Washing-ton’s priority. It is clear that imperial initiatives are weary, but popular forces are still having diffi-culties in regaining an attitude of attack within a world wide level, as they did from 1997 to 2001/3, its protagonism has been focused in regional and national level.

In Europe, the defeat of the European Constitution proposal in referendums in France and Holland represents an important obstacle for the Maastricht project’s fulfillment, because a political renewal would be given to the neo liberal construction of the European Union as a big market, a problem to which, up to now, there is no solution - with the poor youth protesting in France show-ing the latent risks contained in the present path. In the United States, in spite of the repressive and defensive context, many important social mobilizations have recovered themselves, such as the transportation strike in New York. The same is happening with political struggles, particularly within peaceful movements and movements for the withdrawal in Iraq. However, the predominance of a very conservative political atmosphere remains within central capitalist countries (including Ja-pan, Australia and Canada) and within the great performers of the global system (Russia, China, and, to a certain extent, India).

The initiatives to deepen the free-trade, after the failure of FTTA and the temporary stagna-tion of the Mercosul-European Union treaty, have been canalized to WTO’s negotiations, which tries to systematize a series of bilateral or regional agreements (such as the Central-American Free Trade Zone and the Andean Free Trade Agreement, in Latin America, both of them with the United States, and many treaties in Asia and Africa). In Hong Kong, in spite of the rough divergences be-tween the Triade’s axes, the incorporation of Brazil and India to the negotiation tables, allowed some improvement - which is, up to now, merely symbolic. This has to be accomplished until April 2006, in Geneva. This represents, as the military offensive, a greater risk to the movements and to the leftist at an international level.

It is in Latin America where the most consistent winds of resistance to neo liberalism and aspiration for changes blow. If Lula’s election has enormously frustrated the Brazilian and the in-ternational leftist movement and his settlement with the current order strengthens a series of “left without changes” (or social liberals) governments in the region (Uruguay, Chile, and to a certain extent, Argentina), Brazilian government needs to keep dialogue with the reality established by Chavez, in Venezuela (supported by Cuba). The recent election of Evo Morales may be considered, at this moment, a strengthening fact to the transforming pole of Latin America’s left wing. Since 2005 (4^th Hemispheric Meeting Against ALCA, in Havana), Chavez has been keeping a strong po-litical initiative within the region, supported by the Cubans; Chavez has launched the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) proposal, which imposes itself on the discussion as a concrete alternative to FTTA. Another important fact may be the recent zapatists’ change of political course, which came with the Marcos’national tour, introducing, therefore, new elements on the board. All societies in the continent are clearly in movement.

The World Social Forum process has decided, in this scenario of fragmentation regarding the international left wing’s initiatives, to have a polycentric 4^th edition, with three events of Global South continental reach. In the beginning, the idea was to have them taking place simultaneously, but they ended up happening in different dates, the first was in Bamako (in Mali), followed by the one in Caracas (Venezuela), both in January, 2006 and in Karachi (Pakistan) in March 2006 (postponed due to the earthquake that hit the country). Afterwards, the Forum in Bangkok, which should take place on October 21^st and 22^nd, was added to the polycentric process. There will also be the Brazilian Social Forum, in Recife, from April 21^st to 23^rd and the European Social Forum, in Athens, from May 4^th to 7^th.

These events deepen the dialogue with the current progressist processes, within a situation in which mobilization and campaigns that have always been part of the global movement are facing difficulties and/or are cohabiting with a bigger state protagonism - FTTA, WTO, transgenic, patent medicines, Kyoto Protocol, International Criminal Court, protests against the IMF and the G-8, campaign against war, etc.

The four WSF editions in Porto Alegre and the Mumbai edition were marked by local politi-cal conditions, and this was not different in Bamako and Caracas events, whose profiles have re-flected each region’s left wing protagonists’ actions. But these particularities were intensified by the global movement’s general situation, which did not provide to local experiences the same counter-balance, as it did before.

In Bamako, the African edition of the polycentric Forum has, for the first time, introduced completely the self-organized dynamics, which characterizes the Forum’s format within the conti-nent. Ten thousand people participated in the event and hundreds of activities took place, it was a successful process, assembling the entirety of debates on pan-African tradition and its renewal and also many questions that are strongly present in the continent - from the free trade impact to Aids, from migrations to the role of international agencies. The Forum also witnessed an important effort to recover the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and socialist tradition, inherited from Bandung - a seminar stimulated by Samir Amin, right before the Forum, debated the non-aligned movement’s legacy, which was born in April 1955, in Indonesia. Bamako demonstrated an improvement of the WSF process in the continent and sealed a promising direction towards Nairobi 2007.

The political space in Caracas has been marked by the bolivarian experience and by the presence of Chavez government - which is natural, due to the characteristics of the process, in which the State has a string role. The Caracas WSF was an opportunity for international left wing sectors to get more acquainted with the Venezuelan experience and to dialogue with the axle built by Chavez and Castro, with its political initiatives, and to relate themselves with the Latin-American left wing recovery process.

The Caracas Forum was also influenced by the Evo Morales’ electoral victory in Bolivia, which is a result of the indigenous peoples’ long insurrection in that country - and the indigenous issue was a very strong point in the event. Chavez tried to capitalize the Forum taking place in Venezuela - as Lula had done in Porto Alegre, in that case to try to justify the idea of not having an alternative to neo liberalism - strengthening his presence on the continental scene as well as straiten Caracas’ relationship with movements from the region. This transformed the way social movements, political parties and government relate to each other in terms of an important matter regarding the Forum and has given a new value to the debate on the state-power issue.

But the Forum, with its eighty thousand participants, was also an opportunity for social movements to confront at a continental and international level and to launch again campaigns regarding certain themes, such as how to fight free trade (including the articulation of a global action plan to derail the WTO), the defense of water as a common good (integrating Latin-Americans and the Europeans) and a greater integration of the continents in the fight against war and militarization; the social movements could also again articulate themselves regarding the variety of themes, which make the richness of the Forum (external debt, indigenous people, women, Haiti, ecologists, fight against state-terrorism, sexual diversity, rural reform, etc). The Forum has witnessed the first uni-fied international labor union conference since the beginning of Cold War. The regional integration alternatives agenda, already reinforced by the ALBA proposal, has improved and has acquired den-sity. And the Caracas Forum has witnessed a growth on the participation of movements and organi-zations from the United States, integrating them more in the WSF process (with the perspective of having a Forum in the United States, in 2007). The remarks contained in many evaluations are related to infrastructure, highlighting the difficulty caused by the activities being dispersed in a big city (the same kind of observation is also present in evaluations about Bamako).

These events have expressed tensions that are part of the WSF, which have been present in the process since its beginning. In one side, there is some questioning about its characteristic of being an open space that is not deicision-making. In the other side, re-garding its autonomy before government and political parties. Although these tensions are not new, they have gained more intensity, mainly due to the current conjuncture of the global movement be-ing more dispersed politically, but also due to each Bamako’s and Caracas’ events particularities.

Since the Forum has been constituted, an expressive sector within the International Council defends that the WSF, or at least the IC, should adopt resolutions which, supported by the legiti-macy of the WSF process, would point directions for the movement. On this matter, it has been al-ways discussed that the “brand” WSF should be used to sign under a platform or position concerning a certain theme (remember, for instance, the discussion during an IC meeting that preceded Porto Alegre 2003, whic discussed if this body should adopt a position against the Iraq invasion, a consensus among the participants).

Now, in Caracas, Chavez asserted - as Lula had done before, almost in the same terms, through the newspapers, before the 2005 Forum, concerning the campaign against hunger - that “a forum which does not come up with conclusions is a waste of time and will end up being a tourist fair”. As for the debates in Brazil, this same position has been reinforced by people from different positions within the left wing spectrum, from Emir Sader to the congressman Babá.

The WSF has shown itself very efficient in giving impulse to the left wing’s political struggle in the beginning of this century. Innumerous declarations, platforms and calls have been coming out of the process’ events and have been fundamental to organize from the referendum on the FTTA in Brazil to the protests against the invasion of Iraq on February 15^th, 2003. In each forum, social movements network meetings agree on an agenda for global mobilizations, which is reference to thousands of movements and organizations. Declarations such as the “World Charter on the Rights to the City” have been produced in many forums. During the Caracas Forum, de declaration “Another integration, urgent, possible and necessary” was made. The “Bamako Call”, written in a seminar that took place one day before the Forum, is an important reference to our days, assembling much of what the WSF has produced up to now. Some examples of “conclusions” pro-duced “during the Forums” could be multiplied infinitely, and many would point out its efficiency as an impelling force to the organization of initiatives which are central to the leftist movement nowadays.

But, in spite of all these evidences showing the WSF’s efficiency, some still insist that if the Forum does not undertake resolutions, declarations or platforms, it will “end up being a fair”. Therefore, this insistence seems to rely less on what is made explicit within the discourse (how to organize the struggles better) and more on acting methods and political culture conceptions, to rely on what should be the model of organization for the political action adopted by us. This discussion needs to be done without ambiguities.

The socialist projects in the 20^th century were, due to different reasons, defeated by capital-ism. A great number of evaluations emphasizes the authoritarian, vertical and state-oriented char-acteristics of these projects or of their execution. Some others accentuate its link to a national or na-tionalist horizon. Besides, neo liberal reorganization of capitalism has diffused in almost every country, the fordist period’s great concentration of workers, eliminating the basis of the industrial workforce’s previous protagonism, preventing them from intending to be the socialist movement’s center of gravity. And neo liberal globalization has engulfed peripheral states and corroding their market-control tools, conditioning the politics adopted by the government and frustrating citizen-oriented initiatives that fight for alternatives to neo liberalism.

The global movement in which the Forum’s existence is based on has brought to us three important lessons: it demonstrates the efficiency of network-like organization to articulate current struggles (which opposes itself to pyramidal structures, which are conservative and bureaucratic); the revalue of internationalism within the left; and valuing pluralism within social and political composition of any emancipation project without establishing hierarchy among its components. The Forum-like format (open-space, self-organized, structured in network and non-decision making) copes with these challenges and must be defended against any kind of past “international directions” nostalgia.

Some IC members see the WSF as a possible new historical subject of the 21^st century’s struggle for emancipation. They think of its constitution as a similar one to the 20^th century’s inter-nationals. But the subjects (plural) of contemporary people’s struggle have already shown them-selves at the WSF, uniting in a flexible manner, up to the extent in which their political under-standing points to this direction. Institutionalizing the WSF as “the” subject, allowing the space to debate and articulate in overlap with its actors, would prevent these subjects from developing, whereas these subjects should be strengthened, by getting closer to a wider number of struggles and regional, national and local movements.

Adopting resolutions “as” the Forum means the establishment of deliberative bodies that surpass the powers and the function of being the process’s facilitators (as they are today, from the IC to the OCs). This would mean to open processes - natural, but inevitable - of dispute for power, with all its problems, something that the Forum has succeeded in avoiding. Within the processes of deliberation, this would mean imposing the opinion of some people upon others, which would jeopardize the efficiency of the Forum in its current format where the political argument and the voluntary adhesion to any proposal, declaration or campaign prevails. To abandon theses victories obtained by the Forum would mean a great political retrocession to the current left wing.

The fundamental cause for the difficulties we are now dealing with comes from the increasing confrontation in international politics, established by Washington and followed in group by central governments - which is, basically, a problem of correlation of forces (and, therefore, a capacity problem in concentrating forces and initiatives). If we had been able to support the mobilization level achieved in Geneva or in the protests of February 15^th, 2003, we wouldn’t be facing the difficulties we are facing now. The central problem to the present global left is not, in this sense, the lack of candidates to direct the mass movements with “fair” public policies - directions that should have more dissemination of their ideas - but the enlargement of self-organization and autonomous protagonism of wide popular sectors.

At the Mumbai Forum, during a panel about the WSF’s future, Sohi Jeon already warned us about the fundamental implications of this: the Forum process must incorporate the big protagonists from popular struggles in regional, national and local levels, which is the only way for us to keep growing and strengthening, which is also the only way of condensing sets of networks that compose the global movement and the WSF process. Our concern regarding this topic was reflected in the last Porto Alegre Forum, in which we adopted the methodology of stimulating the convergence of themes and struggles, increasing initiatives of dialogues and meetings among different actors.

This year’s polycentric process surely enables an enlargement in the WSF’s horizontal rela-tion with some regional and national processes - in Bamako and Caracas this was clear and we hope that the same occurs in other stages of the process (Karachi, Athens, Bangkok, and for us in Brazil, Recife). We also have to evaluate the methodology’s efficiency within these events and verify if the worries that have guided us in Porto Alegre 2005 are being properly contemplated. But for the 7^th WSF in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007, we must fundamentally build a participative process for the event‘s preparation, a methodology and a communication process that enables global connections of the processes, which at this moment are relatively dispersed - and this in a bigger qualitative scale than has ever been done in any WSF process’ events. But always keeping in mind that the Forum does not substitute social movements nor any kind of struggle, on the contrary, it is an instrument to assist them.

Another discussed issue in the WSF since its creation is the relationship between the Forum and governments and parties. We went on these problems in Porto Alegre in 2002 when PT and the French social-democracy tried to emphasize their presence in the Forum aiming the electoral dispute and again in 2003 when Lula went to the Gigantinho to justify his trip to Davos the following day. In 2005 the WSF watched Lula’s efforts again trying to make the PT government the best ever and Chavez presenting himself as the most authentic left leadership in the continent. In Mumbai the dispute engaged by an Asian communism sector led to the Mumbai Re-sistance parallel realization. In the European Social Forum process each event had to deal with problems in the relationship with the left parties in the countries that were holding the events - widened in the London edition because of the relationship with the London Authority. We did not build the WSF process separated from the party and government disputes but we have always tried to weaken the impact of these disputes preserving the process authonomy in a way that it would not link the process with any specific project, no matter how worthy it is.

But we must face opposite tendencies: the WSF process’ events are used to being big, com-plex and expensive, what means that the relationship with the governments is essential to negotiate things from infrastructure to security. These issues generally go through progressive parties towards the event’s financing - and no matter how clear the rules are, the one who pays does influence or feels like influencing the process. No doubt this is one of our biggest politic fragilities.

In the last period, this attempt of linking the Forum and some left sectors received a new impulse because of the situation present in Latin América with the new left parties or left-origin parties governments. It produced a renewal of nationalizing temptations, reinforced by the strength-ening of the sectors with government resources access. The frustration with PT and Lula’s govern-ment moved tendencies in the region towards Chavez government, which has been leading important social changes and anti-imperialist struggles. It is essential to the global movement and to the WSF process to dialogue with all the positive experiences in the anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist struggles in progress. The choice of Caracas to host one of the events of the policentric process re-felcted the recognition of Bolivarian Revolution’s positive role.

However, with all we have been through in the WSF process with the parties and the leftist governments, this national protagonism reinforcement indicates that since now we must develop more precise protocols concerning the relationship between the WSF events and host governments and the parties that search for protagonism in these events. And we are facing a situation in which it is clear that in some cases there has been a loss of parameters, with some IC members defending that all leftist efforts now should look for the alignment with the “block that seems to be appearing around Venezuela, Cuba and Bolívia”.

In the article “WSF: from resistance to the struggle for a post-neoliberal world or retrogres-sion”, written by Emir Sader a little before the Caracas Forum, he says: “The WSF leaves the neo liberalism resistance stage and starts to participate actively in the fight for ‘another possible world’ or it will be doomed to retrogression. Taking place in Venezuela, it is an excellent opportunity for the WSF to take this step further. If it gets out of this event undamaged, recovering the same previ-ous speech, without having learned from the extraordinary conquers and warnings that Caribbean and Latin America offered, it will condemn itself to be in the margin of the big battles that are in progress now against the imperial hegemony and neo liberalism in the world”.

This quote may give rise to various criticism, regarding topics that go from “denying” the fact that the Forum has actively participated in the fight for ‘another possible world’ (as a space) and it was an important agent in the global ideology struggle for revaluing leftist projects, up to its “ultimate” character as if it was the last chance to correct a mistake, which would be producing its current marginality. We may also think about it as nostalgia of a past in which there were countries whose governments represented international tendencies of the socialist movement. Moscow, Bel-grade, Beijing, Havana, Tirana and even Pyongyang were already presented as the ones which would lead socialism to victory - geopolitical determinations that specific sectors have tried to turn into political imperatives.

If the leftist governments ought to be defended from the imperialist ag-gressions, we should also learn with the “real socialism” collapse and emphasize the fragility of so-cial change processes whose focus is unilaterally the state machine - and this fragility became clear to many Caracas Forum participants. This should not be seen as an antagonistic critic to the Bolivarian Revolution, but as a part of a dialogue that tries to contribute to the improvement of this process. This is the same kind of criticism that many components of the WSF process have made to Castrism, from the leftist point of view, what we, the Latin American people do emphasize stressing the difficult conditions imposed by the imperialistic enclosure to the Havana regime and the Cuba people heroic resistance - approach that usually leftist sectors from outside the continent take as condescendence. On the other hand, the concrete problems of revolutionary processes in progress stimulate the debate within the WSF on the political power and the State as a changing element to-wards another world.

Another civilization, one superior to capitalism, will need to be qualitatively more democratic than the most democratic experiences in progress nowadays. The defense of the pluralism and autonomous protagonism of civil society are an important aspect of this democracy. Part of the WSF historical role is also to stimulate the real leftist sectors’ acceptance of an environment which is favorable “self thought”, critic and self-critic, also in the presence of its government and parties. None of the parties or politic regimes that claim themselves socialists could intend a protagonism in the wide fight movement for another world if they do not take at least this warn not only from the “real socialism” collapse, but also from the incorporation of social-democracy by the neo liberalism. This is a candescent issue, strongly present in Latin American and European politics.

Agreeing or disagreeing with Holloway’s ideas (I am among those who disagree with the ar-gument that it is possible to change the world without “undertaking” the power), each socialist movement experience has been reinforcing the idea that parties and governments, even the most progressives, exist within places of dispute which normally leads them to relate themselves with the various forces in a “friend” and “enemy” logic. Using power to induce changes, or simply adapting themselves to the current order looking for self-benefit, this logic has a destructive dimension in the popular protagonism and in long-lasting participatory democracy process. In the other hand, the so-cial movements performance is based on the coherence of struggles for the multiple interests and causes of more plural civil societies.

We can not build another world without a wide popular democracy, without society partici-pating directly in the exercise of power and in the economy management, without being patronized by parties nor governments. The rulers must be intensively controlled by the governed ones and politics must be a central activity for each citizen in their various dimensions of life. The defense of the protagonism of movements and actors of civil society, registered in our Charter of Principles and given priority before the “leading” character of the socialist tradition politic parties, represents a fundamental experience. We support all the progressive experiences, but we are not looking for new “socialism traffic lights”.

After the polycentric process, Nairobi 2007 will face the challenge of putting in perspectives different experiences of the global movement. The VII will be a moment to dialogue with the African dramatic reality, to learn from its struggles and enrich the movement against neo-liberal globalisation and imperialism.

But the WSF also has a pendent agenda - imposed by the adverse conjuncture and by the correlation of forces that became evident after the Iraq invasion - which Porto Alegre 2005 could not answer and the VI WSF will not answer for its policentric characteristic: How will the global movement retake the initiative, now that Bush’s policies show signs of fragility and that neo liber-alism keeps loosing legitimacy? Should we prepare Nairobi 2007 with this question in mind, and put it in the center of its methodology?

Hence, I would like to present here five concerns:
– better emphasizing the alternative proposals accumulated by the WSF and its journey;
– making the event’s methodology and more suitable to the convergence of struggles, campaigns and mobilizations, deepening the experiences from Porto Alegre 2005;
– advancing in the debates on strategies to implement our alternatives;
– building more efficient and formal ways of dialogue with the parties and governments committed to the struggle for another world;
– giving a greater importance to quality and instead of quantity, by simplifying the infrastructure demands.