From: Aditya Nigam <aditya AT sarai.net> Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 16:02:15 +0000
First, while it rightly seeks to make a distinction between what it calls the militant traditions of the post-Seattle struggles (Genoa, Prague, Melbourne etc) and the WSF, it completely misses the significance of both. The WSF, says the document, "is so designed as to camouflage the crucial issues and thus defuse the struggle against imperialist globalization" (p. 9). Its complaint is that the WSF "is opposed to any form of effective organization." We will return to the WSF in a while but for the time being let us turn our attention to the post-Seattle movement, since the MR claims to present itself as a "continuation of the militant traditions" (p. 3) of that movement. Many Left groups in India, including the MR, see in this movement that living body to which they can latch on and multiply, heralding a kind of resurgence of the old Stalinist communist movement. Some of them have even referred to it as signaling in some way, the "return of Karl Marx". As a matter of fact, Seattle itself was a complex beginning, where many different shades of those opposed to neo-liberalism were present: ranging from those demanding that China be kept out of the WTO, to the big labour unions seeking to protect their jobs and prevent their relocation to third world sweatshops. It is true that the subsequent movement has seen the more militantly anticapitalist contingents take the lead. Nevertheless, something that the MR and the Old Left in general do not wish to face is the fact that the most militant sections of the movements comprise precisely those groups whom they have always attacked (and continue to do so in the MR document), namely the anarchists, the pacifists, the ecologists, the feminists, the movements of plural sexualities, the indigenous movements. It is precisely their presence that makes for the "amorphous character" of the movement. And it is precisely such movements that some of the revolutionaries of the Old Left in India have routinely attacked as agents of imperialism and carriers of bourgeois ideology. In a companion document that is being circulated by the MR, brought out by an outfit that styles itself as the "Research Unit on Political Economy"(RUPE), the emergence of all 'non-class' movements such as these are attributed to the influence of "postmodernism" and dismissed. Consider the following: "Postmodernism places all struggles on par with class as just another social category jostling with gender, ethnicity, nationality and so on"(The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle Against 'Globalization', <http://www.rupe-india.org>). This pamphlet goes on to critique postmodernism for "ruling out the possibility of united action by various social sections on the basis of common objective interests" and merely talking about "varying coalitions/ alliances" (all emphasis original). This is not the place to go into a discussion of "postmodernism" nor indeed to point out that the document lumps together as "postmodernism", one hundred years of internal critique of Marxism, on grounds of gender, and race-blindness, for example. However, it is worthwhile reflecting upon what lies behind this assertion of the document. Why does it reject coalitions and alliances? Because these are built upon an implicit equality between different constituents: there is no vanguard and no commonly defined programme to which all must submit before becoming a part of the movement. To accord absolute priority to 'class' is to suggest that all other movements are inferior. On the other hand, in the new forms of struggle and resistance that have emerged, it is networks of movements that play a crucial role. Programmes and visions only emerge in the course of what Marx, describing the Paris Commune, called the "real movement that had no ideals to realize, no blueprints to which the world must conform". What is so problematic for the Stalinist MR proponents and their RUPE allies, is that this character of the movement leaves no room for a common programme, no room for self-styled vanguards. Thus the lament: "Naturally, this school of postmodernism implies that no single political force can represent the common interests of all sections of the people in a country."(emphasis added). The MR "revolutionaries" are oblivious of the fact that it is precisely as a reaction to this kind of vanguardism that new networks of activist groups and movements have emerged that made Seattle, Melbourne, Genoa or Prague possible. Anybody who has been even cursorily following the developments and the debates within the movement knows that these groups have their own fairly trenchant critiques of some of the more disturbing tendencies within the WSF and its regional sections like the European Social Forum (ESF). But their critique is radically different from that of the MR revolutionaries, for their argument is that it is precisely the vanguardist ambitions of the Old Left and many other sections like the big NGOs that is hijacking the WSF process and leading to its increasing bureaucratization. Their criticisms are directed against the increasingly hierarchical and top-down character being acquired by the WSF - not against their "amorphous" and network- based or coalitional character. It is also worth remembering that while such criticisms are being made, as was also done for instance in the context of the recently held ESF in Paris, none of these groups have decided to start their own sectarian platforms. Rather, they organized their own autonomous space within the ESF - 'not in competition', nor 'anti-ESF', but in order to "contaminate by association, the ESF with non-heirarchical practices" (See for instance, Linden Farrer, "World Forum Movement: Abandon or Contaminate", <http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/worldforum.htm>). In India on the other hand, three alternative events by different Maoist sects have been planned in opposition to the main event. So much for continuity with the militant traditions of the post Seattle movement!
Second, the MR revolutionaries, still caught in the old world imagination of national self-reliance and sovereignty, merely read their own nationalist predilections into the movement. The entire imagination of these revolutionaries is fixated on the nation-state and their "only true alternative" is the old autarkic model of the 1960s and 1970s: "It believes that prosperity and growth in India, as with all other underdeveloped countries, can be achieved only through a self-reliant economy", with "a total break from all controls"(p. 4). If such a possibility existed for some time in the aftermath of the breakup of colonial empires, reiteration of these models in the present merely betrays a complete ignorance of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism itself. There are many complex issues involved here and the nature of present-day capitalism is beyond the scope of this discussion. But this clearly is a perspective that is far, far removed from that of the radical counter-globalization movement that they fraudulently invoke. One of the most striking aspects of this movement is its extremely fluid and mobile character, powered through the new communication technologies, such that it is able to move from one location to another in an almost immaterial form. This movement cannot be fixed to any territorial location. How far such strategies can be replicated in countries like India is of course another matter and is something that new left thinking in countries of the global south will have to address in the coming years. Interestingly, the only contingents of nationalists in this movement are to be found in the WSF, rather the movement that the MR claims to align itself with. Notable among these nationalists, it is well known are powerful sections within France for instance, who have links with the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party, as also the labour unions seeking to defend their own workers' jobs. There is also the powerful section that advocates the Tobin Tax on financial transactions (ATTAC) and many others who believe that capitalism can be reined in and the impact of neo-liberalism contained. The presence of such groups give the process its distinctive character, even as they pose a threat to its non-heirarchical character. This is what makes the Forum a highly contested space but a space nevertheless that makes it possible to take along those who may be prepared to come at least a part of the way in the struggle. This is of critical importance today and to insist that those who are not prepared to come the full way (socialism?), need not come at all, as the MR revolutionaries would have it is to remain confined to small theological sects. On the other hand, the militant counter globalization movement (Seattle etc), need not be romanticized either. It is well-known that that movement too has been riven with problems and have been debated, often acrimoniously among the participants. The resort to violence by some anarchist groups for instance, has alienated some sections, while relatively low participation of people of colour in these movements has been underlined by many others. Neither the post-Seattle movement nor the WSF, therefore, can be treated as finally emerged forms. They are movements-in-process. What is more important, the logic of neither of these processes can be simply replicated in other contexts like those of the global south. That may neither be possible nor even desirable. Our purpose in pointing to these two broad areas of MR's representation of these movements is to merely underline the political sleight of hand involved in invoking the post-Seattle struggles to critique the WSF.
A word now on the World Social Forum. The problems of the WSF arise not because it is an open space for deliberation and reflective thinking - but precisely of its utopian dimension. For it is utopian to believe that "open non-heirarchical spaces" can exist in a world inhabited by big bureaucratic parties, big funded NGOs and vanguardist sects. Such spaces are always susceptible to the machinations of big organizations. There are indeed many disconcerting trends and tendencies that need to be watched and checked for once a space like this becomes institutionalized, it cannot do without a bureaucracy of its own and the need for funds which open it to all kinds of undesirable influences. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that given certain inbuilt checks like barring political parties from participating in it, forbidding of common statements and communiqus etc - precisely the kind of checks being opposed by the MR - this space cannot be fully hijacked. No party can therefore determine its content. The idea behind this is simple but beyond the comprehension of the Old Left: the WSF is precisely an occasion for making contact, exchanging opinions, learning to know each other so that movements can break out of their isolation and form alliances and coalitions. It is emphatically not a forum of organized resistance. Resistances and struggles continue - at every point where power is exercised. The WSF merely provides a space for the emergence of new solidarities for these alone, not vanguardist sects, will become the vehicles of the politics of a different world of equals.
Aditya Nigam Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi-110054