Are Social Forums the Future of Social Movements?

by Peter Marcuse

Summary: Social Forums, modeled on the World Social
Forums, are not social movements in the classic sense.
They are not the organizational form through which
basic social change will be achieved, or can best be
pursued. But they can and do make a significant
contribution to achieving such change. Some concrete
suggestions are made which might enhance their
effectiveness.

* * * * *

A century ago, class issues seemed to be the organizing
focus of progressive struggles in most of the world.
Since the end of World War II, the terrain of struggle
seems to have changed: anti-colonial, anti-imperialist,
identity issues including ethnic, racial, gender,
issues, and urban social mobilizations around
"collective consumption," which might include
everything from anti-urban renewal, anti-displacement,
anti-gentrification, anti-privatization, and public
service issues, and more recently anti-globalization
protests, have all at various times seemed the
successor to class struggles - although class continued
to play a key role in many of them. Some of the
literature[1] focused the discussion on "urban"
movements, although redefining that term; world-wide,
progressive struggles today are at least as much
rurally-based, if with urban connections, as they are
city-oriented.

Are social forums, in the line begun with the first
World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, picking up on the
Seattle protest of 1999, the successor and culmination
of these struggles?

Three World Social Forums have now taken place: two in
Porto Alegre, Brazil, with the support of the Workers
Party government of that city and its province, and one
in Mumbai, India, again with some if limited
governmental support. In each case, Attac was probably
the best-organized international organization involved
in the planning, but the planning committees included a
broad range of both grass-roots and advocacy groups,
and some labor unions; in each case, third world
residents were the dominant attendees (South American
in the Porto Alegre case, Indian in Mumbai). Parallel
meetings of political figures accompanied each, but
politicians were not allowed as keynote speakers (the
exception being Lula in Porto Alegre). U.S.A. and First
World attendance in general was small at first, but
grew with successive Forums. The guiding themes of each
circled around "anti-globalization" (both negative and
positively - theme of the second was Another World is
Possible) and anti-corporate positions, but included
presentations of a broad range of cultural, economic,
identity and political issues. In all three cases,
there was a deliberate decision not to attempt a formal
statement of principles or strategy, and to make the
meetings open, with a maximum of interchange of
information, experiences, proposals, analyses, debates.
In the last of the three, in Mumbai, the decision was
made to try to organize regional Social Forums in
anticipation of the next World one, and indeed regional
forums have now been held in several countries.[2] No
hierarchically constituted organization has been
formed, but there is a steering committee of some 60
members that meets as the occasion demands.

The recently completed Boston Social Forum (July 23-25,
2004),[3] organized in the tradition of these earlier
world and regional forums, provided an opportunity for
reflection on the future of such forums. Held at the
end of the week preceding the meeting of the Democratic
National Convention in the same city, it was
deliberately not held to coincide with that event -
several unions stated firmly they did not want a
"counter-convention" to compete with one supporting
Kerry). But timing seemed propitious: media attention
was on the city because of the DNC The organizing
committee was put together very informally and openly;
only representatives of "real" organizations were
included, "real" being pragmatically defined as
contributing to the Forum either in money, labor, or in
kind.[4]Policy matters were decided by consensus;
organizational/administrative matters, where necessary,
by majority vote. The bulk of funding came from
registration fees: the ford Foundation provided further
funding to an ad hoc group organized for the occasion,
Grass-roots Global Justice. Thirty-three tracks ended
up being constituted as the organizational device for
arranging the more than 600 panels that constituted the
Forum.[5] At least three proposals for panels from
three different organizations were asked as a
prerequisite for forming a track; the only exception
was a track on gay rights, a very recent but very hot
topic, particularly in Massachusetts were the Supreme
court had ruled that denying gays and lesbians the
right to marry violated the state constitution. About
1,000 persons attended the three large "convocations,"
one each day, to hear speakers such as Walden Bello,
Jim Hightower, Maude Barlow, Angela Davis, and Robert
Reich . The American Friends Service Committee helped
substantially in planning, and particularly in making
it possible for overseas guests to attend. Total
registration for the Forum was just over that figure.

The BSF described itself as

not a platform, not an organization, but an ’open
space’... a meeting place for reflective thinking,
democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals,
free exchange of experience and interlinking for
effective action by groups and movements...committed to
building a society centered on the human person....The
goals of the event are simple: encourage various social
movements to exchange information, network with one
another, form new alliances, and push our movements
forward a bit more towards the next stage of our
development.[6]

The Forum was of course not a completely "open" space.
The phrase "committed to building a society centered on
the human person" is n fact a very summary statement of
a shared set of interests, values, and approaches. When
the United Nations sponsors a World Urban Forum, as it
is about to do in Barcelona, it is indeed (at least in
theory) open to all points of view; it is open to
anyone interested in its subject-matter, regardless of
from what point of view. Not so with the Social Forums;
they are forums for those benefiting least from (or
hurt by) the prevailing economic, social, and political
structures of contemporary societies, just as the World
Economic Forum is a forum for those benefiting most
from those structures. All the participants understand
this, and, while a formal statement of the glue that
binds the Social Forums together might be desirable (or
might not; the inevitable level of generality and the
difficulties of precise formulation may not be worth
their cost), it is hardly needed in practice.

The Boston Social Forum as such will cease to exist,
although the organizers hope to pass on the accumulated
wisdom, software, contact lists, etc., to future
Forums. And indeed there are already plans for Social
Forums in New York City (three initial ones, small in
scale, have already been held there) and Connecticut,
and a United States Social Forum is in process of being
organized, although the organizational process, because
of the commitment to openness and inclusivity, is
progressing slowly, and while the target date is 2005,
it might not take place till 2006. For the U.S.
national Forum, Jobs with Justice seems to be laying
much the same role (leading broad grass-roots
organization) that Attac played in the World Social
Forums in Porto Alegre.[7]

A panel on the last day of the Forum assessed some of
its strengths and weaknesses, and raised some of the
difficult questions it had grappled with. In what
follows, the questioned raised at the panel are set
forth, and then put in the context of the broader
debates about social movements, but the actual
discussions were necessarily more limited than what is
discussed below, and the Comments on each are strictly
mine, often at variance with what seemed the consensus
of the group.

1. The biggest single criticism was the lack of
direct participation by grass-roots people. Everyone
considered more involvement very desirable. One of the
organizers of the Seattle demonstration argued that
those most directly involved - e.g. the very poor,
people on welfare, were not that directly interested at
the level at which many of the issues were being
addressed; whether that was a matter of "education" or
of immediate and more pressing concerns was debated. At
the Boston Forum, the greatest success in grass-roots
involvement had been with immigrant groups, where the
connections were indeed immediate; much information and
literature wa available in Spanish as well as English.
And there was an anti-poverty track.

COMMENT: At one level, the issue is an age-old one,
dealing with the role of intellectuals, the importance
of leadership vs. the desire of direct democracy,
historically the role of "the party." Perhaps the
appropriate formulation is to maintain a high priority
for involvement of grss-roots people, both with formal
and real openness to their participation and maximum
out-reach, but to recognize the inevitability of
leadership coming from somewhat more favored advocates,
and not permitting the issue to paralyze decision-
making or action.

2. The sense has been very strong that a Social
Forum should not attempt to reach agreement on a single
statement of principles or agenda for action, and risk
losing members with common interests and willingness to
coalesce in an open forum where multiple positions
could be represented, without any being excluded. Yet
there was also a strong feeling that it would be good
to link the forums to action, to have concrete results
emerge from them.

COMMENT: A critical point (see more below). But
whatever the conclusion, there are obviously some
common agreements that are necessary for any
organization, or even forum or meeting, to take place.
The World Social Forum does indeed have a general
statement of principles. Its opening paragraph states:

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for
reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas,
formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences
and interlinking for effective action, by groups and
movements of civil society that are opposed to
neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital
and any form of imperialism, and are committed to
building a planetary society directed towards fruitful
relationships among Mankind and between it and the
Earth.[8]

Debate abut such should be healthy, even if the result
if a lowest common denominator statement that can be
refined as time goes on.

3. Global, cross-national perspectives were
presented as essential to any Forum; if a New England
Regional Forum were to be held, for instance, it should
include Eastern Canada as well, to stress the global
aspect, and the rejection of narrow national focii,
national elitism, ignorance of cross-national forces
and consequences.

COMMENT: A correct, but dangerous, generality. While it
is true that all problems are globally linked and
neither accounted for nor confined to national borders,
it remains that the effective vehicle for democratic
public action remains at the national level. Even on
directly global issues, involving international
organizations, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMG, the
United Nations, what happens is determined by the
positions of national governments participating in
these institutions. The most advanced cross-national
democratic institutions at this time is probably the
European Parliament, but it is essentially powerless
without the support of the member nations of the EU.
While a global context is indeed essential for
understanding issues and framing policy, and while
limited direct action at the international level, e.g.
Seattle, Genoa, Cancun, are important, ultimately the
decisive actions will be those of national governments,
both internally and acting with other national
governments. To the extent the focus is on action,
national targets remains critical.

* * * * *

Long-range, what then is the perspective of the social
forums as continuations in the line of social
movements? (Whether that is the appropriate context in
which to look at them is taken up at the end.) Are they
ultimately viable vehicles to achieve basic social
change, as the most restrictive definition of social
movements[9] had originally considered a sine qua non
for a genuine urban social movement? I see two
difficulties in visualizing this.

First, there is the political problem. When all is said
and done, basic social change requires a shift in
power, on at least a national if not international
level. That can only be achieved by government. Changes
in government can be accomplished by a variety of
means, of which the electoral is only one; but in the
end the power of government needs to be moved from its
present holders to the dispossessed. Yet the social
forums are almost intuitively anti-governmental,
focused on direct grass-roots efforts, protest
movements rather than movements seeking power.
Historically, successful social movements have always
been essentially single-issue movements, and impacting
on single issues affects the distribution of power -
but it does not achieve a general redistribution of
either power or wealth. At least at this point it does
not seem that the social forums approach is likely to
deal directly with the political relations of power.

Second, there is the problem of direct democracy. Given
that the aims of social forums are multiple-issue aims
(even if strategically concrete targets are chosen for
each, as suggested above), how is a platform dealing
concretely with multiple issues to e achieved, given
both ideological differences and concrete differences
of priorities? And is not the problem infinitely more
confounded if the process is to be both international
and participatory democratic, that is, with
hierarchical decision-making? New York has offered
some interesting experiences in involving thousands
people directly in a single decision-making process,
around proposals for the World Trade Center site at the
Listening to the City session in its convention center.
But that was only five thousand people, and on a single
issue, and with real limits even there. Is it possible
to do at the vastly greater level of the World social
Forums, with 50,000 people and growing, and at that
barely representative of all the groups for whom it
hopes to speak? Would not ultimately some form of
representative decision-making be required? And how can
that be legitimated, in the absence of national
democratic procedures not now on the horizon?[10]

Does major, transformative social change then disappear
from the horizon of social movements altogether? Two
conditions might be necessary to avoid that conclusion,
one within popular control, the other not. One is the
constant and consistent linking of all of the issues on
which day-to-day struggles are waged, the constant and
consistent naming of the underlying system that
accounts for them: a constant harping on the themes of
commodification, exploitation, domination, oppression,
locally and globally. The other is a weakening of that
system, a crisis, perhaps economic, perhaps social,
perhaps political, that opens the door, and people’s
mind, to the thought that Another world is indeed both
possible and desirable. If the two come together, there
may indeed be the answer to both the political and the
direct democracy questions raised above: the focus will
indeed turn to considerations of power over-all, with
government at the center, and immediate decision-making
within the movement will be single issue: changing the
system.

But all this begs the question with which we began: are
the social forums a continuation of the line of social
movements in a post-industrial, globalized world?
Clearly the forums themselves, despite the complaints
of some at the Boston Social Forum that action was
missing, do not see themselves as the precipitators or
organizers of action. Their statements of principle as,
brief as they may be, are clear on the point: they do
not strive for agreement, for resolution, but wish to
be a forum for open exchange and discussion. And there
is a need for such a role. Given the two objections
described above, and their own view of their role, the
answer must be that the Forums themselves are not
social movements, nor wish to be. Perhaps it is too
early to talk of a global social movement, a multi-
issue international movement that not only struggles
for limited objectives but also deals directly with
issues of power and social justice as a whole.

But then, are the Forums irrelevant to those many
social movements that do exist and are active, often
internationally: of the landless, squatters, those
demanding water, security of tenure, environmental
justice, freedom from exploitation and oppression? I
think not, and the answer lies in a strategy that does
not consider the forums as themselves social movements,
but as aids in the widening, linking, informing, such
movements, and perhaps beyond that in helping such
movements organize, clarify focus and implement
strategies.

How might this be done, beyond what is already being
done? Networking certainly is already accomplished at
the Forums, and ideas are already exchanged. But more
might be possible.

Three possible next steps:

1. Short-range, the next step could be to develop a way
in which to link the forums to immediate action
outcomes. The goal of "Another world" is indeed the
right goal, and everything that is done should be done
with that ultimate goal in mind. But it will not be
achieved as the next step; revolution is not on the
agenda today, and ultimately the types of changes most
participants in the forums desire requires changes that
are revolutionary. But there are immediate goals that
are indeed on the agenda, or can be successfully put
there. The Boston Forum highlighted one of those, wit
the slogan: Water for People, not for Profit. That is
an immediate demand; it resonates in many countries,
developed and less developed; battles around water
privatization can be clear-cut, the actions needed are
known, the moral issues should have wide appeal. There
is no reason a Forum could not agree, and agree
explicitly, around a statement on the Right to Water,
and discuss how to organize and fight on the issue, how
to make links with other groups, how to analyze,
propagandize, educate, on it.

There is no reason why a forum could not in this way
take positions on a number of issues, and advance
organization on each. In Porto Alegre, the issue of
land for the landless might have been a similar
unifying issue; debt relief might be another; security
of tenure another; universal health care another. The
New York Social Forum is considering using
participatory budgeting and mayoral campaign issues as
a focus. Developing such a focus (or multiple concrete
focii) for a given Forum might solve another problem
also: the direct involvement of grass-roots people.
While "globalization" or "privatization" or "civil
liberties" as general concepts might not be directly
experienced as issues by many (even though in reality
they are strongly affected), lack of water, denial of
citizenship rights, evictions, disease, are felt
directly, and if Forums, along with their more general
issues, offered direct analyses, workshops, outreach,
on these bread and butter issues, the grass-roots
response might be substantial. The Boston Forum may have
taken a step in such a direction around issues of
immigration, and perhaps others . On the other hand,
urban issues, with the possible exception of
homelessness, were not prominent in this Forum. Perhaps
for future Forums the planning process might
democratically resolve on two or three or four issues
to highlight, with tracks around them ending in
statements of principles and organizing strategies, to
be decided by those directly involved. And they might
well be geared directly to the interests of those in
the host community of the Forum.

2. Other specifics might be considered. One is to take
the idea of the tracks, the administrative device along
which sessions and panels are arranged, and take them
seriously as substantive areas around which there is
concern and already organization. Today, in many
Forums, tracks are simply constituted based on the
apparent congruence of papers or sessions proposed for
the Forum. But they might be given greater importance,
and selected on the basis of whether there are within
or related to them full-fledged or incipient social
movements already active. The setting of the Forums
might then be used to bring the participants in each
track together, to, track by track, to strive for
agreement on principles and organizational and
political strategies on the substantive area of that
track.. There is, for instance, in the area I know
best, housing and perhaps urban problems, no single
place where the multiple movements already active can
come together on an international or even regional
level to hammer our principles and strategies. At each
Forum each "track" might be asked to move towards
synthesis and towards agreement on action.

3. Another idea might be to take the idea of merging
cross-cutting issues, of the unity of the majority of
peoples, of those oppressed or exploited in multiple
ways but because of similar systemic patterns, and
bring them together at each Forum on a geographical
basis. Probably many people from each geographical
area: country, region, city, already know each other
and work together, but experience suggests this is not
always true. In many cases, people from the same area,
but working on different issues, do not know each
other, and have no institutional way of getting
together, comparing notes, developing unified
strategies. Networking at Forums helps, but is a little
hit or miss. Forums could offer an organized way to
bring people together, along lines defined by really
existing political boundaries, and Forums could help
sponsor meetings by each political unit to hammer out a
solid and mutually understood agreement on the goals of
the otherwise independent tracks in that unit.[11]

So the Social Forum movement today and tomorrow can
make a major contribution to the goals of the social
movements represented within it, even though it itself
is not (yet?) the nucleus of such a movement. That
would mean it would continue to work under the banner
of all social movements in the past: improving the
lives of the majority of the people, in cities and
rural areas, wherever the need exists.

[1] E.g. Castells

[2] For links to most of these, see
http://www.nycsocialforum.org/nycsf.html

[3] See www.bostonsocialforum.org.

[4] The New York "seed group" has even looser conditions
for membership: "In order to be a part of the Seed
Group, members have to state to the group their intent
to join the seed group and attend at least two
consecutive meetings, and show a willingness to
participate in a respectful fashion. They then have
decision making power (and will be listed on the web
site as seed group participant groups). Observers are
always welcome at meetings but do not have decision
making power." http://www.nycsocialforum.org/nycsf.html

[5] The tracks were: (the details become relevant for
Suggestion #2 at the end of this paper):

Active Arts Youth Conference

Anti-Poverty

Film Series

Challenging corporate Power

Criminal Justice/Domestic Repression

Culture

Democracy

Economy

Education

Environment

Faith

Fund the Dream

Funding Our Movement

Global Justice

Human Development

Health

Immigration

International Peace Conference

Israel-Palestine Conference

Lifestyles & Personal Choices

Localization

Media

Movement building

Other Economies are Possible

Peace

Science & Technology

Strategic Non-Violence

Student & Youth

Water

Women’s Liberation

Women’s Web/Feminist Agenda

[6] http://bostonsocialforum.org/content.php?content.4

[7] There has also been a mid-West Social Forum, June
4-5, 2004, apparently similar to the Boston Forum, with
4,000 attendees and 550 workshops. Message from Bob
Mast, Portside, August 4, 2004, and there may have been
others of which I am not aware.

[8] The further Statement spells out some of these
points, and deals with organizational questions as
well. It was approved and adopted in São Paulo, on
April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the
world social forum organizing committee, approved
with modifications by the world social forum
international council on June 10, 2001.
http://www.nycsocialforum.org/nycsf.html

[9] E.g. Manuel Castells, in The Urban Question. But
see the extensive discussion around this definition,
from which Castells himself later retreated, in
Pickvance, Mayer, and others.

[10] As Francis Fukuyama, of End-of-History fame, said
with typical arrogance and exaggeration: "Democratic
institutions that work at the nation-state level don’t
work at the global levels. A true global democracy, in
which all of the earth’s billions of people actually
vote, is an impossible dream" New York times Book
Review, July 25, 2004, p. 12. Of course, such a voting
arrangement hardly exhausts the meaning of global
democracy, the issue Fukuyama raises has not yet been
dealt with in satisfactory manner.

[11] The New York City Social Forum may be heading in
this direction already, and the proposal to develop a
unified stance for a program for the coming municipal
election might be one result.

— 
Peter Marcuse
Professor of Urban Planning
Graduate School of Architecture,
Planning and Preservation
Avery Hall
Columbia University
New York, New York 10027
fax: 212 864 0410
tel: 212 854 3322