Impending war and the triumph of Lula's Workers Party in Brazil set the stage for this year's World Social Forum, writes Hani Shukrallah from Porto Alegre In Washington George W Bush was gearing up to "rally Americans to some great causes", one of which -- the invasion and destruction of Iraq -- was known to practically everybody before Tuesday's State of the Union address had both houses of Congress standing up and sitting down in what looked like a freakish puppet show mimicking a Nazi rally. ("When did the coup take place?" wondered one Egyptian as he watched the address broadcast live in his Porto Alegre hotel room). Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Ariel Sharon was directing yet another massacre in Gaza for which his people would reward him with a landslide election victory, renewing his mandate to continue Israel's "war of independence", the aim of which, presumably, is to free the remainder of Palestinian land of Palestinian people. Israel's most famous war criminal declared his electoral triumph "a day for democracy". In the exclusive Alpine resort of Davos 1,000 corporate chiefs, two dozen heads of state or government, and assorted bureaucrats were lamenting the world economy's worst year since the Great Depression. Next year will be worse. "This is just about the hardest year to forecast and it's difficult to be anything but gloomy," British American Tobacco Plc Chairman Martin Broughton was quoted by CNN as saying. Around the globe the neo-liberal policies advocated by Davos's World Economic Forum (WEF) were being blamed for increased income inequality, hunger and poverty as access to basic services such as health, education and potable water is being denied to more and more people, and not just in the Third World. For their part the business leaders cancelled their annual pool-side shindig. "A big party is not appropriate at this moment. It doesn't fit the mood," World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab, said. God may well have withdrawn to heaven in disgust at the state of the world: this, at least, was how Fausto Bertinoti, a leading member of Italy's Communist Refoundation Party, (quoting the Pope, quoting from the Bible) put it to World Social Forum (WSF) delegates at a plenary session of this week's massive gathering of anti-capitalist-globalisation in Porto Alegre, Brazil. More than 100,000 people from 150 nations gathered in possibly the largest multi-national political assembly ever. Established in 2000 and held annually since the WSF has become a major platform for the world's social movements, bringing together thousands of national, regional and international organisations, including trade unions, peasant and feminist organisations, gay rights groups, youth and peace movements, environmental groups and those concerned with health, water, education and human rights, even with such seemingly specialised issues as developing a people-friendly architecture. "Architecture is a very important tool of liberation," a British woman explained to a somewhat bemused Arab delegate. But there is more to this year's WSF than numbers. "This is a unique moment in world history, ominous but full of hope," said Noam Chomsky, the nearest thing the world anti- capitalist movement has to a prophet, at the concluding session of the WSF. At the start of his speech he had light-heartedly admonished his co-panelist, Indian novelist and activist Arundathi Roy, for having written an article about him titled, "Chomsky's loneliness". "I don't feel lonely right now," he said to resounding applause from over 20,000 red-and- Palestinian-flag waving activists. In her own speech Roy noted: "The good news is: we are not doing too badly... In Brazil, we must ask, who was president last year and who is president now?" At a plenary session on the relationship between social movements, political parties and government a couple of days earlier, Gladys Marin of the Communist Party of Chile had declared that "this is a new World Social Forum because a few weeks ago Lula became president... this presents the people of the world with tremendous hope." The swearing in of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as Brazil's 30th president on 1 January was certainly cause for celebration, and not just for the tens of millions of Brazilians who put him in office. In a country which has suffered some of the world's most brutal dictatorships, Lula and his Workers Party (PT) were establishing what friend and foe alike acknowledge is perhaps the most democratic government on the planet. And with a population of 170 million, a huge landmass and enormous natural resources, Brazil is no mean prize. Lula and his Workers Party's electoral triumph was not the only reason for the optimism that characterised the six-day forum, which included two huge marches protesting war against Iraq, Israeli occupation and repression of the Palestinians, and Brazilian membership of the Americas Free Trade Area Agreement, viewed by many as a mechanism for US economic annexation. That the number of participants has risen from 40,000 in 2002 to over 100,000 is just one indication "not only of the amazingly rapid widening of the anti-capitalist globalisation movement since Seattle, but of its much greater maturity," said a delegate from South Africa, who noted that the WSF had played a crucial role in bringing about this maturity. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the snow-balling anti-war movement. Millions of people around the world have demonstrated against the war before a shot has been fired and the anti-war movement has fed directly into the growing movement against capitalist globalisation. For the participants in Porto Alegre this week, as for the tens of thousand others who over the past few months took part in the European, Asian and African regional social forums, war is intrinsic to globalised capitalism, its most brutal weapon in the attack on democracy. According to Bertinoti "war has arisen as a dramatic form of governing the world; war wipes out politics, just as neo-liberal globalisation means that the economy wipes out politics, that the market swallows up democratic space." Chomsky, speaking a day before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address, put it succinctly: "the United States has declared, loud and clear, that it intends to rule the world by force; that it will tolerate no competitors now or in the future." If there was a new feeling of optimism in Porto Alegre this week it stopped far short of euphoria. Nobody was about to celebrate just yet. Participants were well aware that their enemies were not just enormously strong, but they had become much more brutish. "When the dogs of war are let loose, no one can tell how far they will run," was how one panelist put it. Even the Brazilian triumph was mixed with a heavy dose of apprehension, providing one of themes of this year's forum -- how to manage the complex relationship between political parties, social movements and government. After all, as Brazilians and their foreign guests were waving hundreds of Workers Party red flags and chanting Lula's name on Porto Alegre streets, the president himself could not stay. After delivering a speech before thousands of anti- capitalist activists at a park in Porto Alegre he had to rush to Davos, where he was obliged to rub shoulders with the very people the WSF was fighting. With the example of South Africa and Venezuela before them, Brazilians are as aware of the dangers of capital's carrot as they are of its stick. Lula, promising that he was going to Davos to deliver the very same message delegates were elaborating, called upon the Davos economic elite to support a massive drive to defeat poverty and hunger. "My greatest desire is that the hope that has overcome fear in my country will also help vanquish it around the world," he told Economic Social Forum delegates. His Davos speech, televised in the main meeting hall of the Social Summit, drew applause from the corporate tycoons as well as from their worker and peasant opponents. "This is like a simple negotiation between a labour unionist and an employer," the veteran trade union leader become president told a press conference in Davos. It was language that his constituents, in Brazil and elsewhere, easily understood. "We've changed but we have not changed sides," Jose Genoino, who replaced Lula as president of the Workers Party, told delegates gathered for the crucial plenary session on the relationship between social movements, political parties and government. Underlining the uniqueness of the Workers Party -- "a pluralistic party made up of diverse ideological tendencies" -- Genoino acknowledged the difficulties ahead. "We must not become decoration on the neo- liberal model," he warned, before explaining the ways in which the Workers Party and its government would guard against the danger of cooptation and subversion by domestic and foreign capital. On the one hand, Genoino said, "we need to change the institutions of democracy, to reform the state, democratise it, make it public," while on the other, the autonomy of the party and the social movements, must be protected. "We [the party and the autonomous social movements] must be very strong to support Lula's government, but we must also be very strong to negotiate with Lula's government," Genoino said to resounding cheers. Most delegates at this year's Social Forum were well aware that a great deal hangs on the success of the Brazilian experience. The Workers Party's municipal government in Porto Alegre has been a resounding success, introducing a form of participatory democracy that has earned the city UN recognition as a model of good government. Can they do it on the national level? On the same panel as Genoino were William Madisho, of the South African trade union federation, who explained how the left government of the ANC had been "captured" by capital, and Gladys Marin, of the Communist Party of Chile where capital, aligned with the military, drowned a democratically elected government of the left in blood. With this, as with every other major question addressed by participants at this year's Social Forum, no one was under the illusion that complete victory, or utter defeat, lay ahead; rather, there is a long and winding road, one which now more than ever they travel with the dogged determination expressed in the WSF's slogan: "Another world is possible." Arundathi Roy, urging the activists to "come up with a million ways to become a collective pain in the arse", added: "Remember this, we be many, they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe."
