The World Social Forum

Building Economies of Permanence
and Politics of Peace

Dr. Vandana Shiva

6th January, 2004

The World Economic Forum designed a world shaped by the "Davos Man" - a world centered on capital, and men and corporations who control it. Freedom for the Davos Man was therefore freedom for capital. The project for this freedom was corporate globalisation - a project which I identify as a product of capitalist patriarchy - reflected in the structural adjustment conditionalities of the World Bank and IMF, the distorted, biased, undemocratic rules of the WTO and the neoliberal economic paradigm in general.

The implications of the absolute freedom for capital, and hence the deregulation of commerce and trade implied the destruction of social and economic security for people, of the ecological fabric of the planet, and ethical and cultural fabric of society, and most significantly, the democratic structures and processes which socially and politically regulated the power of the capital.

In this world centered on capital, everything is for sale, everything is a commodity. Biodiversity and life forms and genes and seeds are patentable intellectual property. Water, the very basis of life is a tradeable commodity, not an ecological common or a fundamental human right. Food and agriculture are not the basis of sustenance, or livelihoods - but only sources of profits for agribusiness. Biodiversity and peasants have disappeared to make way for corporate controlled globalised and industrial agriculture. Instead of healthy and safe food this perverse system has given us GMO's, Mad Cows and obesity.

The rise of religious fundamentalisms, growth of terrorism and violence, and militarisation and war are inevitable consequences of an economic system which discounts peoples fundamental human and democratic rights, basic needs and recological security. In Seattle, the paradigm and project of corporate globalisation was challenged on a global scale by citizens from different parts of the world and different walks of life. Earlier we had had larger protests in India against GATT, the precursor of WTO.

IN 1993 we organised a massive rally of 500,000 farmers in Bangalore and an International Conference on the threat's posed to Agriculture of the Uruguay Round. But Seattle was the watershed where people's power stopped the juggernaut of globalisation and the WTO meeting collapsed. In Seattle a tectonic shift had taken place. Diversity and Non-Violence as the basis of social political change has been used effectively to erode the power and legitimacy of giant corporations, institutions that serve big money - the World Bank, IMF, WTO - and the violence, coercion and antidemocratic processes on which economic globalisation was based. "Teamsters" marched with "turtles" on the streets of Seattle, overcoming old divides, forging new creative alliances.

The emergent social movements based on diversity, self-organisation, solidarity, and non-violence were writing a new chapter of history. They were establishing that the timeless struggle of people against power was shaping the future. And when, on 15th February, the largest ever mobilisation of people took place against War, civil society was acknowledged as the second super power. TINA - There is No Alternative - could no longer be the assumption about globalisation. And at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, organised after Seattle, a new slogan began to resonate in social movements -"Another World is Possible".

From 16th - 21st January, 2004, the 4th World Social Forum will be organised in Mumbai, India. And as global movements gather once again, it is worth remembering what the citizens in Seattle and Cancun, every city of the World on February 15, and at the World Social Forum are saying to the "Davos Men" at the World Economic Forum. The first message is in the name itself - WSF gives primary to people and society, WEF puts corporations and capital above citizens and nature. Planet and people before profits was the message of Seattle, Genoa, Porto Alegre, Cancun. The second message is in systems of organizing - one controlled by capital, the other self organised by thousands of groups. And it is in the diversity and plurality of self-organisation that a new emergent politics has started to take shape.

The third message of people to power is peace and non-violence. Violence is the means and end of an economy based on greed, economic dictatorship and militarism. Non-violence in both means and end is the choice of the people. Corporate globalisation needed militarism. Either tacit or implicit. When 25,000 Indian peasants are forced to commit suicide, when Korean farmer Lee sacrificed his life at the barricades in Cancun saying "WTO kills farmers", globalisation is exposed as war by other means. When Halliburton and Bechtel emerge as the real winners of the Iraq war, it becomes clear that war is globalisation by other means.

These are the central issues on which WSF - 4 needs to build - unity in diversity, peace and creating just and sustainable alternatives to the corporate led global economy. WSF - Mumbai needs to consolidate these processes, paradigms and principles. Yet there are two dangers that future WSF mobilizations face - the first comes from within the WSF process itself. While the success of Seattle and Cancun was people's self organizational capacities and solidarity access diversities, there is a tendency among some organisations involved in organizing WSF to imitate the giganticism and centralized control of the dominant structures being challenged by citizens rather than create a platform to host and nourish diverse tendencies, movements and cultures. This trend of centralized [control] risks suffocating the WSF process.

The movements that gave rise to Seattle had been built up at national levels first. We are a truly global resistance because the global is reflected in our local and national struggles. A global resistance without local roots is like a house built on sand. It cannot stand for long. Local movements without global solidarity or a planetary or universal consciousness can become parochial, defensive, insecure. In the new citizen politics the global needs the local. The local needs the global.

This is why it is not necessary to institutionalize WSF. It is a costly waste. The dynamism and creative energy of new movements comes from finding small spaces from where people's freedoms can begin to be reclaimed. Bigness is the strength of power, the vulnerability of people. Smallness and diversity is the strength of people, the vulnerability of power. WSF needs to be like the "Kumbha Mela"- when 30 million people gather in the biggest fair on earth to celebrate creation by bathing in the Ganges. We bathe daily, but the Kumbh comes in a twelve-year cycle. Our daily political "bath" has to be political action at local and national levels. WSF can happen once or twice in a decade.

The institutionalization and mechanical repetition of WSF is related to the second threat to the WSF which is arising externally - from old style polities based on patriarchal principles and the celebration of violence and fragmentation. The Mumbai Resistance 2004, organized to counter WSF reflects the divisiveness and violence of old style polities, which attempts to erode the politics of peace and diversity that the anti-globalisation movements have built over the last decade of "live and let live". We were effective because we resisted peacefully and never used violence. We were effective because we allowed different movements their spaces. We therefore succeeded in preventing the establishment from marginalizing us by labeling us as violent - inspite of every attempt in Seattle, in Genoa, in Cancun, in Miami. Our non-violence has been our strength. But that strength, which the establishment cannot take away from people is threatened by some movements which make violence their main organizational strategy for change.

Mumbai will be a major challenge - but it is just one place, one moment. The struggle between people and capital is now a struggle between life and death. This epic struggle has just begun. It is the beginning of a new chapter of human history - not "the end of history".