15.05.2002

A strong anti-capitalist organisation

Tina Becker spoke to two participants of the European Social Forum

A strong anti-capitalist organisation...? 

"A large number of left organisations in Africa and Asia have already signed up to the call made by the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre: both communist parties in India, the left party in Egypt, a lot of peasant organisations and NGOs and a good number of women's organisations. We are also very strong in South Africa, where the Communist Party, the left wing inside the ANC, as well as the country's main trade union body, are helping to build the Africa and Asia Forum. However, it is very difficult to organise in this region, because of the undemocratic nature of many of the systems. We have to be more secretive about our organisation and we cannot meet quite as often as you in Europe, but we are making good progress. The majority position amongst the people in our Forum is that the movement needs to become more politicised. There is a real lack of any vision. While we welcome the call made in Porto Alegre, we are nevertheless critical of it. It is too soft. We need a document that clearly states who we are fighting against: not only neoliberalism, but capitalism as a world system. We should not shy away from using these words. We say, no durable success can be achieved on any social front, as long as we live under a system of US-led imperialism. The WSF has moved a little to the left already, if you compare the first and the second gathering in Porto Alegre. We need to push it further. The next WSF in 2003 is going to be held again in Porto Alegre, but the one after that will be in Egypt. We will be fighting very hard to make sure that we don't just discuss economic and social struggles in Egypt, but political struggles as well. We have already drafted a 10 point-programme that we will be putting forward at the next WSF. This spells out our opposition to capitalism and the need for closer cooperation between the peoples in different countries. This should not be a party programme to which everybody needs to agree, but could act as a powerful common platform. We should not be afraid to raise our differences in such a platform. We could say that the majority of us are anti-capitalist, but not all of us. We should formulate a platform in such a way that everybody can mobilise around it. We don't have to agree on every dot and comma to organise together. Our enemy is united and so should we. We could organise simultaneous protests - not just across a number of countries, but across various continents. Imagine the impact our movement could make. In my opinion the WSF has been dominated too much by the NGOs. A regular annual gathering of non-political NGOs under the WSF banner would be totally useless. A lot of those organisations have already been incorporated by the big multinationals and social democratic governments. They are already inviting NGOs to their own gatherings in Devos, where the World Economic Forum normally meets, in order to swallow them up. To resist this, we need to become more political. That's why we totally reject the call to ban political parties from the WSF."

Or a loosely organised network?

"The European Transport Workers Federation has signed up to the WSF and ESF, because we want to break down the barriers between the unions on the one hand and the social movements and the NGOs on the other. Union members feel like everybody else the results of neoliberal politics. We should fight together around specific issues like unemployment, racism and poverty. We want to build a peaceful and fair EU of the people. Rather than talking about some utopian vision for the future, we should concentrate on reforming the existing EU. For example, how can we make the European parliament more democratic? How can we claim the EU for the people that live in it? I am not in favour of talking about the various alternatives that people in the ESF envisage. We have as many ideas about that as we have members. If we stick to what has been discussed in Porto Alegre, we will grow. We should not talk about socialist or anti-capitalist policies - that would make it very hard for some organisations to join. I am in favour of European trade unions. But in reality that is long way off. There is no collective body on the employers' side we could negotiate with. One of the last advantages the bosses have is unequal pay in different parts of Europe. They don't want to lose that too quickly. So, we can't really start to organise European trade unions right now, but have to wait for the employers to set up the equivalent first. That shouldn't stop us organising on a looser level, like in the ESF. But democratic processes still need structures. It will be important to see how the ESF is trying to resolve the tension between the call for 'basis democracy' and the need for closer cooperation. I fear a lot of 'free spirits' in the ESF will find it hard to accept the necessary delegation of responsibilities. But we can't organise in a way that, for example, the German Green Party attempted: everybody decides on everything. That won't work. We need to elect spokespeople who can speak confidently to the media on particular subjects. Political parties should not be prohibited from taking part in the ESF. I am a member of the SPO myself [Social Democratic Party of Austria, part of the Austrian government], and so are many other ESF members I know. The ESF is at the moment the ideal home for us."