The World Social Forum and the Global Left

TLDR

The article aims to contextualize the World Social Forum within a broad theoretical and historical framework and to analyze contemporary debates about its future organizational direction. The author examines the WSF by relating it to the crises of left thought and practice over the past three to four decades. The author concludes that, with certain organizational reforms, the World Social Forum should persist and will enhance leftist theory and practice globally in the twenty‑first century.

Abstract

This article has two purposes. First, it aims to put the development of the World Social Forum (WSF) within a broad theoretical and historical context. Specifically, my goal is to understand the WSF in relation to the crises of left thinking and practice of the last thirty or forty years. Second, it offers an analysis of some recent debates about the future of the WSF. It raises questions concerning its organizational makeup and asks whether it should continue as it is, or rather give way to other kinds of initiatives and struggles. Against critics such as Walden Bello, I argue that the WSF should continue and, given certain organizational changes, will contribute to the theory and practice of left movements throughout the world in the twenty-first century.