Who benefits from burying the World Social Forum?

That the processes linked to the World Social Forum have always been complex and marked by profound divergences between the various political shades and actors involved is common knowledge. This fact should surprise no one. Organizing a joint international action of the struggles of the working class, adding to all other social struggles for freedom, democracy, human rights, women's rights, the rights of Black people, religious freedom, the rights of children, young people and adolescents, the elderly, the free organization of peoples, environmental protection, and so many other agendas that would fill these two pages, is no easy task. Moreover, articulating these struggles and actors within a single anti-capitalist strategy proposing a new order of things, synthesized in the idea of ​​another possible, urgent, and necessary world, is indeed very complicated.

It is a complex endeavor, difficult to undertake, and requires patience and a tolerant capacity to understand the timing and movements of each process, each actor, each movement. Since its inception, the World Social Forum has suffered attacks from those who predicted its demise. I remember the preparation for the 2009 World Social Forum in Belém, the texts, documents, and messages that proclaimed it would be the last edition. Curiously, many of those who, even today, are planning its burial...

Pablo Solon's letter, however much I respect his political trajectory, makes no sense to anyone involved in the organizational processes of the World Social Forum. Even the proposal for an International Ethics Tribunal was ignored by the Brazilian organizations within the IC. Moreover, these are the organizations that are at the heart of the fight against the coup, acting directly in mobilization and resistance, organizing events, raising funds, and ensuring that the struggle is heard worldwide.

Professor Boaventura's idea originated almost as a denunciation of the International Council. It was a methodological error on the part of those who only accept the World Social Forum if it is in their own image and likeness. But this did not detract from the idea, which was well received by Brazilian and international organizations that began to organize it, both in Brazil and in Montreal, without fanfare or vying for protagonism.

For those unaware or distant from the international processes involved in the preparation of the 2016 World Social Forum, there is no possibility of the World Social Forum being buried in Montreal. There will be not one, but several activities denouncing the coup in Brazil and the attempts to reverse the gains in Latin America. Environmental issues, including the Mariana tragedy, issues of the international crisis, including the issue of refugees in Europe, and issues of the democratic crisis around the world will be at the center of the debate.

This is not to say that the World Social Forum (WSF) does not have serious problems in its organizational dynamics, its operational logic, and its internal processes. The crisis of the International Council is public knowledge. ABONG and CUT, to name just two Brazilian organizations, have been working to overcome this crisis without compromising the future of the WSF. Moreover, recently rereading the Theory of Political Organization, a collection of writings by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Gramsci, and Mao Zedong, it is possible to see how difficult the history of the international organization of workers has been and still is. The failures stem from the same difficulty in building consensus democratically. The crisis is always one of leadership or, better said, of dirigisme. The problems from the First International to the present day are those who hegemonize the process of international organization. And, not infrequently, sectors that do not feel represented break with the processes and divide the struggle. This has been the tragic history of international anti-capitalist articulation. And this division in the fight against imperialism only interests those who are against another possible world.

Well, I dare say that the World Social Forum (WSF) has outlined a political and methodological proposal that breaks with the traditional conceptions that the vanguard is the one who should decide on these processes. This political and methodological proposal generates a dynamic that is often diffuse, complicated, and which, from a distance, appears inert or indecisive. The crisis of the International Cooperation Office (ICI) itself is related to the idea that there is a self-proclaimed leadership. The aging of this space and its difficulty in opening up, recomposing itself, and including new actors indicates that the very organizations that participate in it are reluctant to practice what they advocate.

But that's no reason to bury the WSF. Building consensus through political debate is always complicated. I've said that fifteen years in the life of an organization is almost nothing. And in the life of an international organization with the size and purposes of the World Social Forum, even less. I believe that, as in other editions, this time the sectors critical of the Social Forum's processes will not bury it. Especially since the WSF is self-organized, so who could decide to end it?