The dilemmas of open space: the future of the WSF

Abstract

The World Social Forum (WSF) seeks to bring together, in its own words, all those who oppose ‘‘neo-liberal globalisation’’ and ‘‘imperialism in all its forms’’. It hopes to serve as their common meeting-ground. It has adopted as its principal mode of operation the concept of the ‘‘open space’’. This concept is highly original; it is also quite controversial among the participants of the WSF itself. We need to explore the origins of this concept of the ‘‘open space’’ and the reasons why it arouses so much fervour–both of those who are favourable to it and of those who are quite uneasy about it. Andwe need to explore the dilemmas the concept poses to the viability of the WSF itself. The story starts a long time ago. The year 1848 was a turning-point in the history of modes of opposition to the existing world-system. It was a year of two kinds of revolution. There was the social revolution in France, the first serious attempt by a movement which claimed a base in the urban working class to obtain political power. It was a serious attempt, but a political failure. It actually lasted only four months, and led in a convoluted manner to the seizure of power by Napoleon’s nephew, who in 1852 proclaimed himself Emperor of France, and ruled for two decades. This failure of a social revolution led to a re-evaluation of political strategies all across the political spectrum of Europe–from right to centre to the left. The second revolution, or rather series of revolutions, was the attempt to proclaim national, popular sovereignty in a number of European countries–most notably Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Poland. Historians came to speak of 1848 as the ‘‘springtime of the nations’’. These revolutions too were failures, in the sense that in none of these countries did the groups leading the revolutionary activities achieve (at least in any immediate term) political power. Their failures too led also to a re-evaluation of political strategies. Out of the failures of 1848 came a real impetus for the two kinds of movements–what came to be called the social movements and the national movements–to develop a political strategy based first and foremost on long-term organisation (as opposed to sporadic and ‘‘spontaneous’’ political action). These movements faced new and more efficacious opponents. The liberal centre had been frightened by what had happened in 1848 and made two shifts in its long-term strategy. It toned down its post-1789 conflict with the conservatives in the interests of presenting a common front against the more radical groups. Immanuel Wallerstein is Senior Research Scholar at YaleUniversity andDirector of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations. He was formerly President of the International Sociological Association (1994–1998), and chair of the international Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (1993–1995). He writes in three domains of world-systems analysis: the historical development of the modern world-system; the contemporary crisis of the capitalist world-economy; the structures of knowledge. Books in each of these domains include respectively The Modern WorldSystem (3 volumes, 1974, 1980, 1989); Utopistics, or Historical Choices for the Twenty-First Century (1998); Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of NineteenthCentury Paradigms (1991). Email: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu