Tugal reports on his experience and observations of the recent World Social Forum held in Tunisia in March. Rarely have I seen all the nuances and realities of political views and activities expressed so clearly as in this report by a Turkish sociology professor at UC Berkeley. His report therefore constructs a lesson in revolutionary change and many of the real problems which this entails in our era.
...in a world where a small percent of the global population controls an immense part of the whole world’s wealth, any effort that will put their privileges in question risks being marginalized, repressed, or incorporated. Building alternatives to the world they have built needs to go hand in hand with efforts to redistribute their wealth. I cannot imagine that happening without a fight. And I cannot imagine the big fish leaving us alone if we don’t spread out the wealth they have monopolized.He then goes on to dismiss statism, a revolutionary relic of the 20th century, by stating:
The limits of both negotiation and building small-scale alternatives, in short, are much starker in the era of globalization. Statism is an easy, but misleading, response to these limits.
We have seen in the past that statism can be as oppressive and inegalitarian as capitalism. Why put all our eggs in one basket again?