The World Social Forum and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement: A Backgrounder

Peter Waterman1

Introduction

The World Social Forum (WSF) is probably most identified with the recent international wave of protest known as the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Whilst intimately interrelated with the latter, however, the WSF is just one emanation of this much more general phenomenon and process. How can these and their inter-relationship be best understood?

It is possible to make a 19th-20th century comparison, with the relationship between trade unions or labour parties on the one hand and ‘the labour movement’ on the other. But the labour movement, whilst obviously broader and looser than any particular institution, and having international expression, consisted largely of other, primarily national, institutions (cooperatives, women’s organisations, publications). The WSF is an essentially international event (or an expanding series of such). And, on the other hand, we have an essentially international movement that might not even (yet?) recognise itself as such. So we are confronted with two new social phenomena, of the period of globalisation, that are both international/global, and that have a novel relationship with each other.

The WSF – promoted by an identifiable group of Brazilian, French and other, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions and individuals – is itself linked organically to the more general movement. This is through an informal Forum event, known as the ‘Call of Social Movements’. This has been attended, and its regular declarations signed, by many WSF participant bodies. The Call formalised itself between WSF2-3 with a Social Movements International Secretatriat. But this body, or tendency, is a matter of discomfort for those within the WSF who want to see the Forum as a ‘space’ rather than a ‘movement’. (Social Movements World Network website, Vargas 2003, Whitaker 2003, World Social Forum website,).

As for the ‘Global Justice and Solidarity Movement’ (GJ&SM), this is actually a name proposed by the Call, for the general wave of protest against corporate-dominated globalisation, against US-sponsored neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism and war, one name for the new wave of radical-democratic protest and counter-proposition. This ‘movement of movements’ is marked by its network form and communicational activity, a matter recognised by friends and enemies alike (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 2001, Cleaver 1998, Escobar 2003, Klein 2001). Morever, ‘it’ seems to change size, shape, reach, scale, target and aims according to events. So, at one moment it might be focussed against neo-liberal economic globalisation, at another against the US-led war on Iraq. This makes it even more challenging to analyse than to name.

Like any novel phenomenon, the GJ&SM is easier to characterise by what it is not than by what it is:

it is not an international labour or socialist movement, though unions and socialists are prominently involved.
It is not a ‘transnational advocacy network’ (Keck and Sikkink 1998), though it is much marked by the presence of inter/national NGOs;
It is not a reincarnation of the international protest wave following 1968, though Che Guevara icons are still popular, and it includes other clear echoes of the 1960s-70s.
It is not an anarchist movement, though anarchists, autonomists and libertarians are highly active within it.
It is not a nationalist or thirdworldist movement, though nationalist, thirdworldist, and anti-imperialist forces and notes can be clearly identified within it.

It is, on the other hand, not too difficult to identify a rising number of processes which have provoked this movement These include:

the increasing predominance, within the international sphere, of multinational corporations, and of international financial institutions, along with the neo-liberal policies that have been imposed on both North and the South (Figure 1);
the shrinking of the public sphere and reduction of state social programmes and subsidies;
the feminisation of poverty, the commodification of women (the sex trade), the simultaneous formal endorsement and political denial of women’s and sexual rights;
de-industrialisation, unemployment and the informalisation of employment;
the ideology of competitivity as the court of first and last appeal;
the undermining of market protection (primarily of weaker national economies);
the simultaneous preaching and practical undermining of traditional structures and notions of national sovereignity;
the simultaneous creation of new international institutions and regulations, alongside the marginalisation of the United Nations and such agencies as the International Labour Organisation;
increasing talk of and the continuing underming of ecological sustainability;
corporate attempts to copyright genetic resources, to genetically modify foodstuffs, to commercialise them and then coerce people/s into buying them;
the continuation and even increase of militarism, militarisation and warfare despite hopes raised by the end of the Cold War;
the increase in globalised epidemics and threats to the climate.
The demonisation of immigrants, asylum-seekers, of Islam and other ‘others’.

All these have dramatically raised social tensions, particularly in the South, but also, markedly in the East (the ex-Communist world) and even in such model core capitalist welfare states as Canada and Sweden. The pressures have also provoked major conservative, reactionary, religious and ethnic backlashes, of a violent and repressive nature, sometimes internationally coordinated.

Many identify the new protest movement with the turn of the century, with the North (Seattle 1999, Prague 2000, Genoa 2001, Gothenburg 2001, Barcelona 2002, Evian 2003). They also associate it with the middle-classes, students and youth – who have indeed been prominent within it. But so have women, forming around 50 percent at the World Social Forums, though this is little commented on.

But the movement cannot be limited to major protest events, nor to what has occurred since 1999. It must be traced both back and down, at least to the ‘food riots’, provoked by the International Monetary Fund in the South of the 1980s, when there were urban uprisings against the externally-imposed end of food subsidies. Widespread protests against gigantic and ecologically-damaging dam projects, promoted by the World Bank and developmentalist local elites, go back to the 1980s and earlier. There were major demonstrations/riots against the poll tax in Britain in 1990. Through the 1990s, there were myriad protests across the South against the euphemistically-named Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) in particular, and neo-liberal policies more generally. And the appearance of the often-corporatist, sometimes-chauvinist and commonly-quiescent US American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO) on the anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle, was welcomed - somewhat prematurely - by the slogan ‘Teamsters and Turtles: Together at Last!’. (Aguiton 2003, Walton and Seddon 1994, Yuen, Katsiaficas and Rose 2001)

One major manifestation of US-initiated neo-liberalism has been the North American Free Trade Agreement, which provoked widespread protest in both Canada and Mexico. In the case of Canada, it turned an initial national-protectionist campaign into one of international solidarity, first with Mexico, then with Latin America more generally, leading to the Hemispheric Social Alliance, which included US movements. In the case of Mexico, the launching date of the NAFTA, January 1, 1994, was used for the launching also of the Zapatista movement in the severely globalised, marginalised and exploited state of Chiapas, in the South of Mexico. (Alianza Social Continental website, Zapatista Index website).

Initially appearing as a classical armed guerilla movement, based on the discriminated and land-hungry Mayan ethnic communities of Chiapas, the Zapatistas rapidly revealed entirely novel characteristics: an address to Mexican ‘civil society’, a high-profile internationalism, a sophisticated understanding and use of both the mass media and alternative electronic communications. All can be found in the speeches and writings of its primary spokesperson, Sub-Commander Marcos (Rafael Guillén), a university-educated non-indigene, trained in guerilla warfare in Cuba. Activities of the Zapatistas, particularly two international encuentros, one in Chiapas, 1996, one in Spain, 1997, gave rise, or shape, to a new wave of internationalism. The powerful, poetic and playful words of Marcos, who switches between, or combines, popular Mayan and Mexican idiom with the language of cosmopolitan intellectuals, enchanted a dulled world. It also had dramatic appeal to an international left, battered, bruised and disoriented by: the downscaling of the welfare state; the downsizing of the working class; by the halting of the forward march of labour; by the collapse of Eastern Communist and Southern Populist states; by the crisis of the international movements identified with such. Zapatista encounters also inspired at least two significant emanations of the movement, People’s Global Action(PGA) and the WSF itself. (de la Grange and Rico 1997, Holloway and Peláez 1998, Olesen Forthcoming, PGA website, Wahl 2002)

Other major sources of, or contributors to, the new movement must be mentioned. One was the rising wave of protest against unemployment, privatisation and cuts in social services, which gathered steam throughout the 1990s, markedly in Europe. Another was the increasing development of ‘counter-expertise’, concentrated in inter/national non-governmental organisations which had been honed at a series of United Nations (UN) conferences and summits through the 1990s, notably those on the environment in Rio, 1992, and on women in Beijing, 1995. Yet another was the rise of irreverent, often anarchist-tinted, direct action movements, of customarily internationalist appeal, such as Reclaim the Streets in the UK. This supported the courageous, but eventually defeated, Liverpool Dockers’ protest against corporate attack, state legislation - and union passivity in the face of such. A significant international libertarian initiative, related to this kind of national activity, was that of PGA, which held meetings in Geneva, Bangalore and Cochabamba. (Abramsky 2001, PGA website, Reclaim the Streets website, Sweeney 1997).

Finally, one has to recognise as forerunners the so-called New Social Movements, and theorising around such, in the 1970s-80s. Considered as expressing ‘identity’ more than ‘interest’, these movements – of women, of indigenous peoples, of sexual minorities, for media democratisation, on ecology and consumption – were noted in the South as well as the North. They brought to public attention hidden forms of alienation, suggested new forms of ‘self-articulation’ (both joining and expression). As much addressed to the transformation of civil society as of the economy or state, these movements raised issues that the major old international ‘interest’ movement – that of unionised labour – had long subordinated, ignored or marginalised. (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998, Cohen 1985, Melucci 1989, Omvedt 2003).

The rise and rise of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ (the most common name), did not so much re-assert ‘interest’ over ‘identity’ as surpass the alleged opposition - or even the distinction. Highlighting the increasing power of corporations over states, and of their negative impact on people and peoples – North, South, East – the movement was as much a challenge to institutionalised labour and the left worldwide as to an international women’s movement suffering severe ‘ngo-isation’ (Alvarez et. al. 2002).

It is clear, from yet another appellation - the ‘anti-capitalist movement’ - that this ‘movement of movements’ is as much an aspiration as an actuality, as much a becoming as a being. It has, however, passed one major test. When the terrorist attack on New York and Washington occurred, September 11, 2001, this was a stalemate to a growing movement in North America (Seattle, 1999; Washington, 2001; Quebec, 2001). Yet, with the US-led wars against Afghanistan, 2002 and Iraq, 2003, a movement often considered to be primarily ‘anti-corporate’ morphed into the biggest international anti-war protest in history. A New York Times columnist stated, February 18, 2003, ‘there may still be in our planet, two super-powers: the United States and world public opinion’. A 300-strong anti-war demonstration took place even in Lima, Peru. This is a country profoundly traumatised and isolated by decades of neo-liberalism, counter/insurgency and authoritarian rule, and which had – unlike neighbouring Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia - previously revealed only marginal awareness of the new international/ist wave. (Ashman 2003, Boyd 2003, Callinicos 2003, Starr 2000).

The language of the new radical-democratic protest movements is increasingly infecting some of the 50-100-year-old international trade union organisations, such as the recently-renamed Global Union Federations (GUFs). And the trade unions, which have 150-200 million members worldwide, are increasingly attracted by the World Social Forum. (Aguiton 2003, Buckley 2003, International Transportworkers Federation 2002, Waterman and Wills 2001).

The WSF has been held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001-3, and is scheduled for Mumbai, India, in 2004. If the earlier-mentioned protest events were frequently marked more by opposition than proposition, the Forums have not only been devoted to counter-proposition over a remarkably wide range of social issues (with a wide range of significant collective actors). They have also demonstrated that what is shaping up is much more than a Northern, or even a Western-hemispheric, internationalism. The Forum process, moreover, has now reached take-off, with national, regional and thematic forums taking place all over the world. Some of these may be unknown to the WSF itself. The WSF has also become both the subject and the site of intense reflection concerning its own significance, nature and future. (Fisher and Ponniah 2002, Transnational Alternatives 2002, Sen 2003, Santos 2003, Whitaker 2002).

Definitions

This movement, as suggested, has many names, these reflecting sometimes conflicting, sometimes overlapping, approaches, theories, strategies and aspirations. These understandings vary from the traditional leftist, the non-traditional leftist, to the innovatory, and even the insistence that this is not a movement but a ‘field’. Elsewhere an attempt has been made to capture, or at least conceptualise, the phenomenon under the rubric of ‘global civil society’. The ways even sympathetic theorists/strategists try to identify groups or tendencies within the movement is revealing both of their orientation and of the novel nature of the phenomenon. (Aguiton 2001, Bertinoti 2003, Callinicos 2003, Crossley 2002, Glasius, Kaldor and Anheier 2002, Pianta 2001, Starr 2000, Santos 2003).

Thus, Alex Callinicos (2003:14-16), from the UK, whilst admitting that the majority of its activists are not anti-capitalist, refers to its ‘developing consciousness’ as justification for calling it so. He then draws up a typology of anti-capitalism which includes the ‘reactionary’, ‘bourgeois’, ‘localist’, ‘reformist’, ‘autonomist’ and ‘socialist’ (himself identifying with a sub-category of this last type, the ‘revolutionary’).

Christophe Aguiton (2001), from France, a Trotskyist of another feather, and a leading figure within the World Social Forum, tentatively identifies three 'poles' within the global justice movement: a ‘radical internationalist’, a ‘nationalist’, and a ‘neo-reformist’ one. The first looks beyond both capitalism and the nation-state, the second is a mostly-Southern response, and the third is the kind of 'global governance' tendency also strongly present within the WSF. (Global Civil Society Yearbook website, Rikkilä and Patomäki 2001).

Starr and Adams (2003), from the USA, who would be ‘localists’ in the Callinicos typology, characterise the movement as ‘anti-globalisation’, and identify as significant ‘modes’ or ‘archetypes’ within it, ‘radical reform’, which is state-friendly; ‘people’s globalisation’, associated with the WSF; and ‘autonomy’, identified with the ecological friendliness and democratic qualities of freely cooperating communities (their own).

The Portuguese researcher, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2003), who concentrates on the WSF, suggests its radical implications for the surpassing of traditional left strategies, academic sociology and even Western epistemology. He argues that any significant new emancipatory movement cannot be understood in pre-existing terms, and proposes the necessity, in our epoch, of developing a ‘sociology of absence’ and a ‘sociology of emergence’. This is to surpass the sociologies of the existent and apparent, and allow voice to what has been ignored or suppressed. These new sociologies are also necessary to surpass ‘conservative utopias’, whether of the right or left.

Mario Pianta (2001), from Italy, considering the movement in ‘global civil society’ terms, divides responses to neo-liberal globalisation into ‘supporters of current arrangements’, ‘reformists’, ‘radical critics favoring another globalization’, ‘alternatives outside the mainstream’, and ‘nationalist rejectionists’.

Suggestive is that, with the exception of Callinicos, none of the above uses the terminology of Left (Right, or Centre), and that, in practice, each of these understandings cuts across the left-as-we-know-it, the left of a national-industrial-(anti-)colonial-capitalism. Whilst many activists and some internationally-influential left movements do refer solely to this tradition, the question of whether the GS&JM is not potentially surpassing traditional left internationalism is also being raised. 'Emancipation' might seem a more appropriate term than ‘left’ when discussing today the transformation of society, nature, culture, work and psychology – as well, of course, as that increasingly important but placeless place, cyberspace. (Boyd 2003, Cardon and Granjon 2003, Escobar 2003, Löwy 2003, Waterman 2001a,b,c).

The local/national/regional/global in the formation of the movement

Whilst some writers set up, in oppositional terms, the national and the global, the local and the global, it would seem more fruitful to see these as existing in creative tension, with each of these levels, instances or spaces informed by the other. Or at least needing to be so informed. (Massey 1991, Featherstone Forthcoming).

If we compare the last major wave of worldwide protest, symbolised by 1968, we have to recognise that the movements of that period were parallel rather than linked. Despite all the similarities, there appears to have been little direct contact or movement communication between Paris and Prague, between the European protests/uprisings and those of Dakar, Tokyo or Mexico City. Neither participant accounts nor contemporary ones really claim such. (Ali and Watkins 1998, Carr 1998, Erickson 2002, Halliday 1969, Koning 1988:192).

‘1968’ was certainly inspired by the Cuban Revolution (1959), the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1965), the Vietnamese resistance to the US (1960s), by the dramatic rise of the US Civil Rights Movement (1960s), by the creation of the Cuban-sponsored Tricontinental solidarity movement and the Organisation of Latin American Solidarity (1966-7). It was certainly also informed, in the literal sense, by mass media reports. But 1968 was neither organised nor coordinated by these. And the commercial media proved to be a predictably problematic means of movement communication (Ali and Watkins 1998, Gitlin 1980, Koning 1988:192).

In so far as the movement was informed by the ‘Situationist International’, of that period, connected with the names of Vaneighem and Debord, this would have been in Paris rather than Prague and because of such provocative new notions as ‘the revolution in everyday life’. A hoped-for ‘Coming of the New International’, was confined to the Third World, marked by a state-oriented ‘thirdworldism’ and truncated even here. (Gerassi 1971, Vague 2000).

The period following 1968 can now be seen rather as revealing the crisis of the old, institutionalised, ideological, party, nationalist or bloc inter-nationalisms than as revealing an alternative kind of internationalism. What the vacuum was often filled with was a unidrectional ‘First-World Third-World’ solidarity, itself sometimes conflated with State-funded ‘development cooperation’ projects, carried out by NGOs with an often-ambiguous autonomy from states, North or South. (Harpo and van Swinden 1985, Omvedt 1993).

What was needed, for a meaningfully alternative internationalism to take shape was the revolution within capitalism caused by the combination of globalisation and informatisation. The nature of this alternative may be at least suggested by the world’s biggest and most widespread (if unsuccessful) protest demonstration, the anti-war protest of February 15-16, 2003. This had been called for at the European Social Forum of 2002 and echoed at WSF 2003. The provocation here was clearly the new kind of global war, launched by the most conservative powers in the North. But the coordination of the protest was now largely dependent on dozens of ‘alternative’ websites and lists. It may have been further supported by traditional anti-war and anti-imperialist elements within the movement, but it would surely have been impossible without the web. (Ashman 2003, Boyd 2003, Castells 1996-8).

The new localisms and new internationalisms of the present day are inspired by the explicit or implicit recognition that ‘the nation-state...is at once too large and too small for the range of real social purposes’ (Williams 1983:197). What holds these levels/spaces/foci together, in a possibly conflictive but unavoidable tension, is the more-recent recognition, by the Zapatistas, of the necessity for ‘a world where many worlds fit’ (EZLN 1997). The manner in which various movement elements interact is indicated by Figure 2 below. This suggests that what matters is neither a leading vanguard nor a master coordinator but the relative strength of the links, or the intensity of flows.

Let us reflect on the spatial relations of two national cases.

Their has been a dramatic wave of varied social protest across South Africa in the last few years. This is largely popular (meaning non-white as well as poor) in composition. However, it has also been cross-class and multi-ethnic, as in the effective AIDS campaign, directed against local and international hegemons. These movements can be seen, or presented, as local, and/or national, and/or regional (Southern African), and/or global. In much of the commentary, this kind of cross-scale referencing is quite spontaneous. To what extent such awareness exists amongst participants (or what significance a more-than-national/ist consciousness might have amongst them) remains to be investigated. But the very existence of such a multi-scale awareness amongst organisers and commentators suggests a ‘world of difference’ from that of 1968, or, of course, 1917. Its importance is, indeed, also witnessed in the South African case by those ‘left’ politicians in power, and/or profoundly compromised with the neo-liberal regime, who appeal to old internationalisms against the new global movements! (Bond 2003, Cock 2003, Desai 2002, Kingsnorth 2003, Ngwane 2003, Nzimande 2003, Weekes 2002)!

India has seen similar or even greater waves of such protest over the last decade. But these are traceable back a half century or more. They include worker, rural, urban, regional, adivasi (indigenous) and dalit (untouchable) movements, religious and ethnic protest (often sectarian or communalist), ecological and women’s movements. Over the past two decades there has been an increase in dramatic, often massive, protest demonstrations and marches, explicitly aimed against neo-liberalisation and globalisation/imperialism. With the possible exception of the ecological and women’s movements, and projects for regional civil society linkages, however, these have shown little consciousness of, or significant linkage with, movements elsewhere. That this has continued till recently may be due not simply to the relative size, poverty or isolation of India but to the framing of such protest within the protest discourses of the 19th-20th century, such as socialism (of a decreasingly international/ist nature), of nationalism and populism. The recently rising consciousness of, and connection with, the GJ&SM, is symbolised by the holding of the first Asian Social Forum (Hyderabad 2002), and the hosting of the first WSF outside Brazil, in 2004. Exceptionally, in India, this initiative has been taken (in hand?) by the old Left. Whether, at Mumbai, the clearest note will be struck by the old traditions of national subaltern protest, or the new ones of global counter-assertion – or how these will be mutually articulated – may be significant for the future of not only the WSF but for the GJ&SM in general. (Desh Bachao 2003, Dietrich and Nayak 2001, Featherstone 2002, Muricken 1999, Omvedt 1993, Sen 2003, Waterman 1982)

The cultural/communicational/cyberspatial in the formation of the movement

Distancing ourselves somewhat from current analyses, claims or prognostications, concerning the cultural, communicational or cyberspatial nature, or aspect, of the new movement (Cyberspace after Capitalism 2003) it is worthwhile tracing the line back to, or forward from, the old internationalisms.

Marx and Engels were excited by the communicational impact of national railways and of the telegraph as it became trans-European. In power, Lenin declared that ‘Cinema for us is the most important of arts’: silent film could communicate across the literacy and language barriers. 20th century Communist internationalism was sensitive to the area of communications and culture, one of its most creative spirits declaring, notably, that ‘communications are the nervous system of ...internationalism and human solidarity’ (Mariátegui 1973/1923). In the 1920s, the Moscow-based Third International sponsored a multitude of often-innovatory cultural and communicational forms, both popular and avantgarde, from Germany to India and Japan. (Billington 1980, Mattelart and Siegelbaum 1983)

Leaping forward to ‘1968’, we can note the brilliant poster art, often internationalist in spirit, following the Cuban Revolution. As well as that generated by Paris 1968 itself. At the same time, however, the widespread hostility of the new left to ‘capitalist technology’ and the ‘commercial mass media’, was criticised by Enzensberger (1976). He, argued that engagement with the electronic media would allow people to mobilise themselves - to become ‘as free as dancers, as aware as football players, as surprising as guerillas’. From this period on we note the development of community-specific local-to-international radio, of ‘guerilla’ video groups and computer-communication experiments. (Ali and Watkins 1998, Art-For-A-Change website, Suarez 2003, Waterman 1992).

One part of the new social movements of the 1980s-90s retained, and retains, its suspicion of a computer-based communications internationalism, and of the internet and cyberspace more generally. More pragmatic spirits simply adopted and adapted each new development, if in an instrumental way. And the more visionary began to see the internet not simply as a tool but as a space to be disputed and even as community-creating. Amongst the more pragmatic have been the union organisations, and many independent labour and socialist internationalists. Amongst the more visionary and experimental have been the Zapatistas and their supporters, some feminists and those coming out of the ‘community’, ‘alternative’ and other media movements – themselves descendents of 1968. The best-known expression of the new media movement is the de-centred, multi-media, Indy Media Center, which sprang to life during Seattle, 1999, and which now has nodes in such unlikely places as India, Palestine and Russia. (Harcourt 1999, Hellman 1999, IndyMedia website, Hyde 2002, Olesen Forthcoming, Suarez 2003, Waterman 1992, 2001b)
Alongside such new international/ist media practice has gone democratic international media-campaigning, itself traceable back to the thirdworldist (i.e. statist) New World Information and Communication Order of the 1970s-80s. Today this has a more radical-democratic or social-movement orientation. Media/cyberspace activity finds multi-faceted expression within the World Social Forum, partly in official panels, partly in more marginal ones. It may also, however, find expression within alternative or oppositional spaces during the World Summit on the Information Society, 2003-5. Such activities, within the United Nations system, may now be being seen as secondary to activity within the framework of the WSF. (Cyberspace after Capitalism 2003, ISIS 2003, Leon, Burch and Tamayo 2001, Putting People First 2003, WSF Thematic Area 3 2003).
Given their low-level of institutionalisation, and of the conventional quest for political power, both the WSF and the GJ&SM have to be considered in cultural/ communicational terms. But, whereas the movement’s protest events have been dramatically networked, and concerned with mass-media and alternative-media address, those of proposition, such as the WSF, have been rather less so, relying on such traditional (new) left forms as the panel and the demonstration. A path-breaking exception here has been, however, the anti-fundamentalist and anti-war masks, videos, posters and hoardings of the feminist Marcosur group at WSF 2 and 3 (Articulación Feminista Marcosur website).

Conclusion: A fifth international?

What is taking shape and place is certainly a new internationalism, though it might be more realistic to put this in the plural, or to distinguish it as ‘the new global solidarity’. There will be argument about whether it surpasses the First-to-Fourth Internationals or provides a basis for some kind of fifth one. However, it is also quite possible that it will reproduce the errors, and failures, of previous internationals. The GJ&SM has not, so far, proven to be a movement much aware of that history, which is also part of its own history - or at least of its inheritance. Those involved in such debates are, however, likely to agree that a movement that is not aware of its history is in danger of repeating it. (Bensaïd 2003, Löwy 2003, Waterman 1992, 2001a).

Resources: bibliography and webography