At a crossroads

by WALDEN BELLO

The WSF, a space to discuss and debate an alternative world order, is in danger of becoming a forum of ideas with no agenda for action....The central principle of the organising approach of the new movement is that getting to the desired objective is not worth it if the methods violate democratic process, if democratic goals are reached via authoritarian means.

Perhaps the organising bias of the new movements was best expressed by Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas: “The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN [Zapatista National Liberation Army] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it apart from that would be for it to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army.”