April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

Dakar, no matter what was the theme of the session, its connections with
the other concerns came to the fore. This it seems to me has been the
great achievement of the WSF - to embrace more and more concerns and
get
everyone to see their intimate interconnections.
There was nonetheless one underlying complaint among those in
attendance. People said correctly we all know what we're against, but we
should be laying out more clearly what it is we are for. This is what we
can contribute to the Egyptian revolution and to the others that are
going to come everywhere.
The problem is that there remains one unresolved difference among those
who want another world. There are those who believe that what the world
needs is more development, more modernization, and thereby the
possibility of more equal distribution of resources. And there are those
who believe that development and modernization are the civilizational
curse of capitalism and that we need to rethink the basic cultural
premises of a future world, which they call civilizational change.
Those who call for civilizational change do it under various umbrellas.
There are the indigenous movements of the Americas (and elsewhere) who
say they want a world based on what the Latin Americans call "buen
vivir" - essentially a world based on good values, one that requires the
slowing down of unlimited economic growth which, they say, the planet is
too small to sustain.
If the indigenous movements center their demands around autonomy in
order to control land rights in their communities, there are urban
movements in other parts of the world who emphasize the ways in which
unlimited growth is leading to climate disaster and new pandemics. And
there are feminist movements who are underlining the link between the
demands for unlimited growth and the maintenance of patriarchy.
This debate about a "civilizational crisis" has great implications for
the kind of political action one endorses and the kind of role left
parties seeking state power would play in the world transformation under
discussion. It will not be easily resolved. But it is the crucial debate
of the coming decade. If the left cannot resolve its differences on this
key issue, then the collapse of the capitalist world-economy could well
lead to a triumph of the world right and the construction of a new
world-system worse even than the existing one.
For the moment, all eyes are on the Arab world and the degree to which
the heroic efforts of the Egyptian people will transform politics
throughout the Arab world. But the tinder for such uprisings exists
everywhere, even in the wealthier regions of the world. As of the
moment, we are justified in being semi-optimistic.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For
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