With Samir Amin speaking in the UK this week, Pambazuka Press is pleased to announce the publication of three of his books, and [mp3].

Samir Amin speaks to Pambazuka News on the misleading rhetoric over the so-called currency war. The real problem, he argues, is the disequilibrium in the global integrated monetary and financial system in which the US insists legitimately on the right to control their currency, but denies the same rights to others, such as China, who seek to do the same. The countries of the global South need to leave the US and its allies to sort out their own problems and concentrate on developing regional currencies and exercising strict control over capital flows, Amin argues.

With saturation coverage of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) following a UN meeting in New York last week, Samir Amin attacks the 'supposedly democratic packaging' of the goals. Stripping away the language of development, he suggests that the MDGs mask the pursuit of other goals which have nothing to do with social progress.

The introduction of a single currency was an attempt ‘to force Europe to create a transnational state’, writes Samir Amin, but despite ‘illusions of transcending national sovereignty’, “Europe” still does not exist, either in the political sense or economically and socially. Given the lack of common ground among Europe’s deeply unequal states, Amin looks at the options for managing the Euro in the face of the global financial crisis.

Dambisa Moyo's 'Dead Aid' fails in its attempt to provide a radical critique of ‘aid’, because of Moyo's unwilingess to conduct it within the framework of political economy, says Samir Amin. ‘The politics of aid, the choice of its beneficiaries, the forms of intervention and its immediate objectives are inextricably linked to geopolitical considerations’, says Samir Amin, yet Moyo does not speak to or critique ‘the central role of aid in the strategy of domination, pillage and exploitation by imperialist capital. Neither does she address the need for a “different aid” based on the solidarity of peoples.’

Capitalism is in crisis, Samir Amin writes in Pambazuka News, creating new opportunities to challenge its imperialist dimensions. While the first wave of struggles for the emancipation of workers and people simply wore itself out, Amin asks whether this time round bridges can be built that ‘associate the anti-imperialist and popular struggles in the South with the progress of a socialist conscience in the North’, converging struggles from the North and South in ways that previous movements of the 1950s failed to.

This week’s Pambazuka News brings you a lecture given by Samir Amin on the 22 September 1997 in memory of Abdulrahman Mohamed Babu. Amin recounts the struggles of independence and post-independence in Africa, struggles that Babu played a major role in. In this eye-opening historical analysis, Amin not only pays tribute to Babu but encourages us to look beyond the populism of the Bandung years and the following comprador societies and instead build on the independence struggles to create genuinely democratic societies in Africa.

The current global crisis, writes Samir Amin in this week's Pambazuka News, is neither a financial crisis nor the result of myriad systemic crises, but rather derives from the risk of a challenge of the power of the imperialist capitalism of the world's oligopolies by those marginalised. While global powers seek to restore the system to its pre-crisis state, the current crisis in fact allows us to conceive of a 'possible integrated front' involving all the social and political forces which collectively represent the victims of the exclusive power of the oligopolies, Amin contends. Challenging historical capitalism represents the core element in the emancipation of the oppressed, a challenge that will only be met when the peoples of the global South and North struggle together, and without which capitalism will ultimately be overtaken by the destruction of civilisation, and perhaps even life on our planet, Amin concludes.

In this week’s Pambazuka News, Samir Amin provides a hard-hitting critique of a UN report on

The expansion of capitalism is destroying the planet and placing the future of people in the South in jeopardy, writes Samir Amin in this week’s edition of Pambazuka News. Consumption levels in Europe, North America and Japan are four times higher than the per capita global average, a figure which already outstrips the earth’s ecological carrying capacity. If this pattern continues, says Amin, its logical conclusion is ‘either the actual genocide of the peoples of the South – as "over-population" – or at least keeping them in ever increasing poverty.’

Samir Amin's 'The contours of an aid alternative' is a chapter from Pambazuka Press's new book is available to Pambazuka News readers at 20% off the recommended retail price of £12.95 and comes with a free ebook copy – simply enter 95641284 as the discount code

The violent explosion of this crisis did not surprise us; I mentioned it a few months ago while the conventional economists were ignoring its genesis and consequences, especially in Europe. In order to understand it we must get rid of the conventional definition of the system which qualifies it as "neo-liberal" and "global". This definition is superficial and masks the essential. The current capitalist system is dominated by a handful of oligopolies that control the basic decisions making of the world economy. These oligopolies are not solely financial; such as the banks or the insurance companies, but include enterprises involved in industrial production, services, transports and the like. The way they are financiarized is their chief characteristic. We must understand here that the main source of economic decisions has been transferred from the creation of surplus value in production towards the redistribution of profits between the oligopolies. To that effect the system needs the expansion of financial investments. In that respect the major market, the one which dominates all other markets, is precisely the monetary and financial market. This is my definition of the "financiarization" of the global system. Such a strategy is not the result of independent "decisions" of banks, it is rather that the choice of the "financiarized" groups. These oligopolies hence do not produce profits; they just swipe the monopolies'rent through financial investments.

This system is extremely profitable for dominating sectors of the capital. Thus, the system should not be qualified as a "market economy" (which is an empty ideological qualification) but as a capitalism of financiarized oligopolies. However, financial investment could not continue indefinitely, while the productive basis was growing at a slower rate. Consequently, we have the logic of a "financial bubble", the sheer translation of the financial investments system. The gross amount of financial transactions amounts to two thousand trillion dollars, while the world GDP is only 44 thousand trillion . Quite a huge multiple! Thirty years ago, the relative volume of such transactions was not so large. As a matter of fact, those transactions were directed in general and specifically to cover the operations linked to production, and internal and external trade. The overall outlook of this financed oligopolies system was - as I said previously- the Achilles' heel of that capitalist structure. The crisis was doomed to be initiated by a financial collapse.

BEHIND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, THE SYSTEMIC CRISIS OF THE AGING CAPITALISM

To focus on the financial collapse is not enough. Behind it, a crisis of real economy is standing out, since the financial drift was continuously asphyxiating the growth of the production basis. Solutions brought to the financial crisis can just lead to a crisis of the real economy, i.e. a relative stagnation of the production with its side effects: shrinking wages, growth of unemployment, increased uncertainty and exacerbation of poverty in the South. We should be talking about a depression rather than a recession.

Behind this crisis, looms a systemic crisis of capitalism. The pursuit of a model based on the growth of the real economy -as we know it- and of the consumption attached to it, has become, for the first time in history a real threat for the future of humankind and the planet.

The key factor in this systemic crisis relates to the earth's natural resources, now less abundant than half a century ago. The North-South conflict constitutes for that reason the central axis of coming struggles and conflicts.

The production and consumption-waste system at the moment constrains access to the world's natural resources for the majority of the planet's inhabitants, i.e. the peoples of the South. Previously, an emergent country could take its share of these resources without questioning the privileges of the affluent countries.

But today, it is no more the case. The population of opulent countries -15% of the planet's population- has to monopolize for its own consumption and waste 85% of the world resources, and denies the rest access to these resources, since this would threaten the living standards of the wealthy.

If the USA has formulated an objective of military control of the planet, it is because, without it, they cannot secure the exclusive access to these resources. As we know: China, India and the South as a whole need them as well for their development. For the USA, they must limit the access and ultimately, there is only one means: war.

On the other hand, to preserve fossil fuels, USA, Europe and others develop production of bio-fuel projects on a large scale, to the detriment of food production, causing a further rise in prices.

ILLUSORY ANSWERS OF THE GOVERNING POWERS

Governing powers, under the rule of financial oligopolies, do not have any other aim other than to preserve the current system. However, their success is not impossible, if they can inject enough liquidity to restore the credibility of the financial investments, and if the reactions of the victims -working classes and nations of the South- remain limited. But, in this case, the system steps back to better jump and a new financial collapse, still deeper, is unavoidable, since the "adjustments" for the management of financial and monetary markets are not wide enough, because they do not question the power of oligopolies.

Furthermore, responding to the financial crisis by injecting phenomenal public funds to re-establish the security of the financial markets is amusing: first, profits were privatized, if they are jeopardized, the losses are socialised! Heads I win, Tails, you lose.

CONDITIONS FOR A GENUINE POSITIVE ANSWER TO THE CHALLENGES

To say that the state interventions may change the rules of the game, lessen the drifts, is not enough. We must define the logic of that intervention and its social purpose. Of course, we could come back in theory to the formulas associating public and private sectors, to a mix economy as it existed during the glorious thirties in Europe and at the time of Bandung in Asia and in Africa, when state capitalism was largely dominant, accompanied by strong social policies. But this kind of State intervention is not on the agenda. Also, are the progressive social forces able to impose such a transformation? Not yet to my viewpoint.

The other choice is the toppling of the oligopolies' exclusive powers, unthinkable without, finally, their nationalisation leading progressively to the socialisation of their management. End of capitalism? I do not think so. Yet, I submit that changes in classes' relations are possible, imposing adjustment to the capital, in answer to the demands of working classes and peoples. The conditions for such an evolution to occur imply the progress of social struggles, still fragmented and on the defensive position altogether, moving towards a political coherent alternative. In that perspective, the long transition from capitalism to socialism becomes possible. The advances in this direction are obviously always uneven from one country to the other and from one phase to the other.

The dimensions of this desirable and possible alternative are numerous and concern all aspects of economical social and political life. I will recall here the general lines of this necessary answer: (i) The re invention by the working people of adequate organizations allowing the construction of their unity, bypassing the fragmentation due to the forms of exploitation (unemployment, precariousness and "informal"). (ii) The awakening of theory and practice for democracy associated to social progress and respect of people's sovereignty, not dissociated from them. (iii) The emancipation from the liberal virus based on the myth that the "individual" has already become the subject of history. Frequent rejects of ways of living associated to capitalism (multiple alienations, patriarchal relations, consumerism and destruction of the planet) signal the possibility of this emancipation. (iv) To get rid of atlantism (NATO) and militarism, associated to it, aiming at the organization of the planet on the basis of apartheid on the world scale.

In the countries of the North, the challenge is to avoid a situation where the general opinion adopts a consensus in support of privileges unacceptable by the peoples of the South. The necessary internationalism goes through anti imperialism and not the "humanitarian".

In the countries of the South, the strategy of the world oligopolies is to transfer the weight of the crisis on these peoples (devaluation of money reserves, fall of the export raw resources prices and rise of import ones). In counterpoint the crisis presents the opportunity for the renewal of national, popular, democratic alliance of working classes, and on that basis the move from a pattern of capitalist dependent development with growing exclusion of majorities towards an alternative pattern of inclusive development, in other words "delinking". This involves:

(i) The national control of monetary and financial market (moving away from the integrated global monetary and financial "market").

(ii) The control of modern technologies, accessible now (defeating the exclusive monopoly of the North, overprotected by WTO rules on industrial property).

(iii) The recuperation of the use of natural resources.

(iv) The defeating of global management, dominated by the oligopolies (WTO) and the military control of the planet by the USA and their allies.

(v) The liberation from the illusions of an autonomous national capitalism system as well as of passeist myths (para religious or para ethnic).

(vi) The agrarian question lies at the heart of decisive choices in Third world countries. An inclusive pattern of development needs a radical agrarian reform, that is a political strategy based on the access to land for all peasants (half of humankind). Conversely, the solutions proposed by the dominant powers -to accelerate the privatization of arable soil, and its transformation into merchandise- lead to massive rural disintegration. The industrial development of the concerned countries being not able to absorb this overabundant manpower, this one crowds together in shantytowns or risks its life trying to escape in dugouts via the Atlantic Ocean. There is a direct link between the suppression of access to the soil and the migratory pressures.

(vii) Can regional integration, while encouraging the emergence of new development poles, constitute a resistance and an alternative? Regionalisation is necessary, maybe not for giants such as China, India or even Brazil, but certainly for many other regions in South-East Asia, in Africa or Latin America. Venezuela has rightly chosen to create ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean's) and the Bank of the South (BANCOSUR), long before the crisis. But ALBA -an economical and political integration project- has not yet received the support of Brazil or even Argentina. However, BANCOSUR, whose aim is to promote another development, gathers these two countries, even though they still have a conventional conception about the role of this bank.

Progresses either direction, North and South, the basis of workers and peoples internationalism, constitute the only guarantees for the reconstruction of a better, multipolar democratic world, the only alternative to the barbarism of the aging capitalism. More than ever, the struggle for the 21st century socialism is on the agenda.

* Samir Amin has been Director of IDEP (the United Nations African Institute for Planning), the Director of the in Dakar, Senegal; and a co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives.

* This paper was written for the inroduction of The World Forum for Alternatives in Caracas, October, 2008. It was translated from French by Daniel Paquet for Investig'Action and revised by Samir Amin

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org/

Samir Amin examines the processes and impacts of the World Social Forum and considers whether it is after all a useful forum for popular struggles.

The undeniable success of the World Social Forums (and of the national and regional forums), from their first edition (Porto Allegre 2001) to their seventh (Nairobi 2007) shows that the formula met a real objective need, felt by many militants and movements engaged in their struggles against neo-liberalism and the aggression, including military aggression, of imperialism. In these struggles, movements and militants have much renewed their forms of organisation and active intervention in society.

Yes, the dominant political culture of the left had been marked in the 19th and 20th centuries by practices based on the hierarchical vertical organisation of parties, trade unions and associations. In the circumstances of the period the movements they stimulated – radical and reformist social transformations, revolutions, national liberations – transformed the world, in a direction generally favourable to the working classes. Nevertheless the limits and contradictions specific to these forms of action appeared strongly from the 1980-1990 period. The democratic deficiency of these forms, going as far as the self proclamation of 'vanguards' armed with 'scientific' knowledge and the 'exclusive effective' strategy, are at the root of later disappointments: reforms and revolutions brought to power regimes of which the least that can be said is that they frequently badly kept their promises, often degenerate, sometimes in criminal directions. These failures made possible the return to the offensive of dominant capital and imperialism as from the 1980-1990 period.

The moment of euphoria of capital and imperialism – which went onto the offensive under the banner of neo-liberalism and globalisation – was short lived, 1990-1995. Very quickly the working classes entered the struggle to resist this offensive.

Yes, in general, this first wave of struggle placed itself on the ground of retaliation to the offensive in all its multi-dimensionality: resistance to economic neo-liberalism, to the dismantling of social benefits, to police repression, to the military aggressions of the US and its allies. The chain of these grounds of resistance is continuous, and according to the local circumstances, struggles are deployed mainly on the grounds of the immediate challenge with which people are confronted. In this sense the demand for market regulation, the promotion of women’s rights, the defence of the environment, the defence of public services, for democracy, armed resistance to the aggression of the US and its allies in the Middle East (Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon) are in-dissociable from each other.

In these resistance struggles the peoples have innovated. Many of the old political forces of the organised left remained aloof from these first struggles, timid in face of the aggression, sometimes won over to the liberal and imperialist options. The movement was initiated by the 'new forces', sometimes almost 'spontaneously'. In their deployment, these forces promoted the fundamental principle of democratic practice : refusing the vertical hierarchy, promoting the horizontal forms of cooperation in action. This advance of democratic consciousness must be considered as progress of 'civilization'. To the extent that it is reflected in the social forums, these must therefore be considered as perfectly 'useful' for the development of the struggles in progress.

The resistance struggles have recorded indisputable victories. They have initiated the defeat of the offensive of capital and imperialism. The US project to control the planet militarily, which is necessary to guarantee the 'success' of the globalisation in place, the 'preventive' wars conducted to ensure its effectiveness (invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, occupation of Palestine, aggression against Lebanon) have already visibly held in check the political project of imperialism. The so-called neo-liberal economic and social project, designed to provide a strong and stable base for the accumulation of capital – ensuring the maximum rate of profit at any price – is, in the opinion of the very authorities who are its authors (World Bank, IMF, WTO, European Union), incapable of imposing its conditions. It is 'falling apart': the Doha round of the WTO round is in an impasse, the IMF in financial collapse. The menace of a sudden economic and financial crisis is on the agenda.

The challenge to which the struggling peoples are confronted is entirely situated in the answer they give to the question asked here, in the terms so forcefully expressed by François Houtart, moving up from the collective consciousness of the challenges to the construction of the active social agents of the transformation.

Obviously this challenge concerns, well beyond the forums, the peoples themselves. To what extent does the collective consciousness find its expression in such forums? It is certainly present in unequal degrees of maturity, as always in history, depending on the moments, the places and the movements concerned.
But beyond this, do the forums contribute to the necessary advance of consciousness, to the construction of agents of transformation? To which extent this collective consciousness is reflected within the social forums? We will attempt to reply to this question further on.

Progress is and will be difficult. Because it implies (i) the radicalisation of the struggles and (ii) their convergence in diversity (to use the formula of the World Forum for Alternatives) in joint action plans, which imply a strategic political vision, the definition of immediate and more distant objectives (the 'perspective' which defines the alternative). The radicalisation of the struggles is not the radicalisation of the rhetoric of their words, but their articulation to the alternative project which they propose to substitute for the systems of social power in place: constructing social hegemonies (class alliances and compromises) imposing themselves as alternatives to the social hegemonies in power (those of the alliances dominated by capital, imperialism and the local comprador classes in its service). Beyond a wave of 'coordination' of struggles (or even simply exchanges of views) which does not enable their dispersion to be transcended (and thereby their weakness), convergence can only be the product of a 'politicisation' (in the positive sense of the term) of the fragmented movements. 'Non-political civil society', an ideology imported straight from the US, which continues to wreak devastation, is fighting against this demand.

Convergence in diversity and radicalisation of struggles will find their expression in the unavoidable construction of stages allowing (i) advances in democratisation (conceived as an endless process and not as a 'blueprint', supplied by the model of western representative political democracy) associated with (and not dissociated from) social progress, and (ii), the affirmation of the sovereignty of states, nations and peoples, imposing forms of globalisation which are negotiated and not unilaterally imposed by capital and imperialism. These definitions of the content of the alternative construction are certainly not accepted by all.

Some believe that democracy (multi-party system and elections), be it dissociated from the social question (subject to the working of the market), is better than nothing. However the peoples of Asia and Africa do not appear on the whole inclined to fight for this form of democracy dissociated from social progress (and even in fact associated at the present moment with social regression). They often prefer to rally para-religious/ethnic movements which have very little democracy about them. It may be regretted, but it would be better to ask the question why. Democracy can be neither exported (by Europe) nor imposed (by the US). It can only be the product of the conquest by the peoples of the South through their struggles for social progress, as was (and is) the case in Europe.

The very mention of nation, national independence or sovereignty makes some people’s skin crawl. Sovereignism is almost always qualified as a vice of the past. The nation is to be thrown into the rubbish bin, moreover globalisation has already made it obsolete. This thesis which is popular among the European middle classes finds no echo in the South, nor in the US, nor Japan.

Transformation in stages does not exclude the affirmation of the prospect in the long term. For some, including the author of these lines, this transformation is that of the socialism of the 21st century; others refuse socialism, for them it is henceforth definitively polluted by its practice in the last century. But all the same, even if the principle of convergence is accepted, its implementation will be difficult. Because it is a case of reconciling (i)the advances in democratic practice acquired in and by the struggles (having to abandon the nostalgia for movements commanded by the 'vanguards') (ii)the requirements of unity in action, modest or ambitious depending on the local (national) situations.

The principle of necessary convergence is not accepted by all. Certain so-called autonomist currents, more or less inspired by post-modernist formulations, reject it. The movements they inspire must be respected for what they are, a frontline struggle. Some go as far as maintaining that the movement, although it is dispersed, is constructing the alternative by itself, going as far as claiming that the 'individual subject' is already on the way to becoming the agent of the transformation (the theoretical vision of Negri). However many powerful mass movements engaged in great struggles do not adhere to this theory. It can also be thought that organisations inherited from the past – political parties, trade unions, and so on – are capable of transforming themselves in the direction of the required democratic practice. The thinkers of the autonomist currents affirm they are able to change the world without taking power. History will tell if this is possible, or an illusion.

In any case, whether it is in big organisations or small ones, the conflict opposes the logic of struggle (which insists on its needs) to the logic of organisation (which insists on the interests put into play by the leaderships in place or waiting to seize the leadership, the participation in the dominant power in place, and thereby encourages 'opportunism').

Convergence cannot be constructed at the world or regional levels if it is not first put in place on the national levels because these define and manage the concrete challenges. It is at these levels that the swing in the social and political balance of power in favour of the working classes will or will not occur. The regional and world levels may reflect national advances, no doubt facilitate them (or at least not hinder them), but hardly more.

Advances in the directions opening the way to the construction of the alternative are taking place at the moment in Latin America, in contrast to their absence, or near absence, elsewhere, in Europe, Asia and Africa. These advances, in Brazil, in Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and their visible possible coming success elsewhere – Mexico, Peru, Nicaragua – are precisely the product of the rationalisation of movements having reached the level of an effective critical mass, and their political convergence. These are revolutionary advances in the sense that they initiated the swing in the balance of social and political forces in favour of the working classes. Their success is due to their real practical answer associating the democracy of the management of the movements and the political focusing of their projects, overcoming the dispersion which dominates elsewhere.

Who could deny that the state powers that these advances have produced pose problems; that they risk getting bogged down under the pressure of external constraints and those of the local privileged classes? For all that, should the possibility that these changes (in power!), which open for the mass movements, be spurned? These powers will allow other advances, based on the association (and not on the dissociation) of the affirmation of national independence (vis-à-vis the US), of democratisation and social progress.

Elsewhere the image of reality, despite the struggles, is less promising. In Europe the priority given to the construction of the European Union encourages a slide towards social liberalism, the illusions being kept alive by the rhetoric of the third way, and of capitalism with a human face. Will the 'movement' succeed on its own in overcoming these handicaps? Personally I strongly doubt it and think that decisive changes in the orientation of the political power is a precondition, in particular the break with atlanticism (NATO is the enemy of the peoples of Europe). Others don’t think so. In Eastern Europe, fast on the way to becoming, in its real relations with Germany and Western Europe, the analogue to what was (and still is) Latin America in its relations with the USA, illusions are even greater.

In Asia and Africa we are seeing excesses which we qualify as culturalist and which feed the illusion of supposedly civilizational projects based on para-religious or ethnic gatherings. Here the talk of cultural diversity often comes to the help of this retreat into impasses. This talk is, moreover perfectly tolerated (even encouraged) by the capitalist and imperialist power.

It is necessary to know more at this point – how progressives have asserted themselves in Latin America, to know more about the reasons for the relative stagnation of the movements elsewhere, about their decline or defeat in certain cases. That should be the essential direction for numerous debates, in the forums and elsewhere. The world forums are meeting places and poorly equipped to provide an adequate framework for deepening these debates. The national and regional forums are or could be more suitable.

The proposals drawn up in the Bamako Appeal in January 2006 answered the call to give more importance to deepening the debates of this nature. They are only proposals and not imposed decisions. These were naturally refused on principle both by the extreme autonomist currents and by the mass of apolitical NGOs. But they are making their way elsewhere.

The World Social Forum Charter in no way forbids initiatives of the Bamako type, and the Bamako Appeal was moreover endorsed by Movements’ Assemblies . Nevertheless, this initiative irritated the WSF Secretariat. Why? Perhaps because it does not basically share the proposals contained in this appeal. Should we conclude from this that the secretariat aligned itself with apolitical NGOs (and perhaps the extreme autonomist currents) to close the forum to other currents of action? Who would deny that the document in question – drawn up by 200 participants in one day and a night – points out inadequacies, even contradictions. Should its drafters furthermore be accused of intellectual arrogance, of outmoded vanguardist attitudes, even of dangerous political motives? It would be necessary to show that the extremist autonomist currents produce nothing which is not the spontaneous, eloquent and coherent product of the direct expression of the masses, that the intellectuals who formulate the theses of these currents do not exist. It would be necessary to show that the apolitical NGOs do not hold views which, in fact, have an obvious political sense, in making their own the rhetoric of the system institutions: reduction of poverty, good governance and exacerbated culturalism.

The world forums have a history and a prehistory. They did not appear suddenly without preparation. François Houtart, Bernard Cassen and others have recalled the essential stages of this history, from the anti- Davos in Davos (1999) and other initiatives. The object of this paper is not to propose an assessment of their deployment over the last seven years. Even if one thinks that their success is certain and their impact real (which is our case); nevertheless emphasis must be put not on self-congratulation but on the weaknesses.

The authorities responsible for the actual management of the forums are various (secretariat, international council, leadership of the principal movements and NGOs represented). They are the focuses of power, by definition, as always, and it would be naïve to ignore it. Their often dominant concern is self assessment with respect to internal performance criteria, often of a very banal nature (quantity of participants, number, perhaps quality of the debates, direct material questions of organisation). The real criterion of assessment is external to the forums: do they contribute to facilitating the progress (rather than the stagnation, even the decline) of the struggles? It would be desirable that this dimension of the challenge find a greater echo in the assemblies and meetings organised by these authorities..

Taking the criticism a little further we venture to say that the world forums suffer from a growing imbalance in the presence of their participants. The forums, which are very costly in money and intellectual work, attract more NGOs (sometimes of course devoted to the support of the struggles) endowed with staff and financial means – those of the North, but also, in brutal terms, those of their Southern clientele – than the major movements in conflict. Hundreds of thousands of peasants engaged in fierce struggles, whole peoples confronting the machine guns and bombs of the imperialist occupier, sometimes make their voice heard here and there in a workshop. But many other organisations, sometimes insignificant in the scope of their action, dispose of workshops to make their propaganda. Let us speak frankly: some of these organisations are part of the system constituting safety valves rather than being part of the alternative. These failings of the world forums are also seen in the national forums. But here the immediate proximity of the forces in conflict with the existing order favours, at least potentially, the overcoming of the failings mentioned here.

The reconstruction of a front of countries and peoples from the South is one of the basic conditions for the emergence of another world, one not based on imperialist domination. Without in any way underestimating the importance of the transformations of all types which have originated in the societies of the North in the past and present, up to now these have remained harnessed to the imperialist wagon. One should therefore not be surprised that the great global transformations have originated in the revolt of the peoples of the peripheries, from the Russian revolution (the 'weak link' of the period) to the Chinese revolution and the non -aligned front (Bandung) which, for a moment, obliged imperialism to 'adjust itself' to demands which conflicted with the course of its expansion. This page, that of Bandung and of the Tri-continental (1955-1980), of a multi-polar globalisation, has been turned.

Since the conditions of globalisation in place preclude a remaking of Bandung, the current ruling classes of the countries of the South are trying to join this globalisation, which they sometimes hope to be able to change in their favour, but which they are not fighting. They divide into two groups of 'countries': those which have a national project (the nature of which – essentially capitalist but nuanced by concessions or their absence in favour of the working classes, but nevertheless in open or muted conflict with the imperialist strategies – may be discussed case by case), such as China or the emerging countries of Asia or Latin America; and those which have no project and agree to adjust unilaterally to the demands of the imperialist deployment (in this case they have compradore ruling classes). Variable geometry alliances are in the process of being constituted between the states (the governments), the emergence of which was seen within the WTO. The possibilities which these rapprochements can open up for the working class movements must not be disdained, but examined with open eyes.

Is a front of the peoples of the South, going well beyond the rapprochements between ruling classes, possible? The construction of this front remains difficult, handicapped as it is by the culturalist excesses here referred to, and by the confrontations they entail between peoples of the South (on pseudo-religious or pseudo-ethnic grounds). It would be less problematic if and to the extent that the states having a project would – under the pressure of their populations – evolve in a more resolutely anti-imperialist direction.

That implies that their projects free themselves from the rut of the illusion that resolutely and exclusively 'national capitalist' powers are in a position to influence imperialist globalisation in their favour and to enable their countries to become active agents of imperialist globalisation, participating in the fashioning of the global system, and not unilaterally adjusting to it. These illusions are still great and strengthened by nationalist rhetoric as well as that which encourages the emerging countries in the process of 'catching up' developed by the institutions in the service of imperialism. But to the extent that the facts refute these illusions, new popular and anti imperialist national blocks will be able to clear the way and facilitate the internationalism of peoples. It must be hoped that the progressive forces of the North will understand it and support it.

In conclusion it should be said that the future of the forums depends less on what happens within them than what develops elsewhere, in the peoples struggles and in the evolution of the geo-strategy of states. This does not lead to any pessimism about the forums, but it leads to modesty in assessing their achievements. In parallel then (and not in conflict) with the continuation of the forums militant actions, other forms of intervention are necessary, allowing the deepening of the debates and joint actions.

Since its creation in 1997, the World Forum for Alternatives has been engaged on this path. It is a network of numerous 'think-tanks' directly articulating social and political forces struggling against the system. It attempts to stimulate working groups (and not only exchanges of view) perhaps facilitating joint action fronts. For information: groups of trade unionists ('rebuilding the united labour front'), of peasants’ movements (imposing access to the land for the benefit of all peasants), of non-aligned political forces on the global policies of capital and imperialism, working on questions of international law or the reform of the United Nations system and the economic management systems of globalisation.

Many other national, regional and global networks are deploying praiseworthy efforts in comparable directions. We will not list them at length, but simply recall – as examples - what ATTAC represents in France, or the work of 'Focus on Global South', ARENA and so many others. It would be highly desirable, in the perspective of strengthening the effectiveness of the forums, that a greater presence of these programmes be reflected in the forums.

* Samir Amin is an Egyptian political thinker and is a director of the in Dakar, Senegal. He has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus. His memoirs were published in October 2006.

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