CHAPTER 2 Brazilian Socialist Roots and Global Commonist Horizons in the World Social Forum Teivo Teivainen INTRODUCTION Emerging with the new millennium, the World Social Forum (WSF) boosted hopes of creating postcapitalist alternatives for our world. As thousands of activists converged for the first forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001, the hangover some of the Left had experienced with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end-of-history thesis seemed to be fading away. Thereafter, the WSF has expanded to various continents. Apart from the main forum currently organized every second year, the WSF has be- come a process that has mushroomed into a myriad of local and thematic events. It has also encountered various kinds of frustrations and contra- dictions. Some of these contradictions are related to debates between a more hierarchic logic of transformation, which within the Left are often associated with traditional communist parties, and a more horizontal logic, often associated with autonomist and anarchist tendencies. The Brazilian socialist educational theorist Paulo Freire once stated that in order to change the world we must first know that it is indeed possible to change it. 1 This helps explain why, during its first years, the WSF ex- perienced spectacular growth and provided so much inspiration for social movements and other actors engaged in processes of democratic transfor- mation. The apparently simple WSF slogan “another world is possible” caused enthusiasm because it helped undermine the demobilizing influ- ence of another simple slogan, generally attributed to Margaret Thatcher, according to which “there is no alternative” to the existing capitalist order. 4148-662d-V3-1Pass-002-r04.indd 27 4148-662d-V3-1Pass-002-r04.indd 27 9/12/2013 10:27:35 AM 9/12/2013 10:27:35 AM