ghe third World Social Forum (WSF) Brasil in January 2003 consolidated the WSF's status as the focus of the global opposition to neo-liberalism. It also showed the differences that exist between those opposing neo-liberalism.
Joao Pedro Stedile, leader of the Brasilian MST landless movement, writing in the forum's newspaper Terra Viva, says "Bush and Sharon have succeeded in one great achievement: unifying all of us against them".
This comment correctly describes the unity of the diverse movements represented in Porto Alegre. They were unified against the coming US war, they were unified in support of Chavez and the organisations of the poor of Venezuela, they were in favour of Latin American unity against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and would cheer any mention of Lula to the rafters.
Behind this unity lay diversity at the political level from Kofi Annan's co-ordinator of millennium development goals Everline Hertkens, and former Portuguese prime minister and president Mario Soares, to revolutionary marxists.
Hertkens made a spirited defence of the past success and future usefullness of the social movements maintaining their pressure on UN development conferences and structures: Soares a solid defence of social democracy.
It would give the wrong impression to say these ideas were rejected by the Forum's participants. Stedile was equally well received by many thousands for a speech advocating taking over land and agro-business and arguing the benefits of discipline and democratic centralism as a method of organisation.
One point of unity that was clarified from last year was the recognition that the WSF does not represent the anti-globalisers. The WSF now sees itself as representing a better, human, just and equitable globalisation.
Many speakers referred to the clash of globalisations' represented by Porto Alegre and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - a clash best epitomised by whether you were for or against the US war. The difference between this view and Lula's decision to go to Davos provided one of the main areas of debate at the Forum.
Lula was both the hero of the hour and the villain of the piece.
His address on the first day of the forum was attend by tens of thousands, he took this as a mandate to attend Davos to speak as a representative of the people represented at the forum.
The idea of anybody being able to represent the forum, particularly a head of government, was strongly refuted by the organisers, as was the idea that a dialogue was possible between the WEF and the WSF.
In a truly surreal moment, a conference attended over 5,000 people was interrupted by Lula appearing on the giant screens. He was being interviewed live in Davos.
A young Brasilian businessman stood to proudly ask "my President" a question. Lula outlined his social contract policy and Davos burst into applause; followed by the audience in Porto Alegre.
This year's Forum felt more political than last years, but the spread of the politics is great. However we have to be aware of both the enormous potential represented here by the points of anti neo-liberal unity and the enormous task of ensuring that the hostility to capitalism does not become just hostility to the neo-liberal 'unacceptable face of capitalism'.
The depth of the crisis of world capitalism and the barbarity and permanency of the coming US war will, in the worst possible way, make this job easier that might otherwise have been the case.
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Culture