The World Social Forum and End of Capitalism

“The conflict between Davos [the partisans of the World Economic Forum] and Porto Alegre [the partisans of the World Social Forum] is not about the virtues and vices of neo-liberal globalisation, although this is how it is often protrayed … It is not about capitalism as a world-system, since capitalism as a world system is in structural crisis and will disappear in the next 20-50 years. The conflict is about what will replace the capitalist world-economy as an historical system. It is about whether we shall move in the direction of a different system that maintains one crucial feature of capitalism – its hierarchical, inegalitarian, polarising nature – or of a new world system that is relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian.”
Immanuel Wallerstein , 2004, “The dilemmas of open space: the future of the World Social Forum” in International Social Science Journal 56(4), pp. 629-637.

It is worth noting that the next paragraph begins “This is no small question…” – no shit professor!