From weakness emerges strength. That’s the paradox that seems to be at the heart of le mouvement altermondialiste (what’s known as the “global justice movement” across the Atlantic), as two leading French activists pointed out to me recently. Elisabeth Gauthier, general secretary of the left-wing, communist-affiliated organizing center known as Espace Marx, and Francine Bavay, a Green Party politician who worked for years with trade unions, have starkly different political pedigrees and perspectives on political change, but both come to the same conclusion about the recent rise of global activism. What brought about this loose coalition of environmentalists, trade unionists, Third World solidarity activists, anarchists, and other leftists — the legions who first strutted across the global stage during the 1999 protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle — was the very weakness of the left in countries like France and the United States during the eighties and nineties, the two activists say.

In brief: As the political and economic foundations of the Soviet Union crumbled away, the United States emerged as the world’s single superpower, the superiority of its model seemingly unquestioned — that is, an economics of free market fundamentalism and a politics of center-right conformity. Beaten down by these prevailing political winds, the left — in France, in America, and throughout much of the world — was fragmented. The communists were discredited. The liberals and socialists were tempted to the “dark side” of a center-right, neoliberal consensus. Meanwhile, the wide variety of freelance activists on the left — no longer feeling bound (if they ever did) to a single ideology — had gone off to pursue largely single-issue activism on matters of the environment, the rights of immigrants, labor protections, and other parts of society affected by the unfettering of markets.

These circumstances created a new dynamic. Small groups had a need to band together or face irrelevance. No single group was strong enough to bark out marching orders or dictate strategy for the rank-and-file, like the communist or socialist parties of old. Space was opened up for a democratic culture to take root, one in which differences were (more or less) respected, and no one faction could hijack the decision-making process.

I meet Elisabeth Gauthier at her office at the French Communist Party’s headquarters in Paris, an imposing steel-and-glass structured designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. An immigrant from Austria, Gauthier has been a communist almost all her life — a path she decided upon, she says, while growing up in a country ravaged by the horrors of fascism. Yet Gauthier is frank about the shortcomings of the Soviet Union, which she feels forgot the will of the people in erecting the edifice of an all-powerful state. For her, it was a combination of factors — the end of the Cold War, the downfall of unions, political parties, and other traditional forms of left-wing politics, the new conditions faced by workers in the global economy and the urgent need to find alternatives — that opened up possibilities for cooperation between left-wing activists of varying political stripes. “All this was favorable to building new spaces — common spaces,” says Gauthier. “What we did in Porto Alegre [at the World Social Forums], and maybe in a more intense way in Europe [at the European Social Forums], was that we created an autonomous, open, public, and political space. The social forums are not political movements, but they are self-organized spaces, and they make [it] possible to collect and analyze these experiences and [make] proposals.”

Across the Seine, in an upscale Parisian neighborhood where France’s former prime ministers and billionaires live, I meet up with Francine Bavay at the offices of the regional government, where Bavay serves as a councilmember. Her politics, likewise, are a world apart from Gauthier’s — Bavay describes herself as a “radical reformist” — but she shares the same understanding of the origins of the movement’s democracy culture — and its potential. “The people that fight capitalism, [market] liberalism, are very weak in the world,” she says. “When you are weak, it is difficult to impose an organization to take the leadership.” While there are disagreements over strategy within the movement, there is also a prevailing belief, Bavay says, that the different factions need to tolerate those differences and work toward their common goal: overturning neoliberalism. “It’s a new concept of democracy, in a sense. You don’t have the same tools, but you have the same vision, the same objective.”

What “destroyed” the left-wing social movements that emerged in the late sixties around the world, Bavay says, was intolerance and infighting. “People wanted their solution to be the only one, and [they] fought between themselves. And I think we have understood the lesson.”

The question, of course, is whether these coalitions of activists can remain both democratic and united — both idealistic and effective — in the years ahead. If the rapid spread of the World Social Forum model is any indication, however, there seems to be much promise.

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen