I've already been back from the Social Forum for a week, and not managed to find time to write up what I saw -- until now.

I was there primarily as an interpreter, so I was actually working most of the time. I also unexpectedly met up with friends I made during my years in Nicaragua, so I made a point of spending time with them. I did, however, spend some time wandering through the various tents, and even made it to several workshops.

I spent the most time in the Democracy Tent, put on by the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution (full disclosure: my girlfriend and several other friends work for Liberty Tree), Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County, the Green Party of Georgia, and a number of other worthy organizations. Other tents I visited were the Anti-War Tent, the Solidarity Economics tent (sadly underpopulated), and a handful of others.

I was able to participate in two workshops. The first was Elections for Radicals. This was primarily attended by Greens, though one person from the Peace and Freedom Party spoke up, and there were a number of true independents there to seek unity on the Left. There were a handful of progressive Dems there to play up Kucinich, as well, though I don't think they changed anyone's minds.

The other was debate between David Schweikart and Michael Albert. This is an on-going show, as they have debated on paper and in person many time now. In broad terms, they represent two visions of a post-capitalist economy. Both are openly socialist, and tend to agree on generalities, but their visions are quite different. Albert focuses heavily on planning, and community committee to plan out production for the coming year, or however long. Plans are made and revised, and revised some more, and finally approved, and then everyone's needs and wants are presumably met through the plan. Schweikart sketches out what he terms "Economic Democracy," which basically amounts to market socialism. Workers control the means of production, but enterprises pay a tax that goes into a fund to sponsor start-ups. In this way, the capitalist is written out of the picture.

I don't find either model altogether convincing, but Albert's is far less so. His plan calls to mind Oscar Wilde's quote that socialism wouldn't work, because it would mean too many meetings. Even though he said specifically in his talk that he wanted to see power decentralized, he also said that his theory worked better on a large scale than on a small scale. I find these hard to reconcile. Power is, pretty much by definition, concentrated in his plan. While the committees he speaks of are presumably democratic, the very idea of focusing economic power into the hands of a few invites trouble. It gives control over people's lives to a small number of others.

Schweikart's model is not perfect, either. For one thing, it largely does the same thing with the allocation of start-up funds that Albert would do with all resources. That is to say, it puts it in the hands of a few, who have only indirect accountability to those affected. Likewise, Schweikart specifies that the workers do not own the means of production, but rather society at large does. This is the basis for the tax to pay for start-ups. They do, however, get to elect their boss. One of Albert's more astute points was, why not simply get rid of the boss?

Still, Schweikart is at least within earshot of my vision of a fair-trade economy. Albert's model strikes me as the Soviet model warmed over. I was able to talk to Schweikart breifly after the debate, and he was enthusiastic about fair trade. That's a solid basis to talk more.