View full document: Proposals for a trade system based on justice and solidarity(MS Word)

"There is no alternative,” was one of Margaret Thatcher’s favourite speeches in the 1980s as she refused to back down on economic policies that were causing rising unemployment and social distress in Britain.

It became known as TINA and is a mantra that is all too familiar to the so-called “Third World” who have been repeatedly told by institutions like the IMF and World Bank as well as international donors that there is no alternative to the liberalisation plans known as the “Washington consensus.” 

In the area of trade, this new unquestionable dogma asserted that liberalisation of markets was the key to ending poverty. Backed up by conditions tied to debt loans and relief as well as international aid, the new orthodoxy was supported by a series of governments in the late 80s and 90s who lowered import taxes significantly, privatised State companies and opened up previously protected markets to foreign multinationals. Bolivia became known as the laboratory for the practice of free market ideas.

But two decades later, the orthodoxy is falling apart. As the parties prepare for elections in December 2005, it is noticeable that all of them from the right to the left say that neo-liberal economic policies have failed Bolivia. The fact is there is no escaping the fact that two decades of “free market” policies have left more than two-thirds in poverty, rising levels of inequality and damaged Bolivia's rich bio-diversity.

The traditional parties are responding in part to the social movements that have changed the national debate by forcing the national government to reverse key decisions (such as the privatisation of water in Cochabamba and El Alto) and by putting forward alternatives such as the creation of new constitution and the socially-accountable public enterprises.

From being the laboratory of the free market, Bolivia is becoming the laboratory of alternatives.

One of the alternatives that has become accepted now as almost national consensus is the demand for a Constituent Assembly to design a new constitution. The elections for the Constituent Assembly are due to be held in July 2006. Across the country, community groups are already meeting to put forward proposals to reform Bolivia’s politics and its structures so that they work for the majority of the population. Their aim is to design a radically different form of politics that will end the policy of minority ruling in its own interest.

In April, 2005, representatives of hundreds of popular organizations from campesino (rural farmers) groups, women’s organizations, trade unions, faith groups, teachers and other professions came together to discuss how to enshrine a just and solidarity-based trading system within the rules of a new Constitution.

Their demands if enacted would see a radically different kind of trading system – one designed to tackle poverty and protect the environment. At the heart of the conference's deliberations was a demand that human rights are put before the rights of capital.

The dynamism of the ideas showed that those opposing the current system of “free trade” are neither against international trade or short of ideas to ensure that trade acts in favour of solidarity rather than private greed.

Amongst the proposals were a call for the State to play a greater role in regulating international trade, controlling foreign investment, and giving active support to local industry especially community-based and small-scale enterprises.  International treaties that undermined these principles had to be rejected as they would undermine the crucial struggle to end poverty and protect Bolivia’s rich bio-diversity.
 
As Maria Victoria Fernandez, a leader of an organisation of home-based workers concluded: “We want trade and we need a market for our products, but it must be a just treaty based on solidarity, not just profits for a few.”