alternatives

On December 6, Bolivia will hold a general election where Evo Morales, the first Indigenous President in the Americas will no doubt be re-elected.  His party the MAS has recently released an election programme that Susan Harvie has kindly summarized and translated.  Bolivia is reinventing democractic socialism.  They are in the process of creating a plurinational state with equal rights for all nations and people, redistributing land, free health and education for everyone, what they call a pluri-economy that includes public, private, co-operative and communitarian.  In four years of power they have eliminated illiteracy, reduced extreme poverty by 6%, insituted a senior's pension for the first time, nationalized hydrocarbons and achieved a 6.5% economic growth.  They are showing at a government that acts in the interests of the majority really can succeed and that an alternative is truly possible.  The full list of achievements and election platform for the next four years is below:

This declaration appeared nowhere in the mainstream media but it is an important statement of an alternative direction to the desperate attempts to save the failing system of corporate capitalism.  There is almost no debate of these issues north of Mexico but we need to learn from the reinvention of a real social economy and deep democracy in many Latin American countries.  This is statement is a good summary of the values underlying this reinvention.  Here is an excerpt