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Challenges of Regional Integration

Speech
at the Conference on “Regional Integration: an Opportunity Presented by
the Crisis,” Universidad de Deportes, Asuncion, Paraguay, July 21-22,
2009

Globalization has ended in massive failure.

One
response to this crisis has been to dump export-oriented
industrialization and reemphasize the primacy of the national market in
sustaining economic growth.

Another response, complementary to this, has been to build regional associations or regional blocs.

Regional economic blocs are not new. However,

some of the more prominent ones have either not moved beyond a
primitive stage, as in the case of SAARC in South Asia, or have been
based on neoliberal principles, like ASEAN in Southeast Asia. ASEAN’s
idea of integration is to see it as a step towards full-scale
globalization, a process that is termed “open regionalism.”

The
most interesting efforts at integration, in the view of many, are those
taking place in Latin America, among them Trade Treaty of the Peoples
and ALBA or the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas to which eight
countries now belong. These experiences are at an early stage and yet
they already contain lessons for other parts of the world. It
is for this reason that the organizers of this conference decided to
hold it in Asuncion, bringing in activists and government officials
from Asia and Africa to interact with people in this region to discuss
the lessons that developments here have for the rest of the world.

For many of us from outside Latin America, the dynamics of ALBA hold particular interest. One
item that fascinates us is the use of barter as a key method of trade,
for instance, the exchange of Venezuelan oil for Bolivian soybeans or
of Venezuelan oil for medical services rendered by Cuban volunteers. Another
is the subsidization of the oil needs of 14 Caribbean countries by
Venezuela, which sells fuel to them at 40 per cent off the world price. We
are intrigued by the comment of President Hugo Chavez during the World
Social Forum in Caracas in 2006 that these practices “go beyond the
logic of capitalism.”

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Yet we cannot romanticize these efforts. For

instance, the plan to build oil and gas pipelines from Venezuela to the
furthermost areas of South America is probably dangerous and damaging
not only to the environment but also to the indigenous peoples. Some
elements of the ALBA perspective, as expressed by some people, reflect
the perspective of 1950’s-style national capitalist industrialization,
which is probably not suitable for the current period.

The challenges confronting us today

cannot be met by either neoliberalism or the old developmentalist
model. Let me mention some of these challenges to contemporary
regionalism in Latin America and other parts of the South.

The
first is how to build regional blocs that go beyond trade to include
industrial policy, a shared agricultural policy, macroeconomic
coordination, and technology sharing.

The
second is how to ensure that building complementarity among economies
does not reproduce the old, unequal division of labor between stronger
and weaker economies.

The
third is how to promote a development process that does not reproduce
social inequalities at the regional and national levels in the name of
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capital accumulation.

The
fourth is how to promote a development process that is sustainable,
that is, one that is built on ecologically benign technologies and is
not based on ever-rising material consumption per capita, though of
course the spreading of material wealth via income redistribution is
necessary to bring people out of poverty.

The
fifth is how to avoid a technocrat-led process and promote instead the
democratization of decision-making in all areas of the economy.

The
sixth, related to the previous point, is how to move away from a
statist process and institutionalize civil society participation in all
key areas of economic decisionmaking. Civil society must
not only provide a check to both the state and the market, but it must
be the leading force in the new economics.

Finally,
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the last I would mention is how to undertake a process of regional

integration that transcends the logic of capitalism, to borrow the
words of Hugo Chavez.

I propose these as some of the key questions to guide our discussion of regional integration over the next two days.

Thank you.

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