ARGENTINA: Barter Club to Take Part in Elections

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Sep 4 2002 (IPS) - Argentina’s Barter Club has become so popular, enjoying the support of 10 million people who participate in the network, that it is entertaining the idea of fielding candidates in next year’s presidential and legislative elections.

“Even though we have presented no candidates and have carried out no campaign, we already appear in second place in opinion polls in some provinces” with respect to who people say they would vote for, psychologist Carlos Desanzo, one of the founders of the Barter Club, told IPS.

“If we do campaign, we could win between six and 10 percent of the votes, and at least place a few lawmakers in Congress,” he added.

“We have a powerful proposal for pulling out of the crisis, and this month we’re going to issue a call to create a front or a movement, to present legislative and presidential candidates.”

The initiative currently being drawn up by the coordinators of the bartering network would impose an “oxidación” tax on the local currency for anyone who held onto it, as an incentive to keep money circulating. The idea is opposite to the principle on which the traditional economy is based, which encourages people to save money, through the payment of interest.

The Barter Club will test the “oxidación” tax within its own network, to see how it works on a large-scale, with the aim of presenting the initiative to voters in the elections, as an alternative that could help pull the country out of its four-year recession, which has plunged 53 percent of the population into poverty.

The organisation hopes to present candidates in the Mar 30 presidential elections and the legislative elections that are to be held six months later.

Although several parties are calling for all elected posts to come up for grabs in March, that modification has not yet been decided.

The Barter Club was founded in 1995 by around 30 “prosumers” (producers-consumers) who met to trade products in a neighbourhood street market in the lower middle-class Buenos Aires suburb of Quilmes.

As Latin America’s third-largest economy plunged into recession, bartering became increasingly popular and more varied, and a paper trade unit was created, simply known as the “credito.”

The severe recession that broke out in late 1998 and the rise in poverty and unemployment led to a boom in barter clubs, known as “nodes.” There are at least 8,000 nodes around the country, involving an estimated 10 million “prosumers”, 2.5 million of whom are members.

If the barter movement continues to grow at this pace, by next year the number of members will have doubled, and 20 million of Argentina’s 37 million people will be participating in the network, selling and buying goods and services, according to the estimates of organisers.

Despite the high level of organisation, the founders of the network – like museum expert Rubén Ravera and chemist Horacio Covas – remain virtually unknown. Meanwhile, new coordinators appear as the system continues to grow.

Barter, humanity’s oldest system of trade, exists on a small- scale as an alternative to the modern economy in countries of Europe and Latin America, as well as the United States.

But nowhere else has it taken on the scope that it has in Argentina, where members can purchase land, homes, cars or vacations using creditos, according to the New Majority Research Centre, a local consultancy.

In clubs located in each province, city or town, low to middle- income people, homemakers, unemployed labourers and professionals, pensioners and people from a wide range of vocations and professions exchange products and services, and make up the difference in creditos.

In the province of Mendoza, on the border with Chile, the movement has created an association of doctors who treat Barter Club members in exchange for other goods and services. In other provinces, manufacturing companies have been set up.

Through special arrangements agreed on over the past two years, members can buy railway tickets or tourist services, pay for rides in taxis, and even pay their local taxes.

The network has also set up a centre for bailing out small companies on the verge of going under, by granting them loans in creditos.

In addition, the Barter Club has a social assistance programme that provides a fixed amount of monthly creditos to people with low – or no – incomes, thus enabling them to enter the network as consumers until they are able to offer their own products or services.

But the movement is not free of the woes plaguing this crisis- stricken country. In the past few months, authorities arrested the members of three bands that were forging creditos that were sold for pesos, thus introducing problems with speculation and inflation into the barter system.

“The cost of some products climbed because of the introduction of false creditos, and there were also some who preferred to sell their output on a large-scale in exchange for creditos, but outside the nodes, triggering scarcity that also drove up prices,” said Desanzo.

Sales fell by as much as 20 percent in some nodes.

The movement does not believe that the justice system will resolve the cases, which undermined the barter network’s basic philosophy of solidarity and mutual trust.

If the state were truly interested in supporting the network, it could turn to it as a provider, or press for approval of a bill designed to regulate bartering, which has been shelved in Congress for several years, said Desanzo.

According to parliamentary Deputy Horacio Vivo, of the centrist Radical Civic Union, who is a member of the congressional commission on trade, “It isn’t that there is opposition, but simply that there has been no decision yet to legislate where bartering is concerned. The idea is to leave it alone, if it’s working well.”

The barter movement has now decided to join the electoral fray. It also plans to demand that the state use it as one of its suppliers.

“We had never thought of it before, but now we are determined to challenge the state to provide us with one million pesos (around 280,000 dollars) worth of flour, sugar, milk, meat, and cooking oil for the Club,” said Desanzo.

In exchange, the network would provide, within three months, goods worth the same amount, to supply hospitals, schools and government-run soup kitchens.

“We have everything, towels, sheets, cleaning products, whatever they need,” said Desanzo.