The resistible rise of anglo-saxon capitalism
Michael Hindley was a British Labour Member of the European Parliament until the last elections. In his first article for Spectre in May, 2000, he looked at the role of the IMF, the World Bank and private capital in enforcing privatisation and ‘liberalisation’.
To paraphrase Voltaire, ‘if the IMF didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent it!’
Indeed for many countries the voice of the IMF is the voice of God - and not just ‘Developing Countries’. I well recall the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Dennis Healey humiliatingly having to cancel a flight in 1976 to return to Whitehall to assure the IMF that the British Labour government would abide by the strict IMF guidelines for monetary good behaviour - Orwellian Doublespeak for cuts in public welfare.
Recently the anti-globalisation street theatre has moved on from the WTO summit in Seattle to the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF in Washington. It certainly makes good television and in a world obsessed with image that is important ground to occupy in the propaganda war. But is the IMF, or the WTO the real enemy ? Voltaire’s famous quote was aimed ironically at the atheists who bang on about the God they claim to disbelieve. He was more interested in establishing an alternative humanist code.
What the IMF and its twin the World Bank actually loan grows less and less each year in comparison to the vast amounts from the private sector. It is these massive private flows which have destabilised Russia, East Asia, Mexico et al in recent years and all these economies have been made unsound by forcing them to adopt rapid privatisation and ‘liberalisation’ of their current accounts. In that process the IMF (and World Bank) have played a significant but supporting role, giving the process the veneer of both respectability and approval, by the very label ‘International’ and ‘World’. In reality the terms imposed on emerging (better ‘submerging’) economies have been harsher than those which capitalists have got away with in more democratic societies where there has been in-built and institutionalised resistance. Thatcher, Reagan and Blair have never yet dared to go as far at home as they advocate when dealing with the world beyond.
‘But we cannot go back to imposing controls on capital’ cry establishment politicians. It has been commented that those who cry this are the very politicians who have taken the controls off in the first place. ‘You cannot put the genie back in the bottle’ is my own favourite piece of Doublespeak. Of course you can, the whole point of the parable of Aladdin and the genie was that by guile and determination Aladdin did in fact put the genie back into the bottle and only let him out again on Aladdin’s terms.
Interestingly the traditional entrepreneurial bankers always resisted the establishment of the IMF for they did not want any interference with Wall Street’s (and to a lesser extent the City of London’s) power. The IMF was simply originally meant to be a standby for short term balance of payments problems and as long as that situation exists - and that is in effect for ever - there will be the need for a facility like an IMF. However, it should be a facility which does not impose conditions. If progressive governments simultaneously came to power in major countries they would still need an IMF.
There is much pressure from the right in the USA to reduce the IMF’s role and it is also the right nowadays which is asking the question the uncritical centre left is not asking, and that is, why should a publicly funded body (the IMF) bail out irresponsible and reckless investment by robber barons; if Barclays or Citibank get their fingers burnt in Asia and Russia - hard luck, they will have to take a cut in profits.
My lasting suspicion is that many multinationals are quite happy to see the IMF and the WTO targeted, it takes the pressure off them and in recent years the top multinationals have became very savvy in courting the ‘Green’ and ‘ethical trading’ lobby. But the international institutions IMF, World Bank, WTO are directly responsible to governments and pressure for governmental change is the very essence of progressive democratic politics. So as well as demonstrating outside the WTO and IMF let’s have some street theatre outside our national parliaments, because that’s still where the change has to come from.
