Contemptible argument
$36 billion represents less than 3%
South and East.
International Viewpoint #261 November 1994
THE IMF would like neo-liberalism to adopt a human face. MAXIME
DURAND unmasks their current policies to reveal that nothing has changed.
T
International Monetary
Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank have the habit of replying to their critics with the aid of a standard argument; that there are great difficulties in the countries of the Third World, and that without their intervention things would have ben much worse. It is technically an unanswerable argument, since nobody is in a position to say what would have happened if these two organisations had not been in a position to impose their so-called structural adjustment policies.
This contemptible argument is the classic weapon of those who hold power; there is only one way of doing things — ours — and everything else is utopian and irresponsible.
In relation to this kind of position, the recent meeting of the IF in Madrid introduced an important idea, which strengthens the impact of campaigns against the Third World debt and the
Bretton Woods institutions, and clearly demonstrates the existence of very concrete choices, inside the IMF fortress itself. The meeting touched on the problem of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). SDRs are the credits issued by the IF and they represent something akin to an international currency. The last allocations took place a long time ago (1970, 1978, and 1981) in a very different international monetary context, where they helped to inject a little liquidity in the world market. New instalment The proposal this time was to issue a new instalment of $36 billion, principally destined for the countries of the South and the East, many of them only recent adherents to the IMF. At least this was the plan of the director-general of the IF - and not a particularly revolutionary one, given that $36 billion represents less than 3% of the total debt of those countries. Yet it was still too much for the apostles of liberalism! The representatives of the IMF in Germany, the United States and Britain, joined by France ("out of realism", as the French minister of finance put it) were opposed to the issuing of supplementary liquidities, because of the supposed risk of stoking inflationary pressures. Co-ordinated recovery This says a lot about the real will of the governments of the imperialist countries to ensure the conditions for a co-ordinated recovery of the world economy, in which the so-called "countries on the road to development" can find a more satisfactory place. Yet this is only designed to distract public opinion and show humanitarian good faith, because when they find their backs to the wall, and when concrete decisions have to be made, the representatives of the bourgeoisie throw off the mask of solidarity and show themselves in their true light. in this case, it is not even a question of big spending, the sums in question being, as stated, minimal on a planetary scale. What we see here are the economic and ideological postulates of an inconceivable rigidity. All these thinkers who love so much to vaunt the merits of flexibility are themselves subject to inflexible dogmas; as if the problem today was the risk This myopia is revealing in relation to the hope or rather the ridiculous illusion that the great powers are able to implement a of the total debt in the
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AL CAMPAIGN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN new "Marshall Plan" on a world scale. Not only are they incapable of it, but one could even say that their monetarist blindness leads them to conduct a policy which is counter to their own interests. When an expert such as Jeffrey Sachs, famous for his anti-social intransigence, demands that the IMF "cease preoccupying itself with the transition in Eastern Europe" and on to deplore the fact that there is "no global institution to assure control" of the international financial system, it is very much a signal that the policy of the ImF has skidded into a cynical and counter-productive defence of the domination of the large imperialist countries. Common front The positive result of this policy is that the countries of the South have formed an unexpected common front which has led to a situation of stalemate on the issue of the new spRs. India, Brazil, Argentina and even Saudi Arabia have held firm, with the support of the rising powers of Asia, in arguing that the richest countries have no particular night to impose their point of view on the rest of the members of the IME. The very same day, we learnt that the us House of Representatives had postponed by two months the ratification of the accords signed at Marrakesh in the framework of GaTT. It is the conservative opponents of GATT, led notably by the former presidential candidate Ross Perot, who have won what will undoubtedly be only a first skirmish. This throws into doubt not only the supposed benefits of free trade but also the durability of the future World Trade Organisation which is to be set up on 1 January 1995. The official liberal theory says that everybody gains from free trade, and in the context of GATT it evaluated at US$250 billion the benefits accruing from the signature of the Uruguay Round between now and 2005. A new study has providentially arrived to double the stakes; now it will be US$500 billion. It goes without saying that these studies are pure and simple mystifications and that such figures, which can simply be doubled according to needs or circumstances, mean absolutely nothing. If the benefits of ultraliberalism will indeed be so fabulous, it is hard to see why the IMF should make so much fuss over a few billion dollars! The double non-ratification of Washington and Madrid symbolises eloquently the doubts hovering over the organisation of the international economy and, notably, over the destiny of the poorest countries
Our system is based on one essential principle: trust IMF International Viewpoint #261 November 1994
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