> From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > But could you explain the apparent discrepancy between this remark > > Go for the nation-state, man, it is the only hope. > and this remark in your post on Jubilee 2000 > >this movement is about neither a "final" or a > >"short" burst of activity up to 2000. An excellent network has > >launched a variety of superb campaigns out of this, and I would guess > >that not just the debt, but the very existence of the IMF and WB will > >soon come under the spotlight. > Do you mean that you the IMF and the WB will not be reformed, but actually > abolished? Chris, yes, to get back nation-state sovereignty over capital flows, the IMF/WB must be radically disempowered (I would say abolished, yes). I see three types of arguments coming through in the key int'l social movement debates on this matter: a) an international reformism aimed at merely improving (around the edges) the embryonic world-state institutions, as was done with the WB over the past decade or so, namely making them more green, more gender-friendly, more transparent, and more oriented to participatory processes (critics say this plus Stiglitzism and what euphamistically is termed "debt relief" makes the WB a more effective Trojan Horse for just-as-nasty and in many cases nastier policies); b) a "progressive internationalism" (as it was termed on PEN-L a few years ago) aimed at establishing a world-state but not in any way based upon the IMF and WB; indeed, acknowledge these folk, shutting down the IMF/WB is a prerequisite for the power shift needed to establish global democracy (the philosopher Iris Marion Young, in her forthcoming book, and other cosmopolitan- democracy theorists are putting their hope in the UN); and c) a "progressive nationalism" (again, a PEN-L phrase) which, in advocating WB/IMF defunding, takes heart and strength and knowledge from the potential unity of the variety of particularistic struggles against local forms of structural adjustment, malevolent "development" projects and Bretton Woods interference in social policies (e.g., the IMF deciding last month to micromanage Zimbabwe's exchange control, import tariff and staple-good pricing systems because Mugabe was a bit naughty and dirigiste after the 1997-98 crisis), and which hence motivates for a return to national sovereignty over capital flows (and with it, less balance-of- payments support from hot money or IMF loans, and for trade finance purposes improvement of int'l export credit agencies). This latter argument takes seriously John Maynard Keynes' proposition that "Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel -- these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and, above all, let finance be primarily national" You can find me there in group c, with a growing number of the better South groups interested in opening up space for their own radical democratic and proto-socialist development work, and for strengthening international civil society linkages to these ends. Some strong voices from the South -- e.g. SA poet Dennis Brutus, Haitian economist Camille Chalmers, Nicaraguan ex-dep.foreign minister Alejandro Bendana, and Filippino political scientist Walden Bello -- are more and more explicit in advocating that Northern solidarity activists help defund the BWI boot now so heavily placed upon the Southern neck. But there is also, here, a recognition of the integrity of those in group b who can tell the difference between a potentially democratic institution (the UN, if enormous enormous energies are directed there) and the WB/IMF -- and there is a growing gap between group b and the myopic inside- the-beltway-NGO folk who for professional and funding reasons remain the main coordinators of group a. This is part of the balance of forces argument that I was hoping from your London experience, Chris, you'd invoke. I will have to defer to Bob Naimann for inside-the-beltway critique. I hope at least you're making your way to group b where some reasonable discussion can be had about the UN (or an Eatwell-Taylor style World Financial Authority). You might check out the World Systems theorists (e.g. Chase-Dunn and Boswell) who posit how a world state could actually be established. I think that's where the most interesting debates are going; those seeking "reform" of the IMF tend to be opportunistic and in trying to do good, they are making life more miserable by giving Washington a more human face.
