> From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > ... Some Marxists consider an analysis > of the balance of forces essential. Ok, so where is it? What, in all of the chatter about the up-and-coming global state, are you saying about Our Team's capacity to survive it, Chris? > ... Brown, a declared advocate of the > reform of international finances, on a key IMF committee. That lackey of the City? Keep him OUT of reforming, please, Chris! Really, this is an elementary responsibility of UK comrades. ... > What are the arguments for making the Fed less independent? Elected > governments come to learn that it is very difficult to buck the financial > markets. And a leftist government will get blamed for every decision it > makes. So why not let a committee of experts take the flak? Why not use the little energy and resources we have on a series of national campaigns instead? Surely we have more hope of promoting Mahathir-style nationalist reactions to IMF excesses, and more possibilities for "development," than from fruitless efforts to have IMF economists (and their City sponsors) behave like human beings? ... > I would like to hear a serious argument about how even a mildly progressive > social democratic government could manage interest rates. Again, try capital controls. Hopefully our Congress of SA Trade Unions will be making this argument within days. Sure beats an unwinnable global Tobin Tax. ... > I was not aware I was particularly arguing to increase the power of the > IMF. I was supporting a Swiss report that argued for reducing the power of > the USA over the IMF. No, "independence" increases the power of banks over politics. That's the same as amplifying the power of Summers over the IMF. ... > There are many anti-democratic and anti-working class forces run by > capitalism. I would have thought that an IMF accountable as a world organ > to the world as a whole Huh? > ... World government, even capitalist world > government, would be preferable to US hegemony. Not the way we're going to see world government, Chris: it'll BE yankee hegemony. Can you not admit that possibility? > >Demonstrations against IMF programs, political organizing, strikes, etc. > >are needed, combined with international solidarity. In other words, the > >same thing is needed with an autonomous IMF as with a explicitly > >US-dominated IMF. > > Absolutely! The demand for this, still emerging but taking form from the Bangkok conference Walden Bello sponsored, is to shut the IMF. That's rather the opposite of what your Swiss friends say. > We should be trying to struggle on an agenda that world government should > be democratic and not a government for the interests of finance capital. But since given the actual balance of forces, this is a utopian fantasy, and since we'll get an even worse globalised financial world government than actually-existing Summersville, we shouldn't even try. Go for the nation-state, man, it is the only hope. P. (Ok Chris, you can trash my somewhat more pessimistic array-of-forces perspective if you like, which is here: http://csf.colorado.edu/wsystems/jwsr/vol5/num2/v5n2a11.htm ) Patrick Bond email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * phone: 2711-614-8088 home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094 South Africa work: University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School of Public and Development Management PO Box 601, Wits 2050, South Africa email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 2711-488-5917 * fax: 2711-484-2729
