At 07:40 PM 05/14/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>>I don't think that we need to bicker about the IMF. It is a tool of the
>>oppressors and does terrible harm.
>
>Now, now.
a classic patronizing phrase.
>If there were no IMF--if there were no one willing and able to loan
>Argentina $40 billion to try to get it through its current episode of
>capital flight and foreign investor panic--how, exactly, would the people
>of Argentina be better off? Every serious attempt to answer this question
>I've heard involves somehow automagically reconstituting the functions of
>the IMF--a kinder, gentler IMF--with no plausible story of how the
>institution to carry out these functions is to be created.
>
>The availability of IMF loans gives countries facing financial crises a
>*few* more options: Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes created it
>for a reason, after all. They were not dumb.
As others have pointed out, it's a mistake to simply look at two fellows
who "created" the IMF as a way to understand it. (Strictly speaking, it was
the US and to a lesser extent the UK that created it. No two individuals
are powerful enough to pull that kind of trick.) It's been a long time
since then. The world system has changed a lot, while the IMF's "mission"
has gone far beyond managing the international financial system. (BTW,
Brad, have you noticed that we don't have fixed exchange rates between the
rich countries's currencies any more?) Instead, nowadays it dictates
economic policy whenever it can get its hooks into a country (because the
country allows itself to get into debt to the world, often with the IMF's
encouragement). And it does so at the behest of the US Treasury, so the
economic policy is one that fits with the dominant US ideology and the
economic interests dominating the US government.
>If you want to know how the international financial system would function
>in its absence, I have always thought that 1931 et sequelae in Austria
>gives you a good idea of what would be likely to happen...
This is the either/or fallacy. Either my way (the IMF's) or the highway
(perdition). There's no alternative to dictatorship by the IMF. Stop
worrying and learn to love the bomb...
A long time ago, in a land far far away from Berkeley, Thomas Hobbes argued
that the only alternative to anarchy (by analogy, Austria's crisis, etc.)
was to have a despotic state (the IMF). But as John Locke pointed out,
because the leaders of the state are "mere men" and subject to the same
lust for power as other people, a despotic Leviathan (the IMF, Pol Pot,
etc.) simply creates a new kind of war -- between itself and the people. As
Locke argued, the state needs to be subordinated to the democratic will of
the people. Many have agreed with him, without accepting Locke's belief in
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In order to win the consent of the
people, the IMF must be run democratically rather than in the
technocratic-dictatorial way it is now.
Now it's unlikely that democracy will prevail on a world scale in the near
future (since, heck, it doesn't even prevail in the U.S.) As a compromise,
perhaps we could return the IMF to the original role that Keynes and White
recommended it. Given the way in which the IMF has screwed things up, it
should be abolished, with its positive functions being shifted to the Bank
of International Settlements...
(of course this is silly, since the powers that be want to keep the IMF in
the saddle. The banks and financiers aren't going to allow the IMF to be
emasculated without a fight. But it does suggest a direction.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
