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Defunding the Fund, Running on the Bank by Patrick Bond Two once-impenetrable financial institutions--the International Monetary Fund and World Bank--have finally come into activists' focus, in a way that in turn sharpens what are often fuzzy discussions surrounding globalization and popular resistance. Around 30,000 protesters joined the Mobilization for Global Justice in Washington on April 16, capping a week that began ominously with a chilled, poorly attended Jubilee 2000 USA debt relief rally on April 9 (controversially addressed by neoliberal Clinton economist Gene Sperling), a "No Blank Check for China" AFL CIO demonstration of 15,000 workers at the Capitol on April 12, and dozens of other related events. Auspiciously, the bulk of the A16/17 protesters rallied around a call for the IMF and Bank to be defunded (not reformed), taking further the Seattle spirit that had divided "shut-down" demonstrators against the World Trade Organisation from reformist leadership of big labor and greenwashed environmentalism. God smiled on the 16th, giving the Mobilization the warmth and sunshine denied the Jubilee protest, and many more people left Washington convinced that taking away the IMF and World Bank's money is a logical next step. Socialists across the world should be heartened. With momentum thus captured by the far more radical Mobilization, enormous ideological progress and political maturity can be claimed and consolidated. A16/17 was built upon a militant, internationalist platform and slogan "Break the Bank, Defund the Fund, Dump the Debt!" endorsed by a coalition of forces as strong and diverse as Seattle's. The legal rally/march was joined by initially nervous trade unionists, NGO developmentalists and left-leaning environmentalists. Skillfully, the Mobilization's official core of left leaning Washington thinktank and NGO staff--notably, 50 Years is Enough, Alliance for Global Justice, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Center for Economic Justice, the Nader group Essential Action, and Jobs with Justice--helped to at least temporarily merge the very different agendas of inside Beltway bureaucrats and grassroots activists. Labor/NGO/green officials have historically wobbled when faced with global political economy issues, as a result of the disadvantageous balance of forces prior to Seattle, their often debilitating ties to the Democratic Party (and fears of being seen in alliance with Republican IMF/Bank bashers), and a faux professionalism heightened by dependence upon bourgeois funders. The AFL CIO even supported the $18 billion recapitalization of the IMF in late 1998, after obscure deal making with the Clinton administration. The activists, in contrast, were anxious to conduct a joyous symphony of Seattle like lockdowns and street parties to blockade the Bank/IMF Spring meetings. To do so, they introduced a cultural liberation ambience virtually unknown to Washington, utilizing radical participatory democracy and affinity group cell structuring in strategy sessions and trainings facilitated by striking young talents from the Direct Action Network. In this milieu, Michael Albert reported in Z magazine, The various tactical wings of the movement whether seeking to get arrested, to militantly protest, to make a public but peaceful statement, or just to learn or teach worked together marvelously. Diverse tactics did not trump one another. Tension was minimal. Intercommunication was considerable. Coalitions were strengthened rather than dissolving into tactical disputes. There was in the street mutual aid, careful planning of venues and events, and pre demonstration communication of aims. Results included abundant forms of civil disobedience and 1,300 arrests (although the first 600 were unwilling, as police used dramatic force during an April 15 Free Mumia protest march and also shut the activists' Convergence space on absurd fire code charges). Encouragingly, unlike Seattle, the 1,000 strong Revolutionary Anti Capitalist Bloc of black clad anarchists worked in harmony with those carrying out civil disobedience, and had the honor of attracting a police helicopter devoted solely to trailing their movements across Washington on April 16. Commitments were made to hone tactics for upcoming Philadelphia and Los Angeles political party convention demonstrations. But most importantly for our purposes here, the Mobilization drew the eco socio economic concerns of the Global South far deeper into the fabric of the US movement than ever before. Granted, the protest failed to obstruct the IMF/Bank meetings due to the massive police presence. No matter, the combination of thorough preparation and the large size of the turnout in Washington _ helped raise public consciousness about the IMF and Bank to unprecedented levels, _ brought sympathetic activists from different constituencies into successful coalition, _ taught organizers a great deal about Washington logistics (and how they can really be gummed up next time), _ showed South allies the extent of solidarity possibilities (encouraging them to intensify their own local critiques of the IMF/Bank), and also _ facilitated a long overdue split amongst development NGOs (a group of 22 conservative organisations under the banner of "Interaction" sent a bizarre, self discrediting endorsement note to the Bank and IMF). These protests have set an excellent stage for several years of intense grassroots campaigning across the globe aimed at closing the Bretton Woods twins, thus fundamentally reorienting our understanding of development finance, and in the process rejigging power relations in ways that could benefit radical political movements across the South. Of course, an activist focus purely on the institutional forms of global capitalist (mis)management the Bank, IMF and WTO would detract from an understanding of both the capital accumulation process and class based resistance, and hence could lead to partial and imperfect strategic insights about power and social transformation.In addition, a focus on these global institutions might lead us to neglect national and regional issues and areas in which resistance might be more fruitful. Such debates have inspired this article, which attempts to interrogate the main lines of thinking within the Mobilization and allied groups, and to brainstorm about the different ways forward for the growing movement. The main conclusion reached is that "bond-boycotting" the Bank and defunding the Fund should be supported as integral and unifying components of a broader mobilization for class, gender, ethnic, and environmental justice. The IMF, the Bank and the Financial Explosion In 1944, the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire hosted a conference of delegates cochaired by Harry Dexter White representing the US Treasury, and John Maynard Keynes representing Britain (but more broadly, the interests of the vast majority of countries then in debt). The overarching problem was, simply, the restoration of global capitalist order at a time when capitalists were profoundly discredited (partly thanks to associations with Nazism) or were otherwise in political economic retreat, and when socialism appeared a dangerous specter (not only because of the USSR's durability but because communist and labour movements were resurgent in Europe). Reflecting the power of U.S. capital, White was able to establish the dollar as the world's primary currency and to construct the Fund and Bank so they could be controlled from the White House and U. S. Treasury. Although the Fund initially encouraged nation-state exchange controls so as to limit capital flight, the two institutions founded at Bretton Woods would soon reverse that formula by promoting the globalization of capital over the globalization of people. The Fund was meant to balance the accounts of payments between countries (through money exchanged in trade and financial transactions), while the World Bank would make injections of project finance starting in war-ravaged Western Europe, and later in the South. A few years later, the World Trade Organization's seeds were sewn in the founding conference of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Havana. But it was only in the late 1970s that the full significance of the Fund, Bank, and GATT became evident, as institutions which could solidify the control of capital in the North over that in the South during a period of capitalist crisis marked by a financial explosion and stagnating wage compensation, intensifying environmental degradation, and the crash of the living standards and cultures in the South. They proved very useful in stalling and shifting the costs of various crises (the Third World debt crisis of the early 1980s, energy finance shocks in the mid-1980s, crashes of international stock and property markets in 1987 and 1992-93, long, terribly deep crash of non-petroleum commodity prices from 1973-1999, and a spate of bank failures), from the rich capitalist nations onto those less powerful. And they contributed to the collapse of several decades' worth of ordinary people's living standards across the South since the late 1970s, in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s, and in Emerging Markets since the mid 1990s. A socialist analysis of the dynamic behind finance is critical to comprehending the power of the IMF and Bank. What were eloquently explained by Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy as "financial explosion" symptoms of crisis may have stemmed from what some Marxist scholars argue is a general tendency to capital "overaccumulation." This condition is usually a precursor of massive debt buildup and speculation and subsequent depression and has recurred periodically (1825 45, 1872 92, 1929 48, and 1973 present). Consequent with growing gluts in local and then global markets, the supply side of capital responds to falling profit rates by seeking higher returns in increasingly speculative financial outlets. On the demand side, ever amplifying uneven development assures that the growing crisis can be "displaced" (moved around, across space and through time), permitting flows of funding to switch from one to another circuit of capital, sector of investment, geographical location and even level of activity (from local to global and back). Financial markets are central to this process for they facilitate near instantaneous movement of capital across the world, and they convert an obligation to pay in cash now for consumption into a future liability, so that gluts of overproduced commodities can be (at least temporarily) whittled away by credit. In very real ways, displacement meant that when bubbles burst the Third World debt crisis (early 1980s), energy finance shocks (mid 1980s), crashes of international stock (1987) and property (1991 93) markets, and the long, terribly deep crash (from 1973 99) of non petroleum commodity prices, not to mention a spate of major bank failures it was feasible to shift the costs onto those less powerful. Hence the collapse of several decades' worth of ordinary people's living standards across the South since the late 1970s, in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s, and in Emerging Markets since the mid 1990s all felt acutely by workers, peasants, women, children, the elderly, indigenous groups and disabled people, as well as environments. During this period, the Fund and Bank acquired a qualitatively new role: coordination power over both economic policymaking and financial/aid flows in subordinate countries (though still through the overall permission of the US Treasury Department and consistent with the State Department's agenda). Fund and Bank coordination has meant not merely the certification of countries' policymakers as sufficiently pro-market (i.e., especially welcoming of currency devaluation, state shrinkage, loss of national economic sovereignty, and inflowing financial, trade and foreign direct investments, partly to capture privatized assets at healthy discounts and partly just to speculate). From the early 1980s, the Fund and Bank also played a crucial debt-policing role, firming up the weakened balance sheets of those Northern commercial banks and investment funds which stood exposed due to the demise of unpopular client-dictators during the 1980s, and then late 1990s "emerging market" stocks, bonds and property. Fund/Bank bailouts were arranged so that New York, London, Frankfurt, Zurich, and Tokyo banks could recover (and indeed prosper) from 1980s-era Third World debt (which remained on the liability side of borrowers' balance sheets), as well as from the devastation of currencies associated with speculative runs on Mexico (early 1995), South Africa (early 1996 and mid-1998), Southeast Asia (1997-98), South Korea (early 1998), Russia (periodic but especially mid-1998), and Brazil and Ecuador (early 1999). The negative impact of World Bank and IMF policies was so stark and obvious that professional and intellectual justification was required. The protectionist and inward-oriented economic policies of many developing nations were attacked by proponents of a laissez-faire, "neoliberal" philosophy consistent with the liberalizing interests of international financial/commercial capitals. The "Washington Consensus," a market-Stalinist world view imposed by the United States through the IMF and the World Bank, and supported by associated think-tanks, insisted that the alleged merits (future growth and prosperity) of free-market "structural adjustment" outweighed the enormous short-term economic, social, gender, generational, public health and environmental costs. IMF and Bank influence does not occur without contestation, but mass popular resistance--the "IMF Riot"--has only rarely been coordinated to challenge state power and neoliberalism more generally, and to evolve into more durable, democratic movements combining Left critique and indigenous organizing processes. At times, Third World nationalism has sounded resurgent, as in Venezuela under Chavez. But this tradition just as quickly fizzles out once IMF/Bank screws are tightened, or worse, turns inward to repress the Left, as in Mahathir's Malaysia and Mugabe's Zimbabwe. More hopeful signs include the emergence of Zapatismo in 1994, Korean workers' fightback against IMF restructuring, mobilizations by the Brazilian Movement of the Landless, the graduation of India's National Alliance of People's Movements from world class protests against dams and genetic engineering to campaigns against neoliberalism more generally (including Bill Clinton's recent visit), this January's uprising of Ecuadoran Indians against neoliberalism, February's emergence of Thailand's Forum of the Poor at a major UN Bangkok meeting, the dramatic April revolt of Bolivians against water privatization and protests in Chiang Mai, Thailand against the Asian Development Bank meetings in May. Though none generated conclusive victories, they provide important if incomplete lessons for other protest trajectories, alongside recent North led campaigns to halt the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, ban landmines, halt toxic waste dumping, and prevent the WTO from launching its Seattle round. The IMF and Bank are central to imperialism's reproduction, both in terms of their power to dictate how the poor countries will develop and their power to displace the effects of capitalist crisis onto the world
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