Bank spindocs will no doubt point to the residual influence of Stiglitz -- as did the Pretoria resident representative at the first-ever SA demo at the WB last November -- as evidence of differentiation from the IMF. One fascinating document (still unpublished and institutionally uncensored) which I got from a top Bank economist, for example, creatively and convincingly links Friere, Alinsky, Schumacher, Dewey and others who seek "autonomy-compatible" development assistance, which to me translates into a "self-activity of the class" position and the natural suicide of the WB itself. The coming World Development Report on poverty draws on gender/development expert Caroline Moser's social capital work to undermine some of the precepts of neoclassical economics, I'm told.
So how far do we go here?Alongside the venerable SA activist Dennis Brutus, some discussions I had last week with two of Stiglitz's closest -- and exceptionally progressive - advisors (one of whom is lurking) convinced me that there isn't a Post-WashCon professional project of any substance any more. They also convinced me that the WB bond boycott and other defunding initiatives are on the right track. Identical sentiments came from Socialist Register and Monthly Review gatherings a couple of weeks back.
To drop some more names, over supper with Bob Brenner on Monday night, Bill Greider told the story of how he wrestled with Stiglitz to have him say something naughty on camera (for a PBS documentary) about the E.Asian fiasco in mid-1999, but no dice, he wouldn't risk it then, probably in the wake of another Wolfensohn shhhh. My comrades from the SA movement met Stiglitz last January, as I just noted in the previous post, and were not impressed. I had bumped into Stiglitz on an airplane a few months earlier and was extremely impressed. Speaking self-critically for myself, as a petit-bourgeois radical internationalist, I think we too often merely follow messianic figures around, like the butterflies we and they tend to be.
But sometimes the opportunity arises to forge a more durable strategy, in relation to shifting or cracking this embryonic global state. Which is what several activist meetings in DC and SF last week also convinced me of: in short, the possibility for a Reform the WB/IMF politics -- not just on economics, but gender, environment, transparency, participation and any other areas where some progress has been recorded since the early 1980s -- is actually all the more skimpy, the closer one looks, eh?
Now that a viable shut-down tactic is being endorsed and adopted across the world, and officially launched by an international committee just before April 16, we can go where we need to, and where we want to.