> This is a terribly important thread for me, just arriving back in
> Jo'burg after a couple of weeks trying to sort out where some of the
> leading left forces in N.America are taking their post-Seattle
> strategy. A critical mass appears focused on having a
> terrific Run on the Bank of some sort at the April 16 spring
> meetings of the IMF/WB (chaired, incidentally, by SA's finance
> minister). This is great.
>
> 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 unpublished and institutionally uncensored) which I got from a top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.
>
Very interesting post. I totally agree that the reform agenda leads nowhere. And that the Bank should be shut down. I just think Stiglitz is personally an interesting figure who is more sympathetic to the Left than we knew only a year ago.
Seth