I turned in a research paper on Venezuela a few weeks ago, and my history teacher took slight issue with my statement that the IMF and World Bank are the agents of implementation for neoliberal restructuring programs. She commented, “Not so much anymore…” and I shrugged and conceded: All right, maybe their era is closing. Maybe the IMF hasn’t got so much wrecking-ball energy anymore. All right.
Now, I’m taking that back, too.
I’ve been trying to understand what has been going down in Greece, but I believe I only squinted at the New York Times articles, saw “left-wing government,” “anti-austerity,” and “protests,” and nodded approvingly. I would have admitted that I wasn’t quite sure what was happening there. It turns out that was an unwise ignorance to choose.
Greece is the latest country to land in the IMF’s neoliberal crosshairs. Recently elected left-wing Syriza government is seeing its campaign promises drift away from reality, backed against a wall by the European Commission and pressure to stay in the Eurozone. The fight has been portrayed as dichotomous in the US media: either Greece can play by Angela Merkel’s austerity rules, or it can withdraw from the Eurozone and go it alone. Only a few days ago, I received some emailed petitions saying there is a third way: Merkel could be pressured into making the terms less harsh for Greece, and it could remain in the Eurozone. That was my first hint that the Greece debacle is something to keep an eye on. It’s not going away, and it’s more momentous than simply a little country in dire economic straits.
Today I learn that the IMF has got its hands all tangled up in this situation, too. That’s a flashing red warning sign, if anything is--the International Monetary Fund, with their glorious legacy of forcing economic restructuring packages down the throats of countries desperate for aid, in debt and disaster? Latin America’s ruthless godfather--or puppeteer? The IMF may not be the hulking steamroller that it was in the closing decades of the twentieth century, dealing toxic “aid” to Bolivia, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, and many others, but it is far from obsolete, much less innocuous.
It is more than a struggle for a better economy or even different economic bailout methods now taking place in Greece. I should have seen it sooner. This is another revolt against the neoliberal world order--with other potential revolters, Ireland, Spain, Portugal perhaps, watching--and the world had better not look away, nor allow another democracy to succumb to the rapacious appetite of that infamous neoliberal disciple of capital and corporatism, the IMF. And behind the IMF, we cannot forget, stands always the driving fist of the United States.
Given the urgency with which we need change in the global economic system, before it sells off our planet and our future to the highest corporate bidders, Greece’s struggle could be a tipping point--a challenge to the ruling order, a move toward the unraveling of the certain disaster we are headed for, or another failure, another nail in our global coffin.
Read this article, posted at the AFL-CIO blog: it has the gritty details, and an expanded overview of the heavy consequences of this fight.
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