The IMF’s wisdom is not more than: to press for dismissals, to lower the standard of living, to abruptly lower the subventions without compensation and way out, to deprive people of their rights and press them down to the lowest possible level upon which they are then supposed to work as much as possible in order to produce as much profit as possible; all of this allegedly leading to a functioning economy. Such is the concept it has been recommending for decades to all countries forced to call it in, a concept which already had many, many brutal consequences in countless countries. The dead, the resigned, the ruined people nobody has yet counted. 

But this concept destroys also itself, being exactly the concept which holds the demand in the markets down. Owing to that concept people in the countries concerned are not able to buy, and the developed capitalist countries cannot in the long term compensate the breakdown of sales. A purchasing power which mainly relies on the rich does not function, neither in a single country nor internationally. Exactly this was the beautiful pretence of the past years: the so-called economic locomotive USA, and then Europe. Therefore it will be just the IMF policy which will increase the ruin even more, and for every year this IMF policy continues this capitalist contradiction opens more deeply. 

It is the classic old capitalist overproduction trap which already in the past has triggered the crises - these crises just being many degrees bigger today. The IMF’s whole wisdom in fact shows stupidity. But some things never change - capitalism is like that. 

Also the IMF’s so-called anti-bureaucratic policy has snares of its own. It claims to further a better development of capitalism by fighting bureaucratic structures and pushing through relative liberties in this respect. But on the other hand the IMF, the international capital need the bureaucratic repressive structures of the various countries subjected to its dictate in order to make the misery among the masses happen. So, the contradiction proves unbridgeable in one more form, too.

-ks-     April 16, 2001