116/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
To finance development, the World Bank loans money to
governments. The form these loans have taken has changed over
time. But one key factor has not changed: the World Bank has never
let anyone get away with not paying off their debts.
Politics and Geopolitics
After 1955, the spirit of the Bandung Conference was alive in large
parts of the planet. The Conference took place after the French defeat
in Vietnam (1954) and came just before Nasser's nationalisation of
the Suez Canal. Thereafter came the Cuban (1959) and Algerian
revolutions and a new phase in the Vietnamese liberation struggle.
In growing parts of the Third World, import-substitution policies
were put in place, internal markets were developed. As a result, there
was decreased dependence on the most industrialised capitalist
countries. A wave of bourgeois nationalist governments (Nasser,
Nehru, Peron, Goulart, among others) implemented populist
programmes, while new revolutionary governments (Cuba, China)
pursued an even more radical course.
World Bank projects had a strongly political content: to prevent the
development of anti-imperialist movements by applying the lessons
learned in South Korea and Taiwan. At the time, however, the World
Bank had a relatively small amount of funds at its disposal. Its
financial power was only given a boost later, under Robert
McNamara (1968-81).
The World Bank and the Green Revolution
The World Bank's approach to development is heavily productivist.
The official aim of the Green Revolution of the 1960s was to increase
agricultural production in the countries of the South in order to meet
the food needs of local populations. But it had disastrous effects on the
environment, and has actually increased the dependence of the
countries involved on the agrobusiness MNCs.
The Violence of the Green Revolution
National governments and institutions of the international
community established centres in the Philippines (for Asia) and in
Mexico (for Latin America), whose mission was to seek out and select