THE WORLD BANK AND THE IMF/125the anti-Vietnam War movement in the US in the late 1960s and
early 1970s; the 1968 student movements in France, Germany and
Mexico; massive workers' strikes in France in May 1968, in Italy in
1969-70, and in the so-called socialist countries (the Prague Spring
of 19 6 8). McNamara was an old hand at such things, having himself
ordered mass napalm bombings of Vietnam.
These liberation movements were very much a spanner in the
works of the World Bank's 'development' plans. As a result, the Bank
pumped in increased credit to strengthen the Third World's economic
ties to the world market and its political ties to the capitalist world.
These new loans were part of a strategy aimed at 'containing' the
spread of the broad movement for emancipation.
In 1968, while he was still Secretary of Defense, McNamara
declared: 'Ernesto Che Guevara's death in Bolivia in the fall of 1967
delivered a severe blow to the hopes of the Castroite revolutionaries.
But this is not a sufficient response to the problem' (McNamara,
1968).
In 19 7 2, he made a very clear speech in this regard at the meeting
of World Bank governors:
Too little, too late, is history's most fitting epitaph for regimes that
have fallen in the face of the cries of the landless, unemployed,
marginalised and oppressed, pushed to despair. As such, there
must be policies designed specifically to reduce the poverty of the
poorest 40 per cent of the population in developing countries. This
is not just the principled thing to do, it is also the prudent thing to
do. Social justice is not only a moral obligation, it is also a political
imperative. (McNamara, 1973)Thereafter, McNamara called for agrarian reform to provide land
to poor farmers and limit the land holdings of big landowners. He
proposed that reforms be made to the credit system of developing
countries, to give small farmers access to loans. He backed public
works projects aimed at improving the lot of the poorest sectors. In
short, McNamara wanted the multilateral public institution he
headed to pursue a growth strategy requiring that the World Bank
itself be given greater funds and power. McNamara was scarcely
interested in having the governments of the South themselves play a
role in redistributing wealth. Rather, he wanted the World Bank itself