globalization
Target of Criticism: IMF (International Monetary Fund)
This is a contribution to the project of CSD (UN Committee on Sustainable Development):
A Healthy Planet for Future Generations, Human Rights, and Sustainable Development
indicates six (6) obstacles to progress positively in the present world economic system:
- Massive flows of financial resources that do not contribute to the real economy
- Corruption
- Illicit flows of finance, money laundering, and tax evasion
- Labour-saving instead of resource-saving technical progress
- High public debt in many countries (particular in developing countries)
- Lack of socially responsible/cooperative entrepreneurship
Because of the debt crisis worldwide, the actions and supposed neoliberal vision of the IMF are criticized: Is this justified?
Christian Felber recommends in his book “50 Vorschläge für eine gerechte Welt, Gegen Konzernmacht und Kapitalismus”, Wien 2006“, the IMF should be embedded in the UN system under the hegemony of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); furthermore, the IMF shall involve NGOs, trade unions, churches, small business owners and farmers’ associations. Joseph Stiglitz (Die Schatten der Globalisierung, Berlin 2002) proposed that a democratically composed “Borrowers Committee” should check each loan before IMF approves it. Yanis Varoufakis sees the IMF as the gravedigger of indebted countries in his book (Bescheidener Vorschlag zur Lösung der Eurokrise, 2015).
Stiglitz, Varoufakis, and Felber criticize the neoliberal ethos, independence and the lack of democracy of IMF; moreover, they reject IMFs interference in economic policies of the debt countries in a form of stipulated structural adjustment programs.
What are the causes of the poverty reduction worldwide ?
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, announced in July 2015 very proud the achievement of MDG 1 (Millennium Development Goal 1): While in the year 1990, 50% of the world’s population earned less than US$ 1.25 a day in 2015 it was only 14%.
What are the actual forces which generated this high reduction of poverty: Was it the free market, the globalization (opening up of markets, reduction of tariffs, privatization, the inflow of foreign capital), or was it the the lifting of the ban on ownership, or all of them. The critics of capitalism are more likely to demonstrate the adverse effects of the forces of capitalism. Even if those above mentioned processes were radical, painful and partly unfair it brought ultimately economic growth and prosperity to ermerging and developing countries.
Roland Leithenmayr VfV
NGO Committee on Sustainable Development Vienna 