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these interests continue to assert themselves – if need be, by the use of
military force, as the recent attack on Iraq demonstrated.
9.2 The International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was founded in 1944 and has
been active since 1946 as a UN special organisation with headquarters
in Washington D.C. Together with its sister organisations, the World
Bank Group, it emerged from the so-called Bretton Woods Conference
in New Hampshire (USA) which centred around the reconstruction of
a world economic system in the aftermath of the Second World War.
At present, the IMF has around 2,600 employees in 140 countries
and comprises 186 member states, whose allocation of votes
corresponds directly to their financial contributions. The EU member
states alone have 31∙89 per cent of the votes, 46 but the USA, with its
17∙1 per cent of votes, also has the power to block the passage of all
important resolutions requiring 85 per cent of the votes. Although the
IMF is a subsidiary organisation of the United Nations, it is governed
by capital majorities and not by legitimate, democratic organs.
The official duties of the IMF include the promotion of international
cooperation with regard to monetary policies, the expansion of
world trade, the stabilisation of exchange rates, the granting of
loans, technical assistance and the surveillance of financial policy. In
today’s world, however, it plays a somewhat different role. Under
the pretext of being an international organisation providing financial
and development aid, the IMF, together with the World Bank and the
WTO, has metamorphosed into a neoliberal bulldozer. Within the
framework of so-called Structural Adjustment Plans (SAPs) and in
coordination with the World Bank, the IMF grants loans which are
more and more frequently tied to preconditions such as cutting back
on government (i.e. public) spending and increasing exports, as well
as the liberalisation and privatisation of education, banking, water
supplies and other areas in the public service sector – regardless of
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