Well, the appeal would not resonate with a few of my students who want to work in institutions such as the IMF. They think of job prospects, but a few also believe that the IMF is still one of those institutions that could help ‘development’. Students at the age of 20 to 25 who have enrolled in elite institutions and who have only begun to know about the world, have an interest in believing in such a ‘liberal institution’ of imperialist domination.
Hardly any of those students has ever systematically studied the historical and global working of the capitalist system. On the contrary, even when they are introduced to an alternative, they cannot escape thinking of whether the alternative conflicts with their professional ambitions/careers in managing the system. Public Administration, for instance, is one of the disciplines they enrol in.
Ironically, although I don’t have data to support my argument, a few of them end up in debt if the parents are not able to pay the full fees thus they later work with an oppressive institution that enslaves countries through debt – and other means – so that they could pay their own debt.
“The IMF still refuses to systematically call for progressive taxes on the income and wealth of the richest individuals and corporations – which is the only fair way to expand revenues for development.”
The only fair way to expand revenues for development? No, it is not the only way and that is a social-democratic policy followed in countries like Sweden with 40% corporate tax but in a specific global development of capitalism and class struggle in Western Europe.
“People around the world are rising up and demanding decolonisation.” This is too general and abstract. The writer does not even hint that such a big matter could be solved by sharp social struggle in the indebted countries. There is not even a hint to the lessons from the first decades of neocolonialism and how some African leaders attempted to address the developmental issue.
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