The Fabian Society stained-glass window

96 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND

This hidden agenda becomes crystal clear in the nature of what the Bank calls Sectoral Loans and Structural-Adjustment Loans. In the first category, only part of the money is to be used for the costs of specific projects while the rest goes to support policy changes in the economic sector. In the second group, all of the money is for policy changes and none of it is for projects. In recent years, almost half of the loans to underdeveloped countries have been in that category. What are the policy changes that are the object of these loans? They add up to one thing: the building of world socialism.

As the Fabians had planned it, the word socialism is not to be used. Instead, the loans are issued for government hydro-electric projects, government oil refineries, government lumber mills, government mining companies, and government steel plants. It is delivered from the hands of politicians and bureaucrats into the hands of other politicians and bureaucrats. When the money comes from government, goes to government, and is administered by government, the result will be the expansion of government.

Here is an example. One of the policy changes often required by the World Bank as a condition of granting a loan is that the recipient country must hold down its wages. The assumption is that the government has the power—and rightfully should have the power—to set wages! In other words, one of the conditions of its loan is that the state must be omnipotent.

Paul Roberts holds the William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Writing in Business Week, he says:

The entire "development p r o c e s s" has been guided by the belief t h at r e l i a n ce on p r i v a te e n t e r p r i se a nd equity i n v e s t m e nt is

incompatible with economic and social progress. In place of such

p r o v en avenues of success, development planning substituted loans

and foreign aid so that governments of the LDCs [Less D e v e l o p ed

Countries] could control economic activity in keeping with plans d r a wn up by experts.

Consequently, economic life in the LDCs w as politicized from the start. By endowing governments with extensive control o v er their economies, the U.S. set up conditions exactly opposite to those required for economic growth.1

1. "How 'Experts' Caused the Third World Debt Crisis," by Paul Craig Roberts, Business Week, November 2,1987.