^do sol le te ↵

Even the most draconian of IMF restructuring programmes is unlikely to go forward without a modicum of internal support from someone. It sometimes seems as if the IMF merely takes the responsibility for doing what some internal class forces want to do anyway. And there are enough successful cases of rejections of IMF advice to suggest that the US Treasury-Wall Street-IMF complex is not as all-powerful as is sometimes claimed. It is only when the internal power structure has been reduced to a hollow shell and when internal institutional arrangements are in total chaos, either because of collapse (as in the ex-Soviet Union and central Europe), or because of civil wars (as in Mozambique, Senegal, or Nicaragua), or because of degenerative weakness (as in the Philippines), that we see external powers freely orchestrating neoliberal restructurings. And in these instances the success rate tends to be poor precisely because neoliberalism cannot function without a strong state and strong market and legal institutions.

Just because someone has an internally consistent world view does not make it accurate.

One persistent fact within this complex history of uneven neoliberalization has been the universal tendency to increase social inequality and to expose the least fortunate elements in any society—be it in Indonesia, Mexico, or Britain—to the chill winds of austerity and the dull fate of increasing marginalization. While such a trend has been ameliorated here and there by social policies, the effects at the other end of the social spectrum have been quite spectacular. The incredible concentrations of wealth and power that now exist in the upper echelons of capitalism have not been seen since the 1920s. The flows of tribute into the world’s major financial centres have been astonishing. What, however, is even more astonishing is the habit of treating all of this as a mere and in some instances even unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalization. The very idea that this might be—just might be—the fundamental core of what neoliberalization has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main financial centres of global capitalism.

So when she studies the Greek balance sheet and demands measures she knows may mean women won’t have access to a midwife when they give birth, and patients won’t get life-saving drugs, and the elderly will die alone for lack of care – does she block all of that out and just look at the sums?

“No, I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.” She breaks off for a pointedly meaningful pause, before leaning forward.

“Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.”

Even more than she thinks about all those now struggling to survive without jobs or public services? “I think of them equally. And I think they should also help themselves collectively.” How? “By all paying their tax. Yeah.