The World Bank, Poverty Creation and the Banality of Evil

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The World Bank, Poverty Creation and the Banality of Evil

Wednesday, 25 March 2015 00:00
By Alnoor Ladha, Truthout | News Analysis


This week, the World Bank is convening its 16th annual "Conference on Land and Poverty," which brings together corporations, governments and civil society groups to ostensibly discuss how to "improve land governance."

As this is happening, hundreds of civil society organizations are denouncing the World Bank's role in global land grabs. As the organization I am part of, The Rules, is a member of Our Land Our Business, the umbrella campaign of farmer organizations, indigenous groups, trade unions and grassroots organizers from around the world protesting against the Bank's policies, I often get asked the question, why do civil society and the World Bank have such differing views of the Bank's role? Reading the Bank's website, one would think that the World Bank was in the same line of work as the activists challenging their policy. In fact, they have recently adopted the earnest tagline of "Working for a world free of poverty."

In the Grips of Ideology

As always, the first place to start is ideology, as it is always a background condition. The World Bank is an unapologetic proponent of neoliberalism, a moral philosophy that pushes self-interest, corporate control and "free markets." These forces, they believe, will result in such a large amount of overall economic growth that enough will trickle-down to the "masses" to lift them out of poverty.

Many have pointed to deep flaws in this logic, including Thomas Piketty, who showed through exhaustive analysis of long-term trends how wealth actually congeals in this system. What's more, there is ample evidence to show how the self-interest the World Bank believes in, far from ensuring a fair system in which the well-being of all is addressed, actually results in a set of rules that are rigged in favor of a tiny elite. Research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has shown that a super entity of just 147 companies controls over 40 percent of corporate wealth. The corporations behind this potent web of power are largely Western corporations, mostly concentrated in the financial sector.

World Bank ideology is deeply linked to the belief that corporate interests and country interests are one in the same. The old US adage of "what's good for GM is good for America" has expanded through globalization into wholesale neocolonialism through multinational corporations. The recent cable leaks that show how the US State Department exerts influence and strong-arms countries around the world on behalf of the agricultural giant Monsanto is just one example of such egregious policy. ...........(more)

http://truth-out.org/news/item/29851-the-world-bank-poverty-creation-and-the-banality-of-evil

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