Junk IMF-World Bank! Fight Against Imperialist Plunder!

Statement of the ILPS

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle joins with the toiling masses of the world struggling against the imperialist plunder of the IMF-World Bank into their very livelihoods. The League calls on its members to take up the call to junk the IMF-WB at its annual meeting in Bangkok this coming October 12-18.

In October 2026, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group will be holding their annual meetings in Bangkok, Thailand from October 12-18. The international financial institutions (IFIs) are the two most brutal imperialist tools of monopoly capital, having brought immeasurable misery to the masses, especially in the neo-colonies. With Asia and the Pacific home to 60% of the global population, with a majority living in abject conditions, the people are in rage to confront these institutions calling for their shut down. These are the very lethal instruments responsible for the destruction of our political, economic and social structures that would have enabled national liberation and genuine democracy for our nations, not only in the Asia and the Pacific but across the globe.

The IMF and the World Bank were created in 1944 at almost the end of World War II. Their agenda was to profit off of the reconstruction of Europe which had suffered a massive destruction during the WWII. The IMF’s objective was to provide short term loans for balance of payments, while the World Bank (initially known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) was to provide assistance for infrastructure and economic development. The foundational philosophy of these international financial institutions (IFIs) was to promote a global free-market doctrine, in opposition to the socialist ideology of the former Soviet Union.

As crisis began to strike the capitalist world yet again in the ’60s, primarily its hegemon United States, the IMF and World Bank were adjusted to better facilitate increasing exploitation of the new neo-colonies for more superprofits. The Bretton Woods system collapsed in 1971 which led to the removal of gold as a peg to the dollar, and the IMF lost its primary role in maintaining pegged currencies. In the meanwhile, the 1973 oil crisis led to the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation, based on which the petrodollar system came into being. In turn for getting military security from the US, all oil from Saudi Arabia had to be sold in US dollars which also meant that globally, countries had to build US dollar reserves to be able to purchase oil.There was a massive flow of petrodollars from the oil-exporting countries, leading to low-interest open market provision of loans from commercial banks, and neo-colonial countries borrowed money freely for variety of reasons including economic development, military build-up and for bourgeois-led demand for high end consumer goods.

A sudden spike in interest rates carried out by the US Federal Reserve led to the sudden increase in interest on loans from commercial banks. The neo-colonies were reeling from the rise in oil prices as well the doubling of their debt servicing, badly in need of funds for their balance of payments as well as national development programs.

With the massive flow of petrodollars from the oil-exporting countries, the IMF had changed its course from being the monitor for pegging currencies, to now being the main institution providing conditional loans based on its structural adjustment programs (SAP).

The initiation of the conditionality-based lending program of the international financial institutions have led to decade after decade of misery and pauperization of the masses in the neo-colonies. The SAPs were used by US imperialism and its allies to force countries to accept neoliberalism, which was based on adoption of large-scale structural reforms. Austerity measures forced governments to implement deregulation, privatization, stabilization and trade liberalization. From the 1980s to the present, there have been waves after waves of policy reforms that have led to massive unemployment, underemployment, informalization and flexibilization of the working class. Communities suffered from joblessness, inflation and brutal removal of social services.

Deregulation meant lack of price control on essential goods including house rent, transport, energy, education, and medical care including medication. State institutions continue to be privatized to this day, with millions of workers forced out of work. In the recent years, pension reforms are also being carried out and nation-states shrugging off the responsibility of providing pension to a work force which has been the engine of productivity and growth for them.

In 1989, the US Treasury along with the IMF and the World Bank introduced the so-called “Washington Consensus” of unbridled neoliberalism which forced structural reforms to be mandatory for IMF WB lending programs. Among core tenets of the Washington Consensus were fiscal discipline, regressive taxation reforms, private property protection, deregulation, privatization, trade liberalization, open market exchange rate, among others.

Market-based land reforms have been institutionalized, along with deregulation of multitude crops leading to peasants suffering from the high cost of agricultural production, while market-based reforms have been imposed with the collaboration of compradors and IMF agreements. These reforms along with the diabolical WTO agreements have allowed agro-chemical corporations, hedge funds and other investors to plunder people’s resources, while strengthened monopoly capital’s hold in industrial and agricultural production. On one hand hybrid and genetically modified seeds have taken over the seed market, while on the other hand open-market policies in the mining industry have allowed fresh influx of imperialist mining corporations to exploit minerals that are considered the most critical base for capitalism’s expansion in this century.

While communities suffer from loss of livelihood, hunger, and poverty, microfinance schemes have been pushed by US imperialism and its western allies, leading communities further into indebtedness which has resulted in community-conflicts as well as suicides.

Another scheme that has been used by IFIs are Private Public Partnerships (PPP) which have allowed capitalist ventures to use public infrastructure and resources reaping billions of dollars in profits, while stripping the people of access and use of social services, leaving them to suffer further destitution from the harsh winds of private sector provisions which are much above their means.

Not only the working class and the peasantry have suffered, but also the youth in the neo-colonies are left with no future. Let alone higher education, with even basic education much beyond their means, they are forced to chase whatever work is available, often being sucked into petty crime while their energies and vigor are wasted at the hands of capitalist greed and callousness.

The women, may they be from the working class or peasantry, suffer from the many profit-seeking ventures that the IMF and World Bank are forever floating in the name of womens’ empowerment, where they are pushed into meager, hunger wages, suffering not only at the hands of imperialism but also patriarchy.

The ILPS calls for the junking of the IMF-WB and all imperialist IFIs. Only by struggling against the political rule of finance capital, the heart of the imperialist system itself, can an end to the plunder of the peoples’ livelihood be achieved. It is only through overthrowing imperialist-backed rule in each state, especially in the neo-colonies, that the imperialist system that begets the IMF-WB finally be overthrown. ILPS calls on its members to continue supporting each other’s national liberation struggles towards this end. Each successful liberation of a nation from the imperialist system is a victory for the anti-imperialist movement as a whole!