Ideological Warfare: Neoconservatism, Market Fundamentalism and the IMF/World Bank in the Caribbean

In this book, Darryl Naranjit examines the part the World Bank and the IMF play in the structuring of the world and of the Caribbean. The World Bank and IMF, according to Naranjit, are used as economic weapons to shape the political landscape of developing countries. Whilst, initially, the Bank was conceptualized as a tool for reconstruction and development, from the 1980s its main role seemed to be the promotion of the ideology of market fundamentalism and the combating of any lingering forms of socialism or Keynesian economics in the Third World. The World Bank and the IMF appeared to be engaged in ideological warfare on a global scale. Their Structural Adjustment policies were based on the conservative Reaganomics of the 1980’s. Wealth, according to this theory, trickles down from the wealthy to the poor. This, however, has not happened in the Caribbean or other parts of the developing world. What has happened is that the gap between rich and poor has widened considerably. Structural Adjustment, in the form of market fundamentalism, has become a powerful ideological weapon for consolidating the gains of the wealthy in the face of the increasingly desperate plight of the poor and for fulfilling the neoconservative dream of an American Empire.