4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
through private bond issues in the international capital market, which contribute to over half of the credit volume. The Bank is, therefore, no welfare institution. Rather, it operates on the basis of general financial and economic criteria, even though there is a department of t he Bank, the International Development Agency (IDA), which gives special favourable loans to particularly poor countries. These loans are financed mainly through taxes of the national governments of the highly industrialized countries.
The membership of the Bank is tied to that in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These two sister organizations together control the international policy and are able to manipulate national political interests. This is made easy through the increasing debts of the recipient countries. The governments are' forced to agree to the set conditions since they are increasingly dependent on credit, Special Drawing Rights and successful debt servicing negotiations. That these conditions affect not only the developing countries, though they are the ones especially hit hard, but also other capitalist states is shown by the recent events in England, Italy and Portugal. The function of the IMF and the World Bank can best be described as one form of the ideal common capitalist, as representatives of the ideal common multinational capital, working towards the maintenance of the worldwide capitalist system and long-term system planning.1
McNamara's 1977 speech is especially interesting because it outlines the present development strategies of the World Bank in its totality and attempts, at the same time, to defend these strate gies. That McNamara felt bound to defend the development policy of the World Bank and with it that of international capital, is due to the failure of the hitherto existing strategies. In fact, the policy of the so-called first Development Decade (1960-1970), aimed at achieving economic,growth through rapid industrialization and capitalization, has since been widely recognized as a failure. It has not improved, but rather worsened, the social conditions of the majority of the population in developing countries. McNamara himself ovenly admits this: "In retrospect, it is clear that too much confidence was placed on the belief that rapid economic growth would automatically result in the reduction of poverty, corresponding to the 'trickle-down5 theory."2 In defence of the World Bank's strategies, McNamara asserts that it would be a misconception if one drew from this the conclusion that "economic growth is not necessary because it does not always lead to an improvement in the income relations of the poor."3 On the