WORLD BANK FIGURES FOR trol a further 10 percent.
While the USA, with a population of 250 million, has 19 percent of votes at the IMF, China, with a population of 1.1 billion, has just 2.5 percent.
Since 1944 the 'Third World' countries have been drawn into dependence on a world market dominated by the more prosperous OECD countries.
An area the size of Europe has been set aside in the 'Third World' for export crops as whole countries have found themselves effectively relegated to the role of food reserves for 'northern' countries. As a result their industrial and agricultural development has been skewed towards the production of cash crops and food exports - to the detriment of self-sufficiency.
The high protein requirements of the 'american diet' dominant in the 'northern' countries have driven on the destruction of tropical forests to create grazing land for meat production and exports, and created conditions where 40 percent of world grain production is consumed by 1099 While much of the money lent was stolen, or squandered on armaments by the ruling class in Mexico, Brazil, ArgenWORLD'S HIGHEST STANDARD OF LIVING the "south' still depend heavily on imported manufactured goods from the advanced industries controlled by the Global debt continues to strangle the development of much of the 'Third World'. But for the US capitalist class, as this advert from the 1950s shows, the system has been terribly profitable. opment represented by the Bretton Woods agreements will be interrupted not by reasoned arguments alone, but only by mass action of the countless millions who are the losers in the present system.
A revolutionary programme and leadership are essential for the struggles to come, and it is from this perspective that members and sections of the Fourth International will be participating in these activities.