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It Is now fifty years since an inter‐governmental conference at the small American town of Bretton Woods set up two new institutions and agreed new 'rules of the game' for the governance of the international economic system. For many people, 'fifty years is enough' and there is an international debate about ways to reshape the governance of the international economic system so that it becomes more 'people‐friendly'.
This article offers an interpretation of the Bretton Woods system and the mode of operation and of thinking characteristic of the two institutions whose job is to safeguard that system — the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The aim is not to offer a comprehensive and detailed discussion of the activities of the Fund and the Bank over the last fifty years, but rather to reflect on the ways in which concerns about human well‐being informed the setting up of the system and continue to inform its functioning fifty years later. In order to provide a framework in which to assess this dimension of the Bretton Woods system, we first consider ideas of people‐centred development and money‐centred development. We then consider the interplay of human well‐being and financial well‐being in the original process of setting up the Bretton Woods system, and in its functioning in the last fifteen years. Finally we raise the issue of redressing the balance between money and people.

Interprets the international economic system set up at Bretton Woods, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund; focuses on the interplay between human well-being and financial power.

The article presents a feminist critique of some of the most widely used conceptual frameworks in the economics of development, arguing that micro- als well as macroeconomic theory are male biased. The article also discusses ways in which male bias can be overcome so that analysis can be made a more useful tool, both for understanding the relative positions of warnen and men in less developed countries, and for understanding the way that gender inequality obstructs successful development.

AbstractEconomic analysis that is gender‐aware, in the sense of recognizing that all economic activity works through and within gendered relationships, has the potential to generate both a better understanding of the development process and a better understanding of the policies required to diminish gender inequality. This paper investigates the extent to which neoclassical and structuralist approaches to the economics of development are gender‐aware, and finds both paradigms seriously deficient. Two recent examples of gender‐aware development economics are discussed, and suggestions are made about how to improve gender‐awareness in development economics. The potential contribution of a critical institutionalist approach is highlighted.

Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die wichtigsten theoretischen Konzepte der Entwicklungsökonomie kritisiert, indem gezeigt wird, daß sie einen "männlichen Bias" besitzen. "Unter 'männlichem Bias' werden hier gesellschaftliche Strukturierungen verstanden, die sich zugunsten des männlichen und zu ungunsten des weiblichen Geschlechts auswirken." Weiterhin werden Möglichkeiten diskutiert, wie ein notwendiger Wandel der grundlegenden Strukturen der Ökonomie, des politischen und sozialen Lebens zu erreichen ist, um den "männlichen Bias" endgültig zu überwinden. Für die Realisierung dieses Wandels sind vor allem Veränderungen des Alltagsbewußtseins und der wissenschaftlichen Analyse erforderlich. (psz)

Structural Adjustment in Africa by Bonnie K.Campbell and John Loxley (eds),Macmillan: London, 1989.

Sozialistische Marktwirtschaft und eine demokratisch selbstverwaltete Planwirtschaft werden weithin als alternative Formen sozialistischer Ökonomie gehandelt. Beide Formen werden einer tiefgreifenden und analytisch fundierten Kritik entzogen. Im Zentrum steht der Entwurf einer sozialistischen Gesellschaft, in der die Bürger nicht lediglich als Repräsentanten von Waren existieren. Der Weg in eine solchefeministische, marktorientierte und dezentrale sozialistische Ökonomie ist die Vergesellschaftung von Kauf- und Verkaufakten und des Preisbildungsprozesses.

The international division of employment in the clothing and textile industry has been changing in the last 20 years. Such employment has declined in developed market economies but increased in developing countries and centrally planned economies. It is a widely held view that this is a result of the internationalisation of the Babbage principle. This theory and other forces that may be operating are discussed and illustrated with a case study of the UK textile multinational, Tootal. The case of Tootal suggests a need for a more multidimensional analysis than is produced by relying on the Babbage principle. The company's contribution to the new international division of labour has been to shift its emphasis much more towards its circuits of money capital and commodity capital and to internationalise these circuits. Tootal is a better example of the international centralisation of capital through financial and marketing lines than of the international fragmentation of products.

The aim of this article is to develop a critique of the Brandt Report. It explores the way in which the recommendations of the Report are related to the assumptions and concepts from which the Report begins; and examines why these assumptions and concepts seem plausible to many socialists. The conclusion reached is that the Brandt Report conflates the danger to human survival with the danger to the survival of capitalism, and produces a strategy which is adequate to neither. Rather than campaigning for its implementation, British socialists should be concerned to develop an alternative strategy for changing relations between people in the North and people in the South. This should not be geared to attempts to increase financial flows from governments in the North to governments in the South, nor towards negotiations for a New International Economic Order. Its guiding perspective should be that of organising a New International Division of Labour, and it should be built upon the grass-roots initiatives already existing for such structures as combine committees and workers' plans.