According to their articles of agreements the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are only allowed to take economic considerations into account when making a decision. This essay argues that this stance — here labelled the doctrine of economic neutrality — constitutes the main ideology of the IMF and the World Bank. The two major assumptions of the doctrine — that politics can be kept out of the Fund and the Bank, and that decisions can be made on neutral, economic grounds in these two orga nizations — are examined in detail and rejected as false. The essay ends with a suggestion about the real function of the doctrine of economic neutrality: to provide an ideological smokescreen for the powerful Western nations to intervene in favor of free trade capitalism in the domestic affairs of third world coun tries.
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