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In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference ushered in a new international economic order. The World Bank emerged as one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, and a new colonial authority in all but name. But how does it operate, who funds it, and what agenda does it work to promote?In The World Bank: A Critical History, Eric Toussaint answers all of these questions and more. Offering up a highly readable yet uniquely authoritative account, the book analyses the World Bank from its beginnings to the present day. Chapters on gender, climate and the pandemic era complement the peerless research that informed Toussaint's 2007 classic, The World Bank: A Critical Primer, and provide the reader with a truly contemporary, definitive text.Seven international case studies illustrate the impact of World Bank policy, and Toussaint also explores the political, economic and strategic motives of the US government with regard to the World Bank. The book concludes with a proposal for replacing the World Bank, IMF and WTO with new, multilateral and democratic institutions.

The specificity of the type of Holocaust denial on the rise in Arab countries since the 1980s is explored in contradistinction to Western Holocaust denial. The latter, rooted in anti-Semitism, is a substitute for open hatred of the Jews in countries where this hatred has not been tolerated since World War II. Holocaust denial in Arab countries, on the other hand, finds its roots in Israel's exploitation of the Holocaust for political purposes. It also serves as a simplistic explanation for Western support of the Zionist state and as an outlet for frustrations created by Israel's oppressive supremacy.

Since 1993, various international donors have poured money into a People-to-People (P2P) diplomacy programme in Palestine. This grassroots initiative - still funded by prominent external donors today - seeks to foster public engagement through contact and therefore remove deeply embedded barriers. This book examines the limited nature of this ‘contact’ and explains why the P2P framework, which was ostensibly concerned with the promotion of peace, ultimately served to reinforce conflict and power relations. The book is based on the author’s own experience of the solidarity activities during the First Intifada and her first-hand involvement as a coordinator of the P2P projects implemented during the 1990s. It provides a much-needed critical account of the internationally-sponsored peace process and develops new theoretical analyses of settler colonialism.

Al-Ahram was Egypt's daily newspaper commonly regarded as the mouthpiece of Nasser's regime, especially after its nationalization in May 1960, and hence offered the most meaningful indicator for a study of the regime's reaction to the trial. Since 1957, its editor-in-chief was Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, Nasser's close confidant from the early days of the 23 July Revolution, the 1952 military coup that overthrew the monarchy and brought the Free Officers to power. [...]in the early 1960s, members and supporters of the Nasser regime still reflected the wide range of political sensitivities that existed among the group of Free Officers who had overthrown the Egyptian monarchy in 1952, with one major exception: the Muslim Brotherhood with whom Nasser had clashed since 1954.

Historical materialism alone can ground a radical refutation of all essentialisms, including that of « Orientalism », pace Edward Said’s ill-informed critique of Marx. The political perspective of Marx and Engels on religion remains relevant today. However the Marxist tradition is weak in the field of the sociology of religion. Other contributions, including Durkheim’s concept of anomie, must be drawn upon, in order to understand the religious resurgence that has occurred alongside the neoliberal turn. Whereas early Christianity easily lends itself to a leftist interpretation, Islamic theology, especially in its ultraorthodox version propagated by the Saudi kingdom, fosters a fundamentalist interpretation. It is perilous for Marxists to venture onto the ground of Islamic exegesis, instead of abiding by the separation between the political and religion. Seule la démarche matérialiste en histoire permet de réfuter radicalement les essentialismes, tel que « l’orientalisme » en dépit de la critique infondée de Marx par Edward Said. L’attitude politique de Marx et Engels envers la religion reste d’actualité. Cependant, la tradition marxiste est déficitaire dans le domaine de la sociologie de la religion. Il faut intégrer d’autres apports, dont le concept durkheimien d’anomie, pour comprendre la résurgence du religieux contemporaine du tournant néolibéral. Tandis que le christianisme des origines se prête facilement à une lecture de gauche, la théologie islamique, et notamment sa version ultraorthodoxe propagée par le royaume saoudien, favorise une lecture intégriste combattante. Il est périlleux pour les marxistes de se placer sur le terrain de l’exégèse en islam au lieu de s’en tenir à la séparation entre politique et religion.

The World Bank and its fraternal twin, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have earned an execrable reputation in the Third World since the start of the neoliberal era in the 1980s. That is because these two intergovernmental financial institutions – the two main pillars of the international economic order put in place after the Second World War under the domination of the United States of America, a domination clearly visible in the fact that both institutions are headquartered in Washington – have been the primary vectors of the extension of the capitalist system in its neoliberal mutation in the Global South. That