Making Notes: What is Caribbean Dependency Thought? Part Two

The Policy Dimension

The policies associated with CDT were primarily in the area of economics.

The main point of agreement was the desirability of establishing an economy that is propelled by its own internal dynamic.

Three main policy streams identified were:

(1)    Proposals for regional economic integration/regional cooperation. This was due to the agreed belief that the small size of Caribbean economies was the key reason for dependence. “Economic federalism” was seen as an instrument of economic decolonization. Questions remained as to whether dependency derived from issues of size or of cultural/institutional factors.

(2)    Proposals for institutional and structural reform centred on changes in ownership in key sectors of the economy.

a.       Best and Levitt (1969) called for localization of ownership to promote inter-industry linkages and local decision-making.

b.      Beckford (1972) argued for the nationalization of foreign-owned plantations and comprehensive land reform in order to transfer productive resources for the use of the mass of the population.

c.       Girvan (1974) proposed the nationalization of the foreign-owned mineral-export sector to capture its surpluses for investment in the local economy and to promote local value added industries.

d.      Thomas (1974) proposed that state ownership under the rule of a worker–peasant alliance would provide the political and institutional basis for the transition to socialism.

(3)    Economic self-reliance in accumulation, production, and consumption.

a.       (Thomas 1974)

b.      (Beckford and Witter 1982)

c.       A strategy of “delinking” from the international capitalist system by means of national economic self-reliance, planning production to satisfying the basic needs of the population, and diversifying external economic relations to other Third World countries and to the socialist bloc

Impact of Dependency Thought

Dependency thought flourished from around 1963 to 1975, giving rise to a considerable quantity of published material.

In the mid-1970s the school was regarded as “the leading tendency in Caribbean scholarship”.

Throughout this decade there was a rise in ideological and political radicalisation with the advent of:

-         -  Rastafarianism (1968 Rodney Riot in Jamaica)

-         - Black Power (1970 Black Power Revolt in Trinidad and Tobago)

-         - Cuban Revolution (1970 and 1974 Declaration of “Cooperative Socialism” of the Forbes Burnham administration in Guyana and of “Democratic Socialism” by the Michael Manley administration in Jamaica respectively)

-          - National liberation movements in Africa and Asia

-          - Marxism-Leninism (1979 Marxist-Leninist stance of the Maurice Bishop-led People’s Revolutionary Government that took power in Grenada)

-          - Third World economic nationalism (Post-1973 Nationalistic economic policies of the Eric Williams administration in Trinidad and Tobago)

The contribution of dependency thought was to provide a body of ideas and literature based on research on the Caribbean, a theoretical and programmatic basis for radical politics and policies that was rooted in the Caribbean experience.

Critiques of Dependency Thought

Major debate with (1) Caribbean Marxist Left which sought to establish itself as a rival system of radical thought. (2) Non-Marxist mainstream in social sciences.

The wholesale rejection of imported knowledge as opposed to rejection of prevailing orthodoxies. Beckford (1972) argued that the interests of the dispossessed (black) population should be the point of departure.

The “theory of change” and the role of the intellectual were never fully explored.

The Caribbean Marxist movement went through an internal crisis over the question of the applicability of classical Marxism after the implosion of the Grenadian Revolution in 1983.

Blackman (2003,) posited that the Best-Levitt theory of plantation economy was more successful in diagnosis than in prescription, providing a general theory of Caribbean underdevelopment but not a theory of development.

Decline of Dependency Thought

Leading dependency writers turned their attention to political activity, or accepted governmental roles, or addressed academic topics that branched off from their earlier work.

Younger radical scholars were attracted to

Classical Marxism, which was offered as a more “scientific” guide to analysis and political practice.

Dependency thinking also internationally fell out of favour; it was increasingly judged as less a theory of underdevelopment and more a method for the study of underdevelopment

Developments in Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada fed ideological polarization in the Caribbean and associated dependency with economic mismanagement and political authoritarianism.

By the 1980s, neoliberal economics, embodied in the theory and policies of the Washington Consensus, asserted a claim of universal applicability to all economies.

The paradox is that the actual dependence of Caribbean economies became much more acute in the era of structural adjustment and globalization of the 1980s and 1990s.

The new dependency associated with globalization is presented as interdependence in the effort to obfuscate its asymmetries. The wheel has come full circle from the 1960s, and there is a new orthodoxy that calls for a renewed critical analysis from an updated dependency perspective.