Making Notes: What is Caribbean Dependency Thought? Part Three

Where does CDT stand?

For Greene (1984) it is classified among the main theoretical streams in Caribbean social science which include cultural pluralism, plantation, and Marxism.

For Bernal, Figueroa, and Witter (1984) it is placed within the “critical tradition” in Caribbean economic thought, locating it as the stage that followed W. Arthur Lewis’ work on Caribbean industrialization and preceded Marxist political economy.

It has also been characterized as:

-An ideology of epistemic and economic decolonization and of economic nationalism. But which values and interests were served by the new ideology, those of the nation as a whole, of the validating elites, or of the dispossessed black masses?

-     

-An ideology of the first post-colonial generation of Afro-Caribbean males intent on taking political power from the “Afro-Saxon” elites who inherited political power from the colonial authorities, and on wresting the levers of economic control from white expatriates.

-A model of intellectual “creolization” as proposed by Lewis (1983) “whereby [metropolitan] modes of thought were absorbed and assimilated and then reshaped to fit the special and unique requirements of Caribbean society … [giving] birth to an indigenous collection of ideas that can properly be termed Caribbean sui generis.

-An element in a wider global process of counter-hegemonic resistance to Eurocentric thought.

-A connection with broader intellectual currents in the era of decolonization by which the people of the global South asserted the right to their own interpretation of their history, reality, and vision of the future. It is a source of intellectual capital in providing alternatives to the universalistic, context-free, ahistorical, asocial, and apolitical neo-classical economics that underpins neoliberal globalization.

- One of various manifestations of resistance in the behavioural, religious, ideological, and philosophical spheres that such an experience engendered among those who were the objects of that history but who sought to become the subjects of their own history.

-A critical and counter-hegemonic thought in the region and in the global South.

[Notes from Girvan, N. (2006). “Caribbean Dependency Thought Revisited,” Canadian Journal of Development Studies. 27, 3: 328-352.]

References

Amin, S. (1974) Accumulation on a World Scale,New York: Monthly Review Press

Beckford, G.L. [and K. Polanyi Levitt] (2000a) The George Beckford Papers: Selected and Introduced by Kari Levitt, Mona, Jamaica: Canoe Press, University of the West Indies.

Beckford (197/) (1972) Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World,London: Oxford University Press.

Beckford, G.L. and M. Witter (1982) SmallGarden, Bitter Weed: The Political Economy of Struggle and Change in Jamaica,Morant Bay, Jamaica: Maroon Publishing House.

Bernal, R., M. Figueroa, and M. Witter (1984) “Caribbean Economic Thought: The Critical Tradition,” Social and Economic Studies33:2,5–96.

Best, L. and K. Polanyi Levitt (1969) Externally Propelled Industrialization and Growth in the Caribbean,4vols. Montreal: McGill Centre for Developing Area Studies, unpublished MS.

Blackman, Sir C.N. (2003) “Lloyd Best and the Plantation Model: Afterthoughts,” in S. Ryan (ed.) Independent Thought and Caribbean Freedom: Essays in Honour of Lloyd Best,St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago: Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, University of the West Indies, 397–404.

Frank, A.G. (1967) Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America, New York: Monthly Review Press.

Girvan, N. (1970) Multinational Corporations and Dependent Underdevelopment in Mineral-Export Economies, Social and Economic Studies19:4, 490–26.

Greene, J.E. (1984) “Challenges and Responses in Social Science Research in the English Speaking Caribbean,” in H. Goulbourne and L. Sterling (eds.) “The Social Sciences and Caribbean Society (Part 1),” special issue, Social and Economic Studies 33:1, 9–46.

Lewis, W.A. (1954) “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” in Manchester School of Economic and Social Studies22 (May):131–91.

Lewis, G.K. (1983) Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in its Historical Aspects, 1492–1900, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Odle, M.A. (1975) “Public Policy,” in G.L. Beckford (ed.) Caribbean Economy: Dependence and Backwardness, Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies, 130–46.

Prebisch, R. (1950) The Economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems, New York: United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs.

Thomas, C.Y. (1965) Monetary and Financial Arrangements in a Dependent Monetary Economy, Mona, 
Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies.

Wallerstein, I. (1979) The Capitalist World Economy,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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.

Making Notes: The Plantation School of Thought

 Key Thinkers 

Lloyd Best

Most influential work "Independent thought and Caribbean freedom" (1967)

Considered as his best-known article, Best takes a pan-Caribbean vision, derived from the historical influence of the plantation system. He attempts to critically assess the region’s economic dependency with a particular focus on the government industrialisation strategies of the day, whilst simultaneously rejecting the metropolitan imperialism of both Western and Eastern economic orthodoxies. His central argument is that social change begins with ideas and through ‘independent thought’ Caribbean freedom can be attained.

George Beckford

Most influential work"Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World" (1972)

Beckford's central focus  was  on  the  persistence  of  underdevelopment which he posited is perpetuated  by the deeply  entrenched  social,  commercial  and cultural  systems  established  by  systems of enslavement, formulated  under  the  plantation system.  Beginning with an outline of the main distinguishing features of plantation systems and societies that encompass interrelated political social and economic patterns from a cross-national comparative perspective, its organizational and institutional features as well as a systematic attempt to diagnose the features of plantation systems which retard and arrest development. Drawing heavily on the work of Lloyd Best and the writers at the New World Group, Beckford significantly departs from this body of thought by explicitly attempting to move away from an exclusively West Indian frame of reference, providing a wider framework which could be applicable to other non-Caribbean societies.

Kari Levitt

Unit of analysis: 

"Plantation America", plantations within the Caribbean, Southern United States. Modern plantations in the form of multinational corporations (MNCs) e.g.  mines,  hotels  and  factories.  

Central issue:

What are the mechanisms for perpetuating the underdevelopment of the subsistence sector for the development of the capitalist sector.

Norman Girvan

Policy Recommendations made by the Plantation School

(1) They saw as fundamental to the process  of  change,  the formation  of ideas.

(2) They favoured localisation of decision-making

(3) Regional  integration was  a  main programatic  position.

(4) The  use of land  was  to  be  rationalized by  breaking the stranglehold which  the  MNCs  and  the  mono-crop  had  over this  vital  resource.

(5) Industrial development was  to  be  based  on  the fullest development  of backward  and forward  linkages with agriculture,  manufacturing,  mining  and  tourism.

(6) Banks and financial institutions were to be nationalised.

(7) Major  programme  of social reform was  to be  launched  in the areas of  education,  health,  nutrition,  housing and  other social  amenities.

(8) The policy of accumulation  centred  on  the development  of national production, the capturing  of a greater share of the surplus and  the  elimination of waste.

(9) The  state  was identified as playing the leading role  in directing the  economy  through  fiscal and monetary  policy and  where necessary  by direct participation in production.

References

Beckford, G. L. (2000). Persistent Poverty: Underdevelopment in Plantation Economies of the Third World. Kingston: University of West Indies Press.

Beckford, G. L., & Levitt, K. (2000). The George Beckford Papers. Kingston: University of the West Indies.

Best, L. (1967). Independent thought and Caribbean freedom. New World Quarterly, 3(4), 13-34.

Girvan, N., & Jefferson, O. (Eds.). (1974). Readings in the Political Economy of the Caribbean. New World Group.