“Globalizing” the Caribbean Frantz Fanon and the myth of Change by Renaldo McKenzie

The strategy to liberalize former colonies such as Jamaica and Barbados has brought mixed results. Barbados has experienced substantial growth as oppose to Jamaica whose growth has been flat with high levels of unemployment and debt. We argue in this study that Jamaica’s independence is a myth and that they fare worse than other former British colonies such as Barbados and Trinidad, because they (Jamaica) is still helplessly dependent on outsiders for their survival. Decolonization paved the way for neo-liberal globalization. Therefore, this means that we must reassess the influence of the Martiniquan psychiatrist and political scientist, Franz Fanon, on radical Caribbean thought from the 1960 to 1970s.



INTRODUCTION

Jamaica is putatively an independent democratic nation. However, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, since 1962, Jamaica’s elites have carved out a future for themselves, as they apply “race-to-the-bottom” policies that continue to exclude and extracts their people and wealth. In effect, decolonization and “neoliberal globalization”蜉 has deepened Jamaica’s dependence on the new global elite of the Washington consensus.蜉 Jamaicans negotiated their independence without taking back their wealth. Their capital drained and transported as royalties overseas to the global elites while many of their people fall further into abject poverty.蜉 What was necessary was not just negotiated independence, but a redistribution of the wealth, a pre-accumulation of capital that eluded them for decades. This redistribution of wealth I believe could only come through force because the oppressors do not willingly share what they stole, but must be taken by the oppressed. Hence, the question for consideration is, how do Fanon’s ideas apply to the de/re/colonization and neoliberal globalization experience of Jamaica in comparison to Barbados for example? My own observations are oriented by own interest in the political economy of decolonisation and neoliberal globalization. 蜉

The British granted Jamaican’s independence on Britain’s terms, and did not take it by violence or force - as the culmination of a militant, popular, anti-colonial mobilization. Hence, it was not independence at all but a myth, created jointly by the colonial powers and the middle-class ‘nationalist’ leaders, the nouveuax rich.蜉 The British sought to maintain the essence of the colonial status quo, while the nationalists merely wished to substitute their formal authority for that of the colonial rulers, with all the trappings and perquisites of office that that brings. This was to cripple the collective capacity of the Jamaican people to forge a new society in the postcolonial era. 

Mainstream political leaders were indisputably Anglophile in their personal, political, and philosophical orientations. They lustily sang ‘God Save the King’ at political meetings and believed in the inherent superiority of Westminster institutions. To be free independent men was limited to a desire to take their rightful places as equal members of the British Empire, and not equal members of the world. Influenced by this colonized-colonists mold, they had no confidence in the innate capacities of the mass of the Jamaican people. Nevertheless, the PNP’s Marxist Left was itself shackled by the value-system of the brown middle class.蜉 Its members, distrusting their own abilities to mobilize the masses, sought to manipulate the Anglo-Saxon derived prestige of Norman Manley to their own ends. The intellectual elites derived his own influence partly from their social standing as a scion of white Jamaica. They suffered from the “Mother Country Complex” seeking to substitute one form of colonialism for another, one ruler for the next, the Soviet Union for Britain as Jamaica’s patron and benefactor. However, caring little for the English and initially indifferent to the debate over self-government, Bustamante was regarded as an authentic leader who devoted himself to bread and butter issues of immediate concern to the masses. As a political type, he was interested neither in negotiated independence (at least initially), nor in armed struggle; he was neither an Anglophile nor an Anglophobe, and certainly not a Russophile. 

JAMAICA VERSUS BARBADOS: ECONOMIC POLICY AND CHANGE

As we ponder these things, it might be useful to take a look at some of the conclusions drawn in a recent working paper published by the Brookings Institute in January 2009 titled Institutions versus Policies: A Tale of Two Islands by Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller. This paper examines the divergent macroeconomic paths that have been taken by Jamaica and Barbados since independence. It posits that while both countries started in 1960 from a similar colonial heritage - including property rights and legal institutions - and a similar small-island economic base, they experienced "starkly different growth trajectories in the aftermath of independence. From 1960 to 2002, Barbados' gross domestic product, per capita grew roughly three times as fast as Jamaica's. Consequently, the income gap between Barbados and Jamaica is now almost five times larger than at the time of independence."

One striking feature highlighted in the report is the sharp decline in the standard of living for Jamaicans after 1972. Though both countries were impacted by the first oil shock in 1973, which precipitated a global economic slowdown, Henry and Miller point out that Jamaica's growth slowed much more dramatically than that of Barbados. "While Jamaica's economy contracted at a rate of 2.3 percent per year from 1972 to 1987, Barbados, whose economy has a similar structure and was subject to the same external shocks, grew by 1.2 percent per year," the report said. "In other words, for a 15-year period, income per head in Barbados grew by 3.5 percentage points faster than it did in Jamaica. "As such, the per capita income gap between the two countries moved from real per capita GDP in 1960 of US$3,395 in Barbados, compared to US$2,208 in Jamaica - that is, an income gap of US$1,187 - to a situation in 2002 where the Barbados real per capita GDP stood at US$8,434, versus US$3,165 in Jamaica - an income gap of US$5,269. In essence, the income gap between the two countries now exceeds the overall level of Jamaica's per capita GDP. In analyzing the factors that might account for the variation in the growth trajectory of the two economies, the authors posit, countries have no control over their geographic location, colonial heritage, or legal origin, but they do have agency over the policies that they implement. Of particular importance for small, open economies (that is, most countries in the world), is the response of policy to macroeconomic shocks such as a fall in the terms of trade. Pedestrian as it may seem to say, changes in policy, even those that do not have a permanent effect on growth rates of GDP per capita, can have a significant impact on a country's standard of living within a single generation. 

In 2012 the GOJ is again faced, with some of the tough decisions that Barbados had to make back in 1993 when the International Monetary Fund recommended that they devalue their currency in order to stimulate production and return the economy to full employment. Barbados resisted this and came up with its own solution. Under the 'Wage and Price Protocol', workers and unions assented to "a one-time cut in real wages of about nine per cent and agreed to keep their demands for future pay rises in line with increases in productivity. Firms promised to moderate their price increases, the government maintained the parity of the currency, and all parties agreed to the creation of a national productivity board to provide better data on which to base future negotiations. The protocol came with a steep cost for all parties, and was even fought in the courts. However, the actions led to overall monetary restraint, fiscal discipline, wage cuts which helped to restore competitiveness and openness to trade. And, and as Henry and Miller wrote, this "had the side effect of enabling the monetary authority to maintain the exchange-rate parity without losing external competitiveness. In contrast, Jamaica's policies were never consistent with maintaining commitment to any parity the government might have wanted to adopt.

‘INDEPENDENCE’ AND ‘GLOBALIZATION’: MYTH AND COUNTER-MYTH

Barbados, like Jamaica during the 1960s, was the scene of social strivings surrounding the Black Power Movement and radicalism in general. The Rodney riots in Jamaica in 1968, propelled by the refusal of re-entry to Walter Rodney, sparked some measure of social protests against the JLP government, and were concentrated around (though not limited to) the urban areas of Kingston where most of Rodney’s influence had extended among the urban poor. As more of a pre-emptive strike, the government of Barbados made a deliberate attempt to suppress the black radicalism spreading across the Caribbean in the 1960s and 70s with the passage of the Public Order Act. Passed in 1970, it was expressly introduced to prohibit and curtail individuals from participating in any serious discussions about race. It is important to note that in both Barbados and Jamaica during the 1960s, the source of social protests was the politicization of race in such a way that the “black” freedom won by formal independence from Britain did not mean the freedom to transform the socio-political and racial landscape of these countries. 

In Singapore and Hong Kong the social protests also took on racial features. However, in many ways the racially induced protests were much more extreme than they were in Jamaica or Barbados. Although Hong Kong had not gained independence in the 1960s, it manifested some of the strivings of a new nation-state. During the mid-1980s, Hong Kong saw several riots, much worker unrest and political. Much of the protest and social ferment in Jamaica had primarily domestic causes. Yet, the political and economic outlook of none of the comparators today is as weak as Jamaica’s. It is possible to conclude, therefore, that Jamaica’s social unrest, though serious at times, had never been as destabilizing as that in many other countries. However, Jamaica’s economic situation has not benefited from these “milder” episodes of social ferment. This is not to say that this alone accounts for Jamaica’s socio-economic situations. The significant difference between Hong Kong/Singapore and Jamaica was that the politico-racial nature of social protests did not have overtly economic underpinnings, as in Jamaica and many other countries in the developing world. Moreover, even with the high level of protest in both Singapore and Hong Kong, the socio-political and economic contexts there were manifestly different from those that came to characterize the developing world in the 1970s and 80s.

Notwithstanding this, events since 1975 certainly appear to justify Fanon’s position that Jamaica’s independence was ‘mythical’, in the sense of being more formal/constitutional than substantive. (Whether it was deliberately shambolic is another matter, as I argue below).蜉 Ironically, in retrospect the years 1972 - 1975 may have marked a high point in the degree of effective sovereignty achieved in postcolonial Jamaica. The Bauxite Levy had just been imposed, over the opposition of the powerful aluminium companies. Michael Manley’s PNP Government had defied the United States by supporting the Cuban involvement in Angola to resist the invasion from the forces of apartheid, had instituted a number of reforms to enlarge local control over the economy, and was campaigning strongly for a New International Economic Order.蜉

By 1977 the constraints arising out of Jamaica’s dependence on the global economy—and especially on the goodwill of the United States—had begun to reassert themselves. Collapse of tourism, cutbacks in bauxite production, and capital flight, provoked a grave economic crisis and forced the government into the first of a series of humiliating agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The JLP election victory of 1980 confirmed the restoration of the conservative policies both domestic and foreign relations. The conditionalities imposed through loans from the IMF, and by World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank structural adjustment programmes, resulted in a steady erosion of economic sovereignty through the late 1970s to the mid-1990s.蜉 At one time, budgetary supervision exercised by these agencies may have been as strong, if not stronger, as that exercised by the British Colonial Office in the twilight of colonial rule. By the 1990s, the fall of the Soviet Union, the establishment of the World Trade Organization and the globalization of financial ushered in a new world economic order under the rule of the O.E.C.D. and especially the United States. Under the mantra of neo-globalization, the relevance of the principle of national economic independence is either questioned or dismissed outright, and the idea of independence itself is held by many to be a myth.蜉 Other writers have argued the conclusion is not only premature but also ideologically loaded.蜉

NATIONAL LIBERATION AND POSTCOLONIAL RECONSTRUCTION: THE FATE OF FANONISM

Yet certain questions arise as to the implications of the Fanonist thesis in the postcolonial world generally and in Jamaica in particular. It is not clear, for example, that the comparative experience of postcolonial countries since 1975 provides support for the thesis that liberation secured by violent struggle creates the conditions for ‘true’—or at least ‘truer’—independence, and for the construction of a more viable post-colonial society, than that which is secured by non-violent means.蜉 Consider for example the tragic case of Algeria, the model for Fanon’s work, which by the 1990s was afflicted by a bloody civil war that claimed tens of thousands of lives. Civil wars also afflicted Guinea-Bissau and Angola some two decades after the triumph of the armed liberation struggle. The experience of these countries show that, while revolutionary warfare may succeed in expelling the colonialists, it may become the prelude to prolonged and violent contention for power domestically, in the context of fragile state institutions. Other cases suggest that the distinction between armed struggle and negotiation as routes to independence is not at clear-cut as depicted by the Fanonist model. In Zimbabwe and South Africa the two strategies went hand-in-hand, or rather, were used in stages where the former became the means of forcing the colonialists to the negotiating table. Further, how does the Fanonist model handle the case of India, where Gandhi’s campaign of non-violent civil disobedience was the crucial weapon used in the struggle against British imperialism? Can we be sure that a resort to a war of national liberation on the part of the Indian nationalists (a) would have been consistent with the cultural traditions of Hindu India, or (b) would have prevented, rather than exacerbated, the subsequent fragmentation of the country along religious lines?

Another question dramatised by the experiences of Zimbabwe and South Africa, is the following: once the war is over, what happens with the warriors, and with the arms and ammunition they have accumulated? Institutionalizing and regularizing the revolutionary army presents difficulties when there are many other demands on fiscal resources, and employment opportunities in the civilian economy are limited. Yesterday’s heroic freedom fighters can all too easily become today’s bandits. This is a problem that the Fanonist thesis apparently failed to anticipate. The cases of Mozambique and Vietnam also suggest that the problems of winning a revolutionary war can pale into insignificance by comparison with those of rebuilding the infrastructure destroyed by the imperialists. There are also the difficulties of addressing the profound social and economic dislocation that a protracted revolutionary war inevitably generates. Hence there seems to be no unambiguous evidence that an experience of prior armed struggle necessarily provides an advantage in postcolonial reconstruction and development.

Let us also consider the experience of other countries that have achieved independence practically as a ‘gift’. Here the record is also mixed. In the Caribbean, some, like Barbados and the O.E.C.S. countries, have fared reasonably well, others, like Jamaica and Guyana, not so well at all. Similar observations could be made about the fate of ‘gift-independent’ states in Africa and Asia—for example; Singapore and Malaysia have progressed rapidly in economic terms for most of the postcolonial period, whereas most of sub-Saharan Africa has encountered severe economic and political problems.

In short, the historical record shows no simple correspondence between the means by which formal political independence is achieved, and the subsequent success of states in postcolonial reconstruction. Indeed, a review of the Fanonist thesis might lead to the conclusion that its greatest value lies in its analysis of the ‘psychology of liberation’ at the personal, individual, and hence micro-political levels. Problems arise when its theory of the psychologically liberating effects of armed struggle at the individual level is used as the basis for a theory of the preconditions of successful postcolonial reconstruction at the macro-social and macro-political levels. Fanon himself appears to have fallen into this trap: he directed his greatest anger and sarcasm at the neo-colonial Ivory Coast and its collaborationist Francophile leader Houphouet-Boigny, which were presented as the polar opposites of revolutionary Algeria and the leaders of its liberation struggle.蜉 Hence, the anti-colonial political leaders of Jamaica differs with that of the leaders of the anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia who, refused to compromise the struggle for independence by supporting a ‘Mother Country’ which had been viciously exploiting them. However, we also need to know whether this position was consistently maintained throughout the entire duration of the war, or developed with the changing fortunes of the war in the European, African and Asian centres. We also need a consideration of whether the concrete possibilities for anti-colonial struggle would have been the same Jamaica, a small island of just over 1 million people at the time, as they would have been for countries on the African and Asian land masses with tens and hundreds of millions of people. 

In addition, it is worthwhile to conclude with a discussion on the efficacy of violence vis-à-vis violence in light of our examination of Fanon to Caribbean struggle for independence. The question is, “is ‘violence’ more effective than non-violence in creating social change? We have discussed this question in an appendix attached to this brief paper. We engaged the topic considering the Global Justice Movement and actions around the world to mitigate neo-liberal strategy to impose conditions on countries like Jamaica. We concluded that Peoples have used violence and non-violence with certain degree of success. By success, we mean disrupting the routine, “smashing the old order to smithereens”蜉. I am talking about something new, fresh that truly celebrates freedoms and liberties; a change of history and culture, where the last shall be first. It is a change that affects the day-to-day lives of the colonized, the globalized oppressed man. I am here advocating a redistribution of resources and wealth. When America was desegregated and blacks were elevated to a relative place of privilege, it was a mere equality with the poor whites and a small opening for some blacks to realize marginal increases in their positions, but their lot remains the same. Clarke describes this change as superficial; you see Clarke like tresca, the Italian anarchist, understood that the changes necessary to improve the daily lives of the working class were far removed. The kind of change that was required was a social and economic revolution that involved the redistribution of wealth; unless there is some pre-accumulation of wealth then the freedom accorded to blacks did not do much to liberate their poor wretched state. They were freer, but in actual fact they were still divorced from any rightful claims to their wealth which necessitated a meaningful change. They got civil rights but not economic rights. We may conclude the same d be said of so-called third world states (countries in the Global South) that were fooled into negotiating their independence from their colonial oppressors. They had envisioned a colony that guaranteed their freedom as true men, not “mimic” man – when “decolonization had a dream of a third world of free post-colonial nation firmly on its horizon. However, hope met despair when the freedom negotiated on the terms of the neo-liberals propped up the negotiators (new local elites) over their fellow citizens) who continue to follow the tactics of “Britton Woods. Hence, Frantz Fanon may have been right to advocate for violence as an effective strategy for change. Fanon, Clarke, Gilroy, Trotsky, Sartre et al well-meaning socialists and anti-colonialists and anti-globalists valorizes violence as an effective alternative to non-violence to create real change. The fact is that the history of real change is the history of violence: The French and English Peasant Revolt, which sought the collapse of feudalism/serfdom and monarchical power over the masses. The conclusion therefore is that an effective anti-systemic requires consistent anti-systemic politics. The most lucrative and resistant alternative to capitalistic oppression is arguably socialism because socialism understands the systemic institutional power and represents a vehicle of power. Socialism is based on human solidarity that involves the whole of society to progressively satisfy social need.

REFERENCE

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Global Order: Doctrine and Reality[url]

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Fanon, Frantz (1965b) The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press

Fanon, Frantz (1967a) Black Skin: White Masks. New York: Grove Press

Fanon, Frantz (1967b) Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press.

Hirst, Paul and Grahame Thompson (1996) Globalization in Question. Cambridge: Polity Press

Manley, Norman (1942) “A Better Jamaica”, The Welfare Reporter. (March). Reprinted in 

Norman Girvan (ed.), Working Together for Development: Selected Papers by D.T.M. Girvan on Cooperatives and Community Development, 1938- 1968., 237-238. Kingston: Institute of Jamaica Publications, 1994.

Power, Grant (1997). Globalization and its Discontents”, Development, 40, 2; 75-80