CHOMSKY:

The Rodneyite Quarterly Journal
<http://guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com/societies_ellis.html>

March 30, 2000

A Note on The Importance of Radical Marxist Views for
Contemporary Caribbean Societies

By Clarence F. Ellis

Facing up to the failure of what he calls Communist Party-directed
socialism or what Noam Chomsky referred to as state socialism, Thomas E.
Weisskopf noted that social malformations in Russia and Eastern Europe
were worse than "most of us had previously been willing to admit."
(Weisskopf, 1992). The English speaking Caribbean societies accordingly
are now reluctant to embrace either Marxist philosophical goals or
socialist objectives especially as two of their members-Guyana and
Jamaica-fared badly with roughly hewn socialist experiments and also
because they are aware that their physical, social and intellectual
capital is still very undeveloped. This latter factor makes them, in
economic terms, very dependent on the metropolis.

The consequence has been an embrace of market forces as the basis for
development. Generally the embrace has been inspired by the association of
democracy and the market as the condition for releasing the energies of
the people and therefore for ensuring economic growth and development.
This association has been emphasized as the basis for prosperity in the
metropolitan countries and has emerged as the consensus that underpins the
policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that
provide assistance to the Caribbean countries.

The weakness in the democracy / market embrace has been first the
uncritical application of economic theory, even mainstream theory, to the
development efforts of the Caribbean countries and, second, the reluctance
to examine closely the nexus between political and economic relations as
they exist in the Caribbean

The point of departure here is the stress made by Noam Chomsky that the
major political issue of our time is the democratic control of industrial
society. (Chomsky, 1970) The subtext of that imperative is the need to
institute arrangements to ensure the democratic control of the corporate
sector which has become a behemoth that determines economic opportunities
and fashions social values.

Western industrial society portrays itself as democratic without assessing
the relative weaknesses of political power in relation to the growing
dominance of the economic systems of private power and private empires.
The dominance is associated with structural features that Chomsky
highlights.

The first is the authoritarian cast of mind that is induced in large parts
of society that accept, often uncritically, acts taken in the people's
name. While much of this acceptance is the result of the complexity of
modern decision making, modern education is inadequate to the task of
preparing people for participation in decision making. The second is the
fact that in practice, only a narrow range of decisions is subject to
democratic control. Excluded from democratic control are the institutions
of commerce, industry and finance. Decisions in relation to the operations
of those institutions are matters for the closed sessions of corporate
boards.

Perhaps most important is the third factor which is Chomsky's portrayal of
the power of corporate media to influence political decision making.
Radical critiques of authoritarianism and board room power are weeded out
by a culture that does not tolerate deviant reporting. Editorial board
rooms do not instruct what should be written. They just ignore material
that does not conform. An upcoming journalist quickly comes to realize
what will determine a successful career.

A similar process takes place in the discipline of economics. Mainstream
economics emphasizes neo classicism and constrains enquiry within the
domain of that paradigm. Dissenting economists are dismissed as
unscientific and woolly.

The influence of private power over political decision making is further
reinforced by financial control over political organizations. This is
evidenced in the contributions that corporations make to political parties
and in the constrained behaviour of governments to avoid offending
corporate interests. Corporations also supply personnel to the political
system who wield (because of the authoritarian cast of mind referred to
above) much more influence than their numbers.

In the 1980s, after the oil crisis had threatened the expectations of the
corporate sector, a fourth feature of the political and private power
relations surfaced. It became necessary to reduce the size of government,
asserting classical libertarian principles for freedom in an economic and
technological environment that no longer has the conditions for the
flourishing of classical libertarian ideals. The private economic system
is concentrating power into fewer and fewer firms. E-commerce which gives
the appearance of encouraging open competition is restricted to a
technological elite and prospers on a bubble of so far unrealized
expectations.

It is this reality, extended to the corporate domination of the
globalisation agenda, that threatens democracy in the Caribbean. Banana
production in the Caribbean is being replaced by production of bananas by
corporate giants in Central and South America. Technologies for the
survival of small farmers and other small producers are not developed. The
viability of sugar production in the Caribbean is intimately tied with the
preparedness to continue to subsidise European and American farmers. In
the meantime, traffic in, and production of, narcotics bastardise the
power relations by subverting both political and private systems of power
with shortened time horizons for achieving wealth.

It seems appropriate to revisit socialist goals despite the colossal
failure of state socialism in the 20th century. Weisskopf's presentation
is appealing and non-threatening to commonly held values.

He outlines the following goals:

1. Equity: egalitarian distribution of economic outcomes and
   opportunities.

2. Democracy: economic democracy that enables people to exercise control
   over their own economic fate.

3. Solidarity: promotion of solidarity among members of communities
   extending from the neighbourhood to the whole of society-encouraging
   people to develop the sense and reality of themselves as social rather
   than simply individual beings. (Weisskopf, ibid)

The critical factors here are the requirement to exercise control over our
economic future and the stress on community dimensions. The latter raises
the notion of the values of the cultures in the Caribbean which are
similar but not homogeneous. Jeremy Rifkin's inclusion of civil society in
the social framework is relevant here. (Rifkin, 1996). Also relevant are
the restoration of African and Native American belief systems.

Radical Marxists offer a method for achieving a synthesis between
Weisskopf's polar opposites of homo economicus and homo socialis, a
participatory community person. William Dugger and Howard Sherman outline
the approach in the following:

On the methodological level, critical Marxists do not agree with the
individualist methodology of neoclassical economics. Neither do they agree
with the collectivist methodology, used by Hegel to discuss the state as
if it were alive or by official Marxists to discuss a class as if it had a
will beyond its members. Critical Marxists use a moderate relational or
holistic view in which class relations are quite real but must be
supported by observations--not assumptions--about the individuals in those
classes. (Dugger and Sherman, 1994)

The search here is for rigour in methodology which is available in the
inspiration that Radical Marxists drew from classical liberals who were
concerned with the imposition of the state to interfere with the ability
of man to enquire and to create. Truly human action, they argued, is what
flows from inner impulse. Man should love labour for its own sake. In the
highest form of society, labour is the means of life and also the highest
want in life (Chomsky, 1970).

Willis Harman and John Horman have noted that "within.....a few centuries,
the focus of interest shifted from the inner world to the outer
world-(from inner impulse to outer impulse my paraphrasing). All but one
of the [seven deadly] sins, sloth, was transformed into a virtue. Greed,
avarice, envy, gluttony, luxury and pride were the driving forces of the
new economy." (Harman and Hormon, 1990, p.47 ). What the authors go on to
argue is that the world's problems are, in part, the result of the
successes of the Western industrial paradigm that thrived very blithely on
the "six" sins.

This paradigm is associated with the patriarchal society that is dominant
in the West. It was not always so. Before then agricultural societies were
more MOTHER centered-more egalitarian, more democratic and more peaceful.
Also they were more reliant on the psychological force of influence than
on the power of domineering institutions. This observation of history
points to the fact that the cultural factors cannot be omitted from the
analysis. Feminism is broadened into a wider matriarchal panorama.

Radical Marxists combine this attachment to the inner impulse with an
opposition to the organisation of production by the state. In
contradistinction to state owning socialists, they perceive liberation
from exploitation as the goal of the working class but it is a goal that
cannot be reached by a new directing class substituting itself for the
bourgeoisie.

The goal can be realised only when workers themselves form workers'
councils to organize their activities. (Chomsky, ibid) Radical Marxists
are very apprehensive of management by elites "however dripping with
soulfulness" those elites may be.

For the underdeveloped Caribbean countries, leads in this respect in the
industrial world are helpful. Developments in this respect have begun.
William Waters observes that:

"Democratic principles are being extended to workplace participation and
economic democracy. Economic democracy is worker ownership, a position
pushed mainly by European theorists. This requires considerable
restructuring of the economy-a task improbable but not impossible as
evidenced by the exciting social reconstruction in the Basque country of
Spain.........

Five principles may be drawn from this Mondragon experiment:

(a) Firms are structured for net job creation and local economic
    development, not for individual or company gain.

(b) Labour has priority over capital....The ranking of the four
    ingredients of a business firm,........capital, management, product
    and workers is reversed.

(c) Worker participation in production is collegial.  Each worker is a
    member of a cooperative team. It is more difficult (but not
    impossible) to apply this principle to privately owned firms than to
    co-operative ones such as those in Mondragon.....The key idea in the
    firm, as in the economy generally, is cooperation not competition.

(d) The firm enjoys an autonomy with regard to public owners. Both
    government and private corporations pursue aims in honest
    collaboration with each other.

(e) The firms' aims are subordinate to the demands of the common
    good...........

Illustrations of collegial participation and economic democracy range from
a typical large Japanese firm to the highly developed team control concept
used in the production of Saab automobiles in Sweden. Two American
examples, the Olga Company, Inc. Van Nuys, California, and the Rex works,
Inc. Milwaukee are cited. (Waters, 1988)

American firms continue to be successful with worker ownership
arrangements. The size of the American economy does not require any
restructuring to accomodate these experiments. The point to be made here
is that democracy in the sense of having the capability to affect one's
future is progressing gradually without any major revolution. Caribbean
economies must necessarily tread carefully in this direction, taking
advantage of worker participation in production whenever the possibility
exists. Radical Marxists who follow in the tradition of Classical
Liberalists consider that freedom and variety of experiences are the
preconditions for human self realization. Rosa Luxemburg argued that only
the active participation by the masses themselves in self government can
bring about their spiritual transformation from conditions which have been
degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule. The errors committed by a
liberated class are infinitely more fruitful than the infallibility of the
cleverest central committees, she argued.

The importance of Radical Marxism in the Rosa Luxemburg tradition is its
revolutionary vision which will inform the relations in the political
system to develop similar participatory arrangements. To the extent that
the views - incorporate the classical liberalist emphasis on inner
impulse, the "six deadly" sins are eschewed. This is crucial. To be an
anarchist, Bukharin once said, one must first be a socialist.

Similarly Radical Marxists must aim at bringing about changes in human
values and behaviour. If the influence of matriarchy causes the dominance
of patriarchy to give way to gender equity, the psychological value
structure changes and participation in companies and councils becomes less
destructive. As the intrinsic features of the diverse cultures in the
Caribbean are allowed to flower, bigotry will subside.

The quote on methodology by Dugger and Sherman reminds us that all this is
in embryo conceptually. We know too little. Hence we should explore these
ideas a lot more, assured of one assumption-we are all the same.

--

Clarence Ellis is an economist. He is a former Deputy Governor of Guyana's
Central Bank and Executive Director at the World Bank. He is currently an
Indepedent Consultant and frquent commentator on Guyanese and Caribbean
political and economic issues.


References

Chomsky, Noam, Government in the Future, Audio Forum Sound Seminars,
Jeffrey Norton Publishers, 1970

Dugger, William M. and Howard J. Sherman, "Comparison of Marxism and
Institutionalism" in Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. xxviii, No.1 March
1994. Reprinted in David L. Prychitko, Why Economists Disagree, State
University of New York Press, 1998.

Harmon, Willis and John Horman, Creative Work: The Constructive Role of
Business in a Transforming Society, Knowledge Systems Inc., Institute of
Noetic Sciences, 1990.

Waters, William R., "Social Economies: A Solidarist Perspective" in Review
of Social Economy, Vol 46 No. 2, Oct. 1988. Reprinted in David L.
Prychitko, Why Economists Disagree, State University of New York Press,
1998.

Weisskopf, Thomas E., "Toward a Socialism for the Future, in the Wake of
the Demise of the Socialism of the Past," in Review of Radical Political
Economics, Vol.24 No 3&4, Winter 1992. Reprinted in David L. Prychitko,
Why Economists Disagree, State University of New York Press, 1998.

Copyright (c) 2000 Guyana Caribbean Politics.


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