Caribbean Advocates of “Republics” Are Elitist and Disrespectful
The elitism and disrespect directed toward ordinary Caribbean people must be brought to an end. The Caribbean states and ruling classes need to experience a big payback — revenge — for even raising the idea of a republic in public life. Let us start the Clash. In the words of Skillibeng:“Shopkeeper, run di music!”
Whether Caribbean governments have been republics for many years or toy with turning toward this status now even as they maintain a parliamentary regime (elite representative government) already, it is time the region’s rulers are thrashed in a debate about the deep content of democracy (majority rule) that they wish to run away.
Start the Clash: Democracy Versus Republic
Democracy has two contradictory meanings today. Some use it to dress up the degenerate idea of a republic (minority rule above society through periodic elections). The other meaning of democracy is direct majority rule through popular assemblies and councils of ordinary people. This type of democracy has appeared in every historical popular revolution including in the French, Haitian, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Hungarian, and Cuban Revolutions.
The establishment of a republic, even if it’s called “a people’s republic” is a counter-revolution against popular and direct self-government. Whether we have friends in America, Russia, or China, we have to recognize and not model ourselves on a republic.
When those gathering around the community well, at rural storefronts, at rum shops, cricket and football matches, calypso and reggae concerts, and church revivals finally get the news what Caribbean politicians have been saying about wishing to be a republic there will be a coming explosion.
And such is delayed, where Caribbean educators have failed to clarify the distinctions that leave the common people disempowered. But that is to be expected which is why we talk about the process of arriving on our own authority. We must educate ourselves.
A Republic Fears the Democratic Majority in Caribbean and World History
A republic is a form of government that openly rejects majority rule. It is based on the idea that everyday people are culturally unfit to govern. In contrast, Caribbean politicians have been presenting the move toward a republic as an expression of “self-determination” and “anti-colonialism.” It is trickery. It openly wishes to deny the Caribbean masses direct self-government. It pretends that treating toilers like a colonial trustee is a grand measure of post-colonial freedom. The preachers of “republic” tell the Caribbean masses to their face that they are culturally unfit to govern.
Barbados’s Mia Mottley made the move a short time ago and shot off fireworks before taking pictures and having wine and cheese with every imperialist politician who could be found and squeezed in the frame. Antigua Gaston Browne, when not busy trying to grab Barbuda’s land, reminds he may get into the act. Jamaica’s Andrew Holness suggests he may be next to declare something grand like this. Comrade Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines likes to shake the rattle of this and other toys — after all communism and all-inclusive luxury hotels are his playpen. And yet Haiti became a republic in 1804 — and some ignoramuses think it is still the highest stage of liberation and independence politics today. Both a few years after official independence, Guyana in 1970 and Trinidad and Tobago in 1976 made the move.
When has a Republic in Caribbean or World History Broken the World System?
What Caribbean country has broken the world system with a move to a republic? In the last two to three years Caribbean statesmen have been highly disrespectful. They have openly been elitist and been degrading ordinary people in the name of ushering in the fraud of a new society where there are no tears or inconvenience for them.
And like their top-down reparations campaign, notably with tepid rhetoric and without a fight much less a whimper, these pretenders have been agents of the police state, private property, and empire. But they keep talking republic.
So-Called Caribbean Thought Leaders: Afraid of Everyday People
Remarkably, the region has distinguished experts on “Caribbean Thought,” and “Caribbean Philosophy” in a region that has not stood up to these advocates of a republic. No journal or newspaper has posed “democracy versus republic.” Many like to publish books — creolizing Hegel, Rousseau, even Rosa Luxemburg. Why no creolizing of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke? Far more than we realize, it is already how Caribbean government and politics function.
First of all, the idea of creolizing anything doesn’t mean make it multi-cultural and certainly not anti-colonial. It means in practical Caribbean politics, the manipulation of plural identities as propertied elitism! Creole is the identity of the Latin American and Caribbean elite.
Further, the truth is the keepers of “Caribbean Thought” already are afraid of the Caribbean masses and never place them at the center of a self-governing vision.
Who’s Nasty, Brutish with a Slave Mentality & Calls this Liberty?
Hobbes thought human nature was nasty, brutish, and short — he didn’t say the character of the aristocracy was that. He meant the masses scared him. Locke thought slavery was a bad thing — for aspiring rulers to experience.
Both Hobbes and Locke thought the state was something like the devil except it had one practical use: policing the multitudes and protecting private property. So, we see Caribbean political thought among the rulers has already creolized Hobbes and Locke. Both Hobbes and Locke were “republicans” in the classical sense.
In contrast, Rosa Luxemburg at her best said the pretense to revolution is the last refuge of the bourgeoisie. And no Caribbean scholar with professional credentials in the region has clarified that the Caribbean governments are always trying to sustain a false pretense to social change in defense of aspiring Caribbean rulers and at the expense of Caribbean toilers.
And to the Caribbean Left, Don’t Get Left: Discard the Republic
In fact, no public or professional intellectual in the Caribbean or the Caribbean Diaspora discusses the Caribbean governments pejoratively as oppressive rulers at all — a few might use “ism” words, but none name names. We intermittently name names but the list of purveyors of degradation is too long. Therefore, we say a Caribbean federation from below requires discarding ALL the states and ruling elites of the region. We want no scandalous or vapid politician or party to feel left out. Including the “nothing left” and the “don’t get left.”
The call for a republic, the lack of insistence on direct democracy and workers self-management, is evidence that professionals and experts need to be abolished as the embodiment of culture and government. Clearly, those who are the hierarchical keepers of the arts, humanities, and social sciences, the cultural apparatus of society are not improving ethics and morals in the world.
Further, the idea that the Caribbean people need specialists and experts is a farce when we consider there is no gathering to make things plain. The only thing the credentialed are specialists in is keeping their positions with higher wages in exchange for keeping us down.
The Caribbean discussion about Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua & Barbuda, or St Vincent and the Grenadines becoming a republic, as a gesture toward independence after 40–60 years with this de facto status, is a type of plot to disempower and contain Caribbean commoners.
From Plato’s Republic to the French Revolution
Caribbean people talk about Western political thought not as a result that we are not interested in Africa, India, the Middle East, and China, or alternatively we just wish to challenge racism and empire. We look at Western political thought as a result that many of the political ideals or exploitative formations we are degraded under comes from Europe.
Most who have a lot of bad things to say about Europe have a poverty of imagination as to how to re-arrange society except to have people of color leading police states and peripheral national capitalism. Those talking “republic” have certain things in mind. Are they particularly “white” things that can only come from a colonial mentality? Actually, these ideas have been recognized for better and for worse as lurking behind the anti-colonial mentality. For years Caribbean activists have denounced the Westminster model of government. It is clear nobody can explain what this means. It means elite representative government through a parliament. And from a historical development point of view, this means the nation evolves not through popular rebellion, but the evolution of its laws as made by the upper class who take part in official society. The post-colonial critique of racism does nothing to overcome this model of politics and government.
Talking About Democracy Stimulates the Caribbean Multitudes
Plato wrote The Republic (c. 375 bce) in classical Athens in response to a perceived threat to the ancient rulers. Democracy was becoming too direct among those with citizenship rights. Even the spirit of democracy (majority rule) gave courage to the comportment of those of lower status who threatened to rise up. Remember Caribbean toilers, that’s why the Caribbean rulers don’t want to have a deep talk about democracy. The part that has no part might get the idea that they could be central to running society.
A republic then was to be a government of minority rule through periodic elections. Run by specialists, experts, and philosopher-kings. Periodically appeals would be made to the common people by suggesting how beautiful, creative and self-reliant they were. This in fact was a policy of containment by authoritarian rulers. As we know populist Caribbean rulers like to compliment the common people’s wisdom. They just will not arrange society based on Caribbean toilers’ directly governing society.
A Politics of Liberation Must Go Beyond Quarrels Among Elites
In the Puritan Revolution (or English Civil War of the 1640s), a social conflict emerged where the King proposed to tell parliament (elite representative government) that they could only gather when he told them it was alright. This suggests a republic might be liberating or threatening. In fact, it was a quarrel among the hierarchical powers that kept commoners on the outside. At a certain point Caribbean everyday observers of party and parliamentary politics have to make a leap and stop making debates among elites the center of the struggle for power. Power in fact must be taken away from the minority who wishes to rule above society. In this way democracy is majority rule.
The King during the English Civil War also insisted that without checks and balances a standing army should be available to him to start any wars he wished on command. Rebellion against the King was led by what was called the New Model Army. Debates were had within this army and among a few radical thinkers (most of the discussion happened in the name of God and religion) as to what terms to stand up to the King. Imagine if in the Caribbean today, ordinary people started to build an army that stood outside the authority of the abusive government?
Can the Motley Crew Form Its Own Army for Democracy?
Unfortunately, the political debate within the English Civil War happened primarily among the emerging middle classes not so much the common people. When the common people became involved, and these were surely ancestors of contemporary toilers, it was quite a motley crew that placed Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous in conversation under various banners including “No Government but God” but also religious views that anticipated socialism, communism, and anarchism.
The monarchy tried to misbehave and tell the elite representative government what to do. The masses began by defending parliament and then for a time wished to discard elitist politics altogether. Some of the most radical thinkers saw themselves as “Levellers.” At their best they wished to level hierarchy to the ground — establish social equality by knocking it down. The demise of this movement re-established English identity as an elitist claim of God’s chosen people. It was a nationalism that maintained a hierarchy of social classes. Now a proper telling of this “English” history would certainly be an archive of ideas that could tear down colonial and post-colonial hierarchies.
Eventually, the Mia Mottleys of the world will come face-to-face with the Motley Crews of the Caribbean. And they will tremble and fall… Wait a minute. Are we saying a rag-tag speckled mob of scrunters will call for Auntie Mia’s head? We are saying when the clash comes, the Caribbean rulers in their “republic” talk have already disclosed how they see the masses of the region. They haven’t built the RSS (the Regional Security System) army based in Barbados to crush us as a result they see Caribbean commoners as distinguished vessels of reason and creativity.
We Don’t like White Racism. But Do We like Liberty and Property Only for Ourselves?
Many realize the American Revolution (1776–1785) was a revolt of local capitalists who were slave masters and who began genocide against Native Americans. Still the early Americans had nationalist aspirations against the monarchy of the British empire. Some of the more democratic and republican Christian ideas expressed in England carried over to the American Revolution. The American Revolution made a big show of founding a republic. Despite disputes among them about taxes and how centralized their government should be they started an empire of liberty. Does not the Caribbean mimic much of the American tradition today? Don’t Caribbean opportunists wish to fight for liberty and equality to get more capitalism for themselves? The American Revolution was distinguished by popular committees and militias. The question is what use would a Caribbean revolution put these?
During the French Revolution (1789–1795), a big show was made about the overthrow of monarchy, feudal nobility, and the Church (a super-power at that time). Mind you advocates of republic promotes this not we. They revolted against elites who inherited their status and property through family and blood lines. Don’t some Caribbean people, not just imperialists, inherit property in this way?
Many world history textbooks falsify that the French Revolution was led by the Jacobins, a party that desired to establish the power of a republic or elite representative government through elections to parliament. A few contradictions are worthy of note.
The Problem with the Critique of Privilege (It Has a Hidden Elitism)
The problem with the critique of privilege is it wants exactly what other forces of hierarchy and domination want for themselves. The critique of privilege and disparities has no independent political values whatsoever. That’s why such ideas in the contemporary era have been appropriated by managerial regimes.
The critics of feudalism during the French Revolution opposed the “privileges” of the nobility not property relations. In fact, the French Revolution expressed itself as a “bourgeois revolution.” It was a grab for elitist power by the secular propertied who pursued capitalism. The truth is like in Ancient Greece, ordinary people scared those with bourgeois aspirations, and the sans-culottes not the Jacobins, were the force of the direct democracy in the French Revolution that were the social motion from below.
To be clear, the sans-culottes, or artisan craftsmen, common people, toilers, and unemployed, were the driving force of the revolution. The establishment of a parliamentary republic was actually a counter-revolution. Have Caribbean people every stopped to think that the establishment of a republic then or now was a counter-revolution?
CLR James, who wrote both about Classical Athens as a model for the Caribbean, and the Haitian Revolution in conversation with the French Revolution, understood that a republic was a form of degradation. Trinidad & Tobago became a republic in 1976, but it was in 1966 that Eric Williams first tried to deceive the Caribbean with talk like Barbados, Jamaica, and Antigua & Barbuda today.
Revolutionary Russia, China and Cuba: Republics?
Many in the Caribbean look to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Communist China, and Castro’s Cuba as models of national development. Russia used to be called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). All over the world it is difficult to find, except among individuals and small groups, people who know what is a “soviet.” The Soviets were originally workers, peasants and soldiers’ councils, committees, and militias that in 1905 but also from 1917–1921 formed their own government.
There were similar forms in urban China in 1925–1927 before the myth of a peasant revolution was invented by Maoist China which termed itself a “people’s republic.” Similar popular forms in the cultural revolution, independent of Mao’s state, appeared in 1966–1971. The Cuban Revolution, especially during the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis were distinguished by committees in defense of the revolution. Similar committees were present in Havana before Castro’s guerillas showed up. This is not the place to discuss with the Caribbean comparative historical revolutions. Instead, it is to remind us that there are no soviet or people’s republics. Popular committees are not for spying and reporting to the state. They are popular democratic forms that if they do not stay independent and are defeated by the state, this becomes the basis of a republic being declared. A minority who rules above society. And no insurgent social motion EVER accepted a republic being declared above society.
Do Caribbean people really understand the meaning of a republic?
Monarchy or Republic? When the Trinidad Guardian place this question to CLR James in 1966, he replied in this fashion. What kind of nonsense is this? Do you really know what a monarchy and a republic are as forms of government in the Caribbean and the world? Why is this conversation being started by despicable and arrogant politicians except to fool commoners in the post-colonial era? Directly self-governing Caribbean toilers would never identify with a post-colonial republic. It is to identify with one’s own constitutional subordination.
Those who make a lot of noise about colonial mentalities in the Caribbean, who object to those who still identify in some way with the late Queen Elizabeth or King Charles, refuse to tell Caribbean toilers what non-hierarchical form of Caribbean politics and government they prefer. Why is that?
Most activists work for the government (some are paid or work for free) and are not opposed to elitist forms of government today. A coming Caribbean Revolution will have to defy and stand up to these people.
So, if you are “activist” inclined but look around and say this crop of activists I see in many ways are despicable — we are in total agreement. And these individuals or small groups will be insignificant once a new social layer rises and moves. We cannot inadvertently get tangled up with their false ideas.
Discard the British Monarchy, the Creolized Republic, and the Activists who work for the Hierarchical Government
When we see Caribbean post-colonial states and rulers making a move toward a republic 40–60 years after official independence, this is a type of defensive radicalism that reveal the insecure condition of the contemporary tottering regimes. They are not leading any type of revolt against the US, UK, the European Union, or Canada. Their militaries and cultural apparatus are substantially funded by them. It is a mere decoration on their barbaric ways they fear will be exposed.
Jamaica, Barbados, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda are already parliamentary governments under a constitutional monarchy — this simply means they declared independence while still accepting the royal family symbolically.
In Britain, the monarchy doesn’t govern. A Caribbean rebellion against monarchy today will not turn the Caribbean world upside down. What it does is renew and stirs the anger against white racism in defense of the Black political class. Clash does not share a worldview, even partially, with any government in the region. We will not partner with or defend this class. Some are compensated off cultural budgets to offer “criticism” of this class and their policies. Any alert person can see what is happening in Caribbean forums today.
While it is true the British royal family still has astounding private wealth from the time when the sun never set on their empire and where they were central to slave trading in the Atlantic World, they are merely an impotent symbol. They name some people “dames” or “knights” for their apparent service to the British empire, or that benign term Commonwealth.
What is a Commonwealth that Doesn’t Know How to Share?
The only way the Commonwealth (or British commonwealth) shares is the rulers of Britain circulate funds and training to prop up the legitimacy of degenerate Caribbean governments. In exchange they permit them to pretend they are rebelling against them.
We agree it is silly to see any empire as a “commonwealth,” especially with the highest stage of seeing clearly not transcending charity. The trouble is not enough of us see Caribbean nations, a hierarchy of social classes, as silly for its pretense to taking part in a commonwealth. They can take part in the commonwealth with or without the British monarchy as symbol. This is how we know it is a scripted act between the British and Caribbean rulers.
Meanwhile national development talk is actually common pursuit of wealth under unequal power and property relations. It sounds like jungle law to us. When the lion eats the lamb is that an expression of commonwealth or development? Not only do the Caribbean statesmen say “Yes,” this is their attitude toward our labor.
Sometimes the British monarchy is said to be a symbolic head of state of Caribbean countries. Some Caribbean governments appeal to the British Privy Council as the final court (while others appeal to the Caribbean Court of Justice). This creates a false debate. Do we want Caribbean people to transition from chief justices who administer propertied law in Britain to those who do so in the Caribbean? Or do we wish to begin to make and live by our own laws discarding the experts who specialize in containing our power?
The Commonwealth realms are sovereign states as any other not fighting the empire of capital. Caribbean rulers’ objection to symbolic monarchy means nothing — they are all equally “labour parties” hostile to labour as in Britain and “democratic parties” hostile to democracy in the USA.
The Caribbean Objects to Historical Slavery as Black Police Knock Them on the Head Today
Just as in the USA where one can be proud to be an American where at least one knows “freedom” as you are homeless and sleep under a bridge, in the Caribbean you can object to the insults of slavery and empire while you get knocked across the head by the Black led police state.
Observers of Caribbean politics should ask themselves how does a move to a republic strike a blow against empire and bring direct democracy and workers self-management closer?
Wasn’t the hightide of Caribbean post-colonial political criticism 1968–1983? We realize more than two generations who have never “decolonized” anything are quite fond of this and similar vocabulary. Why wasn’t the identification with the “crown” — many Caribbean states still call public or state property “crown lands” or “queen’s lands” discarded in more militant times? Perhaps because the cultural revolution under the rubric of “Black Power” was overstated and few dialogued with ordinary people about new terms of power and direct self-government.
We are aware that there is a heritage of those who did stir those conversations. Where we agree and disagree with our ancestors in political life, we cultivate and renew the conversation. Both with respect but also without apology.
Don’t Fall for Reclamation of the Aspiring Black or Indian Political Class
Are the contemporary Caribbean parliaments of dunces the most militant pretenders the region has ever known? Far from it. Why then try to make this symbolic and far from substantial move toward a republic?
This is a result that there is a vacuum of independent political thought in the Caribbean region. And certainly, the mumbles, reluctant smiles, and pessimistic stances, of the employed experts who “teach” us should be ashamed of themselves. Crucially, they can be ashamed or not ashamed. But it is a mistake to desire to reclaim them as a social class; divide them as patriotic or selfish in relation to national liberation. That was a mistake of the previous generation. As a social class, aspiring rulers who think they are heroic capital accumulators have no role to play in arranging the new Caribbean society. That is “republican” thinking. Creolized Hobbes and Locke masquerading as Black and anti-colonial revolution. It is not that we are unaware of those who play around with Marxism in the Caribbean. However, a Marxism that advises Caribbean rulers on national development thinks no differently about labor than Hobbes and Locke in practice. Caribbean labor is a national resource to aspiring capital accumulators: we are like their raw materials to churn out their profits.
For decades the Caribbean popular will has not been cultivated. And if the existing governments are being advised by such “activist” people, all are navigating through a decline of Caribbean civilization. “Non-alignment” means Caribbean rulers will meet, hat in hand, with feudal monarchs in Britain or Saudi Arabia (see the picture above), secular monarchs in China, Russia, or the two-party monarchy of the United States. This is how they show their independence while speaking of “republic.” The Caribbean elites will never rebel against any hierarchies that further divides us into castes and classes.
Caribbean civilization can handle a contemporary debate of democracy versus republic. Will it disturb the imperialists who like to spread “democracy” in the name of conquering the world? Alternatively, will it bother the arrogant who say since one imperialist doesn’t take democracy seriously none of us need to do so? Will it shakeup the keepers of the graveyard of fakers who like to talk “radical tradition” which they have transformed into farcical submission?
Bring this discussion to the street corner, around the community well, at rural store fronts, among market women, the barefoot, the fishers, among unemployed and in industrial workplaces. Organize your own political thought, as you would organize your own government. One anticipates the other.
Take ownership of the neighborhoods in Caribbean society where those with feudal and modern elitist titles, whether sir or doctor, fear to tread. Make sure the idea of a “republic” is widely known as an insult among Caribbean people. Start debates about the meaning of democracy. If you really know what a republic is and has been, the debate will not be lost against the politicians, professionals, and formally educated. But first organize your own gathering for the unavoidable clash.
Caribbean governments, with this republic rhetoric, have already declared war on the common people. They have swung repeatedly and missed. We have been exceedingly patient with their constant violence in words and deeds. As the final bell rings, the time has come to knock them out. Shopkeeper, run di music!
