Caribbean Federation from Above or Below? CLR James Opposed CARICOM from the Beginning
CLR James, the Pan African and independent socialist, among other achievements of a life fighting racism, empire, and for a future popular self-directed socialist society on a world scale, was the most distinguished advocate of Caribbean federation in two specific historical moments.
He was the secretary and primary cultivator of the West Indian Federation of 1958–1961. It failed for two reasons. First, it didn’t take seriously economic integration of the whole region. Too much time was spent trying to compel aspiring Caribbean rulers above society to cooperate instead of mobilizing Caribbean commoners below society against them.
After the West Indian Federation Failed…
In the 1970s, when James was based in Washington DC, as an elder mentor of the Black Power and Black Studies movements, he advocated Caribbean federation very differently. He projected a Caribbean federation from below that condemned the Caribbean nation-states and its economic and cultural apparatus to irrelevancy as part of a social motion that began in the Caribbean Diaspora that is still little understood. If it was comprehended, it would be impossible to falsify the potential of Caribbean civilization today.
We must always keep in mind that CLR, like all activist-thinkers, cannot just enter political arenas as they please. No matter how revolutionary one’s perspective, one must position oneself to forge coalitions and pave the way for larger visions to grow in credibility among everyday people.
It is not best to build coalitions to bring the new society closer that include members or advisors of the government you are trying to discard. People with narrow visions of power do this; those who wish to control the politics and economics of their communities no matter the degrading and evasive form they actually take. First, we must place value on ourselves, or one cannot claim to sustain independent self-created political institutions.
Advocating Popular Assemblies as Foundation of Caribbean Federation
CLR is willing to facilitate dialogue with diverse sectors of the Caribbean community provided that if we suspend the pretense toward revolution, finally those associated with aspirations to power above society must admit their whole situation is an embarrassment. James while acknowledging empire creates circumstances for limited sovereignty of Caribbean peripheral nation-states, at his best he was not mobilizing their rulers.
Even during the first failed effort at West Indian Federation, he advocated popular assemblies so ordinary people could discuss the constitutional basis of their unified future. What was not advocated, and which must come, is that travel must be funded for ordinary Caribbean people to freely move throughout the region beginning with the unemployed. This way those of the yard and dungle are federating not the bourgeois administrators who chatter about the “poorer nations” to obscure their only concern is their own power. Discussion about federation among Caribbean toilers cannot be as isolated “Jamaicans,” “Trinidadians,” “Bajans” or “Vincentians.” Caribbean people, not their elites, wish to be together and must discuss face to face.
We must remember that CLR engaged a post-colonial Caribbean where those who claimed to be political leaders, and could chatter about anti-colonialism as well as anybody, in fact believed that the Caribbean even in its “independence” would have a limited sovereignty or no sovereignty at all.
Be mindful, this disposition above Caribbean society didn’t lead to a focus on organizing marginal toilers or the unemployed for insurgent and popular democratic activity at the post-colonial moment. However Caribbean statesmen are quite enchanting in how they can lead a discussion above society about “the meaning of independence” until those who are sober, or alert realize they have no concept, and really no desire, to pursue and make it a reality except by shouting all about “They are no better than we.”
CARICOM: Coalition of Elites Hijacking Caribbean Identity & Community
“The Caribbean community” (CARICOM), now fifty years old, is a euphemism for a coalition of peripheral states and ruling classes, and those administrators of servile lives who function in its bureaucracy and who believe they are technical specialists while overlording Caribbean society today. We must underline what CLR thought of CARICOM at its inception; for many wish to falsify CLR’s radical heritage as contributing in some way to federation of nation-states from above. CLR took steps to correct his mistakes. Now hustlers who never were fond of CLR’s actual federation vision, advocate something far short of his most limited viewpoint on the matter.
CARICOM is not a gathering of popular forces searching for identity, national or regional purpose. It is a formation of economists and cultural researchers who like to pretend they are opposed to empire. They never have disturbed anybody. Further, objecting to empire while doing nothing about it is the normal socialization of those brought up in post-colonies.
Just like Americans who are “proud” because “at least they know they are free” but sleep under a bridge; Caribbean people talk about the burdens of colonialism mirroring the mainstream media of their territories. These themes are apparent in Independence Day celebrations in Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados.
But have ordinary Caribbean people really broken their chains to rule? How has CARICOM facilitated this? What war of liberation or designing of a new society has CARICOM brought closer?
CARICOM Fears Everyday People Breaking Their Chains and Ruling
Accepting this socialization, this feigning and mystification are in fact requirements for the compensated privileges of regional travel CARICOM public servants live by. Their studies and reports on the fishers and farmers, bauxite miners, oilfield workers, teachers, and tourism sector hospitality workers, are meant to contain and suppress ordinary people for their aspiring Caribbean capitalist governments.
CARICOM has done everything to appropriate the legacy of CLR James, the most dynamic advocate of Caribbean federation in the twentieth century. The facts are he opposed the creation of CARICOM from the beginning. On the fiftieth anniversary of CARICOM, we should remember why CLR James held CARICOM in contempt and why it was not even partially consistent with James’s most radical democratic values.
CLR James Held CARICOM In Contempt: It was Nothing Like His Vision of Caribbean Unity and Federation from Below
It is not that CARICOM, a supposed well-meaning project, has declined over time. In fact, many of its advocates think it is stronger and more relevant than ever. CARICOM, to anyone with a substantial historical perspective, must be fingered at its origins as a counter-revolutionary project.
The Caribbean was a lot closer to unification and federation in 1973 when CARICOM was founded. Those with a welfare state of mind who chatter about national development don’t think so. This is because they have always maintained a eugenics outlook on the fitness for popular self-government of the Caribbean multitudes. We know Caribbean toilers migrated to obscure inlets — Rat Island off the coast of St. Lucia was one place — barely recognized on the map to plot Caribbean unity against the Black political class of the region.
There was a grassroots movement for Caribbean federation from below in the 1970s. It was so strong “progressive” governments like Michael Manley’s Jamaica and Forbes Burnham’s Guyana had to unite to block independent activists from across the region, whose common perspective was advocacy of a movement for popular assemblies, attending the 6th Pan African Congress in Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania.
Tell the Truth: “Progressive” Governments Oppose Caribbean Federation
CARICOM, a gathering of hierarchical governments, professionals, and elites, at its inception was an attack on the self-directed political power of the Caribbean toilers and the unemployed. Far more than we realize, that is why CARICOM exists today. Those who are demeaned and suffer brutality and poverty still have remarkable capacities to take matters into their own hands. CARICOM literally plots against them arriving on their own authority.
CARICOM claims to be the identity of a federation of mostly small island territories — with member and observer status. From Anguilla to Antigua & Barbuda; Barbados, Bermuda, and Belize; Dominica, Grenada, and Guyana; Haiti and Jamaica; and St. Vincent and Saint Lucia; Saint Kitts and the Grenadines, and Suriname. But Haitians at this time do not have the same status to move throughout the region — does anybody wonder why?
CARICOM: A Force for Policing, Surveillance, and Repression
CARICOM, with its RSS (the regional security system) that brags it’s a Pan Caribbean army that pridefully traces its origins to the overthrow of the Grenada Revolution, is planning to join a multi-national force to invade Haiti and to restore order. Order like in Antigua & Barbuda, Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, and Jamaica?
Remarkably, CARICOM delegations meet all over the region regularly to talk about “our” economy. Not a word is said about ExxonMobil’s relationship to Guyana, the potential for ecological destruction, and the fact that every faction of party politics in Guyana is complicit in self-aggrandizing patronage schemes as they promise the Guyanese people development in the future.
“Our” Caribbean Economy but Not a Cooperative Economy
Not a word about a cooperative economic future for the Caribbean. Advocates of Caribbean federation from above have always been duplicitous in this fashion. It is the same if talking about development of luxury hotels in Antigua & Barbuda, bauxite in Jamaica, nutmeg in Grenada, or bananas in St. Lucia. No effort is made to cultivate the Caribbean popular will to stretch forth its hands to make decisions and plans. Nothing about the reports from their meetings offer scraps of usable information for empowerment.
How Generous and Patient? Overstated Cosmopolitan Gatherings
James could lead relatively conservative discussions on the economics of Caribbean federation. Conservative in the sense that they didn’t really directly center the thinking and acting of Caribbean toilers — at first. During the Cold War, he was advocating an integrated economy for regional sovereignty that avoided labels of communist or capitalist, private or nationalized property. Taking part in such conversations, that tend to gather crowds of power grabbing self-centered individuals with an overstated cosmopolitanism, means one has to behave absent minded about the social motion of the working class if you wish to be invited back (even to one’s own country). Of course, this is a burden of the Caribbean Diaspora, most toilers and unemployed in the Caribbean don’t have a passport.
The Search for Self-Sufficiency in Food and Industrial Coordination
James advocated the complete reorganization of Caribbean lands, not to send sugar abroad, but so the region could be self-sufficient in food production. He felt some cotton should be produced so the Caribbean tendency to make distinguished shirts fit for sea island environments could be advanced, as he was familiar in St. Vincent and Cuba. He felt there could be carefully negotiated technology transfers that furthered the production of industrial chemicals. The Caribbean if its economies were integrated could produce one type of automobile if agreement could be forged as to what type.
Elitist Vision of Science & Technology Hold Caribbean Toilers in Contempt
CLR would then suggest Caribbean workers already go abroad to the U.S., Canada, and Britain and work in the auto industries there; nobody has ever said they were not sufficiently advanced in technological know-how to produce these cars. Of course, he was chiding the formally educated many who absent-mindedly or with deficiencies of mind suggested exactly that.
In 1966, world-renowned Jamaican reggae artist Bob Marley worked in a Chrysler plant in Wilmington, Delaware. He was a fork-lift operator. Some call this his “wilderness” year. Certainly, it is easy to say the greatest reggae artist, perhaps the greatest musical artist the world has ever known, that his special gift was not to work in industry. While undoubtedly there are people in the world, whether certified for their skills or not, who do have a special gift for building and fixing cars, and few enjoy the noise and filth of a factory or garage, many tend to think of labor as mere wage earning.
Too many instead of having creative dreams (not driven by aspirations to money), we accept without question that first we must make money and then we can enjoy what we do with it. Nevertheless, experienced observers understand there is a cooperative community in industry, and really in farming, or any economic mode of production. Automation and the internet can try to keep us apart, but it doesn’t work. Besides if everybody thought about money first, the blows that the Caribbean has struck against slavery, indentured servitude, and empire would never have been organized. After all, nobody pays anybody to pursue this. Activists for the government may be paid to undermine it.
Caribbean Artist, Cultivator of the Popular Will, and Industrial Worker?
Our alienation in capitalist workplaces — — and those claiming to be “socialist” — compels us to wish to be together. Some may say, well just because people share their complaints about the drudgery, or the insults of their supervisors doesn’t mean people want to cooperate for emancipation. Whether we realize it or not, Bob Marley, the Caribbean artist who cultivated the popular will through his revolutionary music, who did more for Caribbean unity than 100 federation advocates, understood how to cooperate under arduous circumstances. It is something that Caribbean statesmen and economists don’t know how to do.
Many of them will protest and tell us: “How can you say that?” “I am an expert in negotiating with global banks.” Another will say “I am an expert in negotiating labor contracts with multi-national oil, bauxite, or hoteliers.” This one say: “I advise my small Caribbean territory about its foreign policy.” “If you only could see what I have done behind the scenes.” Could this last part have any merit at all? There are a few historical circumstances where this could be valid. But only in a context of support of those who actually cultivate the grassroots social motion by facing the public.
Very Fine: “I Am an Expert on Negotiating with Banks and Big Business”
This is the mentality of a class of people who talk “progressive” and “national purpose” but do not believe that everyday Caribbean people can directly govern. They will mobilize for protest — but what does this mean when they already work for the Caribbean governments they are protesting?
What CLR James teaches us is the discussion about the tasks of politics and government must be placed in the hands of everyday Caribbean people. It can be a peculiar maneuver. For CLR shares aspects of a historical problem with “progressive” Caribbean intellectuals — an unnecessary chiding of the middle classes of what they cannot see about Caribbean commoners.
Place the Tasks of Government in Caribbean Toilers Hands
One can agitate against aspiring rulers to boost the confidence of a mass audience that may be shy or slow in finding their confidence to act, but it does little good to accidentally or purposefully suggest how those who aspire to rule can become better observers of the social motion below society — for what?
The problem with the framework of political actors “leading by obeying” (a framework sometimes promoted by the Zapatistas) is accompaniment with Caribbean toilers is not them directing their own affairs. Multi-directional flows of teaching and learning are valuable at its best when those who need to overcome their shyness start to act for themselves. And all political actors, not out of sense of guilt, must recognize their own mistakes and try to correct them.
We Can Act Boldly: Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes
CLR always taught that we cannot act boldly in politics if we are afraid to make mistakes. Still, if we are leading ruptures with hierarchies and domination relevant to the present and future we hope to live through, this must be based on speculations. What is the next development in political thought required to bring the new society closer? Mind you, not to hold on for dear life to the barbarism we have and some take pride in facilitating.
CLR could dialogue with Caribbean economists who in various ways he would generously accept had documented what was required for social and economic transformation of the region– perhaps this was too generous where he ceased to elaborate his own political economy. He rarely would challenge their elitism so long as they stayed in their lane, perhaps adding a little culture-talk that could start a conversation but never disturbed anybody.
Tell Professional Economists to Stay in Their Lane: What Analysis of Political Economy Doesn’t See Ordinary People Taking Initiative?
But then CLR would say alright we understand the Caribbean is a certain type of peripheral society in the world system. Then he would ask questions: What type of society doesn’t organize itself to be self-sufficient in food? What type of society cannot coordinate its mental and material resources to plan an auto industry or any other industry? Who is going to do it? Those who think they have overcome racial insecurity but always think of “our” people as underdeveloped often don’t realize CLR was chiding them.
And the fact is every government in the Caribbean, with an apparatus of some of the most culturally interesting economists in the world, for years show no practical interest or capacity to do so. Now CLR when he approaches talking public policy and not projections for a political philosophy placed himself in more narrow-minded circles. And he recognizes that as a revolutionary one cannot expect when one speaks to professional planners or university-based scholars that — as a social class — they will know or be able to gather the social forces able to overcome this perennial bankrupt bureaucratic mentality that claims to monopolize discussions of science and technology.
Don’t Be Ambivalent About the Power of the Caribbean Rank-and-File
CLR in 1974–1975 argues the Caribbean ordinary people, the rank-and-file, are fully able to handle science and technology as any other sector of the population. Shortly before he had showed ambivalence in his projections toward Africa, but that was a result that he entered the movement for the Sixth Pan African Congress in coalition with Julius Nyerere’s government.
Now, CLR highlighted where toilers are missing some aspects of the knowledge or skill they need it is only a result that they are not given the opportunity to learn. Multi-national corporations are always setting up production in a manner where toilers are told screw or weld these pieces of metal together. They are not given the opportunity to train on the theoretical and strategic questions of industry. If they were, the professional class of specialists and experts would have no basis for existence.
Where CLR, as was characteristic could rattle off a list of Caribbean historical personalities known for their cultural and political achievements, many responded but you can’t discuss the potential to learn and become educated among ordinary people as if it is similar to the most distinguished achievers the world has known. Yet James’s conception of Caribbean and world civilization rejected this.
Caribbean Individual Talents Emerge from the Mass of the Population
First, James observed in Britain and to some extent the U.S., the hospitals and universities in imperial centers would fall apart if not for their reliance on those Caribbean people who were certified in various fields with a high degree of scientific and technological knowledge.
Note please, CLR never complained that imperial centers contributed a “brain drain” from the peripheral-colonized. The arrogance of that whole discourse is the idea that toilers and unemployed don’t have brains or don’t have meaningful knowledge and insight to sustain self-created institutions.
Even the Cuban Revolution Does Not Understand This
But more importantly, it is the apparent Caribbean common people, those without formal education, insignificant in official society from which these distinguished individuals emerged. James found that even the Cuban Revolution did not understand this. All these cultural congresses are put on there, and Cuban toilers drive you around, prepare breakfast, clean the hotel bed linens, set up the chairs, nobody invites the Cuban workers to take part. James finds this is the dilemma of only Cuba but is the common attitude across the Caribbean. It is found in Jamaica, Trinidad, Guyana, Antigua & Barbuda, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, etc.
“Axe har de question… e’nah funny”: CARICOM does not invite the Prostitutes and Unemployeds to Govern
What would happen if every time a Caribbean government sponsored or convened a conference the ordinary people of each territory took part? Unless they were afraid to be shot or jailed, they would start to discuss with global visitors their shared burdens with those who rule above society. Most certainly they did not take part at CARICOM 50 except to pour drinks and arrange tables and chairs.
Many years ago, a Caribbean activist much younger than CLR became notorious in Africa for facing arrest for inviting the prostitutes in the street to take part in a certain congress. It was a heroic moment to be remembered. Now this same person, still around elderly but apparently in good health, writes as if he has lost his damn mind and is comfortably compensated for doing so.
The point is professionals who are steadily employed can only live a comfortable international life by becoming prostitutes themselves. It is alright to make mistakes but not for an entire political epoch. This is what CARICOM represents except it never began by inviting the people in the street to take part.
In 1973 the Caribbean Governments Gathered to Celebrate Independence: They Just Told Us They Are Getting Ready to Declare Independence Again
In 1973, in CARICOM’s founding year, CLR gave an interview to newspapers in the Washington DC area as Caribbean diplomats were having a wine and cheese party at the Hilton to celebrate “independence.” Listen closely. Many of the Caribbean nations whose diplomats were there are talking “decolonial” now, that they are making a move to break with the British Crown, and become a republic. They couldn’t make a move with the aid of a prescription laxative. Please note as CARICOM governments prepare, as Barbados did recently, to declare independence again from Britain — the activists for the government, the communists for capitalism constantly tell us the greatest purveyor of violence is the United States. So why doesn’t the “progressives” in the cultural front around these governments make a big show of declaring independence from the United States?
CARICOM Begins By Thinking Caribbean People Are Illiterate, Have No Attention Span, And No Historical Knowledge (Except the Professors and Economic Planners Who It is Mistakenly Thought Are Geniuses)
The CARICOM governments whose entire brand and reason for existence is pursuit of national development by making this maneuver clearly starts from the premise that the Caribbean people are illiterate, have no attention span, have no historical and economic knowledge, and that their slavery reparations campaign can set back the Caribbean mind to 1833.
But the same reporters who interviewed CLR James in 1973 posed some of his critical questions to the Caribbean diplomats gathered at the Hilton. Some admitted, perhaps no nation-state in the world can function “independently” of the capitalist world system. Still, they kept celebrating independence and the forging of CARICOM fifty years ago. These guardians of Caribbean sovereignty still don’t believe its possible. They still ignore the question of who, what social force, must unite to transform the Caribbean? Somebody, CLR did not always say who (which social class) but I think the Caribbean police state knows who.
CLR placed forward that all Caribbean resources should be held in common by the Caribbean people through a federation of the entire region. It would include Guyana and Cuba, and would take back the Dutch and French Caribbean. The lands and mineral wealth would not be “for sale.” No island can be economically self-sufficient by itself.
CARICOM: Going Down The Road One Mile An Hour
In 1977 he was asked was CARICOM or CARIFTA (the Caribbean Free Trade Association) models of what he was talking about. Are they going down the road at least in a small way toward this direction?
CLR said: “they are going down the road at the rate of one mile an hour. They are not headed for any federation with control of their resources.” CLR would not say Cuba is a model of the sovereignty he is speaking. He said that he was not speaking merely about unity or coming together. “There would have to be a total change in how the Caribbean thinks about government.”
Not One Caribbean Government Is Prepared To Do What Is Required
There would have to be a total change in the relations of control and ownership of resources. He would not have to underline control if he thought public and nationalized property was control. CLR when asked to clarify explained not one government in the Caribbean was prepared to say and do what was required. Some have the courage to say something, others have the courage to say nothing at all — but these are the Caribbean statesmen. But great courage and commitment above society is not taking place in the Caribbean at all. When asked is a Caribbean New Left required, CLR explained that what is required is the proper program and policy. Those who appear progressive, socialist, and communist most often do not have the proper approach. CLR always came back to the question: “Who is to do it?” Who is to federate the whole of the Caribbean? Of course, the fishers, farmers, industrial workers, unemployed, and the care-givers.
[For further reading see interview with CLR James in Washington Post. August 25, 1973; CLR James. “The Revolutionary…” In The Commonwealth Caribbean into the Seventies. A.W. Singham ed. Montreal: McGill University, 1975; Dawad Wayne Phillip. “Black Struggle and the New Society: An Interview with CLR James.” Amsterdam News. June 4 and 11, 1977.]
