By Hilbourne Watson
Barbadian Hilbourne A. Watson is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
In “The Idea of Barbados,” a commentary carried in Barbados Today on April 3rd, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves explains why he believes Caribbean governments could learn from Barbados in searching for solutions to contemporary challenges facing the region. Gonsalves positions Barbados as superior to the rest of the region, most highly developed, with a national consciousness that unites the country around one goal, best infrastructure, best attitudes, uniquely prepared to overcome the crisis currently engulfing the region, and therefore a model to follow. Emigration saved masses of Barbadians from utter destitution in the century following emancipation, when the British colonial state and local agro-commercial capitalists kept the unfranchised working class in extreme poverty. Barbadians, self-assured that they dominate the postcolonial intellectual and cultural landscape, flip the text to read that when they migrate the host societies benefit as much as themselves. This belief, coupled with benefits from universal public education informs the grand myth of Barbadian exceptionalism that undergirds Gonsalves’ “Idea of Barbados”.
Gonsalves makes his “Idea of Barbados” stand for “more than a nation-state or a national community.” He says “it flows from a national community which has been in ownership … of an especial or particular landscape and seascape.” He imbues it with a “veritable autonomy as a category beyond the community”, contradicting his acknowledgement that it cannot negate the “universal ‘laws’ of history, society or political economy.” Societies are organized around the tools they make to reproduce themselves which necessitates considering the material context that informs the role of ideas in history. Ideas become a material force, when people embrace them as part of the dialectic of social transformation, which extends to the development of social consciousness that contributes to overcoming the constraints of nationalist ideology, which forces the mind to imagine the world the way it has never been.
Gonsalves says “On a wide range of governance and developmental indices Barbados is … a developing country with developed nations’ governance and human development attainments …”, ignoring the contradictions rooted in the spatially uneven processes of global capitalist production which are for private accumulation. Barbados’ “high quality governance and level of human development …” is a function of its embeddedness in the global economy, and contradicts the false inside-outside dichotomy of a developed (West) versus an underdeveloped (non-West). Barbados lacks a competitive base in modern research and development, high technology manufacturing and a capacity to attract and keep cutting–edge productive capital on its shores, and the relatively low development of the productive forces compounds the unfolding crisis with myriad problems in educating, training and equipping the labor force with the skills and tools for competing in the global economy.
Gonsalves says Jamaica is “a brand, but not … a transcendental idea that infuses the body politic and society to consolidate progressive achievements, nationally.” He describes Trinidad as “an incomplete national formation with immense possibilities but constrained by … limitations, including rising lawlessness.’ Guyana “possesses enormous potential.” The “OECS … aspire to the Barbados ‘model’ of a maturing social democracy.” He reduces Guadeloupe and Martinique, and Puerto Rico – territories that are part of the most advanced zones of global capitalism – to “subsidised enclaves … in search of a Caribbean identity”. He is here genuflecting to the romantic notion that state sovereignty is the highest form of political consciousness a “nation” can achieve: under international law sovereignty is an attribute of states rather than nations.
Social democracy was a compromise forced on the bourgeoisie by the class struggle in the decades following World War II. What remains of social democracy in Barbados is being systematically destroyed by the neoliberal austerity offensive for softening the state and working class to accommodate demands of global capital.
Gonsalves believes that the “Idea of Barbados” will enable Barbados to overcome the current “economic challenges brought on … by the prolonged global economic slowdown from 2008 …” In fact the crisis besetting Barbados is part of the global economic and financial crisis beyond economic “slow down”. He claims that Barbados is the “peculiar beneficiary of “unbroken representative government … on a restrictive franchise until universal adult suffrage in 1946”. Universal adult suffrage became law in Barbados under the Representation of the People’s Act (1950) and took effect in 1951. The mass literacy and universal primary education, which Barbados achieved, had nothing to do with superior intellect thrust upon Barbadian colonial subjects. Part of the return on colonial investment in universal public education in Barbados was the export of certain Barbadians to help manage imperial affairs in other colonies that Britain neglected.
Gonsalves’ populist account ignores contradictions of class exploitation and racial and gender oppression in Barbadian society. If other “Caribbean nationals” misinterpret as “Bajan superiority” which he labels “an attribute of quiet assurance, a manifestation of the virtue of self-mastery, … the wellspring of a civil, and civilized, people steeped in progressive values …,” it is because Barbadians propagate the myth of exceptionalism. When he accuses other Caribbean nationals of failing to “appreciate that a progressive society is not built on leisure, pleasure and nice time, but on hard, smart, productive effort …” he fails to appreciate that worker productivity is constrained by the quality of tools capitalists put at their disposal to produce goods and services.
Evidence for Barbados’ growing economic sclerosis comes from the death of the sugar industry, the lack of a competitive manufacturing and export platform, a tourism sector facing relentless competition from other destinations, emphasis on unproductive financial capital, reforming immigration law to woo investors with citizenship rather than building up a competitive infrastructure, and denizens of marginalized and alienated youths and rising gangs.
Gonsalves connects his populist idea about a unifying “national consensus” with his assertion that “Barbadian entrepreneurs … commit themselves to Barbados in a way which appears to be … better (than) the commitment of most of the other Caribbean entrepreneurs to their respective countries”, a sign that he ignores the persistence of racialized economic (class) hegemony and contradictions that the political parties and the labor union leaders mask in ways that keep the working class fragmented and divided. Barbados is beyond the “Big Six” entrepreneurs: the process of restructuring via the concentration and centralization of capital finds Goddard Enterprises Limited as a transnational corporation with profitable operations across the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and beyond.
Gonsalves should explain how his “uniquely committed” Barbadian businesspeople contribute to competitive advantage in tourism, manufacturing, and agriculture, and how they provide the working class with the necessary tools to reproduce itself at a higher standard of living. His “Idea of Barbados” is insignificant in attracting “international organizations and embassies with assignments to the nation states of the Eastern Caribbean.” Any advantage that comes from locating operations in Barbados results from convenient access and the higher quality of the infrastructure plant expressed in “Barbados’ modernity”.
Grantley Adams, following the conferral of a knighthood on him by the British in 1952, and during his tenure at Prime Minister of the Federation of West Indies, lectured the Federal Legislature on the innate intellectual superiority of Barbadians among all British colonial subjects. Errol Barrow differed from Adams by degree, barely containing his impatience with leaders of Eastern Caribbean territories, and claiming that Barbados inherited an original constitution from 17th century England that made it more advanced than other British colonies. Barrow claimed that Barbados’ “autochthonous” constitution proved that its relationship with the United Kingdom was one of “contract and not a relationship of status” (Barbados Advocate, 5 January 1966).
Gonsalves exaggerates that “Errol Barrow is the greatest leader … our CARICOM region has thrown up since universal adult suffrage”. It is unflattering that he compares Barrow with “Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore”, considering that Barrow openly criticized Lee Kuan Yew’s repressive, anti-labor capital accumulation strategy. Barrow did not initiate Barbados’ transition from sugar to tourism; rather it was the relentless technological restructuring in the global sugar industry that forced Barrow to promote tourism, when declining fuel and transportation costs, the impact of the Cold War on the Cuban Revolution, and international capital flows made Barbados an attractive destination. Barrow’s policies emphasized meritocracy in education and the public sector; however, he failed to forge a revolution in education to meet the needs of a postcolonial society.
Barrow also failed to nurture progressive cadres in the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) to assume the mantle of leadership – hence the existential crisis that threatened the DLP following his sudden death in 1987. At the CARIFTA-CARICOM intersection Eastern Caribbean leaders did not trust Barrow, aware that he was promoting economic integration to benefit economic growth in Barbados at their expense. Barrow’s paternalistic approach to post-federation integration did not win him converts in the Eastern Caribbean.
Barrow draped his class prejudices in populist ideology, combined with his affable way of representing himself as the servant of the Barbadian people – a tactic that disarmed the working class. Barrow knew how to be a “man for the people” while never seeing himself as a man of the people. In foreign policy Barrow exuded a low-intensity, anti-imperialist aura in dealing with London and Washington; his public criticisms of the IMF, World Bank, and the US for their failure to make “Third World” development a priority were not politically costly for him.
On Cuba, it was only after Forbes Burnham and Michael Manley convinced Eric Williams to establish diplomatic relations with Havana that Barrow nervously followed suit. Barrow led Barbados to sovereign statehood as a monarchy partly to convince London and Washington of his commitment to the Anglo-American Cold War geopolitical order. His satellite of none and friend of all assertion was mere rhetorical flourish.
Gonsalves’ notion that the “‘Idea of Barbados’ is in tandem with a mature regionalism and CARICOM is the vehicle through which Barbados will successfully meet its current and prospective economic challenges …” is fanciful. Leading CARICOM-based businesses are aggressively pursuing strategic alliances with globally competitive counterparts, mindful of CARICOM’s marginality in the global production and accumulation process.
The current economic crisis in Barbados confirms that the country did not perfect Barrow’s “socioeconomic model” because crisis, which inheres in the capital relation, begets crisis. Gonsalves’ notion of Barrow’s “socioeconomic model” did not protect the DLP from defeat in 1976 after three consecutive terms in office (1961-1976). Owen Arthur did not perfect Barrow’s “socio-economic model”, considering that the DLP inherited problems from Owen Arthur and the Barbados Labour Party (1993-2008) that ballooned to where Barbados had a public debt of 94.7% of GDP and savings of -8.7% of GDP for 2013.
Gonsalves’ failure to understand capitalist globalization finds him arguing that globalization produces an “increasing homogenization of culture propagated by a dominant cultural imperialism” to the detriment of “localization”, an assertion that hardly impresses managers of Barbados’ political economy. Gonsalves ends where he began- with ideology – beseeching us in pseudo-religious terms to have “faith” and be confident that the “Idea of Barbados will endure”, as “faith is made complete or perfect with deeds.” Gonsalves has little of a constructive nature to offer Barbados or the region in this moment of acute crisis. It is time to part with illusions.
