Democratic in Also by the authors

Evelyne Huber Stephens, The Politics of Workers' Participation: The Peruvian Approach in Comparative Perspective

John D. Stephens, The Transition from Capitalism to Socialism in Jamaica

The Political Movement and Social Transformation in Dependent Capitalism

Evelyne Huber Stephens University of California, Irvine and John D. Stephens Northwestern University

M MACMILLAN © Evelyne Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens 1986

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First published 1986

Published by MACMILLAN EDUCATION LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Stephens, Evelyn Huber Democratic socialism in Jamaica: the political movement and social transformation in dependent capitalism 1. Jamaica-Politics and government I. Title II. Stephens, John D. 972.92 F1881 ISBN 978-0-333-40478-2 ISBN 978-1-349-18173-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18173-5 To our Parents Contents

Tables xii

Preface and Acknowledgements xiv

Abbreviations xviii

1 Democratic Socialism: An Alternative Path of Development? 1 Characteristics of the path 3 Strategic requirements 6 Constructing a class alliance 6 Building the political movement 6 Theoretical assumptions 7

2 State, Party and Society in a Post-Colonial Plantation- Mineral Enclave Economy 10 To 1938: Colonial plantation society 10 From the labor rebellion to the first years of independence 12 Political change 12 Economic development 21 Jamaican society by the late 1960s 25 The dependent economy 25 The dependent society 32 The race-class structure 35 The state 38 The parties 42 The unions 46 Forms of social integration and domination 52 The coming crisis 56 Unfavorable pre-conditions for democratic socialism 58

3 The PNP's First Term: Tasks at the Outset and Populist Politics in the First Years 1972-74 60 The tasks facing the party 61 Preparation for power 1969-71 62 The 1972 election 65 The campaign 66

vii viii Contents

The PNP program 67 The pattern of the vote 68 The populist years: political developments 69 Domestic policies 71 The bauxite strategy 76 Foreign policy 81 The PNP: organization and appeal 82 Managing the economy 84 Politics: the Opposition 87 TheJLP 87 The Gleaner 91 The private sector 94 Concluding remarks 101

4 The First Term: Ideological Definition and Social Polarization 1974-76 104 The PNP political offensive 105 The move to ideological definition 105 Warming relations with Cuba 108 Mobilization, rhetoric and internal disputes 109 PNP policy initiatives 110 Managing the economy 1974-5 111 Political reaction and counter-reaction 113 JLP 113 Gleaner 115 The private sector: the crucial turning point 118 Reactions from other social forces 124 The government's counter-reaction 126 The turns against Jamaica 126 The crisis of 1976 128 Economic crisis 128 Rising violence and destabilization 131 The 1976 elections 137 The 1976 campaign 137 The pattern of the vote 141 Concluding remarks 144

5 The Second Term: The Rise and Fall of the Left Alternative, 1977 148 Spring 1977: the rise of the left and the debate over the IMF 148 The development of the left alternative 149 The development of the alternative plan 151 Contents ix

Other signs of a move to the left 153 Reaction of the PNP 'Moderates' 154 The JLP on the defensive 156 Private sector 160 The Gleaner 162 The People's Production Plan 163 Manley decides 166 Was the plan feasible? 168 April-December 1977: under the first IMF agreement 172 Economic and domestic policy 172 Foreign policy 176 Internal struggles in the PNP 178 Content of the ideological disputes 182 The JLP takes the offensive 187 New tactics from the Gleaner 192 Reactions from the private sector 193 Reactions from other social forces 195 Economic performance in 1977 196 Concluding remarks 197

6 The Second Term: The Struggle with the IMF 199 IMF in the driver's seat: 1978--9 199 The economy under the second IMF program 200 The importance of Jamaican foreign policy 204 The JLP and the Gleaner on the offensive 205 Private sector reactions 210 Growing disaffection among the middle class 212 Growing tensions in the relationship to the unions 215 The PNP on the defensive 217 From the break with the IMF to the elections 222 The decision to break with the IMF 222 The non-IMF path 224 Implications for a non-IMF path in the long run 226 Work of the electoral committee 228 The JLP campaign and the Gleaner 229 The private sector's move to total opposition 232 Increasing USA hostility 234 Violence 236 The turn of the security forces against the PNP 238 The PNP campaign 241 The role of the WPJ and the JBC newsroom 243 The election outcome 244 Concluding remarks 249 x Contents

7 Seaga's Return to Dependent Capitalism 251 Seaga's economic model 251 Economic performance 254 Balance of payments 254 Investment 258 Reduction of the state's role in the economy 259 Overall growth and sectoral performance 260 Employment 262 Political dynamics 262 Seaga's snap election 267 Concluding remarks 269

8 Jamaica's Democratic Socialist Path: An Evaluation 270 The goals and policies of the PNP's democratic socialism 271 Reducing dependence 271 Establishing and operating the mixed economy 282 Increasing social equality 292 Deepening political democracy 296 Forging an independent foreign policy 296 Democratic socialist political strategy 297 Constructing a class alliance 297 Building the political movement 304 Using the state as an instrument of transformation 310 Managing geopolitics 315 Concluding remarks 318

9 Lessons of the Manley Government: Democratic Socialism as an Alternative Development Path 320 Theories of state and class 320 State and society in democratic polities in the periphery: class power, autonomy and dependence 320 The capitalist class: class interests and class action 327 The nature of the political project of the PNP 329 Democratic socialist development 329 Social origins of Jamaican democratic socialism 337 Jamaican lessons for other democratic socialist movements 339 Pre-conditions, strategies and problems in Jamaica 339 Relevance of the model for other third world countries 342

Notes 346

Appendix 1: Tables 376 Appendix 2: Interview Data 399 Contents XI

Appendix 3: Readings and Codings of Newspaper Reports 401 Appendix 4: Jamaican Elite: 1974 and 1982 403

References 407

Index 418 Tables

2.1 GDP at factor costs by economic sector, 1950, 1960,1970 23 2.2 Annual rate of growth of GDP by industrial origin at constant prices, 1950-70 24 2.3 Growth of population and the labor force, 1943-72 24 2.4 Percentage of income of quintiles of households, 1958 25 2.5 Urbanization, 1943, 1960, 1970 25 2.6 Land distribution, 1968 29 2.7 Average weekly earnings per worker in selected industries, 1965 31 2.8 Jamaican class structure, 1973 36 2.9 Occupational and racial composition of the labor force in Kingston and St Andrew parishes, 1960 37 2.10 Strikes, 1962-82 50 3.1 Principal policies of the PNP government 70 4.1 Attacks on the PNP government: 1974--6 122 5.1 Attacks on the PNP government, January-April1977 157 5.2 State participation in the economy: actual and proposed, as at April 1977 174 5.3 Issues in the PNP internal debates 182 5.4 Attacks on the PNP government May-December 1977 188 8.1 Elite perceptions of failures of the PNP government 289 8.2 Elite perceptions of successes of the PNP government 294 9.1 Schematic comparative analysis of democratic socialist movements: sociological nature of the movement and tasks faced 334 A.1 Comparison of general elections, 1944-80 376 A.2 Government expenditure and revenue, 1971-83 377 A.3 Attacks on the PNP government appearing in the Gleaner 379 A.4 Jamaican migration to the USA, 1967-80 383 A.S Jamaican migration to , 1967-80 384 A.6 Capital formation, 1969-82 385 A.7 Crime, 1973-81 386 A.8 Balance of payments summary, 1968-82 388 A.9 GDP by industrial sector in purchasers' values at constant prices, 1970-82 389

xii Tables xiii

A.lO Rate of growth of GDP by industrial sector at constant prices, 1970-82 390 A.ll Employment and unemployment, 1972-82 391 A.12 Exports of select goods, 1970-80 391 A.l3 Share of exports to major trading partners, 1970-80 392 A.14 Share of imports from major trading partners, 1970-80 392 A.15 Opinion polls, 1976--83 393 A.16 Industrial disputes by cause, 1972-82 394 A.17 Industrial disputes by union, 1972-82 395 A.18 Domestic food production, 1971-80 396 A.19 Tourist arrivals, 1970-82 396 A.20 US loans and grants to Jamaica, 1956-82 397 A.21 Class realignment, 1972-80 398 Preface and Acknowledgements

Our interest in democratic socialism as a development path has two sources. On the one hand, it stems from the intersection of our previous academic work on in Western Europe and the reformist military government in Peru; on the other from our intellectual and political discontent with the pessimistic conclusions that have been drawn from many empirical analyses of the Chilean experience and from the theoretical perspective of dependency analysis in its orthodox versions. These conclusions suggest that no serious reform oriented toward greater equity and popular participation is possible in Latin America and the without a revolutionary break with the capitalist world system and a revolutionary overthrow and demolition of the existing state appara­ tus. Given the low potential for a revolutionary upheaval in most countries at intermediate and advanced stages of dependent capitalist development, these conclusions lead to an intellectual dead end and to political paralysis. The search for an empirical counter-example of a country making serious efforts to transform the social and economic structures of depen­ dent capitalism within a democratic constitutional framework drew our attention to Jamaica. At first sight, the Jamaican experience under the government led by seemed to confirm the pessimistic conclusions, but upon closer examination, the successes that were achieved and the highly unfavorable conditions in which the process started sug­ gested some openings and potential for transformation which might have been realized in Jamaica and might be realized elsewhere in the future. Two recent historical developments have brought the question of the viability of a democratic socialist development path to greater prominence, namely the interest taken in the Third World by the (SI) under the leadership of Willy Brandt, and the democratic openings in South America. The SI and the North-South Report of the Brandt Com­ mission have provided the forums for a discussion of changes in the internal and international economic order which could open a develop­ ment path meeting the criteria of growth, equity, and popular participa­ tion. The viability of such a path has become particularly relevant in Latin America with the democratic opening in several countries, most promi­ nently Peru, Argentina and possibly Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. In these

xiv Preface and Acknowledgements xv countries, on the one hand the revolutionary option basically does not exist as the security forces are too strong, and on the other the socialist movements are too weak to carry out a rapid socialization of the economy within a constitutional framework. Thus, the only progressive option open seems to be the democratic socialist path, that is, a gradual process of social and economic transformation which involves reduction of depen­ dence, expansion of the state and cooperative sectors of the economy, redistribution, egalitarian social policies, popular mobilization and deepening of democracy. Given that there is as yet no successful case which could serve as a model for the democratic socialist path, it is important to analyze and learn from the attempts that have been made to chart this path. It is with this purpose and in this spirit that we offer the following analysis of the Jamaican experience. The relatively small size of Jamaican society (by any but Caribbean standards) made it possible for us to take a total system approach in our research design. That is, we did not single out one aspect of the social transformation process (for example, bauxite policy or sugar cooperatives) as the focus of our primary research and then attempt to put it in the context of the whole process, relying-on secondary material. Nor did we settle for outlining the whole process relying on secondary material. Rather, we attempted to study the total system and dynamics based on primary materials. Thus, we employed a variety of methodologies (see Appendices 2-4): reading newspaper accounts; coding reports in the papers; interviewing key political actors, business people and other elites, as well as US policy-makers and aluminum company executives; and investigating a limited number of key topics through collecting documents and interviewing experts in the area. This is not to say that we did not also rely on secondary material. In fact, we owe a deep debt to West Indian social scientists. Given our resources, we were obviously not able ourselves to do some things essential to our project. One key area was the investigation of mass political behavior and public opinion. Here we were fortunate in that Jamaica in the 1970s was a well-documented case. We also relied on other research on the period, primarily by our colleagues at UWI, in a number of areas; the media, the public bureaucracy and bureaucratic management, and the economy spring to mind as being the most important. These works are cited throughout the text. It is worth mentioning a few of the remaining gaps in the collective knowledge about the PNP government. We would have liked to cover the reactions of the professional and managerial class in the same kind of detail that we covered the reactions of the capitalist class, given the crucial, but ambiguous, role this class played in the developments of the period and would play in any project of the type the PNP pursued. In our view, this would have demanded at least a medium-size survey of 200-300 people and xvi Preface and Acknowledgements ideally would have included migrants as well as non-migrants. Such a survey was beyond our capacity given the other tasks we wanted to carry out. The second gap is the general area of covert activity. In the case of the USA, we went to considerable lengths to investigate covert action in Jamaica, and though we are relatively confident of our findings, we cannot present conclusive evidence. Even after cross-checking our results among our sources and with other investigators, it must be admitted that certain gray areas in our knowledge remain. The gap in the collective knowledge is even larger in the case of the politics of ghetto gun warfare. Every knowledgeable observer in Jamaica is privy to rumors about which politi­ cians are most closely connected to criminal gunmen. Moreover, there is widespread consistency on the identity of these men. For obvious reasons we have not put this in black and white, but any reader who can read between the lines can guess who the main candidates are. Hard evidence on 'who told whom to do what' is not even available to many insiders, nor has the judicial system ever been able to uncover such evidence. Those who know simply are not telling. In the course of our work on this book we have received invaluable support from many people and institutions. Our field research in 1981-2 was supported by a grant from the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, and by a Fulbright Research Award for the American Republics. The Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, provided an intellec­ tually stimulating environment during the field research phase and on the occasion of later visits. A fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Interna­ tional Center for Scholars from July to December 1983 enabled us to do research in Washington, DC, on US policy towards Jamaica and to complete a first draft of the book, and the Department of Sociology at Brown University and its Chair Alden Speare gave critical support for the write-up and processing of the data collected by providing us with funds from its limited research reserve and granting time-off to one of us. We greatly appreciate all this support and hasten to emphasize that the views expressed in this book are not those of any of these institutions. Of course, we are deeply indebted to all the people whom we inter­ viewed, who were generous with their time and in sharing with us their views and much important information. We wish to thank them all collec­ tively and express our hope that those who disagree with our analysis and conclusions will at least find that we took their views seriously and that our analysis is thorough enough to merit consideration. For help in the conceptual stages of the project, in obtaining the institutional support already mentioned, and in making initial contacts in Jamaica, we thank Wendell Bell, Peter Evans, J. Edward Greene, Michael Preface and Acknowledgements xvii

Harrington, Vaughn Lewis, Juan Linz, Michael Mann, John A. Maxwell, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Alfred Stepan and Charles Tilly. Our research in Jamaica was aided inestimably by George Beckford, Richard Bernal, Carlton Davis, J. Edward Greene, Edwin Jones, Michael Manley, 0. K. Melhado, G. E. Mills, Rex Nettleford, Paul Robertson and Michael Witter. Many of them talked to us for long hours and gave us insights which we as outsiders could never have gained on our own. Others made important materials available to us, and still others opened doors which enabled us to pursue further certain research questions. At the Wilson Center, we found a very congenial atmosphere among our colleagues in the Latin American program, and our work benefitted specifically from feedback offered by Tom Farer, Louis Goodman, and Crawford Young. Kathy Meyer provided much careful, reliable and cheer­ ful research assistance. We would also like to thank Sandy Thatcher of Princeton University Press for his interest, encouragement and guidance throughout the project, and we are grateful to Jean Evanowski, Pat Sheridan and Carol Walker for typing various parts of the manuscript. Finally, we want to thank all our colleagues who have commented on parts of earlier drafts of the manu­ script: Wendell Bell, Richard Bernal, Peter Evans, Richard Feinberg, Carl Feuer, Norman Girvan, Harry Goulborne, J. Edward Greene, Edwin Jones, John A. Maxwell, 0. K. Melhado, , Peter Phillips, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Michael Witter and Crawford Young. On the one hand, their comments managed to save us from certain errors of fact and judgement, and on the other hand they forced us to rethink and develop further many of our ideas. Many of the people mentioned above may disagree with some of the opinions we express, which is inevitable given the variety of views they themselves represent. We nevertheless acknowledge our debt to them while taking full responsibility for the views expressed in the following pages. Abbreviations

ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific Countries AIFLD American Institute for Free Labor Development AMC Agricultural Marketing Corporation API Agency for Public Information BITU Bustamante Industrial CBI Caribbean Basin Initiative CDF Capital Development Fund CEO Community Enterprise Organization CEOPDC Community Economic Organization Project Development Company CIA Central Intelligence Agency (USA) CLC Caribbean Labour Congress CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance C. of C. Chamber of Commerce CWP Committee of Women for Progress DN Daily News EFF Extended Fund Facility EPP Emergency Production Plan FlU Financial Intelligence Unit G Daily Gleaner; Sunday Gleaner GROW Growing and Reaping Our Wealth HEART Human Employment and Resources Training IBA International Bauxite Association IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ICSID International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes IDB Inter-American Development Bank IDT Industrial Disputes Tribunal IMF International Monetary Fund ITAC Independent Trade Union Action Council JALGO Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers JAMAL Jamaica Adult Literacy JAS Jamaica Agricultural Society JBC Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation JBI Jamaica Bauxite Institute JCC Jamaica Council of Churches JCF Jamaica Constabulary Force

xviii Abbreviations xix

JDF Jamaica Defense Force JDP Jamaica Democratic Party JEA Jamaica Exporters' Association JEF Jamaica Employers' Federation JFL Jamaica Freedom League JIS Jamaica Information Service JLP JMA Jamaica Manufacturers' Association JNH Jamaica Nutrition Holdings JNIP Jamaica National Industrial Promotions Ltd JOS Jamaica Omnibus Service JPL Jamaica Progressive League JPS Jamaica Public Service Company JTC Jamaica Telephone Company JWG Jamaica Weekly Gleaner JWTU Jamaica Workers and Tradesmen's Union JYCBL Jamaica Youth Construction Brigade League KSAC Kingston and St Andrew Corporation LARRC Latin America Regional Report Caribbean LO Landsorganisasjonen (Norwegian Federation of Trade Un­ ions) LRIDA Labor Relations and Industrial Disputes Act MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of NEC National Executive Council NHT National Housing Trust NIEO New International Economic Order NIS National Insurance Scheme NNICC National Narcotics Intelligence Consumers' Committee NPA National Planning Agency NPM National Patriotic Movement NRA National Reform Association NSC National Security Council (US) NWU National Workers' Union OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPIC Overseas Private Investment Corporation PNP People's National Party PNPYO PNP Youth Organization PSOJ Private Sector Organization of Jamaica RJR Radio Jamaica Rediffusion SAC Social Action Centre SEC Special Employment Program STC State Trading Corporation TUC Trade Union Council TUEI Trade Union Education Institute xx Abbreviations

UAWU University and Allied Workers' Union UNDP United Nations Development Program UP Unidad Popular/Popular Unity USDEA United States Drug Enforcement Administration UTASP Union of Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Person­ nel UWI University of the West Indies WFM Women's Freedom Movement WFfU World Federation of Trade Unions WLL Workers' Liberation League WPJ Workers' Party of Jamaica YJ Young Jamaica YO see PNPYO YSL Young Socialist League