Seasoning Caribbean leadership

Robert Buddan, Gleaner Writer

Caribbean scholars and politicians will gather at the Mona campus, University of the West Indies, this coming week, September 30 to October 2, to honour the great Gordon K. Lewis' contribution to the way we have come to understand the modern West Indies.

This is what Caribbean historians and scholars of political thought do. They discover and rediscover how we have and currently see our societies. That is important for how we approach our problems. It might be the fundamental issue in determining whether we are going about our solutions the right or wrong way. It is a vital public conference.

Gordon K. Lewis wrote a book called the Growth of the Modern West Indies. He belonged to a generation of new scholars of the 1960s who wanted to know what West Indian life meant and what it meant to be West Indian. Lewis remains relevant because, despite the years of regionalism, talk of single market and economy, freedom of movement and Caribbean Court of Justice, most of us cannot truly say we know what it is like to be Puerto Rican, Haitian, Surinamese, Barbadian, Trinidadian, Grenadian or Antiguan.

How, then, can we make democracy, economy and justice work for us all together in the region? How can we be free to exercise our power towards these ends? This is the theme of the conference. The Centre for Caribbean Thought (Department of Government) has organised this conference under the theme 'Freedom and Power'.

Freedom

There is much creativity in the region. But there is much imitation too. The former is about the creative use of freedom and the latter is about imitating other people's freedom. This difference is of practical importance. How we approach our plans to be become developed countries in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago can be creative or imitative. What works for others might not work for us.

Our approach has much to do with the power structure. If the imitative thought and policies of those at the top of the social, economic and political ladders prevail, then I fail to see how that power structure can help us. Getting creative Caribbean thought and policies to the top of the business, social and political classes is necessary. It is part of the transformation that development plans must begin with.

We need a power structure where the creative and independent thinkers of Caribbean reality are, or can rise to the top. If they are creative Caribbean capitalists, with a sense of our emancipatory history and mission, fine. If they are creative political democrats on a mission of regional and nation-building, good. If they are creative cultural players who know how to bring out the best in us, nice. What is important is that the new, bold, path-breaking ideas and practices that can make the best of what is uniquely Caribbean is at the top, not the bottom of the power structure.

Where money is at the top and creativity is in the middle, and at the bottom and there are many social, political and economic barriers against them meeting, then we will not progress. Society grows stale, stagnant, demoralised by failure and falls badly behind. This is true for society as it is true for its institutions. The University of the West Indies, for example, has a rare space to think independently and creatively, not slavishly or commercially, and its own opportunity structure must reflect this.

Power structures have a way of 'seasoning' aspirants to power in business, politics and social institutions. It was not only the slaves who were seasoned into the societies of the planter class. The upwardly mobile in modern society go through a seasoning process of deradicalisation as well.

Power

How we think is one thing. What we have power to do is another. Power tends to go to those who imitate best. They follow the rules. They play safe. They don't rock the boat. The basic premise of Western civilisation is that westernisation is best. To rock the boat of westernisation jeopardises the trust that the powerful will have in the unseasoned. This is why the imitators go to the top and the creative ones are kept down. The management models, political models, family models, belief systems, dress codes, and those things we live by, are valued to the extent that they approximate the Western ideal types. Power judges those favourably who can imitate best.

But if power rewards imitation, freedom rewards creativity. Creative people challenge power, especially when power gets incestuous, stale, stagnant and ultimately repressive. But these people are demonised as dangerous radicals and as threats to stability and orthodoxy. Yet, all they want to do is experiment and explore the fuller range of possibilities that lie in Caribbean people and societies.

Imitation

Imitation is our limitation. Creative people believe in transformation. They believe progress comes from transforming power structures so that the creative ones come through. This does not mean rejecting things western as it sometimes does. Nor, is it about accepting things African, Asian or non-western, simply because they are. Non-Western ideas and practices can be oppressive and reactionary. But they can be liberating and emancipatory. What matters is what is creative and progressive.

Growing the West Indies

Lewis' book, Growth of the Modern West Indies, covered the period after the First World War (1919) to the independence of Guyana and Barbados in 1966. He wanted to understand the main currents of West Indian life and (in a later book) of West Indian thought. He wanted to know what contributed to Caribbean life and thought. The project remains relevant for today's scholars. They must build on understanding the forces that shape us. They must study political parties, race and ethnicity, and family structures.

These must be studied in the new context of nearly 40 years of nation building since independence under the new forces of globalisation and the new Caribbean identity at home and in the diaspora. Without that, our development plans are futile. The big four - Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago - have launched plans to achieve First-World status by 2020 or 2030. None of those plans rest on what kinds of societies we have become. But they propose what kinds of societies we can be.

More urgent than ever

The growth of the modern Caribbean is now more urgent than ever. Sir Ronald Sanders says the Caribbean region is worse off than it was at the start of the decade. This is true in crime rates, growth rates, debt and unemployment. Probably we are thinking about freedom and power the wrong way. After all, aren't we in Jamaica cutting back sharply on what we spend on our regional university?

Many people simply do not understand the value of knowledge in development. They focus on the output - economic growth, job openings, income rises and more services. Social and political thought's focus on intangible inputs like freedom, justice, knowledge, and thought. Without them, the outcomes are not possible. Let's have more freedom and fewer barriers between those with capital and those with creativity, and we will have more power all around.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, Mona, UWI. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.