Creative classes and emancipatory thinking

Robert Buddan, Contributor

Francis Wade is a young management consultant whose passion is the transformation of Caribbean workplaces, economies and societies. He wants to do so by getting people to think creatively about wealth and investments. He has been writing on the subject in this newspaper and elsewhere and has made me revisit a thought that seems appropriate at this time of reflection on Emancipation.

There has been a long-standing debate among historians about whether it is the economic ruling class of a society that makes that society do well. Others believe it is how well governments do, or how productive the labour force is.

Mr Wade is a Caribbean rarity, not because he thinks about wealth creation, but because he goes all the way back to slavery in doing so. Many management consultants are not historians, and many younger professionals today seem to believe that thinking about slavery is old-fashioned and would probably embarrass the powerful classes who they prefer to imitate rather than study critically. They tend to think that some of us are too hung up on the shame and guilt of the past, and only the present is relevant.

'The blacker, the poorer'

In fact, Mr Wade believes the successful person today must think critically, rather than imitatively. He puts it this way: "One of the grim reminders of plantation slavery in the Caribbean is how well we were trained not to think," meaning not to think critically but to follow without questioning, which is really not thinking. Mr Wade believes this was a design of the ruling plantation class because this made it easier to control the slaves and, later, the emancipated people. His other point is controversial. He said this is why it is that "the blacker the country, the poorer it is".

Uncritical thinking

The uncritical thought system of slavery continues to exist in today's management-worker relationship. The result of this form of control is that the countries with the largest ex-slave populations have been least successful in solving their problems. They have the highest crime, unemployment and poverty. So said Mr Wade. Is he talking about Haiti and Jamaica?

Mr Wade says the ruling class has taught the working people not to think. He hasn't said if that class has itself been unthinking, that is, uncritical and uncreative. He seems to believe so, though. And, here is where he comes to his transformation idea. It is that the modern country needs more knowledge workers. He says, and I agree, that: "Critical thinking is a key competitive advantage in a world that is coming to rely more and more on knowledge workers, and less and less on manual labour."

A historian like Eric Williams tended to see another dimension to the problem. The way resources were distributed followed racial and, later, ethnic lines. Black slaves and ex-slaves were regarded as cheap labour. Such cheap labour policies influenced the maintenance of low wages, which continued with the immigration of indentured servants after Emancipation. Unlike the lighter-skinned indentured servants, the black ex-slaves were denied credit and loans to go into more lucrative self-employment and business ventures. The ruling planter class used various means to force blacks back into plantation labour. This included land pricing, taxes and vagrancy laws.

The result was ultimately the same. Workers were treated as manual workers not developed to become knowledge workers. The modern view, though, is that: "The creative labour of the mind is now considered to be the primary workforce capable of generating value." The question is, do we have a modern ruling class that thinks this way? Is the ruling class emancipated?

The thing that got me thinking was how to get our ruling class to be a critical and creative-thinking class. Race and ethnicity wouldn't matter if they were, and their wealth would be well-earned. Even better, they would inspire all of us to think critically and creatively, and more of us would consequently rise into the middle class. This would be a form of transformation, not just by the power of the people but the power of the people's thinking. Probably this is what made workers loyal to the ruling classes of the industrial countries. They brought them into the middle class.

Emancipatory thinking

When some of the Caribbean's political parties were launched, they were launched for critical and creative thinking. Eric Williams had declared, "Massa day done." This was because, to Williams, the West Indian massa "constituted the most backward ruling class history has ever known". But Williams added that not every white man was a massa, and not every massa was white. A key role for Williams' People's National Movement was getting "the people to do things for themselves and think for themselves". Norman Manley "connected nationalism with liberty, democracy and creativity", one scholar wrote. Nationalism and nation-building were to be a creative exercise.

Critical and creative thinking is emancipatory thinking. It is the thinking that builds a nation out of a plantation. Manley and Williams challenged everything that had been said about why natives could not rule themselves and locals could not build a nation. They went further. They actually built a region. Emancipatory thinking is the critical thinking that challenges prevailing views about what others say we cannot do; and creative thinking is about coming up with ways of looking at things very differently in order to solve a problem or even to change the world.

Manley and Williams believed that the people must be part of national thinking, and so they believed in participatory democracy. Democracy meant the freedom to think. Creative thinking is not an elitist exercise. Creative thinking comes out of a creative process that is participatory. Francis Wade is thinking creatively about how to get manager and worker to think differently about their relationships, hopefully with their participation, and thereafter conduct their relationships differently.

Recently Douglas Orane, executive chairman of GraceKennedy, presented a one-year scorecard of Jamaica's progress in nine areas he had identified before. What he must do for the coming year is get the stakeholders to participate in thinking differently about how to improve performance in these areas and ways to do it. How do we think critically and creatively about paying more taxes; volunteering in our communities; selecting more parliamentary candidates with integrity; disclosing campaign financing fully; seizing criminal assets; reducing the homicide rate; designing fit and proper standards for contractors; auditing political parties; and processing legislation more speedily.

It is one thing to score. We need now to look radically at how we have been thinking about these things and thinking creatively about doing them differently.

I would also challenge Mr Orane and the ruling class, workers and stakeholders to make Grace and their companies regional and global; export what we have around the world; find energy alternatives; make a regional stock exchange work; make more companies list on local and regional stock exchanges; grow more food; create decent work for everyone; make society more equitable; make education work, and invest in our rich cultural industry. We should score them later.

When our ruling class - and our upper middle class is our ruling class - can think less imitatively and more creatively, maybe more of us will be loyal.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm.