Beyond Ronald Mason's diatribe

Hilbourne Watson, GUEST COLUMNIST

Jamaican immigration lawyer Ronald Mason penned a 'commentary' that was published in The Sunday Gleaner of May 5, 2013 under the title 'Kick CARICOM to the kerb'.

Mr Mason declares: "I am a Jamaican; I am NOT a Caribbean man. I want no part of the totally useless creation we label CARICOM. The peoples who populate those islands 1,000 miles away from my home are not brothers and sisters. There has been some cross-breeding, but it's statistically insignificant to warrant the familial term 'brothers'."

Mr Mason's frustration with the CARICOM brand is understandable; however, his hypernationalist ideological tone does little to add to our understanding of the necessary distinction to be drawn between CARICOM - an organisation established by a number of former British West Indian colonies in search of a strategy for promoting regional integration - and the population groups that comprise the actual societies he so cavalierly dismisses. Mason dwells on nationalist themes that highlight the deep sense of fear and loathing that come with capitalist globalisation.

A case in point is the presence of right-wing groups operating throughout the member countries of the European Union that target foreigners and, especially, immigrants from non-European countries. Some of these groups go so far as to target people from neighbouring countries with their xenophobic outbursts.

Clearly, Mr Mason's sentiments have a certain global resonance. However, it is important to note that globalisation continues to expose the inability of nationalism to protect the increasingly insecure and vulnerable mass of people trapped in national societies from the contradictions that come with the deepening of economic, social and political inequality.

The very serious issues currently facing the masses of Jamaican working-class people deserve a more serious engagement, with attention to the challenges that will inevitably erupt at the regional and global level. There is a sense in which Mr Mason dares to say openly what some of his counterparts in other CARICOM countries dare not express so candidly. The problem is that Mason limits his attention to CARICOM, without any mention of the stalled Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME).

CARICOM was created in 1973 to promote and foster regional integration. However, the institution has made very little substantive progress beyond functional cooperation, with marginal achievements in meaningful economic integration, when measured in terms of the growth and deepening of 'inner structures' of science, technology, capital, and large numbers of highly trained cadres of professional and technical workers capable of fomenting any dynamic and strategic regional integration.

Partly as a result of this stricture, the leading CARICOM-based business strata have largely given up on CARICOM becoming a viable regional market to support and sustain their specialisations, so they have turned to forging transnational alliances in the hope of achieving global competitiveness.

The reality, of course, is that when functional cooperation in areas like education, sports, natural-disaster management and coordination of political and administrative processes assumes a life of its own and becomes a substitute for effective economic integration, the tendency is to find scapegoats in response to frustration and cynicism.

Mr Mason is left to concentrate on symptoms rather than causes of the crisis to which he draws attention in unmistakable vitriolic ways by vilifying the people of the Eastern Caribbean member countries. Largely, he appears to be pandering to a version of Jamaican exceptionalism, with its counterparts in Barbadian exceptionalism, both of which are unseemly contrivances.

The very small size and scale of the CARICOM market forces businesses to build strategic transnational alliances for which national sovereignty offers no viable alternative, nationally or regionally. Take, for example, the dominant company within the so-called Barbados Brand - Goddard Enterprises Limited (GEL) - which did not only deepen and expand its operations within CARICOM but was also forced to forge strong links with companies in Central and South America, Canada and Europe.

When GEL got into developing its supermarket business in Barbados decades ago, the Goddard family sent their sons to Canada for college education and business training, and their boys subsequently returned armed with the Canadian supermarket model, which they set up in Barbados with considerable effectiveness for as long as the model could survive, and when the time came they restructured and diversified their operations. Of course, GEL took advantage of every incentive that the ruling political parties in Barbados provided.

Important in this regard is the GEL operation called Flight Kitchen, which services all airlines calling at Barbados with meals, and other services. Flight Kitchen also operates in Central and South America and GEL markets a brand of Barbados rum in North America, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Australia, and New Zealand and in parts beyond. GEL is also big (by standards) in the Caribbean. However, the company is very clear that the Caribbean market (especially the CARICOM submarket) is far too small for it to expand and become globally competitive as a capitalist enterprise.

PRODUCTION STANDARDS LOW

Serious thinkers on the Caribbean political economy scene know that the level of production, investment, and trade integration within CARICOM is extremely low by standards and with respect to the period the entity has been in operation. When we exclude trade in Trinidad's oil and gas products, the extent of regional cooperation declines significantly. It is also a fact that the huge and persistent variations and forms of economic unevenness in terms of the development of the productive forces, performance, exchange rates, professional and technical labour mobility, and debt-to-GDP ratios, carry serious implications for capital accumulation potential.

CARICOM has far outlived its effectiveness and capacity for economic deepening in the direction of meaningful regional economic integration. The dominant myth shared by politicians, technocrats, most academics across CARICOM and the mass of ordinary citizens is that governments can actually produce meaningful regional economic integration in market-based economies.

NO AUTONOMOUS BASE

The fact that the CSME had to be put on hold speaks to the fact that CARICOM had never matured into a body that produced the appropriate infrastructure for creating a single market and economy. Frankly, CARICOM has no autonomous base within the global capitalist economy, when one looks beyond the logic and process of functionalism. In fact, the member countries have all become much more deeply integrated with North America and the European Union (EU) than with one another.

The noise and chatter over the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the EU dating back to at least 2007-08 revealed a number of contradictions within global capitalism. A few decades ago, the Canadians noted that they did not see where the future direction of the Caribbean countries suggested opportunities for the deepening of Canada-Caribbean economic, industrial and technological ties.

The CARICOM 'political class' acknowledged, when it signed on to the terms of the EPA, that the CARICOM zone was already so deeply integrated into the EU zone that there remained very little room to try to assert themselves along any regional trajectory. The strategy adopted by the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) reflected the position of the 'political class' and the business strata with its commitment to forging transnational linkages. Much, if not all, of the funding that allowed the RNM to conduct its studies for deepening links with the EU was provided by the EU and/or Canadians, as I have heard.

My problem with Ronald Mason's argument is that it is rabidly ideological, paying no attention to the concrete material, economic and larger social processes that give rise to much of the insularity where his sentiments remain trapped like fossils. His is a grossly hypernationalist response to issues and forces beyond his control and beyond the control of any ordinary national of Jamaica or of any other Caribbean country.

Mason's argument is old hat - notice that he is looking north to Canada, which has no interest in what he is proposing. I would be far more interested in listening to how any given Jamaican businessman views CARICOM rather than listening to a diatribe that adds nothing to any serious discourse.

It is, however, quite understandable that Ronald Mason feels that Jamaica should withdraw from CARICOM. He might do well to ask the following probing questions: What is to be the future of an entity like CARICOM in an increasingly global capitalist economy?

What is CARICOM adding to the chances for the broad mass of working people inhabiting the member countries to reproduce themselves?

HOW MUCH CAN CARICOM DO?

Apart from a space in which senior and other bureaucrats and technocrats in the organisation can go to work and perhaps retire with good benefits, how much can CARICOM do to effectively stimulate science, technology, R&D, investment, production, employment and capital to broaden and deepen the chances for raising the standard of living of the great mass of working-class people in the Caribbean, considering that the large enterprises do not view CARICOM as substantively viable?

Finally, I recall exchanging points with Ian Boxill several years ago about his published graduate thesis on "ideology or ideologies of regional integration in CARICOM", in which he concluded that certain Jamaican business interests had long viewed themselves as outliers on the ideology of CARICOM regionalism. Based on Boxill's conclusions, I do not think that Mr Mason's diatribe should come as a surprise to anybody.

Hilbourne A. Watson is professor of international relations at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and hawatson@bucknell.edu.