TOWARDS A THEORY OF WEST INDIAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT by Marietta Morrissey* The former British West Indies1 have received much attention from economists, sociologists, historians. These scholars have examined a wide range of hypotheses and propositions, but important phenomena have gone unexamined. West Indian economic development, for example, has been simply equated with Western capitalist evolution. And, more recently, scholars have ascribed West Indian &dquo;underdevelopment&dquo; to the influence of Western imperialism. But social science has failed to describe fully or to explain the unique character of West Indian economy. Up to this point we find that social scientists with a non-Marxist materialist and historical viewpoint have treated West Indian development most seriously. Prominent in West Indian studies, as in few other world areas, are scholars for whom the conflicts of economically defined groups are a motive force of history. Two distinct perspectives on the definition of these groups and the nature of their conflicts within and outside their nations and the region are provided by those I would term traditional materialist historians and by Caribbean advocates of a dependency perspective, or Caribbean structuralists. In the section that follows, the major propositions and assumptions of these two approaches to West Indian economic development are reviewed, focusing on their conceptual weaknesses. In the following section evidence from the 1846 to 1880 period of Jamaican history will be presented that challenges both the traditional materialist and dependency analytical strategies. Finally, I will suggest the contours of an alternative, Marxist theory of West Indian economic development. TRADITIONAL MATERIALIST AND CARIBBEAN STRUCTURALIST PERSPECTIVES: A CRITIQUE Traditional materialist writings have lent much to our understanding of West Indian economies. The empirical research of Williams (1966b), Hall (1959), Eisner (1961), Curtin (1955), and others is particularly useful, taking *The author teaches in the Department of Sociology at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas. She wishes to thank Nora Hamilton, James Dietz, and David Barkin for their comments on an earlier version of this article. The former British West Indies here refers principally to the larger nations, Jamaica, Trinidad, 1 Guyana (formerly British Guiana) and Barbados. 4

5

of primary resources in Britain and the West Indies that are not accessible to an American audience. Traditional materialists compare Third World economies to now developed capitalist ones. The model for the traditional materialist discussion of satellite economic development is the bourgeois revolution, based on the assumptions: (a) that the old order was precapitalist or transitional to capitalism; (b) emergent capitalist enterpreneurs engaged first in trade and then in manufacturing, breaking with landed forces; (c) this break from largescale landowners eventually led to the development of an internal market in which food from the agricultural sector (acquiring capitalist relations of production) was exchanged for light manufactured goods; it was the internal market that provided a continuous stimulus for industrialization and balanced

advantage

economic

growth. to the first of

these

propositions, that the bourgeois revolution initially precapitalist mode of production, we find several theoretical problems in its application to the West Indies. As dependency theorists have long argued, Third World social formations are, at least in part, capitalist; thus, neither European feudalism nor the early European capitalist pattern of small-scale production for use and limited exchange are found in pure form in sixteenth through nineteenth century Third World social formations. Rather, large-scale commodity production, associated with a more advanced stage of capitalism, was widespread in Latin America, Asia, and Africa during this period and often existed alongside petty production and trade of basic goods and precapitalist forms of production. In the West Indies, dependency theorists have argued rightly that plantation production of raw materials for trade to European manufacturers wiped out precapitalist antecedents and severely restricted the scope of peasant agriculture and petty artisanry (Mandle, 1972; Best, 1968: 288-289). Traditional materialists in effect answer dependency critics by contending that the West Indian slave-based plantation of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries was not a capitalist form of production regardless of the crops grown, their sale on the market, or their destination. This traditional materialist position is grounded empirically and analytically in comparisons 3f modern slavery to the noncapitalist slave regimens of antiquity. And, ironically, traditional materialTurning

from

arose

a

ists have found theoretical support for their characterization of West Indian slave societies as noncapitalist in Marx’s definition of modes of production in terms of their social relations (Curtin, 1955). If, the traditional materialists argue, free labor defines capitalism, then slave labor on the West Indian scale establishes it categorically as a noncapitalist society. Traditional materialists have also cited Marx’s discussion of slavery, specifically the claim that it is a production relation fundamental to some social formations and thus is the basis itself of a mode of production, one which has not necessarily preceded or contributed to the evolution of capitalism (Marx, 1965: 87; Mintz, 1978). Thus traditional materialists have considered the West Indies of the plantation slavery period as precapitalist societies anticipating bourgeois revolution. Traditional materialists have used the second assumption, concerning the bourgeois separation from landholding classes, to assert that nineteenth century West Indian national entrepreneurs were carriers of a bourgeois Latin American

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1981, Vol VIII, t4o 1

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tradition (Curtin, 1955; Hall, 1959; Williams, 1966a). Among peasant producers (of food and export crops) a yeomanry has sometimes emerged, although traditional materialists agree that it did not achieve dominance over the nineteenth century planting class or later corporate plantation owners (Curtin, 1955). Dependency theorists also charge that traditional materialists are wrong to term many elements of the national bourgeoisie progressive, for they are tied to the plantation system through production and trade of export crops that are processed and marketed by plantation agencies or through the provision of goods and services for the plantation. Moreover, say dependency theorists, the activities of export-oriented producers and traders may threaten plantation owners through competition for land, labor, and more recently capital, but production and trade of exports and export-related goods required continued bonds to the large-scale planter (Beckford, 1972: 179-182). Students of Latin America have made a similar point, arguing that entrepreneurs have not broken with traditional landowners; kinship ties with members of the merchant-landholding coalition and industrialists as well as the structure of agricultural and industrial production have prevented a progressive national bourgeois challenge to the old order (see, for example, D. Johnson, 1972). At issue between historical materialists and dependency the theorists, then, is the economic foundation of the national bourgeoisie volume and composition of food and manufactured goods produced for use and local exchange, and whether the production and trade of exports and export-related goods by sectors of the national bourgeoisie enhances the potential for capitalist economic development. -

-

-

Finally, the traditional materialist argument about European and West Indian internal markets has been scrutinized carefully by dependency theorists. Dependentistas and traditional materialists generally agree that the internal market of emergent European capitalism was based on the exchange of light manufactured goods and food. But traditional materialists argue that, although local West Indian production of food and petty manufactures has not equalled the output of early European bourgeois farmers and manufacturers, the production of export crops and goods and services for export industries can take the place of production for local exchange in the development process (Eisner, 1961; H. Johnson, 1972). Dependency theorists challenge a fundamental assumption of this traditional materialist view by arguing that the production of commodities for international exchange (and related forms of production and trade) does not produce as much domestically controlled capital as the production of goods and services for local exchange (Thomas, 1974: 57) and that this is a significant difference from the European path of development. Two limiting factors are cited by dependency theorists to account for low domestic capital accumulation in societies which emphasize export production: foreign ownership of the means of production and the few spin-off possibilities (linkages), given the inelastic world demand for primary products and the fact that phases of production are completed abroad (i.e., much export production has a high import content). interesting to note also that a unique and influential Caribbean dependency perspective has emerged in this debate, marked by the regional It is

7

of its proponents and their nationalist politics.2 Through the 1970s, Best, Beckford, Girvan, and other well known Caribbean

backgrounds 1960s and

advocates recast the area’s history within a framework of British and American imperialist domination as follows: The Third World has served historically as an extension of capitalist metropolies; the production of commodities for international exchange by slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth century West Indies fueled British capitalist development. The result for the West Indies has been &dquo;underdevelopment,&dquo; a loosely defined condition of sectoral imbalance and low growth. The region cannot achieve the strength of Western Europe and the United States because of enduring high levels of international and national investment in export-commodity

dependency theory

production. Caribbean dependency theorists contend further that the plantation has been the fundamental unit of production throughout the history of the West Indies, and that it is also capitalist. In this, they concur with Latin American dependency theorists and the more recent proponents of the &dquo;world capitalist system&dquo; approach, who claim that Third World countries have been capitalist since their contact with North Atlantic plunder, trade, and investment (Frank, 1967: Wallerstein, 1974b; Amin, 1974). Borrowing also from American anthropologists of the cultural materialist school, Caribbean dependency theorists have argued that the relatively high capital content of plantation production, corporate sources of capital, production for international exchange, etc., distinguish the plantation from other, noncapitalist systems of production (Wolf and Mintz, 1957; Best, 1968; Beckford, 1972). The Caribbean dependency methodology derives from the concept &dquo;plantation society&dquo; or &dquo;plantation economy,&dquo; as a total institutional &dquo;structure&dquo; (Mandle, 1972; Beckford, 1972; Best, 1968). The plantation &dquo;structure&dquo; is believed to have dominated all aspects of social and economic life in the region (Wagley, 1960) and is the reason for blocked economic development. Domestic capital accumulation is said to be restricted to the boundaries of the plantation, while foreign ownership and control of various stages of production and marketing limit the portion of capital returned to the local economy and define the type, and thus the capital generating potential, of external economies. No form of production that can propel bourgeois capitalist development of the society such as food production and light manufacturcan emerge beside the plantation, as the latter ing for the internal market dominates local land, labor and capital. Essentially, then, Caribbean dependency theorists, or &dquo;structuralists,&dquo; perceive little structural change in the local economies’ four hundred years of existence. The region’s economic progress seems slight and its form unaltered. Neither historical modification in the organization of the plantation nor new institutions and industries which have become a part of the plantation -

-

2 T his is by no means the first critical treatment of the Caribbean dependency perspective; others include Sudama (1979), Benn (1974), Ohiohenuan (1979-1980), and Oxaal (1975). This body of evaluative literature is part of a general critical assessment of dependency theory. Observers agree, however, that the Caribbean dependency approach is unique because the nationalist political ideology of Best, Girvan, Beckford, et al., arose in a West Indian context of seeming accommodation with colonial and neocolonial influences, and because Caribbean dependency scholars and their students have recently served in regional and national policymaking bodies. Latin Amencan

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&dquo;structure,&dquo; e.g., mineral export, have seemed to relieve Caribbean dependence on metropolitan demand, expertise and capital (Girvan, 1970; 1973). The economy remains, the dependency perspective suggests, as it has always been, passively responsive to external forces (Best and Levitt, 1975: 37). The destruction of nearly all precapitalist social formations in the earlier Spanish conquest meant that British imperialists encountered little rivalry. Dependency theorists claim that no West Indian class or social group has ever emerged to challenge the principal form of imperialist economic hegemony, the plantation. In essence, the plantation is the source of all social stratification in the society. Wolf (1959: 154) states the dependency view succinctly: &dquo;The plantation thus not only produces its own class structure, but has an inhibiting effect on the formation of any alternate class structures within the area of control.&dquo; Before emancipation, it is argued, there was a direct functional relationship between plantation production and social groupings, as nearly everyone produced plantation goods and services. A progressive national bourgeoisie could not arise out of merchant or planting groups, as indigenous petty food agriculture and manufacturing of any more than a limited nature were incompatible with their commitment to commodity export production and international trade (Mintz, 1974: 181-207); the laboring population was held, by and large, coercively to plantation production. After emancipation those not employed on the plantation produced goods and services independently, forming forward and backward linkages to the plantation. In the twentieth century, foreign investment in mining and manufacturing has taken place, but, for the dependency theorists, this trend has been absorbed into the &dquo;plantation society,&dquo; and thus has not altered long-standing patterns of social hierarchy. Mining and manufacturing firms have employed relatively few West Indians. But, more importantly, such enterprises perform only a phase of production locally; they are, like the plantation, vertically integrated internationally, and channel capital and ancillary production away from the satellite economy (Girvan, 1970; Best, 1968).3 Beckford summarizes the structuralist dependency position on stratification in the West Indies: In these areas the plantation has been the dominant economic, social and political institution in the past, continues to be in the present, and from all indications will continue to be in the future. It is an instrument of political colonization; it brought capital, enterprise, and management to create economic structures which have remained basically the same; it brought together different races of people from various parts of the world to labor in its service and thus determined the population and social structures now existing in these places (1972: 3).

The dependency theory of former British West Indian underdevelopment needed antidote to the traditional materialist perspective. Surely, the

was a

3 C aribbean structuralists were also influenced by Western orthodox economics (Brown and the Brewster, 1974). Best, Beckford, Girvan and others extend analysis of the "firm" other like The boundaries. national plantation, neoclassical economics unit of analysis beyond segments of the international firm in the Third World, is said to inhibit national economic development because it is separated from the rest of the firm. The implication, which Caribbean structuralists have occasionally made explicit, is that nationally or regionally integrated firms could create autonomous West Indian capitalist development (Girvan, 1970). —

—

9

early European bourgeoisie has

not had a precise counterpart among Caribbean classes or social groups. And as Mintz (1974: 40) remarks about West Indian peasantries, often compared to sectors of the European bourgeoisie, &dquo;In view of this special social history, it is difficult to understand why any scholar of this portion of Latin America shoul~ have concluded that Caribbean peasantries closely resemble those of the European sub-continent.&dquo; Nor can international marketing of commodity exports be properly compared to local petty commodity exchange in its consequences for the development

process.

Yet, there is

a sense

gone too far in

refuting

in which the Caribbean dependency theorists have traditional materialist propositions. Underdevelop-

ment, as conceptualized by the Caribbean dependency school and embodied in the &dquo;plantation society,&dquo; presents serious inconsistencies and weaknesses. First, the totalistic definition of the plantation system excludes from consideration all nonexport and nonexport-related forms of trade and production carried out by particular social classes and groups (Benn, 1974). The size and scope of the internal market for food and other basic goods are crucial, as they indicate a degree of independence from foreign capitalist hegemony, and constitute possible grounds for dynamic, autonomous capitalist development even if exaggerated and improperly along the lines originally perceived The character of the plantation, in traditional materialists. explained by is overdrawn Caribbean dependency theorists, rendering it static general, by and rigid.&dquo;[D]espite its ’historical/institutional/structural’ context, [their] analysis cannot be called dynamic ... &dquo; (Ohiorhenuan, 1979-1980: 398). Rather, it is descriptive of gaps in national income and differences in sectoral composition between developed and Caribbean economies. This leads to a second line of criticism: that the &dquo;plantation society&dquo; does not account for group conflicts and resulting transformations in the West Indies generated internally or through interaction with Western capitalist imperialism. More fundamentally, then, &dquo;a source of motion in the dependent economy has not been identified&dquo; by Caribbean dependency theorists nor, have what is for Marxists its root, class relations (Ohiorhenuan, 1979: 399). The question of whether modern Third World social formations are wholly capitalist has stirred much debate among Marxists (Wallerstein, 1974a; Brenner, 1977). Underlying the controversy is a rejection by some Marxists of &dquo;relations of production&dquo; as a definitional characteristic of capitalism, a noteworthy departure from classic Marxist categories (see the works of Frank, 1967; Amin, 1974, 1976; and Wallerstein, 1974a, 1974b). The substitution of market relations for relations of production does little in the opinion of many to recapture the analytical power of the Marxist method. Nor does it lead to the full description of conditions under which goods have been produced in the Third World after imperialist penetration; it is now argued that there have been classes and groups in Third World societies whose members have instituted and preserved forms of production outside the nexus of imperialist capitalist influence (Petras, 1976; McDaniel, 1976-1977). The growth and full elaboration of the precapitalist forms may be limited by the domination of the capitalist mode of production, but their nature, origins, and dynamics cannot be accurately described as capitalist. -

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Latin Amencan

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10

The Caribbean dependency contention that the West Indian plantation is capitalist is not, of course, based on a new interpretation of Marx. Caribbean dependency theorists have sought merely to explain the connection between what is for them the principal unit historically of West Indian production, the plantation, and &dquo;underdevelopment.&dquo; But at least two criticisms that have been made of &dquo;underdevelopment&dquo; and &dquo;world capitalism&dquo; apply equally to Caribbean dependency theory’s analysis of the plantation. The &dquo;plantation,&dquo; like Frank’s, Amin’s, and Wallerstein’s conceptual structures, is a totality, one which includes relations of production that may resemble the dominant form but are, on closer examination, quite different. Thus, structuralist proponents of &dquo;world capitalism&dquo; and &dquo;underdevelopment&dquo; brush aside enduring precapitalist social relations in their sweeping categorizations of the &dquo;total&dquo; complex of social forms in the Third World (Patankar and Omvedt, 1980: 23), just as the Caribbean dependency theorists’ &dquo;plantation&dquo; obscures nonexport and nonexport-oriented forms of production and trade. In like manner, Caribbean and other structuralists have by-passed or distorted decades of Marxist empirical research on the origins and stages of capitalist development, expressed in the distinction between mercantile, competitive, and monopoly periods of capitalism. Third World capitalist institutions, including the plantation, have everywhere changed form in tandem with metropolitan capitalist evolution, providing one key element for a description and analysis of Third World class relations and the dynamics of Third World development. Acknowledgement of metropolitan transformations and their effects on satellite social relations is too often shallow, disconnected from fundamental and long-studied alterations in the forces and relations of metropolitan capitalism (see for example Wallerstein, 1974b; Amin, 1976; Best, 1968; Beckford, 1972). Dependency theory is not methodologically suited to the identification of dynamic processes because the bases of group relations are unspecified. Caribbean dependency theorists have not rectified traditional materialists’ failure to explain West Indian development class and group conflict to because they lack the conceptual apparatus develop a theory of the dynamic means by which the region’s economies have formed. Ohiorhenuan (1979-1980: 395) thus concludes his evaluation of Caribbean dependency theory: &dquo;There (has been) no serious attempt at formulating a comprehensive theory of Caribbean development.&dquo; In general, dependency theories especially those employing an explicitly structuralist methodology lack the analytical categories on which to construct theories of Third World development. &dquo;[T]hese theories of dependency ... are mistaken ... because their mechanico-formal nature renders them both static and unhistorical&dquo; (Palma, 1978: 903). As implied in the foregoing theoretical critique of the Caribbean dependency perspective, empirical descriptions of specific social relationships have been inaccurate. The volume and range of West Indian food and light manufacture production not directed to the plantation or export-related enterprises have been underestimated in recent structuralist accounts. The problem is to develop a Marxist theory of West Indian development which describes and explains a full range of historical dynamics. In particular, it -

-

-

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11

address such classes and forces of

production as nonplantation and their enterrelated) entrepreneurs (especially nonexport producing have and manufactures of food simple prises. Petty-bourgeois providers the remain national and in other about settings brought revolutionary change most autonomous and productive class in modern West Indian history. The Caribbean structuralist interpretation of the nineteenth century West Indies reveals only a vague elucidation of social hierarchy, masking a fluid

must

or

and conflict-ridden set of classes and groups. A more direct look at relations of production uncovers profound social struggles as a result of the demands of plantation owners and long-distance merchants for labor, goods and services. It will be illustrated in the next section that even during the height of mercantile plantation influence, a significant number of West Indians did not engage in

plantation work;

moreover,

indigenous opposition

to

planters,

through the initiation of other (nonexport oriented) forms of trade and production, has been substantial in many periods of West Indian history. The traditional materialist model of bourgeois capitalist development cannot explain conflicts between members of these groups and planters and international merchants; the size and social origins of the West Indian national bourgeoisie differ from those of its European counterpart. But, the relation of national bourgeois producers and traders to the planting and merchant groups must be taken into account in formulating an alternative conceptualization of West Indian history and will be the cornerstone of a Marxist theory of West Indian economic development. THE WEST INDIES, 1846-1880

The Rise of British Competitive Capitalism West Indians initiated and expanded nonexport and nonexport-related forms of production for internal markets throughout the area’s history. Incipient bourgeois classes appeared and consolidated themselves at various times, although a bourgeois revolution never took place in any West Indian societies. At no time are these processes more evident than from 1846 to 1880 when British capitalism passed from its mercantile beginnings to its competitive, industrial stage. British competitive capitalism was established upon capital accumulated by a mercantile bourgeoisie through exclusive and preferential agreements with an absolutist state (Marx, 1967; Mandel, 1968). By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the privileges enjoyed by British shippers, traders, farmers, and raw material producers abroad held back domestic industrial growth. The emergent industrial bourgeoisie wanted to buy low-priced raw materials and sell manufactured goods in competitive domestic and international markets, and by 1850 had reversed fully the complex network of laws and traditions by which the British state legitimated and secured mercantile capitalist privilege. But prior to this, during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, British long-distance merchants and West Indian planters were allied with other groups supporting mercantile conventions; together they resisted industrial bourgeois threats to monopoly in the British Parliament and other political arenas (Hobsbawm, 1969: 56-78; Williams, 1966b: 135-

153). Latin AmerIcan

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West Indian sugar

planters understood the high costs of production that possible only through mercantile protection; indeed, market guarantees for raw materials promoted &dquo;irrationality&dquo; in production. In the West Indies, land quality eroded steadily under the pressure of constant and nearly exclusive sugar planting; slave labor made possible this abuse of land. As overhead costs rose on the individual unit of production, the planter invested in production on virgin land. When costs were cut, it was generally to increase short-term profits and not to extend the long-term viability of the investment in planting.4 Both planters and merchants benefited from slavebased plantation agriculture although the maintenance and reproduction of the slave labor force was expensive and exacerbated the mercantile tendency to overplant in pursuit of large, immediate gains (Genovese, 1967: 13-39). Planters frequently gave up sugar production after accumulating the wealth needed to assume rentier status; merchants sought one means after another of rapidly acquired commercial wealth. However, with the evolution of British industrial capitalism, rational production characterized by the use of free labor, low factor costs, and reinvestment of profits in improved means of production superseded the irrationality of forms of production protected by mercantilism. The logic of competitive capitalist production would be demanded of planters in the West Indies and of producers in other satellites as were

well. As owners of plantations in the British West Indies exhausted the supply of virgin land, production costs on existing plantations rose rapidly. Politicians in England understood that slavery increased the price of the West Indian sugar that Britain was bound by law to buy (Williams, 1966b: 145-152). At the turn of the nineteenth century, Britain began to purchase sugar from other countries and the islands of the West Indies, including the older sugar islands (e.g., British Guiana), produced in excess of 25 percent of the reduced British West Indian sugar quota. In 1807 the British Parliament sought to decrease West Indian sugar production by abolishing the slave trade; continued oversupply moved Parliament to the emancipation of slaves in 1833 (Williams, 1966b: 152). From 1810 to 1820, the cost of West Indian sugar was so high that British merchants backed away from their long-time allies, the planters. Traders were tempted by the low price of sugar in new areas of production inside and outside the British Empire Cuba, Brazil, Mauritius, Singapore, the PhilipIn the 1825, pines, Java. Navigation Laws were modified and colonies were to trade given permission directly with any part of the world; thus a major mercantile convention was rejected by the then powerful British industrial bourgeoisie, joined by long-distance merchants eager to sell manufactures throughout the world and to buy raw materials without the required -

4 G uttman’s (1975) comments on historical studies of the eighteenth and nineteenth century American South are apt. Too often, he charges, scholars have not noted subtle changes in cotton markets when attempting to establish general propositions about Southern slavery. At the turn of the nineteenth century, British and West Indian class relations were expressed in forms of production that discouraged cost saving. However, in the West Indies there is historical evidence of variation in mercantile planting methods that was most marked when market conditions changed. There was also a broad trend towards more efficient sugar production when mercantile agreements fell and the planting class feared bankruptcy.

13

intervention of British shippers. Also in 1825, the sugar of Mauritius (acquired by Britain in 1815) was admitted to Britain on the same basis as British West Indian sugar, thus forcing the West Indies to share the British market with East Indian sugar. Duties on all sugar imported into Britain were equalized through the Sugar Duties Act of 1846. The British islands of the Caribbean might have withstood the competition from other areas of production had planters emphasized efficient management, advanced technology, and lowcost resources, including cheap wage labor. But this productive regimen was antithetical to the logic of mercantile accumulation.5 From about 1830, individual and merchant company planters withdrew in large numbers from the production and trade of exports and export-related goods and services in the West Indies. The weakness of the mercantile capitalist planters and merchants allowed substantial changes in West Indian social relations to occur. Thus, 1846 to 1880 is an optimal period for careful empirical scrutiny of West Indian economies.

Aspects of

Economic

Development

There are three groups whose activities contrasted with those of the West Indian plantation, export agriculture, and activities related to these forms of production during the period 1846 to 1880 West Indian peasants, urban petty manufacturers, and local traders. They acquired land, labor, and capital through various means of struggle with West Indian merchants and planters; &dquo;rational&dquo; use of these factors of production manifested their continuing and profound conflict with mercantile capitalists. Looking closely at the Jamaican case,6 we find that even before the passage of the Sugar Duties Act, a peasantry had begun to emerge in the West Indies, based on manumitted and emancipated slaves who bought or seized small plots of former plantation land. By 1839, Jamaica had 2,114 freeholders, each with less than 40 acres; by 1845, a total of 19,397 peasants, owning less than 10 acres apiece, resided in Jamaica. Reverend William Knibb, a Baptist minister, established the &dquo;free village&dquo; system after emancipation, buying up land on which to settle freed slaves. Methodists and Scottish missionaries became involved in similar resettlement schemes and joined other churches in seeking improved wage and worker benefits on remaining plantations. By 1842, Knibb had settled 150 to 200 free villages, with an acreage of 100,000; 3,000 cottages were erected, at a total cost of about 100,000 pounds sterling. Knibb and the Jamaica Baptist Union followed the ideal of a &dquo;noble free -

B5 ritish West Indian sugar planting was notoriously inefficient, even by mercantile standards. Planters did not use irrigation, they reinvested only a small portion of profits, and absentee ownership contributed to a lack of care in day-to-day operations. In Barbados and St. Dominique, owners in residence seem to have cut production costs and lengthened the lives of estates. But finally, they too succumbed to exhausted soils and to market shifts by world buyers, who found cheaper products in the fresh lands of other Caribbean islands and in Asia. The following discussion focuses on Jamaica. There are problems with generalization from this 6 case to other larger former British West Indies. Trinidad and Guiana exhibited significant bourgeois challenges to planter hegemony later than did Jamaica; Barbados has a history of medium-scale planting, owners in residence, more efficient planting than was found elsewhere in the region. Nevertheless, the general propositions made have application in all four social formations and qualifications will be made when necessary. Latin Amencan Perspechves Issue

28, Wmter 1981,

Vol VIII, NoI

14

peasantry&dquo; that could spawn a yeomanry. But many of the nearly 50,000 freeholders living in Jamaica by 1865 were never self-supporting and supplemented their individual farming with plantation work. Mintz’ comments

are

instructive:

Between 1838 and 1844, 19,000 freed men and their families removed themselves from the estates, bought lands, and settled in free villages. In terms of the total population affected, this figure may represent an aggregate of as many as 100,000 persons. The initial transformation of ex-slaves into independent yeoman farmers on a grand scale was accomplished in less than a decade. Its social and economic importance for the subsequent character of Jamaican society cannot be overestimated (1974: 160).

Hall (1959) suggests that peasants and laborers grew mostly provisions, and not export crops; small farmers grew more varied agricultural crops, including one or more export crops, and by the late 1850s, they hired wage laborers. Hall adds (1959: 164) that the Jamaican producer (slave or free) was never completely self-sufficient.7 Apart from imports of building materials and metal goods, clothing and various household items were imported from the United States and Canada after the Sugar Duties Act. Peasants produced vegetables and some meat and poultry; they continued to buy cornmeal bread, flour, some kinds of meat, fish, oil, and soap. They supplied essential food to their families and workers and used currency earned in plantation work, trade with urban markets (though relatively limited), and export of sugar, coffee, and later fruits, to buy imported goods. The number of smallholders tripled from 1860 to 1930, and the British government increasingly took the position that the development potential of the islands was embodied in the peasantry and small farmers. The official British attitude towards the peasants diverged from that of the remaining planters and merchants, who disapproved of church schemes to redistribute land. However, in the 1860s, the sugar industry could provide employment for no more than 5 percent of the population. Planter resentment of the peasantry stemmed from an attachment to long-standing West Indian social relations, which included racial hostility to nonwhites as well as a virtual monopoly of political power and nonwhite labor (Curtin, 1955). The conflict between planters and peasants came to a head in 1865 with the Morant Bay rebellion of rural nonwhites, bloodily suppressed by Jamaican Governor Eyre. The repression of the African and Afro-European peasants and agricultural laborers resulted in the reversion of Jamaica to Crown colony status, followed by a similar transition in other West Indian islands. The removal of the local legislature by the British meant that there was no voice for the peasants, laborers, small farmers, and townspeople; nonwhites, generally, lost an avenue for political influence and political and occupational experience. is socially defined. The peasant who produces all that his/her family consumes is self-sufficient, until the family begins to consume other, unnecessary goods. Mintz (1974) and Mintz and Hall (1960) have argued that Jamaican slaves provided for their own subsistence through production in gardens and "provision grounds," (the derivation of the still common West Indian term, "ground provisions," for traditional food crops like yams, corn, beans and other vegetables). This level of self-sufficiency was certainly attained in post-emancipation Jamaica,

Self-sufficiency 7

although imported goods

were

also

widely

available.

15

The efforts of benevolent governors in the post-1865 era to follow the initiative of the Colonial Office in providing social services for the people of the West Indies were also limited by the opposition of remaining European planters, merchants, and professionals. The Crown colony government

supported

some

peasant expansion and settlement programs and credit

Royal West Indian Commission of 1897 recommended land settlement and diversification of agriculture. But many more successful government policies encouraged corporate penetration of the peasant areas, e.g., construction of roads from plantations to ports, cooperative marketing among planters and large-scale farmers of export crops. State support of corporate agriculture had the following consequences. First, peasants continued to supplement their incomes from petty trade of farm products with work on the sugar estates, and later, banana plantations and coffee farms. Second, a distinction emerged between small farmers and peasants, the farmer growing for export, the peasant, for use and local exchange. While sugar production now required capitalization to succeed, coffee production was still feasible with labor intensive methods and, in fact, required less care than sugar. Some of the more prosperous farmers also became involved in sugar production of poorer quality than estate sugar, but exportable. The numbers of these farmers living in Jamaica in the 1850s is difficult to discern, according to Hall (1959), but available evidence suggests that they were fairly numerous and relatively prosperous. Following the emancipation of slaves, there was a rapid rise in the number of inland towns and villages. There were four principal categories of occupation for the working population in the towns: (1) skilled crafts, (2) petty trade, (3) unskilled labor, and (4) various ancillary skills and services. Some manufacturing and trade was directed exclusively to the domestic market, others to the international. The skilled crafts, trades, and services were masonry, carpentry, largely what they had been before emancipation but the numbers seeking work in these areas bricklaying, tailoring, etc. greatly expanded. Those who failed at crafts moved to petty trade and shopkeeping, growing professions as a result of the larger cash economy created by emancipation. In the rural towns, people sometimes supplemented their income from farming with craftsmaking, leading to the creation of a limited and rudimentary manufacturing industry in the countryside. However, the towns were frequently rife with unemployment, as urban industry could not support a growing nonagr cultural population. For example, in 1865 Baptist missionaries reported that in Spanish Town unemployment was especially high in semi-skilled, female-dominated occupations. Of one thouthe largest single occupational category recorded sand domestic servants only about half were employed; the town’s 422 laundresses were mostly out of work, while the 112 local seamstresses worked only occasionally (Hall, 1959: 213). After 1850 many skilled laborers and craftsmen migrated to other areas of the Caribbean and Central America. From 1905 to about 1910, 100,000 Jamaicans emigrated, many to work on the Panama Canal; it is estimated that at least one-third never returned to the island (Hurwitz and Hurwitz, 1971: cooperatives;

a

-

-

-

-

159). The most successful urban economic Lohn American

Perspechves

Issue

28, Wmter 1981, Vol VIII, No

I

activity

was

long-distance trade

-

16

buying of sugar and other export crops from West Indian farmers in exchange for imports of food and manufactured goods. The introduction of wage labor and extensive peasant agriculture both increased the volume of imports sold and the number of intermediate positions between buyer and seller. These trading establishments would also benefit from the extension of corporate agriculture into rural Jamaica; Hall (1959: 223) tells us that some of the new long-distance traders were also involved in sugar planting. He adds (1959: 228) that merchants were apparently among the highest income groups in Jamaica, based on accounts of a Jamaican tax reformer of the period. Merchant prosperity increased after 1846, probably because of lending to

the

troubled estate

owners.

As Eisner’s figures show (Table 1), however, the number of Jamaicans involved in commercial employment was not great. Long-distance traders

numbered more than 376, although these figures are deceptive, as they obscure the overseas participation of British merchant houses in trade and

never

Table 1 Number of

Jamaicans Employed

in

Industry

and Construction

Source: Eisner (1961: 175)

production in Jamaica. The numbers of petty traders and shopkeepers grew more rapidly, outpacing population growth from 1861 to 1891. Table 2 reveals high rates of increase for those engaged in some types of manufacturing and service, for example, dressmakers, tailors, shoemakers and butchers. Yet, carpenters, blacksmiths, and bricklayers grew less quickly and less extensively in number from 1861 to 1891, indicating the relatively low levels of development of manufacturing actually achieved in Jamaica of the British competitive capitalist period. Were there substantial levels of economic growth in sectors unrelated to West Indian export agriculture in the historical era 1846 to 1880? Let us look more closely at the two industries which preceded full economic development in Europe: food production and light manufacturing. These enterprises have traditionally encouraged the creation of a large internal market by promoting domestic capital accumulation and forward and backward linkages among domestic industries.

17

Number of

Table 2 in Commercial

Jamaicans

Employment

*includes itinerant traders

Source:

Eisner

(1961: 165)

(1961: 100) claims that the volume of food for human consumption outside of home gardens rose steadily in Jamaica after the Sugar grown Duties Act in 1846, reaching 55 percent of total agricultural output in 1890. Yet, documentary evidence studied by Eisner and Hall leads both to suggest that most farmers had to supplement their incomes from farming either with wage labor on the plantations or the growing of cash crops for export. In fact, sugar and truly prosperous peasants turned to export crop production as a means of agricultural expansion. coffee The cash earnings of peasants went for food, suggesting again that selfsufficiency in food production was not attained. Moreover, Table 3 indicates that the percentage of food imports into Jamaica between 1832 and 1930 fluctuated, but displayed no significant increase or decrease. In 1832, of the total value of retained imports, 32.5 percent was for food; in 1850, the percentage rose to 36.1 percent, rising again in 1870 to 37.1 percent, and falling to 34.3 percent in 1890. The consequence for Jamaica of the importation of food, in the most superficial terms, is indicated in terms of trade, which reveal a tendency for a continuing deterioration in the Jamaican position as export prices tended to remain the same and import prices rose (see Table 4). This increase in the price of imported manufactured goods and certain foods (meat, wheat, etc.) relative to raw materials is a long-term trend, which has become an increasingly serious problem for raw material producing countries that are not self-sufficient in food and basic manufacture production (Amin, 1974). However, the more critical problem with Jamaican agriculture is in the pattern of entrepreneurship itself. Why did the peasant not strive for self-sufficiency, producing food for consumption in the towns? It would appear to be due both to the ready availability of imports, and the highly profitable possibilities of farming for export and plantation work. Eisner

-

-

Latin Amencm

Pefspechvas

Issue

28, Wmter 1981, Vol VIII, No1

18

Table 3 The

(Total

*in thousands of

Composition of Retained Jamaican Imports Value of Retained

Imports

at 1910

Prices)

pounds sterling

Source: Eisner (1961: 264)

Table 4

Jamaica: The Terms (1910=100)

Source:

Eisner

of Trade

(1961: 257)

Immediately after emancipation, wages were very high on plantations. By the 1850s, wages fell with the introduction of capital intensive technology into sugar production. But, as Hall (1959: 171) notes, peasants could make up for the decline in wages by turning to the production of at least some cash crops. Eisner (1961: 229) indicates that figures for peasant per capita gross earnings increased considerably from 1850 to 1930, mainly as a result of their growing share in export production. Peasant cultivation of export crops was possible by adaptation to small-scale production and techniques rather than by

19

organization of production. Furthermore, when plantation wages fell, wages throughout the West Indian economies fell, reducing the prices obtained for peasant-grown provisions. While the market

improvements

in methods

or

for

grown food was constricting, farmers were not inclined to in further crop diversification but turned to the production of cash crops for export. In reference to Trinidad’s cane farmers, H. Johnson (1972: 67) comments: &dquo;The main attractions of growing cane were that it

locally experiment

needed little skill, land was available, the cane had an assured market, but most importantly the farmer was guaranteed quick returns.&dquo; It can be concluded from this discussion of Jamaican food agriculture that level of production sufficient to feed the population and establish a constant a and expanding base of capital extraction for investment in manufacturing was never reached. The output and range of products grown were substantial, however, and suggest a strength to pure peasant agriculture (as opposed to peasant production of export crops) that rivaled export agriculture during this period. The plantation itself was weak at this time in Jamaica and Barbados and by the 1870s in Trinidad and British Guiana. But export agriculture, the real foreign-dominated challenge to food production, had considerable strength in the West Indian economy in the British competitive capitalist era. Turning to light manufacturing in Jamaica from 1846 to 1880, we find evidence that the development of petty crafts and trade also went beyond the level of the mercantile period. Increasing numbers of people were employed in carpentry, tailoring, etc., and given the large numbers of services formerly provided by the plantation, both a cash economy and the variety of marketable goods and services inevitably expanded. Further, it appears from Eisner’s figures that crafts oriented to individual consumers were more frequently taken up than those of service to the plantation or other

enterprises, e.g., bricklaying, carpentry, etc. (Table 2). Hall (1959) suggests that overall, the advances made in manufacturing during this period were not great. The major problem that the emerging industrial bourgeoisie encountered in the West Indies during the British competitive capitalist period was the unavailability of credit. Financiers and government in Britain would not support long-term projects in the dependent colonies outside of public services and public works. Savings banks, holding the hoardings of laborers, small farmers, craftsmen, etc., made funds available to the Jamaican Treasury but not to private capitalists. United States firms were not interested in investment in Jamaica, assuming that their capital could have been channeled into manufacturing with substantial domestic linkages. Inexperience and lack of political influence compounded the problem of capital scarcity (Hall, 1959: 154); schemes to grow tea, tobacco, cotton, and to manufacture silk, to mine copper, and to market Jamaican timber, all ended in disastrous or disappointing results. By the 1860s, the interest of local investors in the establishments of new enterprises in Jamaica had ebbed. A favorite investment became public works, for which Jamaican government loans were available. Like food agriculture, petty manufacturing gained a foothold in Jamaica from 1846 to 1880, although its overall progress was less marked. Farmers and craftsmen alike laid foundations for the development of a sizeable internal Latin Amencm

Ptf specie

Issue

28, Wmtof 1981, Vol VIII, No1

20

market. In the last years of the nineteenth century, corporate plantation agriculture began to erode some of these gains (Mintz, 1974). Nevertheless, many traders, peasant growers of food, and manufacturers of light goods survived the only Jamaican entrepreneurs capable of carrying out the classic bourgeois mission. -

THEORETICAL ALTERNATIVES better conceptualize this progressive bourgeois thrust, combining the traditional materialists’ recognition of nonexport oriented manufacturing and agriculture and the Caribbean dependency theorists’ understanding of the influence of metropolitan linked raw material production on the West Indian economy? Such a synthesis must start, I contend, with Marxist theories and research on metropolitan capitalist imperialism. Dietz (1979: 19) concurs, urging a shift in focus from dependency to imperialism: &dquo;dependency is not a cause of underdevelopment, but rather a result of imperialist penetration by the advanced capitalist nations.&dquo; By studying metropolitan capitalism, class analysis can be reasserted, which will permit the elucidation of parallel class or group categories for discussion of Third World economy and the eventual construction of a general theory of Third World development. There are now two conceptualizations of the impact of imperialism on Third World development that, together, suggest the contours of a Marxist theory of satellite economy and West Indian development : dependent development and the articulation of modes of production. Critics of dependency theory have long complained that &dquo;underdevelopment&dquo; assumes low levels of Third World growth as a result of systemic imbalance and disaggregation (Palma, 1978: 903-904). Yet nations like Brazil display complex and integrated industrial infrastructures, promoted now by national rather than metropolitan investment. Evans (1979: 32) suggests that &dquo;dependent development&dquo; best describes &dquo;cases where capital accumulation and diversified industrialization of more than a superficial sort are not only occurring in a peripheral country, but are dominating the transformation of its economy and social structure.&dquo; Yet, Evans (1979: 32) claims, &dquo;dependent development was taking place even during the period of classic dependency and ’export-oriented growth,’ at least in those countries which were able to make the transition to the ’consolidation of the internal market’.&dquo;8 &dquo;Dependent development&dquo; implies, nonetheless, exacerbation of some forms of inequality within Third World societies and between developed and developing worlds, as well as the generation of new forms of inequality. In particular, Evans (1979: 29) writes that dependency is for Third World elites &dquo;an obstacle to self-sustained, autocentric accumulation, but for the mass its consequence is exclusion.&dquo; Still, growth in some economic sectors is apparent and benefits national rather than metropolitan classes and groups. Growth is dependent, however, because capital (in various forms) remains concentrated among How

can

we

imperialist metropoles. For the West Indies, the concept of &dquo;dependent development&dquo; allows for a consideration of nonexport oriented forms of production, recognizing that while the satellite as a whole may be dependent upon metropolitan capital, Evans drawson Cardoso (1974) here and 6 ment."

throughout

his

presentation

of

"dependent develop-

21

economic

growth

has been

possible historically

in

particular

sectors and

industries, if only sporadically. Such economic expansion has not lessened dependency. Thus, some West Indian producers and traders have economic interests compatible with export-oriented entrepreneurs; dependent industrialization is, according to Evans (1979: 39), &dquo;a project built on compromise and not on (national) bourgeois domination.&dquo; Nor have struggles among West Indian classes led to bourgeois revolution, given the tendency for imperialism the export-oriented to stimulate &dquo;the growth of its more favored children class.&dquo; and a mercantile Still, &dquo;dependent comprador agrarian capitalists the existence of a national admits possible bourgeoisie comdevelopment&dquo; West Indian contributors to an internal of and progressive posed comprador market that expanded and changed form through time. However, the more profound significance of the dependent development perspective is its potential contribution in making class relations the central organizing principle in the study of the Third World. Its adherents return to the classic Marxist differentiation of forms of metropolitan class relations -

-

mercantile, competitive, monopoly - to establish the basic imperialist framework within which dependent development occurs (Evans, 1979). Thus we know the class origins and systemic logic of metropolitan economic activities in the satellite from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries to the present. This class configuration represents, of course, a traditional Marxist conception of a specific relationship in which owners of the means of production extract surplus-value from workers’ production, the relationship that is at the core and provides the definition of the capitalist mode of production. Moreover, we are able, thinking in terms of &dquo;dependent development,&dquo; to identify satellite groups and classes that react to metropolitan imperialist classes and the form of reaction. However, the dependent development perspective is inadequate in a crucial way: it does not identify satellite classes and groups in organic relation to specific satellite modes of production or social formations. &dquo;Dependent development&dquo; moves beyond theories of underdevelopment in its focus on imperialism as the cause of dependency, but it lacks the conceptual means to fully discern satellite class relations and thus establish Marxist theories of satellite economic development.

Our task, then, as Marxists pursuing an understanding of dynamic Third World economic processes, is twofold. First, we must find the means to conceptualize satellite social groups in relation to indigenous and, what might be termed &dquo;reactive,&dquo; national modes of production. And, second, we must acquire the means to trace the interaction of satellite groups with classes representative of the more readily identifiable imperialist capitalist mode of production. In general terms, then, we are seeking the &dquo;manner in which class structures ’cross’ each other&dquo; (Petras, 1976: 21). More specifically, as McDaniel (1976-1977: 54) asserts: &dquo;Dependency is a relationship: And so it makes no sense to argue that ’external factors’ mechanically cause ’internal factors.’ Instead concrete groups form relationships that shape their practices with respect to each other.&dquo; Thus, we must describe precisely the relationship between sets of classes/groups, including their differing origins and goals. It is tempting to simply categorize such conflicts, as evidenced in the plethora of Latm Amencan

Perspectives

Issue

28, Wmter 1981, Vol VIII, No1

22

to describe Third World social relations: marginality, colony, Evan’s &dquo;exclusion.&dquo; These terms have been useful as metaphors that capture the primacy of capitalist class relations in the Third World, but they are inexact, lacking connection to modes of production and thus the explanatory power of the category &dquo;class.&dquo; Efforts to identify a generalized historical periodization of Third World development linked to satellite class relations are also worthy (Gerstein, 1977: 9). &dquo;There was and is a crucial distinction between where capitalism arose internally within a social formation (typically analyzed by Marxists as the ’normal’ case, i.e., the European model) and where it is imposed from the outside (the colonial and hence Third World case, hitherto inadequately theorized by Marxists.) (But) capitalism should not be seen as merely processual and developmental but also relational and interactional&dquo; (Foster-Carter, 1978a: 66). And, the discussion of relations and interactions depends upon identification of Third World modes of production, their stages and forms, whether indigenous or reactive to imperialist capitalist penetration. Marxist examination of modes of production and their articulation is a promising means by which Third World class and analysis can be completed. Recent scholarly interest in modes of production has its origins in Marxist anthropology, specifically in British and French structuralists’ efforts to augment Marx’s descriptions of precapitalist modes of production (Marx, 1965; Foster-Carter, 1978b). Marxists have not, until now, tried to understand fully non-Western forms of precapitalism; many dependency theorists have, in fact, declared the modern history of the Third World wholly capitalist (Palma, 1978; Patankar and Omvedt, 1980). The richness and complexity of precapitalist social formations is suggested by Godelier (1977), Sahlins (1976), Hindess and Hirst (1977), and others who argue that while relations of production define a mode of production and thus a social formation, they are not necessarily dominant in cultural expression. Other social relations kinship, religion, etc., may be ideologically superordinate. Thus, students of modes of production may eventually identify relations of production in precapitalist social formations, but in a context of other, perhaps more ideologically significant, social relations. The dominating impact of capitalism on precapitalist social formations is termed &dquo;articulation.&dquo; Capitalist social relations and the production related ideology that infuses capitalism overwhelm and tend to destroy precapitalist social relations, although some precapitalist groups may survive and actually, for a time, be strengthened (Dietz, 1979; Foster-Carter, 1978b). The articulation of metropolitan capitalism with Third World precapitalism implies the linkage of two sets of relations of production with different social meanings that through time produce new social formations and which represent the long-term disappearance of precapitalist forms.9 The process of articulation between modes of production can be extended to discuss ties between social formations representative of different stages of capitalism (Dietz, 1979). As the bourgeoisie seems able to conquer groups

&dquo;prototypes&dquo; created internal

-

9 F or Foster-Carter (1978a), the debate between Wallerstein and Frank and many Marxists over the definition of capitalism is irrelevant in light of "articulation." Foster-Carter (1978a: 73) contends that an "articulation" or joining of modes or production most precisely describes the beginning of Western capitalism.

23

dominant in other modes of production, superordinate classes in each stage of capitalist development have undermined an earlier dominant or hegemonic class. In reviving the classic Marxist conceptualization of stages of metropolitan capitalism, &dquo;dependent development&dquo; lays the groundwork to consider ties between social formations in different stages of capitalist development (Dietz, 1979). For example, American monopoly capitalists successfully blocked competitive industrial development in much of Latin America (Dietz, 1979: 22-23).10 The same type of process occurred in the British West Indies. There, British mercantile capitalism destroyed precapitalist antecedents and established a mercantile capitalist economy. Returning to the earlier discussion of traditional materialists and Caribbean structuralists, we see that both have portrayed inaccurately the extension of British mercantile capitalism into the West Indies, the traditional materialists labeling mercantile sugar production &dquo;feudalism,&dquo; while the structuralists claim that it is simply capitalism. The latter characterization is more nearly correct than the former. But, as Marx explained it, mercantile capitalism did not have the same relation to labor as did industrial capitalism and, indeed, was a transitional stage in the realization of industrial capitalism (Marx, 1967; Dupuy and Fitzgerald, 1977; Brenner, 1978). The concept of dominating linkage, or articulation, can also be applied to bonds between capitalism and &dquo;reactive&dquo; national modes of production.&dquo; In the West Indies, British merchant capitalists eventually lost their holdings and political strength, as they were displaced at home by the industrial bourgeoisie. The fall of British mercantile capitalists allowed competitive capitalism to emerge in Jamaica and in other social formations in the region, in opposition to the remnants of mercantile capitalism and its predominant form of production, commodity exports. Thus, British mercantile capitalist imperialism laid the foundation for an apparent incipient West Indian progressive bourgeois revolution that actually represented a new, national mode of capitalist production. Expatriate planters do form a class parallel to the European landed elite, in the sense that both were challenged by new 10 (1979) analysis of recent Puerto Rican history is relevant theoretically to the study of the Dietz’ former British West Indies, as he traces the obstruction of national development by metropolitan monopoly capitalism. However, there is a problematic underlying the capacity of metropolitan capitalists to consistently conquer satellite social formations that Dietz does not explain. Bradby (1975) and Foster-Carter (1978a, 1978b) try to establish this problematic in their shared contention that metropolitan capitalism has always achieved hegemony in contact with Third World social formations, but must, in some specific stages, strengthen precapitalist groups to do so. They have not, however, indicated why capitalism can overwhelm satellite economies. Empirical study in the dependency tradition suggests preliminary answers: that mercantile encounters were characterized by force; thus metropolitan capitalists developed the capacity to reach new stages of development before satellite groups and to realize the potential of each stage more fully. Therefore, the metropolitan bourgeoisie has consistently imposed a new and intrinsically more forceful stage of capitalism on satellite social formations. Post (1978:23) argues that the new mode of production was built on the "complementary (but 11 antagonistic)" combination of the peasant form of production and the plantation form of exchange, formerly synthesized in plantation slavery. The West Indian slave regimen, according to Post, was a precapitalist mode of production within an international capitalist mode of exchange. By the turn of the twentieth century, the plantation had evolved into an underdeveloped capitalist mode of production, including remnants of the peasant form (and thus the precapitalist slave mode of production), but contained in a totality, the British capitalist mode of

production. Latin American

Perspechvas Issue 28,

Wmter

1981, Vol VIII, No I

24

groups, elements of which would extend the internal market. But their roles in ensuing class struggles are quite different and crucial to the distinction between a real bourgeois revolution, however much hindered by external forces, and the establishment of a new mode of production. West Indian

planters, themselves only a sector of the British mercantile bourgeoisie, withdrew from Jamaica more completely and quickly than general mercantile class influence ebbed in England. Jamaica was, in a real sense, abandoned by British planters and - if inadvertently granted the opportunity to develop a national capitalist mode of production after the fall of British mercantilism; conflicts among the so-called progressive national bourgeoisie, comprador bourgeoisie, and remaining members of the planting class were more intense after most planters and merchants had left Jamaica. On the other hand, the old landed classes of Western Europe fought back, first against mercantile usurpers and finally in opposition to industrial capitalists (Post, 1978: 24-25.). The West Indian progressive national bourgeoisie might well have succeeded in supplanting remaining planters and export-oriented producers had British monopoly capitalism not reached into the Caribbean at the end of the nineteenth century and blocked progressive bourgeois advances. Again, an articulation of modes of production occurred between British capitalism in the monopoly stage and Jamaican national capitalism in an earlier period of development. British monopoly capitalists had accumulated great concentrations of capital and production by absorbing the holdings of other domestic capitalists; they now repeated the pattern with national Jamaican capitalists, more vulnerable to metropolitan monopoly capitalist encroachment, given the nascent character of their mode of production. -

CONCLUSIONS

&dquo;dependent development&dquo; and the &dquo;articulation of synthesis production&dquo; proposed here is still only suggestive. There are, however, aspects of each approach that should be preserved and explored in formulating a complete framework for analysis of satellite development. First, dependent development suggests the importance of changing historical conditions in the metropole and, by extension, in the satellite. This perspective cannot, however, specify the national bases for satellite historical change group relations and therefore is inadequate by itself for the construction of theories of satellite development. The analysis of articulation of modes of production, on the other hand, assumes identification of modes of production and thus of group relations. Marxist structuralist categorizations of modes of production are not intrinsically dynamic, however, and have too often yielded intense debate about the definitions of modes of production rather than their association with particular social formations and the nature of concrete and typical group/class configurations and articulations (for critique, see Patterson, 1979, and Mintz, 1978). Marxists can bring a needed dialectical dimension to the labelling of modes of production by tying it to existing theoretical and empirical statements about capitalist development as realized historically in Western metropoles and restored recently to the study of Third World development by proponents of &dquo;dependent development.&dquo; of

The

modes of

-

-

25

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