ONE CARIBBEAN AS A ZONE OF PEACE
by Tim Hector
The following essay, published in the Outlet issue of December 14, 2001, may be properly regarded as the fullest, most cogent elaboration of Hector's views during his final years. It sums up brilliantly his understanding of the environmental danger now facing the region as a manifestation of long-standing historical trends, and the need for a starkly different regional vision. The essay also illuminates Hector's urging of peaceful solutions and the opportunity as well as obligation that a longer life would have lent him for Caribbean leadership. P.B. [Paul Buhle]
I am writing this from Havana where I am attending the tenth meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum to whose executive body I have just been elected. The Sao Paulo Forum is a grouping of Latin American and Caribbean progressive forces, which began in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 199o. The next forum was in Mexico City in 1991, then to Managua, Nicaragua, in 5992, Havana in 1993, Montevideo in 1995, El Salvador in 1996, Port Alegre in 1997, Mexico again in 1998, then Managua in z000, and now Cuba again in zoo'.
Since 1992 I have not attended because of my membership in UPP and not wishing to involve that party in controversies as to where and why I was meeting with the most progressive forces in the region and all sorts of backward conclusions drawn and spectres being raised by the ruling directorate as well as by backward elements within the UPP. Now that that phase [is done, and] my one compromise with anti-intellectualism, backwardness and reaction is over, I can now revel in being free of that suffocating straitjacket—though self-imposed.
Here at the Tenth Sao Paulo Forum a tremendous debate is taking place over globalisation and in particular the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Nothing of the kind goes on at home, as the reactionaries rule in government and Opposition alike. A debate that has seized hold on the world, drawing global protest, has met with nothing but silence at home. Outlet alone raises the issues of the new world order, or better, new World Disorder.
What has startled the rulers of the world, and even progressives, is the vitality of the movement, arising, in a manner of speaking, spontaneously in Seattle, Prague, Porto Alegre, Quebec, Gothenburg and Genoa, against what I call, the Dictatorship of the Market, as determined by the U.S. or the G8 governments, the OECD countries and the multinationals.
What has startled even me, [as I] wrote to my very dear friend and colleague Paul Buhle, after Seattle, is that the world has reached a new stage. Yes, what has startled even me and compelled me to write Paul Buhle is that in this new international movement "For a Different Globalisation"—as Seattle demonstrated—was the large amount of youths who have returned to political action, since the 6os, questioning and rejecting the existing capitalist world order. That this new movement among youth is global is all the more startling.
In truth the most varied forces have come together "For a Different or an Alternative Globalisation," in a new self-organised international movement. The mobilisations carried out during the different summits of international leaders and officials are a very clear sign of a new impulse among the peoples of the world. It gives cause to hope, and not just hope, but to work for a new future.
They, in their thousands and tens of thousands are not just against globalisation, not merely an anti-globalisation movement, but at Porto Alegre thousands of representatives of social, religious and political organisations met and promulgated their common support for an alternative globalisation. This is absolutely new in world history. Not since the Crusades, has the world seen the international like. Not even the single greatest movement of the twentieth century, the revolt of the formerly colonial, black and coloured countries which saw over a hundred new nations created matches this new movement.
Among the key proposals for an alternative globalisation, posed at Porto Alegre is the primacy of human development and survival over any other consideration, especially mega-profits. Further this new international movement declared its support for only a type of development that does not harm our environment, and, simultaneously, is carried out with respect for human rights and the principles of economic and social justice. They have called for the cancellation of the Third World's and the poorest countries public foreign debt. They have required compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, which U.S. President Bush unilaterally reneged on, and which sought to reduce the emission of contaminating gases and air pollution, with its devastating effects on world climate. They have advanced as well postulates relating to education and health care in the world.
On behalf of the Caribbean, the English-speaking Caribbean and speaking here in
Havana for the English-speaking Caribbean, I have advanced in the memory of
Maurice Bishop, Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, George Weekes, Rosie Douglas, C.L.R.
James, George Padmore, and Che Guevara that the Caribbean be declared a zone of
peace by vote of the U.N. Security Council and the U.N. General Assembly.
This would mean the removal of all foreign military bases in the Caribbean in
independent and dependent states, be it in Antigua, Guantanamo or Vieques, it
would include Russian, French and American military bases and pacts. It would
remind the world of one of the Caribbean's principal claims to distinction in
the comity of nations, that though these islands and territorial states have
been fought over, annexed and conquered by imperialist powers, Caribbean people
have at no time fought a war among themselves. Though we are among the most
rebellious peoples in the world, rebelling against the pernicious slave world
order in which we began our history, the worst form of slavery known in history;
and rebelling too against internal and external powers, the Caribbean people
have never made war on each other, irrevocably committed to Peace. This makes
the region unique. Therefore the Caribbean should be declared a Zone of Peace
and be so regarded and respected by all.
Maurice Bishop, I remind, can claim paternity of the idea. The point is now to make the shadow into substance, the abstraction into reality, the word, flesh, and therefore dwelling amongst us.
The Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, must involve and include, international recognition that the ruthless extermination of the Indians (Tainos) throughout the Caribbean, constitutes a great crime against humanity. It was, in fact the first of the world's horrendous genocides. Moreover, and it is from then that the barbarian germ of genocide was planted in human consciousness and the foul contagion has spread to all continents, as rulers and dominant races and tribes have adopted political positions, aided and abetted by religion, to the right of Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. Therefore reparations must be paid for the genocide against the first peoples of the Caribbean, and their indigenous survivors must themselves administer self-determined programmes of affirmative action designed to bring them into the modern world, with due respect for their native language and culture. This, to be sure, is a first step in a really new world order: the redistribution of income.
Similarly, reparations must be paid by Euro-American powers for African slavery in the Caribbean as a condition of declaring the Caribbean a Zone of Peace. Such reparations must go to programmes of industrialisation, education, housing, health care, but primarily to women's development for their double oppression as slave, in colonial and patriarchal societies as well as oppression in the household, with priority to single mothers, themselves thrice oppressed—the third instance being the social arbitrariness imposed on them and their children.
One other point I made as a condition of the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace must be the immediate cessation of shipments of nuclear wastes and other hazardous waste through the Caribbean regional waters extending from the Bahamas to the Guyanas.
And finally to ensure the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace there must be an immediate cessation of foreign countries returning hardened criminals to the Caribbean to intensify crime. All such criminals who have lived abroad for more than ten consecutive years must not be returned or deposited to the Caribbean. The poor Caribbean ought not to be solving the criminal problems of the most advanced countries.
Fortunately, I recently chaired a meeting, which will bring progressive Caribbean forces together to agitate and struggle for One Caribbean as a Zone of Peace. It will include organisations and individuals, women's organisations, Trade Unions and Farmers' organisations. The founding meeting has been carded for March, 2002. As such it will signal the world the Caribbean vision of itself for the new millennium and "For an Alternative Globalisation." It will bring the Caribbean centre stage in the new global movement of People.
I want now to show the form of globalisation, the reactionary and fundamental ist vision of globalisation proclaimed by neo-liberals or capitalists and their intellectual forces and statesmen.
According to this reactionary and fundamentalist vision of globalisation technological advances have unleashed forces independent of the control of humankind and nation states, as though the technological advances were a new divinity, whose omniscient and almighty decrees, brook no dissent from this supremely jealous and intolerant god. It is assumed from this that the global economy is in the hands of transnational agencies, as the human agency of the new planetary divinity. And in this new global village united only by informatics and by the speed of the means of transportation, economic transactions no longer take place in national or regional spaces but in planetary spaces. All independent of the will of people, controlled exclusively by the Divinity of the Market.
Consequently, decisions about the allocation of resources technological advances replacing labour, the distribution of income and specialised production in the various countries—the new division of production and labour—are taken outside national spaces and states, which, of course have no say. The New Divinity rules, allocates, displaces, downsizes, de-regulates, and let no damn dog bark!
In effect, countries no longer compete in the world market, but firms. And in that predatory world, only such firms will survive, exclusively because of their capacity (probably genetic, but definitely racial) to downsize and subordinate labour and exalt technology over humanity, with ever increasing concentrations of Capital. To such transnational or multi-national firms, national or regional loyalty will be transferred.
Naturally (or is it un-naturally?) these firms will be uprooted from national spaces, though backed by the greatest military might from space as well as on earth, and such global enterprises, powered by computer chips and other innovations would fly by themselves imposing its own order, as the divine magic of the global market decrees.
It is said therefore that this globalisation of our time and in our time is an absolutely new and unprecedented phenomenon, incomprehensible to mere non-corporate mortals, who, of necessity, with the end of history, must go along to get along. Or be damned to eternal exclusion, immiseration and pauperisation.
For, national or regional economies have lost all power. Sovereignty has lost
all national or regional meaning. The only real Sovereignty would be the
sovereignty of the Market, which is blind, deaf and dumb, but magical in its
dispensation of favours on its chosen zo per cent, but ruthlessly unmerciful in
its disregard of the unfortunate 8o per cent.
I want to emphasise that this domination, this hegemony of zo per cent over the
other 8o per cent of this world can only take place if the zo per cent, through
collaborators, can inflame and sustain at red-hot heat of racism, ethnic
division, party division, religious divisions, animosities between indigenous
and immigrant peoples, with women in all categories subordinate, and with the
immiseration of the whole, with children preyed upon as pornographic objects of
hedonism let loose. An essential policy of the whole system will be trade union
bureaucrats in company unions keeping the working classes divided for the
political elites, and the dominance of Capital. Meanwhile, political parties,
without ideology of any kind, except the dominant ideas of the dominant zo per
cent, will keep nations in subordination, in fee simple
I want to re-emphasise that there is nothing new in globalisation, while not contending that there is nothing new under the sun.
Let me prove the point with an immortal analysis of history and political economy.
As long ago as 1848 the great Karl Marx said: "The bourgeoisie had through the exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption. . . The bourgeoisie has by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication drawn all, even the most barbarism nations into [global] civilisation."
That capitalist globalising process then is nothing new. It only appears new in that consumption of the same news, the same TV, radio and newspaper presentations of the ruling elite, the same video games are more global, more cosmopolitan, if you prefer. And with the same global consumption pattern, the same atomised and dehumanised consciousness, turning us all into consuming zombies, measured only by the things we have, or do not have, all worshipping and paying homage to what is known as one of the lesser gods, namely, Standard of Living or Economic Growth. A regular diet of the most animal sex and the most horrific violence, laser violence as in sci-fi completes the picture of global civilisation, with its ever more brutal wars.
The truth is if we look at the last century we can see from 1900-1910, that monopoly capitalism then dominant in Great Britain—which in its grand delusion ruled over an empire on which "the sun would never set"—France, Germany, Holland, Belgium latterly in the U.S.A., and partially in Russia sought to escape their recurring economic crises by engaging in colonial domination.
No corner of the globe escaped the greed of these imperialist powers. Imperialist globalisation was born with colonial conquest. The crises of overproduction in these advanced countries pushed these imperialist countries to expand demand by drawing into their vortex, and getting "a more reasonable share," as it was said then, of the colonies.
Thus the First World War, which would gulp down the lives of some 10,000,000 people. Humanity had never before seen such staggering losses of human life. The brutality of the American Civil War at the end of the nineteenth century, a Civil War fought over slavery and in which slaves played a decisive role, laid the foundations, as well as the genocides in the Caribbean and U.S.A. lodged in the collective unconscious (to borrow from Karl Jung) of Euro-America, and too, the terrorism of slave society, which allowed a few planters to ceaselessly terrorise, by an admixture of terror and benevolence, the whole black race. In these cruel antecedents lie the new brutal regimes of terror, which dominate global civilisation.
Despite or because of the Russian Revolution of 1917, imperialist globalisation intensified in the r9zos and 1930s. It was intensified by the growing rivalry between the imperialist powers to lay hold of the markets and raw materials of the whole world. The world crisis of 1929, known as the Great Depression, was a crisis of overproduction in the industrialised countries, linked to financial collapse. The larger capitalist countries sought to get out from under this Depression by means of a Keynesian policy of public works and huge weapons programmes.
End result—the Second World War. In the course of which 50,000,000 people lost their lives. Barbarism had reached unprecedented heights. So, on the one hand there was the constant revolutions in production and on the other ever-increasing barbarism. Or both were a unity.
U.S. imperialism enriched itself at the start of the Second World War by selling goods and weapons to both "democratic" and "fascist" countries. The U.S. entered the Second World War late, with a view to avoiding the socialist revolution in France, Italy and Germany, which were halted by the advance of the Allied Forces and the Red Army. The U.S. also hoped to acquire the colonies of a weakened British Empire, not as outright colonial possessions, but their markets and their economies, just as it had acquired Cuba and the Philippines at the end of the Spanish-American war at the end of the nineteenth century.
Before, during and after the Second World War Stalin turned the Russian Revolution into its opposite, where the State ruthlessly exploited the working people, maintaining capitalist relations of production most rigidly. Barbarism triumphed over socialism. It was only a matter of time, before the new technocrats and party officials in the Soviet Union who "planned" production, substituting themselves for the working class, collapsed into private ownership of production, and outright capitalism in 1990. In the ensuing process production in the former Soviet Union stood at 57 per cent of what it was in 1990, and in the Ukraine fell to 39 per cent, while in Russia itself 6o per cent of the population receives an income—when they are paid at all—below subsistence level. Criminality has become endemic.
In the interim most Third World countries managed by titanic struggle to free themselves from colonial rule, by seeking first the political kingdom and hoping that all other things would be added. That hope, as in Shakespeare's Macbeth proved drunk. For, as in the economic kingdom the price of Third World raw materials and primary production, fell painfully low, as the cost of advanced countries manufactured goods increased many times, in spite of the expanded market. Thus sharply contradicting the very fundamental law of capitalism, that with increased demand, prices would fall. Not so at all. The truth is, prices were arbitrary to allow the industrialised countries a superior standard of living (as "proof" of their racial superiority) at the expense and impoverishment of the newly freed black and coloured formerly colonial countries. And above all to allow Capital to accumulate in fewer and fewer hands in the industrialised countries.
The new, formerly anti-colonial leaders merely took over the positions in the State left by the Colonisers; kept the Colonial State, virgina intacta, and proceeded to plunder the wealth of their countries, in association with the financial and corporate interests of the industrialised world. Whereas the bourgeoisie made their wealth by the corruption of industry and the environment, the new Third World elites, made theirs by state plunder and from the foreign public debt, given for infrastructure, and not industrialisation or agricultural transformation.
At another crisis of imperialist globalisation in the 1970s, the national elites in the Third World were forced or acquiesced into debit, in a huge way, for the construction of massive infrastructure, while they were offered, by various means, the opportunity to enrich themselves off this public foreign debts. The aim of globalisation was to precludeand prevent the creation of national industry agriculture and commerce based on the needs of the popular masses, and to ensure consumption of the over-production of the industrialised countries.
This resulted in the following conditions currently in the world; 15 per cent of the world's population lives in z8 developed countries sharing 77 per cent of world exports; 77 per cent of the world's population lives in 128 countries sharing 18 per cent of exports.
The United Nations' "Report on Human Development woo" shows that the poorest 20 per cent of the world's population consume 5.4 per cent of global wealth, whereasthe richest 20 per cent consume 48.3 per cent of this same global wealth.
World redistribution of income is a necessity of human survival on planet earth. But let us make the picture even clearer. The President of the World Bank was forced to admit that 20 per cent of the planet control 8o per cent of the global economy.
This results in a picture in which 1.5 billion human beings survive on a monthly income of less than 3o U.S. dollars and it is estimated that by 2025 this figure will reach billion. But, there are another 2.8 billion people living on less than US $60 a month. More than 600 million men and women are homeless. An African family consumes 20 per cent less today than twenty-five years ago.
65 per cent of the world today have never received a telephone call in their lives, in spite of increased means of communication in the global information revolution, and 40 per cent have no access to electricity.
The Caribbean and Latin America groans and strains on the way to its calvary, under the cross and yoke of an external debt which exceeds US $750 billion, dedicating 56 per cent of its revenue to servicing this gargantuan debt. Most of which debt went down the corrupt political beltway, or enriching multinational banks.
The more over-production becomes a menace to the industrialised countries the more they destroy, by various nice-sounding stratagems national production in Third World countries. So that both in the Second World—the former satellites of the Soviet Union—and in the Third World productive capacity is dwindling.
The current phase of globalisation, perhaps its last, is characterised by constant revolutions in the field of information technology, communications and transport, and simultaneously, the unprecedented concentration of capital in trans multinational corporations, which are in a mad rush to conglomerate even more for global hegemony, backed by the enormous armed power of an uni-polar world.
There interlocking forces represent current globalisation. First the big transnational corporations. Then the imperialist states, which protect and defend these concentrations of global capital. Thirdly the institutions dominated by these same states, such as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation. Through these, and lesser organisations like the OECD, imperialism mainly the U.S., imposes conditions on the governments of the dominated countries and dictate policies and laws, which they must enact, if they are not to be subject to sanctions, and if need be to wars of destabilisation or outright wars of aggression.
But there is a fourth and independent factor in the growing unity of the world, against the IMF, World Bank, WTO, environmental abuse and pollution of the world by the industrialised countries and the great income disparities of a world or global village organised to satisfy a small zo per cent, at best, global elite.
One Caribbean as a Zone of Peace is a distinct and direct challenge to that militarised world order in greedy pursuit of more and more capital, at the expense of humanity, but in the name of anti-terrorism and sham democracy. Check it out!
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from the dust jacket:
Tim Hector
A CARIBBEAN RADICAL'S STORY
Tim Hector (1942-2002) played many roles—political philosopher, educator, literary and music critic, cricket administrator, political leader, and newspaper editor. Best known for his editorship of the newspaper Outlet and his co-founding of the Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement, Hector struggled for the independence of his native island, Antigua. As a disciple of C. L. R. James, he was one of the Pan-African movement's most vital figures, and his regular column "Fan the Flame" in Outlet was followed avidly throughout the Caribbean. His insights into regional history, politics, cricket, and literature were eagerly awaited.
Biographer Paul Buhle traces Hector's intellectual development and explores how the editor-activist's political philosophy evolved from an early island nationalism and militant Marxism into an embrace of democratic self-determination and of political union in a future Caribbean nation. Hector's Afro-Caribbean Liberation Movement labored to make Black Nationalism into a generous vision of collective pride and historical destiny, with no one excluded. His trials and travails—loss of a teaching career, arrests, destruction of his printing press, the murder of his wife, betrayal by the political leaders he supported—were frankly revealed in his columns.
Hector's life and work offer a saga of Caribbean achievement and anxiety, at once racial, political, economic, and ecological. Through the lens of Hector, Buhle gives the reader insight into the radical movements in the British West Indies. Hector's story unfolds in a region full of turmoil but also full of promise.
Also: An interesting review of Buhle's biography of Tim Hector
by scholar Sara Abraham:
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/183
Scanned and posted February 2007
by Walter Lippmann
from:
Tim Hector: A Caribbean Radical's Story
by Paul Buhle (2006)
University Press of Mississippi