Particular Caribbean contributions
Suriname, while not producing any economists whom I would mention, is distinctive in terms of extent to which developmentalist ideas have involved planning, including infrastructural planning whether successfully implemented or not.
This no doubt reflects traditions from The Netherlands but it has parallels elsewhere. In Puerto Rico, the main architect of its industrialization plan, Teodoro Moscoso, was not an economist; while Cuba's planning derived from a Marxist perspective which prevailed during debates in the early 1960s.Such debates among Marxist economists in Cuba were not new as they had been plying their trade long before the revolution, starting with Ruben Martinez Villena and Antonio Guiteras, who provided the first Marxist analysis of the deficiencies of the Cuban mono crop economy, following the sugar crisis of 1921. Elsewhere, Marxist ideas have also been important although sometimes more in politics than economics. For example, the Peoples Political Party (PPP) was put out of office based on concerns regarding its Marxist-influenced policies on two occasions, in colonial British Guiana (Guyana). In 1953, the British intervened militarily and suspended the constitution, and in the early 1960s, the US CIA used covert means to remove the PPP from power. When the PPP returned to power in 1992, the Cold War was over and any intentions it had of implementing its earlier program had dissipated.
In the Dominican Republic Marxist historiography is one of the tendencies which blossomed after Trujillo's demise. Its commitment to the working class propelled it to counter his anti- Haitian-ism which sought to erase the African presence from Dominican history; a presence which was most evident amongst the workers. The strength of such tendencies has meant that heterodox economic ideas have retained a place in the Dominican Republic.
One of Haiti's best known economists, Gerard Pierre-Charles, was also a Marxist. In the English-speaking Caribbean, Marxist economists influenced the People's Revolutionary Government in Grenada, critiqued International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs, and warned of the “debt trap” in Jamaica from the 1970s. Among the Marxist economists, Guyanese author C.Y. Thomas produced what was probably the most widely cited text: Dependency and Transformation. Marxist ideas also played a significant role in the French Caribbean where the Communists led by Aime Cesaire won the 1945 elections in Martinique. Despite the strength of the Communists in Martinique, there was no possibility of a Marxist-conceived effort at transformation (even if Cesaire had not broken with them) as in 1946 France chose to integrate the French Caribbean as overseas departments.An analysis of the resulting situation has led Martinique-based Fred Celimene to apply the notion of a rent-seeking economy to the French sub-region. He projects that given the weak productive base, local groups pressure the metropolitan government through their local councils. Subsidies result, in keeping with a commitment to help less developed regions and because of the relatively low cost to the national budget. Nothing is demanded in return in terms of production or productivity. A disconnect results as consumption is high despite the absence of corresponding production, and there is no issue of balance of payments. Similar concerns have been raised regarding production and productivity in economies which depend heavily on remittances, and Dennis Pantin applies a related idea of the rentier state in oil- and gas-rich Trinidad and Tobago. He suggested that the focus is not on production and productivity but on getting a share of the state's mineral rents. This analysis can be linked to what came to be known in the 1970s as the “Dutch Disease,” but which was identified for mineral exporting countries within the greater Caribbean by W.
Arthur Lewis and Dudley Seers in the early 1960s.Both US “Samuelson” and British “Cambridge” type Keynesianism have had their adherence in the Caribbean. For example, in 1950s' Cuba, Keynesian analysis influenced the economic policy of the Batista regime. This period provided an example where various schools of thought contended, including the Keynesian (Julian Alienes, a Spanish national), neoclassical (Felipe Pazos), and Marxist (Carlos Rafael Rodriguez). Questions were raised as to the application of Keynesian policy in an open economy, especially where investment decisions were in the hands of foreigners and there was corruption. Given the sympathy for state action among much of the Caribbean intelligentsia, it is not surprising that many of the more mainstream economists were drawn to Keynesianism. This meant that the issue as to its application in an open economy required exploration, a theme pursued by British economist Charles Kennedy while in Jamaica, and C.J. Bruce in Trinidad.
The use of multi/interdisciplinary approaches and the applications of structuralism, and subsequently dependency thinking, have had a wide influence on Caribbean economists. The Cuban Regino Boti was a founding member of CEPAL (UNECLAC) under the leadership of Raul Prebisch in 1948. The Martinican economist Jean Crusol studied under Celso Furtado at the Sorbonne and interacted with like-minded English-speaking Caribbean economists from the 1960s. Most of the 1950s∕1960s generation of academic English-speaking Caribbean economists, including some of those who made extended visits to the region, such as Dudley Seers and Kari Levitt, utilized structuralist approaches.
In the 1960s, a radical tendency associated with the journal New World emerged. It was made up of pan-Caribbean nationalists who wished to overcome what they saw as the integration of individual production units with foreign, often trans-national corporations, to the benefit of the latter, and replace this with a programmed economic integration of the entire Caribbean basin, for the benefit of its people. While not primarily socialist in orientation, they took the view that the only local institution which had the capacity to facilitate the necessary transformation was often the state.
Some of their ideas were reflected in the policies pursued by Caribbean governments in the 1970s. Norman Girvan, who analysed the Bauxite sector and the role of trans-nationals, is significant not just for his work but because he stands out for his early adoption of new media and his continued maintenance of an active website.Within New World, there was a distinctive sub-grouping which focused on the impact that the historical, institutional, and structural conjuncture associated with plantation agriculture had had on Caribbean economies. Levitt credits Alister McIntyre as being involved in its early development, but it was she and Lloyd Best who documented the plantation economy perspective, and George Beckford's Persistent Poverty is the most cited work from this school. For these economists, Caribbean economies suffered from enclavism typified by the plantation, which had more links abroad and responded more to foreign than to local demand.
Plantation type economies were therefore externally propelled and lacked an internal dynamic. A transformation was required to relocate decision-making within the local economy, link plantation type units with locally oriented sectors, and thereby create an integrated economy, which could achieve self-sustained development.
The English-speaking sub-region also produced W. Arthur Lewis, the Caribbean economist who is by far the most cited. In 1979, he shared the Nobel Prize for helping to create development economics. His analysis also had a structural element and he adopted a multidisciplinary approach. He wrote on industrial economics, planning, and world trade, as well as on race, education, and political systems. Unfortunately, he is best known for the “Lewis model” which, although inspired in part by his most famous 1954 article on “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” was created by John Fei and Gustav Rannis, and deviates significantly from his original work. In the Caribbean, his 1950s' proposals for development in the sub-region were often caricatured by later writers who disagreed with his promotion of foreign investment and his analytic reference points.
Given these circumstances, misunderstandings of his perspective are frequent. His main goals were to identify how economies shifted to a high growth path; what determined their participation in international trade; and hence the development policies appropriate for the tropical world, which he saw as lagging behind the temperate world since the latter part of the nineteenth century.For him, the key issue was labor productivity in food produced for the home market, noting that Britain had become the most developed country following the first industrial revolution, based on a prior agricultural revolution. Productivity in this sector also determined the factoral terms of trade and hence the benefits accrued therefrom. Land-rich countries (Ghana) needed to resolve social issues in the organization of agriculture which hindered productivity, and get the latest technology to farmers, thereby effecting an agricultural revolution. In over-populated countries (the Caribbean), the two revolutions needed to proceed simultaneously. Agricultural productivity needed to be raised using the same methods outlined for under-populated countries, but this would not be possible without reducing surplus labor on the land, where the productivity of the last additional worker in agriculture (and other traditional subsistence sectors) approximated to zero. Hence, industrialization was necessary to create the jobs to absorb surplus labor.
Only rapid accumulation in a modern capitalist sector could make this possible. This required the creation of a capitalist class whether within the state, from the local propertied classes, or initially by importing foreign capitalists to kickstart the process until the locals could take over. For the Caribbean, Lewis emphasized the last option as the small market size meant that new jobs would need to be in export manufacturing, and there was little relevant local expertise. Foreign capitalists were to be attracted to relocate light manufacturing industries in the Caribbean, based on the availability of workers who could be transferred from the overcrowded sectors at relatively low wages.
This was to be facilitated by the state which would ensure that, with the growth of incomes and knowledge, locals would eventually take over the process. From the 1940s, when he worked with the British Colonial Office, Lewis was at the forefront of the ideological struggle against racist and other narrow views which suggested that the peoples of the tropical world should concentrate on primary production. In this he was not alone, but at that time he had one of the boldest visions for a Caribbean transformed, in a generation or two, as subsequently took place in a number of Asian countries; but he favored a social democratic framework, based on voluntary consensus and a liberal political system.Between the trends and tendencies there have often been more polemics and sharp critiques than dialogue. These have involved wide-ranging differences surrounding methodology, role of the state, planning, and industrial policy; foreign investment and capabilities of local capitalists, significance of small size, and value of regionalism; importance of trade and value of export orientation versus import substitution; land reform and agricultural policy, technology and technological transfer; and pricing, exchange rate, and monetary as well as labor, social, and welfare policy. All of this is in addition to a range of differences on more political questions.