At whose service? Caribbean state posture, merchant capital and the export services option

Abstract

Elite planners in the Eastern Caribbean sub-region pin their hopes of economic viability on tourism, a vibrant offshore financial (and other) services sector and an increase in export activity from companies operating out of industrial parks. Framed against the perception of an inevitable globalisation process underway, with limitations posed to high-level or diversified manufacturing, power holders have sought to concentrate on the promotion of 'export services' as a viable cover against new competitive challenges. This article argues, however, that this state of affairs betrays a crisis-of-mission within the ruling class on how to reconstruct political economies marked by the hegemony of merchant capital. Rather than a move towards what are globally the most remunerative factors of production--high-level manufacturing and services--a rather curious consensus has emerged which proclaims a solid future for export services without roots and/or ganglia to local manufacturing. The success of such an 'export services' model anywhere in the Eastern Caribbean will not turn as much on the quality of human resources as it will on overcoming the short-term horizon of local politicians, and the low-risk predilections of the wealthy planter-merchant elite. The latter's conscious 'opt out' strategy on the question of manufacturing diversity has made for a strikingly conservative enterprise culture. More specifically, merchant capitalist societies like those in the Eastern Caribbean insufficiently display the sociocultural attributes required for the creation of high-level services: innovation-mediated risk, research and development competence, and affinities to industrial processes and networks.