Recent Caribbean Developments and Need for Theoretical Expansion

Abstract

In recent years there has emerged in the Caribbean scene of intense political struggle for socialism a score of influential left intellectuals writing on socialist transformation and national liberation. One of these new Marxist thinkers is Clive Y. Thomas. His book Dependence and Transformation, Economics of the Transition to Socialism, published by Monthly Review Press in 1974 like the works of Samir Amin (e.g., Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment), represents some of the deepest and freshest thinking within international Marxian circles on the recent debates concerning the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, imperialist crisis, and transformation problems in the world of peripheral capitalism. Thomas' essay, The 'Non-Capitalist Path' as Theory and Practice of Decolonization and Socialist Transformation (this issue), modestly tentative yet controversial in its formulations, represents an attempt at theoretical praxis in the midst of recent theoretical consolidations and advances, on the one hand, and escalated class struggles in key, small countries of the Caribbean and Africa, on the other. In its initial years, Latin American Perspectives has focused largely on select critical issues within Marxist theory (dependence, uneven development, the state, etc.). Yet little attention has been given to either the theoretical contributions of Caribbean writers or the actual influence of Marxist theorists making important contributions from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Thomas' essay, therefore, comes at a particularly timely and critical moment in the history of class struggle and theoretical development in Latin America in particular and the developing nations of the world in general. To fully appreciate Thomas' essay, it is necessary to place it in the historical context in which it operates and from which it comes. This context involves countless important factors, of which three are paramount: (1) the pervasive influence of Marxist formulations coming out of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union on Latin America; (2) the rapid escalation of class struggle and political change in the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica and Guyana; and