The muddle school - 2

By Bukka Rennie
June 18, 2003

The poorest definition of a "ruling class" ever presented was as follows: "...a class which is responsible for producing or securing those things which are essential for the maintenance of a particular society. It carries on for generations..."

In the commentator's description of who comprises a ruling class he identifies in "Old World societies" people such as "great military defenders, conquerors, epoch-shaping entrepreneurs" who bring "order and prosperity" to nations, which otherwise may presumably have been consumed by chaos.

Obviously it is a poor definition because it addresses more the results and consequences of what ruling classes do rather than precisely what in itself they do. Ruling classes own and/or manage the means, factors and processes of production and reproduction through which they generate and accumulate wealth from which they derive the power to define and to shape society or to set the social and cultural benchmarks of legitimacy.

Such wealth generation and accumulation is the basis of social development and this affords the ruling classes the wherewithal to "secure those things essential for the maintenance of society", according to the quote above. But how does all this fit with what obtains here at home? The commentator quite aptly postulates the following:

"...Coming from a ghastly past of forced migration, slavery, indenture, and colonial rule, it is almost impossible for us to conceive of ruling classes in any way but the worst possible way. Furthermore, we misconceive our privileged elite as a ruling class. We often overlook that the main thing which is essential for the maintenance of our society is in the hands of absentee investors, not privileged locals. Then in sugar, today in energy..."

And herein, dear friends, lies the rub.

Twenty years ago in a document titled "A Strategy for State Power", I advanced the following:

"...Capital is not the same as money; a miser who keeps his money in a safe and does nothing with it except hoard it is not a capitalist; his wealth does not constitute capital. It has to be invested in the purchase of labour and raw materials and machinery for the production and reproduction of goods and services and the creation of new or additional value for it to be constituted as capital...

"In T&T we have clearly identified three blocs of capital - international foreign capital (foreign direct investment); local private capital and State capital. And it was concluded that if this is the case, then there must be three distinct social groupings that are crystallised around these three blocs of capital..." Then came the crucial argument:

"...Because of our historical development as a dependent economy, as an appendage economy to the economy of the metropoles (ie Britain, USA), then our true ruling class and ruling social structure is the international corporate ruling class in the worldwide economic sphere (eg Texaco, Amoco, Chase Manhattan, etc) and their State structure (US, Britain, Canada)..."

It was always clear that the loose joint-stock companies that brought us here as slaves and indentures were later to evolve into the very first multi-national corporations as they tightened up as legal entities and moved away from the mercantilist philosophy of closed economies into world free trade and the fierce competition over the exploitation of new primary products and mineral resources around the world. Even Barclays Bank got its name from a slave-dealing British family.

With the further intensification of the globalisation process today the strangulation of dependent economies by these international corporations have taken on even more in-depth dimensions over the past 20 years. A lot of what these local political pundits, activists and commentators describe as our "impotence" and "unresponsibility" and "aimlessness" may be a direct result of this strangulation and the fact that people understand clearly that all else is irrelevant and meaningless unless that strangulation is somehow effectively breached.

The people here have always had their eyes on this international ruling class and, given their proletarian consciousness, every political expression over the years that gained currency among them, be it Garveyism, Pan Africanism, Gandhism, the movements for federation, home rule and non-alignment, etc, all has had as their core value and raison d'etre a breaching of the power and control of this international ruling class.

Every attempt to rally people here that was not anti this international ruling class in content never got off the ground. Check the history of all the movements. Only our intellects and political pundits of today do not know this, moreso are unable to see this precisely because of the limited vision of their "imperial schooling".

But the people of these twin islands know that every time they have stood up for fundamental change they have had to face the warships of the international ruling class: in 1939 it was the HMS Ajax and the HMS Exeter; in 1970 it was the USS Guadalcanal out of Puerto Rico with the then Venezuelans standing by as an agent-State of the international ruling class.

The Americans as the key arm of this international ruling class are today adamant that no more breaches of their power and control will be tolerated. America's sense of historic mission as the empire of the 21st century harmonises with the objective demand of international capital to pull the entire world within its ambit, to modernise every nook and cranny, every backward area, so as to deepen the integrated world market.

The local private capital social grouping are the owners of private domestic capital but with little room for development save and except as conduits for foreign investors. They are estate owners (most of which have been abandoned), commercial moguls, the large and medium manufacturers (garments, food, etc), the inter-locking directorate of service and finance companies, and so on.

The State capitalists are really bureaucrats, career public servants and political functionaries, who do not own but wield State capital on behalf of the people's development. They too facilitate partnerships with foreign and local investors in accordance with the vision of the government of the day.

It is the entrenchment of all these middle elements throughout the world in government and in industry as specialists and professionals which have served to cement the penetration of a particular culture that is by nature defensive of the system of relationships that is the status-quo. Their roles more than all else have led people to be wary of "representative democracy". Somehow "representatives" always end up defending the old way, defending the conservative culture of the ruling class, rather than standing for direct democracy and fundamental changes in the system.

When in 1970 the People's Parliaments emerged and communities all over convened local Parliaments, was that an indication that they were not seriously thinking about "modes, means or aftermath"? Or were they indicating and demonstrating that such direct democracy was the solution? Isn't this why the pundits have failed to motivate the people with their quest to tinker with the Constitution?

The people know that everything hinges on the question of power. And in discussing Grenada the pundits never indicate what was the nature of the conflict between Coard and Bishop that led to the intervention of the US ruling-class and caused internecine bloodshed and mayhem? They never say that it was all about whom and what should hold the power, the party bureaucrats/professionals or the emerging parish councils.

Again we have to ask what do our intellects see, when they see? No wonder all they see is "impotence", especially if they keep looking for kings and queens and super human beings.

The muddle school