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BY TIM HECTOR

THIS IS THE SECOND PART TO THE EARLIER PIECE "RALPH GONSALVES AND THE NEW IDEA THE CARIBBEAN AS A CIVILIZATION.

IN THE PIECE TIM HECTOR STARTS BY GOING INTO THE ORIGINS OF THE WORD, "CIVILIZATION, WHICH IS RELATIVELY NEW...CREATE BACK IN THE 18TH CENTURY.

ALSO POINTED OUT IS A UNIQUE CHARATERISTIC THAT WE AS A CIVILIZATION HAVE...THE ONLY PLACE IN THE WORLD WHERE THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION WERE ONCE ENSLAVED OR WERE INDENTURED SERVANTS. AND FROM THAT POINT WE IN THE CARIBBEAN ARE PRESENTED WITH AN UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY TO EMBARK ON A NEW HEIGHTS FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD CIVILIZATION...BUT OF COURSE WE ARE CONSISTANTLY GREETED WITH INSURMOUNTABLE OBSTACLE...ATLEAST THATS MY TAKE ON IT.

ITS AN INTERESTING READ.


PART1

March 23, 2001


Is the Caribbean really a New Civilisation?

Dr Ralph Gonsalves in his very fine recent work, The Politics of Our Caribbean Civilisation has posed a most interesting question. Namely: Is there a Caribbean Civilisation?

Ralph Gonsalves has no doubt. Let us explore. First Dr Ralph Gonsalves says this:

"It will be an error to consider that an authentic civilisation is sustainable only if it has the capacity to impose an imperium. Empire-building has, historically, been a feature of dominant civilisations but it does not constitute a defining aspect of a civilisation. To be sure, a civilisation is more than a society or a nation but it is not coterminous with empire. The fact that the Caribbean has been moulded in the crucible of an admixture, conflict, contact with and between African, Asian and Western European civilisations does not diminish its distinction and uniqueness in a particular time and geographic space as a producing society, not a parasitic one, with an inter-connected and sophisticated social, cultural and political umbrella."

And says Ralph, "In the long, painful and joyful march of our Caribbean we have arrived at a relatively advanced stage of social development with our own peculiarities and distinctiveness as to be viewed as a civilisation sui generis.

So it can be inferred that a civilisation requires "an advanced stage of social development" and a set of peculiarities and distinctiveness" to make it a civilisation in and of itself. And, making it more distinctive is that all the currents of the globe, African, Asian, European, and New World are distilled in this civilisation of the Caribbean.

The point that has to be underscored is that in a book of speeches and articles, a genre in which one of the finest minds of the 20th century, Isaiah Berlin, specialised, Ralph Gonsalves labours under a difficulty. That is, that the categories are often not rigorously defined.

What for example is meant by civilisation? Oddly enough the word "civilisation" only came into existence in the 18th century. Surprising eh.

Is there for example an Indian civilisation? The expert on India, Hermann Goetz, tells us there are two essential Indias. One is humid, with copious rainfall, lakes, marshes, forests and jungles, aquatic plants and flowers – the land of people with dark skins. In sharp contrast, is the other India. The India of the Indo-Gangetic plain, plus the Deccan plateau – the home of the lighter skinned, many of them warlike. India then, in Goetz’s view, is a tug-o’-war between these two contrasting areas and peoples. Is not much of world civilisation convulsed by this same tug-of-war?

And now I want to surprise even Ralph. There is no such thing as Western Civilisation. That notion or term is entirely a Cold War construct. Russia is as much a part of Western Civilisation as is Germany. East and West Germany were reunited, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye proving that East was also West.

There is no western civilisation without Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekov, Dostoevsky in literature, Kadinsky in painting; Tchaikovsky or Rachmaniov; or even Rostoprovitch in music; and Eisenstein in the film; not to speak of ballet and Nijinsky, or for that matter, Nureyev. To leave these out is to leave out whole chunks of western civilisation without which it would not be complete. Unless we dismiss this idea of western civilisation we cannot approach the question of civilisations at all. That Cold War construct of western civilisation seeks to separate Eastern Europe from Western Europe and to draw America, North and South, into a whole as Western. It is a distinct absurdity. Therefore I need to spend no more time arguing it. The Cold War is dead. And so is the notion it spawned of a ‘free world’, meaning western civilisation. The proper term is not Western Civilisation but World Capitalist Civilisation.

But I think I will surprise readers. In that following CLR James, I think there is such a thing as American civilisation. A civilisation distinct from European civilisation. In fact set up in opposition to European civilisation is American civilisation.

After the French Revolution did not bring about its own declaration of liberty, equality and fraternity, it was to America that even Europe turned for the fruition of its own momentous declaration as to the end purpose of life and living, namely, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

America, again following CLR James, brought something new to those profound, enduring and universal goals. To the trinity of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, America added, the all-important one. Namely, the pursuit of happiness.

Where before civilisation had seen happiness as only attainable in heaven, after life, America made the pursuit of happiness the essential purpose of living. Happiness being achievable in the pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity. The pursuit of happiness, as an end in itself, distinguishes American civilisation from European civilisation in particular. No longer was happiness attainable only in the after life, in heaven. But, thy kingdom of happiness had to come on earth as it is in heaven.

But lets get back to my contention that the word ‘civilisation’ first appeared in the 18th century. "To civilise" was known but "civilisation", was first used in 1756, in a work entitled Treatise on Population, by Victor Riqueti, Marquis of Muabeau, father of the celebrated revolutionary Honoré, Count Mirabeau. He referred to the "scope of civilisation". Civilisation now meant the opposite of barbarism. For a while, civilisation was synonymous with culture.

From about 1819, the word "Civilisation" hitherto only singular gained a plural form. That gave it a new meaning. That meaning being "the characteristics common to the collective life of a period or group". Thus one spoke of the civilisation in the century of Louis XIV, or Chinese civilisation in the Ming dynasty.

But, says the finest student of the subject, civilisation, Ferdinand Braudel: "In the 20th century Civilisation in the singular lost some of its cachet. It no longer represents the supreme moral and intellectual value it seemed to embody in the 18th century. Today, for example, we more naturally tend to call some abominable misdeed. ‘A crime against humanity’ rather than against civilisation although both mean much the same thing. We feel somewhat uncanny about using the word civilisation in its old sense, connoting human excellence or superiority."

To be more direct than Braudel, the word civilisation, coming as it did in the 18th century, synonymous with the birth of racism, had to do with dominance and superiority. The justification for dominating anyone is that such and such a people is inferior, and one dominates or colonises them in order to civilise them. That notion of civilisation is stone, cold dead. So now trade liberalisation takes place in order to dominate the world, or to maintain dominance in the global village. But, they dare not say that they are civilising anybody by trade liberalisation. It is all about maintaining dominance in the world market place for the American and European multinationals, by hook or crook, but mainly by crook.

Indeed today there is no talk of civilisations. There is but one. As Raymond Aron wrote "We have reached a phase where we are discovering both the limited validity of the concept of civilisation and the need to transcend that concept." For industrial technology is exported everywhere and eagerly adopted. So we have the same ferro-concrete everywhere, the same steel and glass buildings, the same airports, the same boom boxes, the same fast foods, even the same mini-skirts, and three-quarter length pants, and importantly, the same concentration of people in cities.

So why then is Dr Ralph Gonsalves’ claim that the Caribbean is a distinct civilisation important. It would seem to be an outmoded idea in the light of one global civilisation, in East and West, in North and South.

If civilisation means the greater level of humanity, that is the greater level of equality, liberty, fraternity and happiness attained by the overwhelming majority of people, then it is a concept, which still has validity. If it means the greater harmony between humankind, development, and nature, then it still has validity.

If civilisation means the greater degree of equality between races, between women and men, then it still has validity.

If civilisation means less centralisation of authority and power, and greater distribution of the same, then it still has validity. And Ralph Gonsalves is making an inestimable contribution to the discussion about the Caribbean and its place in world society. And its difference and distinction from the rest of global society. It is, in a way, a profound argument against the current mode of globalisation.

The point is, is the Caribbean distinctive in any of these areas noted above?

Or is the Caribbean tending in a different direction to the rest of global civilisation and so distinct and worthy of note in its strivings, if not its attainments.

But first, just where then is world civilisation tending? CLR James of all modern thinkers puts its best. In one of the best modern essays of the 20th century "Dialectical Materialism and the Fate of Humanity" CLR James supplies this answer as to where modern Capitalist Civilisation is tending.

"Capitalism being the greatest wealth producing system so far known, has carried its contradictions to a pitch never known before. Thus it is at the moment when the world system of capitalism has demonstrated the greatest productive powers in history is exactly the period when barbarism threatens to engulf the whole of society. The anti-dialecticians stand absolutely dumbfounded before the spectacle of the mastery of nature for human advancement and the degradation of human nature by this very mastery. The greater the means of transport, the less men travel. The greater the means of communication, the less men freely interchange ideas. The greater the possibilities of living, the more men live in terror of mass annihilation."

I am going to quote another of the great thinkers and men of action of the 20th century. He is V.I. Lenin. I am going to substitute the word "civilisation" for the word "power" the better to understand where we are. Said Lenin:

"The old civilisation – [which is our current world civilisation] maintains itself as a dictatorship of the minority, and could only maintain itself as such by the aid of police stratagems, only by preventing and diverting the masses from participating in the government, from controlling the government. The old civilisation consistently distrusts, fears the light and maintains itself my means of deception.

"The new civilisation, as the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority, could and will maintain itself only by winning the confidence of the great masses, only by drawing, in the freest, broadest, and most energetic manner, all the masses into the work of government. Nothing hidden. Nothing secret."

A grander conception of a new world civilisation, historically based, does not exist anywhere.

To be sure, Dr Ralph Gonsalves cannot claim that this new civilisation exists in the Caribbean.

Ralph Gonsalves is quite clear though, that there is in the Caribbean masses "their quest for greater democratic control over the state administration and for justice." That striving of the Caribbean masses to put the state under manners as we say in the vernacular, may be universal, but it is particularly pronounced in the Caribbean.

It is unfortunate that Ralph Gonsalves did not give examples of that great striving of the Caribbean masses, particularly when the most impressive instance of nearly the whole people self-organised, against the State administration took place in his own native St Vincent. It is, to my mind, the most decisive event, which rounded out the 20th century, in 2000. It is far more significant than the earlier Rodney affair. I had hoped that Ralph’s closing chapter would be an empirical account plus a detailed analysis of those events in St Vincent, which characterise the Caribbean "quest for greater democratic controls over the State administration."

Now I said that the distinguishing feature of American civilisation is that it challenged European civilisation not to defer the realisation of happiness to the after-life, but to realise happiness in this life. Sadly America was to define happiness as the sum of the consumer goods, services and durables that one owns and can own. Obviously, consumerism and happiness are not synonymous terms, but in its degradation of human nature, modern America conflates them, and enforces the idea of consumerism as happiness world-wide. Thus it degrades human nature into pigs to be enticed and fattened with consumer goods all packaged in a wrapping of sexual lust and craving.

I now contend that the Caribbean had something else special to say and that something else was at its very birth.

To my mind the Caribbean was born in the Haitian Revolution.

At its conception, as colonies, the Caribbean was the classic dictatorship of a white minority. This dictatorship of the white minority even disguised itself as legislative and deliberative Assemblies.

And then in 1804, the great mass of the population of Haiti overthrew slavery, and overthrew that dictatorship of the minority, which ruled by police stratagems, or outright terror and deception. It was a great leap forward. A quantum leap, in fact.

It was not Wilberforce, Fox, Sharpe and Pitt who abolished slavery. It was the Haitian Revolution, and the threat of several succeeding slave insurrections, which led Wilberforce, Sharpe, Fox and Pitt, to abolish slavery.

For when Toussaint abolished slavery by revolution in Haiti he automatically put on the agenda – a mass government. That as "the new power, as a dictatorship of the overwhelming majority, which could well maintain itself only by winning the confidence of the great masses, only by drawing, in the freest, broadest and most energetic manner all the masses in the work of government."

If the mulattoes saw themselves as the successors to the colonial elite, as the dictatorship of the minority, in whatever democratic guise or disguise, the Haitian Revolution liquidated them as a class or social category.

Therefore, Caribbean civilisation confronted the world with the most serious challenge to the dictatorship of the minority dressed up in parliamentary guise and democratic disguise.

I want to make another point about the distinguishing characteristic of Caribbean civilisation, other than the fact that it already confronted the world with the possibility, not the actuality, of the mass of the people "making themselves masters of the islands" as King Court declared here as long ago as 1736.

That characteristic is this. The Caribbean is the only place in the world where the mass of the population, the overwhelming majority, was enslaved or were indentured labourers. If all other societies had slavery, the slaves in ancient Greece or ancient Rome, on ancient Babylon, or modern America were a minority. The Caribbean is the only place in the history of the world, where the overwhelming majority of the population were slaves or indentured labourers.

Freedom in the Caribbean automatically posed the question of mass rule. That is why we are the world’s most rebellious people. I did not say the world’s most revolutionary people.

The French Revolution of 1789 brought into being bourgeois rule, not mass rule as Babeuf had hoped. The American Revolution of 1776 brought into being not mass rule, as Crispus Attucks had hoped. For that would have included the blacks, and American racism forbade that, blacks being declared fractions of a man, four-fifths of a man, at best. Therefore did bourgeois rule, the rule of the industrialists as distinct from that of the aristocrats take control of the USA. The Russian Revolution of 1917, posed the question of mass rule through the Soviets, an advance on the Paris Commune of 1872. But the Soviets collapsed, and bourgeois rule was exercised in the Soviet Union through the State apparatus, The Party and State Capitalism. Those were the events, which created the current, global civilisation, completing Columbus real discovery, not of the Indies and the Americas, but the discovery of the world market.

The Caribbean Revolution, or more specifically the Haitian Revolution was distinctly different. There being no Haitian bourgeois class, mass rule was on the agenda. It took the combined machinations of slave-owning Europe and slave-owning America, to destroy the Haitian Revolution with its new prospect of a new civilisation in mass rule.

But that possibility of mass rule, has always been imminent in the Caribbean, but immanent, that is, only latent, in the rest of the world.

Cricket best illustrates the point. West Indian cricket from its inception existed under the dictatorship of a white minority. Whites administered, managed and captained West Indian Test Cricket teams from 1928 - 1960. And then, in 1960, thanks mainly to the agitation of the same CLR James, Frank Worrell broke the white stranglehold. And then too, the majority of working people, came into their own, first under Sobers as World Champions, and then Lloyd and Viv Richards consolidated that power of the dispossessed overwhelming majority. And that West Indian team, of Lloyd and Richards, the sons of working people, African and Indian dominated world cricket from 1977-1995. It has never happened before this sustained excellence in world sport. It is not likely to happen again.

It is not accidental, that the West Indies Cricket team, is the only institution, in the entire Caribbean, which brings ordinary people together, as a force, on the world stage. Cricket was freed from the elite – the dictatorship of the minority. Ponder that.

Cricket to me is symbolic of the social forces at work in the Caribbean "in the quest of the masses to bring the state administration under mass control." That gives the Caribbean the possibility, but not that actuality, of being the harbingers of a new civilisation, distinctly different from bourgeois civilisation, which currently dominates the world, in North and South, in Orient as in the Oriedent.

But let CLR James, the greatest thinker of the 20th century and the best representative of the nascent Caribbean civilisation have the last word.

"It is the crime of capitalism that it uses men only partially. Labour bureaucracies, which call on men and women only for votes or sending telegrams [of solidarity], are only partially mobilising vast resources of creative energy which are crying for release. Bankrupt economies, which cannot mobilise the universal contained in modern man are doomed to remain bankrupt. Objectively and subjectively, the solution of the crisis demands a total mobilisation of all forces in society. Partial solutions only create further disorders in the economy; partial demands, as such, because they are only abstractions from the reality, lead only to disappointment, partial demands by leaders on the workers fail to mobilise their energies and leave them with a sense of frustration and helplessness."

This sense of frustration and helplessness is the last great obstacle to be overcome to end the dictatorship of the minority, which rules and reigns over our current world capitalist civilisation.

In its place will come a new civilisation based on the new power of the overwhelming majority, which can and will maintain itself only by winning the confidence of the great masses, only by drawing, in the freest, broadest most energetic and enthusiastic manner all the masses in the work of government.

The idea of a Caribbean civilisation seems alien to many of us here in the Caribbean, so deep does the Eurocentric socialisation run. Dr Gonsalves, as a prime example, is conspicuous by the fact that his philosophy is like a leaf floating in a sea of mental impotence, semi-literacy and colonialist ideology also known as our political and intellectual landscape. The colonial schooling, which was retained by the post-Independence power structure, has created generations of people content with being subjects and middle managers, slavishly reliant upon approval from the North. We import almost wholesale ideological and political constructs that are almost completely irrelevant to our reality.

Thinkers like Gonsalves, CLR James and Best represent people who are not afraid to think independently and see our part of the world as OUR centre. What Gonsalves and Best are trying to bring out in us is what may be perhaps the Caribbean’s greatest gift to the world. The human intellect.

THIS IS QUITE AN INTERESTING INTERPRETATION ANANCI.