A Systems Approach to Planning Models for Small Dependent Economies: with Special Reference to the Caribbean

• Author: Courtney Blackman
• Pages: 21-48

A SYSTEMS APPROACH

21

The decade of the 1950s saw the f1owering of Caribbean novelists

George Lamming of Barbados, Vidia Naipaul and Samuel Selvon

of Trinidad and Tobago, Jan Carew of Guyana, John Hearne and

Vic Reid of Jamaica, and many others. In a simi1ar fashion the

Sixties witnessed the emergence of a new school of Caribbean

political economists, who are fast becoming household names in

the region. There have been, among others, William Demas and

Lloyd Best of Trinidad and Tobago, Alister McIntyre of Grenada,

Clive Thomas and Havelock Brewster of Guyana, and George

Beckford and Norman Girvan of Jamaica.1 Writing mainly in the

New World Quarterly, they were the first scholars to address

economic problems from a distinctly Caribbean point of view. Sir

Arthur Lewis had, of course, done excellent work on regional

problems in the 1950s, but his approach has always been that of a

classical economist.

The New World economists focused on the ‘dependence’

syndrome as the most important feature of Caribbean political

economy and blamed it on the colonial experience — an

experience they see as essentially replicated by the current

development policy of ‘industrialization by invitation’. For them

the plantation is the villain of the piece, and their policy

2

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO

PLANNING MODELS FOR SMALL

DEPENDENT ECONOMIES

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE CARIBBEAN

THE PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT

22

prescriptions are calculated to undo the effects of the plantation

system.

However, the economists of the New World Group have gone

off in different directions. Demas and McIntyre have focused on

the obstacles to economic development posed by the small size of

Caribbean territories, and have emphasized the need for

economic integration. They have probably oversold integration

as a source of economic growth; at least, they may not have

emphasized that the benefits of integration are slow of realization.

At any rate, the policies they proposed were always tempered by

pragmatism. Girvan and Beckford have been mainly concerned

with reducing the dependence of the Caribbean territories on

the outside world. They are bent on closing the system, and are

strong proponents of the ‘ownership and control’ of the natural

resources of the region. Rabid enemies of the multinational

corporation, their stance may be described as one of reactive

nationalism and their prescription for economic development is

a blend of autarchy and chauvinism.

In a certain sense, Clive Thomas has betrayed the New World

School, which promised to view Caribbean problems from a

decidedly Caribbean viewpoint. He offers the alien Marxist-

Leninist model, and sees central planning and socialization of the

economy as solutions to Caribbean economic problems. Both the

emphasis of Girvan and Beckford on closure of the economy, as

well as Thomas’s insistence on central planning and the

monolithic organization required for socialist production, reveal

a continuing adherence to deterministic and mechanistic models

of economic development.

Lloyd Best, perhaps the most fertile and creative New World

mind, understands quite well that small size is a parameter of

growth and not a variable. Moreover, he recognizes clearly the

nature and the limitations of mechanistic economic models, and

understands the need for a heuristic approach to economic

planning. He rejects the Marxist-Leninist model as being both