New Directions
Volume 5 | Issue 3
Article 7
4-1-1978
Jamaica: Progress Report
Michael Manley
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INT[RNATIONAl
28
Progress Report
By Michael Manley
We aremaking progressin Jamaica.First, I would like tosay a wordabout the eco n-omy-not just to talk about it, because talking about the Jamaican economy to-day is a means of illustrating what is a world-wide problem, particularly in the ThirdWorld context.
During 1972 and 73-even into early 1974-we had begun to makevery,very substantialprogressinanumber of areas; employment had started to come down from nearly25 percentdown toabout 20 percent-still terrible but at least a great improvement. Weinitiated freeeducation and land reform programs.We began the process which we havejust completed of bringing into national ownership all the sugar estates previously owned by for -eign corporations. And a State Corpora -tion responsible for all trading insugar has beenestablished,with the realization thatsugar is a nationalassetto be traded on behalf of the whole nation. All pr o-ceeds from the sugar industry will bene-fit theJamaican peopleas awhole once therequirements ofservicing theindustry had been met. This is an important so -cialist program that involves the estab -lishment of Worker Co-operatives on the sugar estates. And I mustconfess,one of
the proudest experiences of my Iife is whenI recall someof the old grass weed-ers, spreaders of ferti Iizer, marked and bent by a Iife-time in the field with noth-ingto believe in,nothing to hold on to ex-cept the hope that there might besome small wage increase torelievetheir mis -ery,and when Iseethose people today on their sugarfarms going to their execu-tive meetings to discuss what to do with their proceeds, how to plan the next crop's activity, andwhat to set aside to buy the tractorsfor nextyear.
The workers are now the democratic voice ofdecision at the placewhere they work and see the transformation of the humanspirit, and the dignity in their ef -forts-that alone makes the Jamaican struggleworthwhile.
We have started work in education,not completed but we haveinitiated exciting new programs.That isthekey-education isthekeyto everything.
Wehavecompleted theacquisition of all the public utilities which are now owned bythestate.In the bauxite indus -try,we have done some ofthemost im -portant pioneering work that has been done anywhere in theworld among pri-mary raw material producers byintroduc -ing and imposing the Bauxite Levy by taxation,andby proceeding to re-acquire for Jamaica a quarter ofamillion acres from the muIti-nationalcorporations.
The Bauxite Issue
We have started negotiating themaj ownership ofthe bauxite institutions
a
setting up a completely newconcep thebauxiteindustry.AndtheBauxiteL.isregarded asthe mostadvanced fonn mineral taxation in the world today ana serving as a model that isbeing stud
-throughoutThirdWorld countries. Itis arevolutionary concept in taxati
because,for thefirsttime, it locks be
=
--fits into metropolitan inflation, whi-meansthatif the price of aluminum ri
in theNorth Americanmarket,the taxtal -ofJamaica also rises. Ittook,for a Ii z;
country like Jamaica, alotofcourage
-do that. We formed theIntemational Ba -ite Association and now,for thefirst tirns
theassociation hasmadehistory by
s
e;
x -ting an international minimum price all bauxite delivered to NorthAmerica -ahistoricbreak-through.Butwhileall ofthatwashappening,t stormclouds ofthe economic crisiswerE
gathering, beginning with the big gra-r price take-off in 1973,followed bytheill -flation in tractor prices. Energy prices eventually overtook their historic role
also. But with all the attacks again higherenergy prices, they are at theleve
where they really ought to be. It tookE. longtime forsome peopletoperceive the
factthat therehadto be some relationshi between the price of oiland the inflatior of industrial economies. And becauseal
now been associated with the
in the world sugar price; the
in the world alumina market
- ==
m
e
stage,theserious contraction .Jamaica,like many other simi-ies that are dependent on the
Export relationship, have been
!n a massive squeeze. For e
x-used to cost us$30M a year to
=
--=oilthat we need(95%of Jamai-isbased on oil), it nowcosts~ after three years to bring the nt ofoil intoJamaica. I won't ntion wheat prices but one can
. right down the Iine to the
Jamaica has been under ex -- ::8SSure at the energy level, and ling level,that has created an
ce ofpayments crisis. Thisis
have done ask the people for
- sacrifices, and cut out the im
----"'-''''''- of all irrelevant and luxuries
- =
~ign exchange that Jamaicahas _ soentfirstofall on food;second--=--X::ine;thirdly onraw materials to
factories going; fourthly on
~s, and fifthly on the capital
• are needed for expansion.
done because of the lack of
ange, it isdone tocreate the
under which the Jamaican
-II learn to produce for them
-The truth isthatwehavespent alotof
time in our history allowing a small fringe of our society to waste the national sub
-stanceinakind of riotous living.
Whenwe have built the internalecon -omythatuses ourraw materials,that ex-ploits our own by-products, thenwe can
talk about the next phase But Ido not
believe in luxuries for a minority when
there are thousandsofchiIdren thatcan -not get into schools.
Distribution of Resources
It is not for meto quarrel with the dis
tri-bution of resources in another man's country.Every countryhas to work that out
for itself. But the decision that the Ja
-maican people tookwas a decision that
we are going to go for thesatisfaction of the basicneedsof themajority ofthe peo-pleas ourpriority.And thatiswhy we are working first ofall massively inhousing, in clothing, in domestic agriculture, in
education,and in health.
Lest there be amisunderstanding, we are doing everything possible inthe area ofexports.Iam proud tonote:one of the greatestexamples ofThirdWorld soli
dar-ity involves apactbetween Mexico,Ven
e-zuela and Jamaica to build a major in -dustrial complex that will begin with Jamaican bauxite. This project was a
dream that began at a table in a room in JamaicaHouse betweenthePresident of
Mexico and myself in 1973. I know of corporations that have jumped high and
29
low to try to stop it happening because they saw it as an interference in tradi
-tional Iines of power. But we have overcome.
In January we senta missionto Algeria
for bauxite and alumina sales, and we have recently finished major exploration
with theSoviet Union inthe area of trade possibilities and economic cooperation. At thesame time,we are trying to expand our sales in the United States and also in Canada. Wehave just entered into a
major economic agreement with Norway
and are holding negotiations with Yug
o-slavia. What we have insisted upon is
this: we are little but that doesn't mean
that the world isnotour stage also. We do believe in internationalism and maintain excellent relationswith mostn
a-tions of the world, including the United
States.
But what we are making clear to the
world andto othersisthatwe will not
ac-cept a world that says to us that friend-ship isthe exclusive preserve of anyone corner of the world.We regret all inter na-tionalconflicts. Ibelieve there is only one
thing in the world worth worrying about
and that'sthe plight of thetwobill ion pe
o-ple that are poor. And the daythe world community recognizes that-and deals with it-the world will begin to move forward.
Asthe resultofthe tremendousefforts
that wehave undertaken lastyear,forthe
30 very nearly closed thetrade gap between
Jamaica's exports and imports.Westill havesome problems butwe also have a greatdetermination.Weneedassistance, yes, and cooperation. We welcome fo r-eign capital only on terms thatarecon
-sistent with ournational priorities, stand
-ards of good corporate citizenship and joint venturing with the home government
so that we become partners in whatever
takes place.
The Common Fund
Wehave a tremendousconfidence in the future. But all of those efforts take place in the context ofthe world itself. And one of the tragic eventsof our time is the con
-tinuing failure of thedeveloped world to come to terms with the needs and just requirements of the Third World. Even now negotiations in Geneva on what is
knownasthe CommonFund have broken downagain.
The Common Fund is an attempt to
create, through international political
management, a system in which basic commodities such as sugar, cocoa,cot
-ton,copperand tincan be managedsoas
to secure that theyhave minimum prices
thatguarantee somelevelof prosperity to the Third World countries that produce them. It isto ensure that if North
Ameri-can tractor prices rise,wedon'tfind our
-selves producing more and moresugar
tobuyonetractor.Instead,thefloor price of sugar wiIImove if the priceof tractors
moves upward. And it seems,at least to
me, that is a preeminently reasonable proposal.But it isrejected in thenameof free enterprise.
We are not asking for charity.We are
asking for the pol itical organization of justice.
One of the things that is extraordinary
to observe is that right now the whole world economy is stagnant. It isso be
-cause the Third World istrapped inan economic structure that bleeds it of re-sources through the current terms of in
-ternational trade. It is stagnant because theThird World is staggering under the
debtsthat have beenaccumulated inthe
past to finance the survival of human
beings.
It is stagnating because most Third World economies are now so stripped of
foreign exchange that they cannot buy
the manufactured goods from developed economies.
The developed economies themselves are in a log jam of the debt overhang of the debt at this moment. They too are
stagnant because part of their own ma
r-ginofgrowth isthepotential market ofthe
Third World.Therefore,allof usarebeing sacrificed on the altar of a false theoryof
free enterprise. The answer Iiesinpol
iti-cal perception, pol itical education and political will. 0
This report by Michael Manley, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, wasexcerpted from an address he gave at
