Socialist Revolution, No. 155;
CARICOM, the Caribbean Common Market, recently celebrated its 47th anniversary on July 4, 2020. Although at the time of its creation in 1973, the goal of establishing a Caribbean free trade area and coordinating policies in the areas of transportation, financing, and industrial and regional development may have seemed to its members (and others) to be a promising path to development for CARICOM, each of its member states, and their peoples, it must be acknowledged that since then—and especially since the 1980s—there has been nothing but an increase in their dependence and subjugation, under the sway of neoliberalism and globalized capital.
Today, while a serious assessment of their current situation is necessary, an assessment of the outcomes for the populations of their 2014 call for reparations—outlined in a 10-point plan—directed at the European nations (France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) that practiced slavery, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonization—would seem equally useful. This assessment is all the more necessary given that the European Union has just recognized slavery as a crime against humanity.
Furthermore, with regard to their more recent shift toward strengthening cooperation with China (the 2018 visit by Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs), this represents, as the example of Zambia shows, a genuine process of colonization currently underway by the People’s Republic of China. For while one can understand their desire to distance themselves—even partially—from the other dominant blocs, namely the United States and the European Union, China’s offer to CARICOM has finally the trappings of a partnership with Chinese capitalism. This search for another partnership should not means, for CARICOM and all of its members, a simple changement master's and maintaining a dependent orientation, that is, « I'm here for younbé an sann ».
Any voluntary and free association of’ÉIn principle, unity is a positive thing. But when it occurs under the banner of capitalism, that unity is fundamentally flawed by a system that inevitably creates inequalities among its parts, just as it does internally among its social classes. The end result is frustration, the domination of the weak by the strong, and ultimately rejection by the people. What we are witnessing with the European Union highlights the threat facing CARICOM, which has not put any safeguards in place to ensure that the competition inherent in capitalism does not come at the expense of the people.
When it was founded, also in 1972, the GRS, had as its programmatic goal—beyond the national and social emancipation of the people of Martinique and Guadeloupe—the creation of a « Federation of Socialist States of the Caribbean EIn this 21st century, It is appropriate to include the option of choosing l’eco-socialism or of the barbarism. That is to say, We aren't being offered to us MArtinican–e–s, CCaribbean–not–s, and other peoples of the world that barbarism, such as alone has led to the current global crisis of the capitalist system. That is what CARICOM members need to hear. But that is that they omitted to say that since 2015, all Martinican representatives who are associate members of the ÉCaribbean countries. It is essential to introduce all these questions and thiss debates among the general public in both the countries that are already members and those that aspire to membership to a greater or lesser extent.
