Dependence and Non-Capitalist Development in the Caribbean: Historical Necessity and Degrees of Freedom

The theory of noncapitalist development is the major Soviet Bloc contribution to development theory. In certain respects, however, the theory seems inconsistent with its dialect-materialist basis. Too often, for instance, a country is labeled socialist-oriented merely because its leaders proclaim socialism or adopt an antiimperialist, or simply pro-Soviet, posture. It is more useful to explain the choice of a noncapitalist path in terms of the interplay of ideas & material circumstances. Based on the Caribbean experience, it is shown how noncapitalist development is the outcome of a people's intellectual & physical response to particular, historically determined social processes. While objective conditions permitted the emergence of a petit-bourgeois leadership & the expansion of the state economic sector, as suggested by the Soviet theory, the crucial determinant in the move to noncapitalist development was the active struggle of the working people & a mass revolutionary consciousness which arose partly because of, & partly in spite of, Caribbean dependency theory. AA.