DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM: THE JAMAICAN EXPERIMENT

In 1974, Jamaica's ruling People's National Party government, led by Prime Minister Michael Manley, rejected his Third World nation's dependent, capitalist development model and, instead, embraced an ideology of democratic socialism. Democratic socialism, Mr. Manley thought, could serve as an agent of mass mobilization, which, in turn, would effect socio-economic transformation in the direction of self-reliance, egalitarianism and social justice. This study, which utilizes the methodologies of documentary analysis, in-depth interviews and field work in Jamaica, represents an attempt to analyze the Jamaican experiment with socialism. First, the salient characteristics of democratic socialism, and specifically its Jamaican variant, are identified through an analysis of the ideas of Prime Minister Manley and other political elites in his administration. The study then seeks to determine whether reforms introduced by the Manley administration between 1974 and 1980, constituted movement in the direction of what is generally defined as democratic socialism. The inquiry focussed on two case studies of reform in the agricultural sector of the economy--the attempt to transform sugar plantations into worker-managed cooperatives and an agrarian reform program called Project Land Lease (PLL)--in order to make this determination. The obstacles to radical socio-economic reform in Jamaica and the dilemmas faced by the Manley administration in the aftermath of the declaration of its democratic socialist goals are also addressed, for they facilitate an understanding of why there was some economic restructuring, social welfare and legal reform, but no transition to democratic socialism in Jamaica between 1974 and 1980.