Paul Andrew Bourne, B.Sc. (Hons); Dip. Edu.
Capitalist ideology is the main source of interpreting the socio-political world since the late fifteenth century. (Addo, 1985, p.20) This Eurocentric edifice is generally promulgated as the ontology of this social and physical universe. Europe has not governed the world since its inception but their philosophy is so similar to that of the Greek-imperialism, the Roman-supremacy and the Babylonian-dominance but the former has made its theorizing as fundamental as an abstract. The irony is during the period of the African civilization and dominance of world affairs, much of man’s present creation began there and they fashion a culture that had militarization as its tool of enforcing deviance but Europe has entrenched those same principles through a mindset as against a physical dominance. The world has sacrificed all other paradigms because Europe’s doctrine incorporates the entire social and political institutions. Individualism is the principle that fosters ‘development ‘, and this has become a reality for many. The reality is perception and the likelihood of materialism. Profiteerism is the principle that catalyses the materialistic end of this phenomenology, and a concept that we all have accepted as an epistemology, which is a distant ingredient of humanitarianism. One of the hallmarks of humanitarianism is explained by Marx’s social ideology, which surmises that social equity is important for ‘development’ but that man has accepted the doctrines of individualism. Social transformation is not an illustration of the capitalistic world-system but in order to maintain that social balance it offers ‘development’ that in and of itself dwindles any revolt. The construct does not uphold socialistic tenets but is so designed that ‘minimalistic’ offerings are provided as a cushion against possible social deviance. Thereby creating an illusion that avenues are available for advancement, which if not taken, militarism is automatically enacted to suppress the deviant while the general society acts with support.
This conceptualization of the capitalist caste is a theorizing that has been re-engineered in order to keep abreast of the times. A number of authors (Addo et al., 1985) penned a position that obviously explains the construct even more. ‘This conceptualization of capitalist world-system with the exception of the understanding of the socialist countries’ is predominantly a view of individualism, an underpinning of the new socio-political order, which guides all future ‘ideashanal’ in the capitalist phenomenonology. In order to maintain the social order, militarization is used as a mechanism but not the same degree of brutality of the past. This dialectic tool is a medium of suppression for those who are disadvantaged and is equally a conquering principle over the oppressed masses while endeavouring to create the perception that there is an internal mechanism of ‘development’. The end is usually in favour of the productive class, which if is oppressed is refashioned and revamped but when the reverse becomes the reality, the military is unleashed on the class to suppress present and future ideology of such a perception. The proletariat class is not perceived as a valued contributory to the structure, which explains segregation from particular consumption and social accumulation. The Western world has bought into the Eurocentric phenomenology as they seek to continue the traditions and in extension expand on its supremacy. Therefore, the role of the bureaucrats is to maintain the social order, which provides the class with power, supremacy and wealth. What happens when the proletariats become desirous of the wealth seeking opportunities? This is where the military and police become active in an effort to topple any aspirations of the under-class.
Eurocentric beliefs have so conquered the epistemology of world ideology that it becomes difficult even for the ‘honest’ advocate to be effective. Individualism-profiteerism drives the engine of social existence that humans only protect themselves, even if it appears that another is being helped in the process. Christianity is a by-product of the Eurocentric system and so helps to explain its true tenet. Europe in an effort to corner all epistemologies of the ontology of man’s existence and creation offered spiritualism. Christianity operates as though it has the sole authority to the ontology of creation. Despite its stance, the ideological phenomenology of Christianity subsumes individualism. Unlike the other traditional epistemological construct of man, humanitarianism is a tenet of their doctrine but they are not the iconic thought because they were fashioned prior to Europe’s delineation of world ideology.
Eurocentricism is not the only sweeping generality of man, a system that unites man and defends the interest of the average person is an alternative. The current world ideology is so dominant, that even in periods of its alternative, political individualism was present. The depth of capitalism is so entrenched in our socio-political meaning system that it infests ‘social development’. From within the view of social transformation, Eurocentric dominance cripples its ‘development’.
The culmination of slavery in Third World societies has not dwindled the bourgeois, individualistic, philosophies of Europe. The ‘new social order’ that is needed to commence an unbridled social transformation is highly unlikely to blossom in this society. The post-slavery hegemony in Third World societies share the same pigmentation and cultural history of the masses but the present bourgeoisie class consider themselves the new slave master, which affords them the helm to oppress the disadvantaged. This is a clear case of socio-political maneuverings instead of social transformation. Marx’s dialectic doctrine is evident in this happening; it is a situation like that in "Animal Farm". The process heftily compensates the mercantile class with the remnants being offered to the labourers.
The non-European constituents of this world are not Europeans, which is a philosophy that Third World countries need to inculcate in their peoples in order to build social capital and by extension ‘development’ void of Eurocentric biases. Intellectual dishonesty is highly pervasive in Jamaica where some academics recognize the social order but they are not concerned with dehumanization, which is complex but the hegemony can be tackled. They have Europeanized the Jamaican ideological landscape by offering nothing in response to the caste system and the blatant socio-political dishonesty. Their silence has become a weapon for the continuation of the social order than a tool for its destruction. Marx identified this as a dialectic that in a caste system.
The philosophical foundation of social transformation is based on an ‘ideashanal’ that resides opposite to Eurocentric ‘developmental’ theorizing. The primacy of social development is an enormous politics, which interfaces many challenges as a non-alternative form of development. This non-alternative vehicle of change is a prerequisite for capacity building while the world rulers maintain their political order. The crisis that this needed positive change faces is trying to springboard ‘development’ while the established individualistic structures breed a social and political system that change evens in increments so long as they uphold the order. The first necessary and feasible mechanism that will liberate the period of transition from economic to social development and will reduce the power structures is the collaboration of academic globally with a thesis on communal development. Concurrently, Third World leaders are to institute a self-reliance development programme that will foster the creativity and arrangements of its peoples in an effort explore the possibilities of profound changes in the caste system. This established transnational ideology will be the direction of social transformation and gradually reduce the bourgeois-democratic state in operation, inasmuch as removing the bourgeois-military state. They will forge socio-political and economic alliance with the south and the east as alternative form of arrangement with the end of proletariat development.
The problematique that Michael Manley encountered in the 1970s should be understood as this capitalistic world system destroyed a construct that was people driven. The reality is clear that Marxist socialism as much as it is just cannot be a contender with modernization that is underpinned in individualism. Capitalism modernity is dishonest as its crisis with particular poignancy is a parameter of ‘development’ but not a desirable alternative of comprehensive development. Some people may argue that Manley’s ideology was or was not relevant, and that the construct was some 30 years ago but the principles of social transformation cannot be undersold if we intend to that development be a social transformation. The fallacy of many peoples is that the bourgeois-militarization will protect them indefinitely but history shows that empires and great cities have been destroyed and infants born. The edifice of this Eurocentric-Americanization is oppressive and dehumanizing to many innocent lives, a reality that is philosophical for many in the caste system.
‘Each race has conflicting feelings of repulsion and attraction for the others’ but Jamaicans are predominately African descendants, which should be the catalyst for social transformation instead of the massive socio-political rhetoric that binds the disadvantaged group. The real monster that threatens us in Jamaica is the acceleration of dishonesty and economic inequality and not the DJs, the dance hall music, the spoken ‘clothe’ and the marijuana smoking. I am cognizant of the Eurocentric system of hegemony that exists in Jamaica but it has produced profits at the expense of dignified human existence. Many a man is analyzing the lifestyle of the affluent, the middle-class and the oppressor among the oppressed while they juxtapose to their own meager existence. The bourgeois-militarization will not hinder a revolt as history showed where the Haitians taught a super-power the misery of frustration.
Marxist theorizing on the dialectic of development continues to be relevant in the Third World; the world-system and more so the one that operates in Jamaica is the primacy of exploitative euro centricity. ‘Because the enforced or adopted imitation of Europe may be the reason why the exploitation of the periphery by the centre persists, and if we wish to tackle this exploitation component of the global problematique – to eliminate it in fact – we need a grasp of theory able to indicate the possibilities for influencing future history’ (Addo et al., 1985, p.31). The unequal development of particular topologies, the commonalities in the manipulation of proletariat between the national and the global system is a methodological hindrance to social transformation. This is the national problematique to which this constituent intents to critique. The theoretical ideographic understanding between the proletariat-bourgeois classes in development is a dialectic one since the historical development of the caste system was established on the masses acceptance of their position. This explains the synergy in the socio-economic characterization of the global society and by extension Jamaica’s imitative model. The Eurocentric world is beyond the simple views of an ideology to that of an objective realism that is presently colonial, imperialistic, and elitist; and it is transnational even within socialist societies. Why then there is a philosophy of ‘social-capital formations’, and who establishes the institutions of social transformation?
The Jamaican hegemony is concretized within the world-system that allocates an automatic mechanism dissonance. European dominance in history is the believed ontology. The narration and chronology of European events in all societies are not only biased and highly historic since the fifteenth century but the system was fashioned with all the prevailing complexities of the establishment, which justifies why the Jamaica’s future in tied to its history.
‘This is what we seek to make clear: that development, as it is conventionally understood, is an impossible dream – an impossibility rooted in its faulty, partisan, philosophical foundations. Understanding development as a vocation for increasing humanization entails conceiving of development as the social transformation of our present world’ (Addo et al., 1985, p.34).
If there is any realism that theory is history, we must begin to fashion a new historiography of Jamaica and by extension the world-system that will dwindle most of the present problematiques that hurdle ‘social transformation’. Like most Third World economies, there is dialectic in the caste system. These are illustration of the continuity in belittle non-eurocentric music in Jamaica. The Eurocentric hegemonic policies of this society dictate the anomaly in reggae music art form. The dishonesty is not merely the process of the bourgeoisie understanding of the struggles of the proletariat class but that this group (hegemony) is unable to provide the philosophical justification for belittling that language form that evolved from the proletariat grouping.
When Sizzla, Fantam Mojo, QQ, and Peter Tosh penned words that highlight the dialectics within the Jamaican society, they are subtly ostracized and expelled from the ideography of the day as this contradicts the dictates of an Eurocentricity that prides itself as the history and future of humanity. The system is so individualistically dehumanizing that immediately an attempt is to arrest the art form and sometimes the characters without the masses recognizing the artistry of the hegemony.
Bob Marley’s art form, although is generally acceptable, is poetic and analogous of the socio-political dialectics of capitalism but the characterized hegemony of the world-system immediately interprets the messages within the general epistemology of eurocentricity. Those underpinning of the messages were removed from the language; thereby providing the death of the social transformation that Marley envisioned for his people. Tosh, on the other hand, referred to the structure as ‘Shitem’, and his language was labeled deviance instead of his meanings understood; the prophetic redemption of the message was sacrifice for the "greater good of mankind’. It would be interesting to ascertain those who are responsible for ascribing the ‘greater good of mankind?
Another irony within the Jamaican society is the helper categorization. These individuals are unable to consume the diet to which they continuously serve the pets of the hegemony. The philosophical underpinnings of this present dishonesty lies in Eurocentricity. This social reality is not limited to the Jamaican experience but the Haitians are presently paying for their historic victory against the establishment. Despite Manley’s social, transformational-developmental pursuits, the required weaponry against the bourgeois caste system, transnational survivability of Eurocentricity within this society revailed. Those ideological-phenomenal designs have not shifted even though more aids that are social are offered to the masses as a ‘symbol’ of social transformation. The Haitians revolution represents a feat over the caste system despite its reality of militarization. Metropolitan Parks and Markets’ wardens and established forces of the state continue to suppress and oppress hagglers. This hegemonic weaponry against social transformation is incremental approach a closure. ‘This imitation precept is absurd because it seems to say that for the Third World cultures to develop they must imitate everything European including even the underdeveloped aspects of European culture’ (Addo et al., 1985, p.33), which is a justification for the ‘social development’ of Kingston.
‘However, if one chooses to leave kindness aside and state matters as they are, what is involved is a complex situation in which, while things dehumanization not only persists but intensifies and deepens on a world-scale. Why? Very simple – because of the developmentalist precept that to develop, the so-called underdeveloped must change to look like the so-called developed; and it is in this process that the level of dehumanization increases on a world-scale’ (Addo et al., 1985, p.35)
In the best interest of the business class, a social transformation’ that is widespread is paramount as historiography precept of imitating Europe in the construct of development cannot continue when this is compared with the fallacy of developmentalist tautology and the widening of gap between the richest twenty percent and the poorest twenty in this society.