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The Social Origins of Democratic Socialism in Jamaica, by Nelson W. Keith and Novella Z. Keith. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992. $49.95. Pp. 320.
The 1980 electoral defeat of Michael Manley's democratic socialist Peoples National Party (PNP) government led to a burgeoning literature assessing the viability of "democratic socialism" as a development path. Democratic Socialism in Jamaica (1986) by Evelyn Huber Stephens and John D. Stephens and Jamaica Under Manley: Dilemmas of Socialism and Democracy (1985) by Michael Kaufman are the best known books on the subject. Major articles have appeared in the 1970s and 1980s by Carl Stone, Fitzroy Ambursley, Anthony Payne, Norman Girvan and Richard Bernal, Arthur Lewin and myself, among others. Obika Gray's recent publication Radicalism and Social Change in Jamaica, 1960-1972 (1991) provides an excellent analysis of the social origins of democratic socialism--a dimension that had been inadequately treated in the literature. The text under review supplements Gray's excellent work in its rich historical analysis of the rise and demise of radical movements in the period 1865-1980. While the book adds little substantive information to previously published studies, it contributes to the theoretical discussion of democratic socialism. It brings a refreshing Marxist class analysis to the subject at a time when many Caribbean intellectuals are retreating from socialist paradigms and are adopting frameworks more compatible with the regional and worldwide trend toward political and economic liberalization.
The simple point of the book is that a crucial distinction must be made between "left-rhetorical" regimes and revolutionary states genuinely committed to the transition to socialism. Keith and Keith dismiss the PNP's ideological label of "democratic socialism" as bogus, offering "national popularism" as an alternative. For the Keiths, the distinction between "democratic socialism" and "national popularism" is a crucial one. Democratic socialism is a model of change that may have the potential for...