Growth plan flawed - Too many loopholes in PIOJ strategy

Trevor A. Campbell, Guest Columnist

One of the online respondents to Martin Henry's article 'PIOJ's growth-boosting strategy' (The Sunday Gleaner, March 13, 2011) - where he (Henry) attempted to summarise the content of the recently released PIOJ document, 'A Growth-Inducement Strategy for Jamaica in the Short and Medium Term' - remarked: "The country is not short of so-called road maps. It is in the implementation of their prescriptions that we have fallen short. Just maybe, if we could resist being carried away by grand announcements, as Mr Henry seems to be here, and pay more attention to the actual effort put into reaching the destination laid out in the map, we would be better off."

While there is certainly some validity to what Roanja54 (the name used by the respondent) is saying - based upon what he/she and others have observed on numerous occasions - I am going to suggest, and argue, that the central challenge or problem is not merely a case of incapacity of the political leadership to implement the policy proposals that are contained in the various reports by our experts. Most of the time we do not seriously question or examine the economic viability of what is being prescribed by these experts/economic doctors to supposedly aid the Jamaica-based capitalists and workers, as they struggle to compete within what are now globalised capitalist industries. In other words, if what is being prescribed has no objective basis in reality - and is, therefore, not viable - no amount of wishful thinking, appeal to magic, or force of political will is going to bring about the desired results.

Let me address a number of concerns. First, the latest PIOJ Growth-Inducement Strategy (GIS) document - proceeding along the same conceptual lines as the earlier Vision 2030 Jamaica document (as the authors reveal) - will not be particularly helpful as a guidebook for understanding the ongoing process of restructuring that is occurring in the globalised capitalist economy. Second, the GIS document does not and will not provide useful insights regarding the concrete implications for how the various social classes and their strata in Jamaica will have to organise themselves in order to reproduce their existence as individuals and as members of the particular social classes.

Lack of framework

One of the more glaring shortcomings of the GIS plan is the absence of any conceptual or contextual framework in which to situate the proposed strategy for economic growth/capital accumulation, in Jamaica, within the context of the technical and spatial changes that are taking place within the process of globalised capitalist production. This lack of a necessary framework makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the reader to develop a clearer understanding of what realistic options are available, based upon the island's natural resources, its geographical location in relation to strategic markets, and the current stage of development of its productive forces. In other words, a concrete and realistic conceptualisation and contextualisation would have assisted the reader in grasping the logical basis for the components that were outlined by the authors, as being at the core of the plan's strategic and programmatic framework.

For instance: while the strategy document pinpointed specific areas for action - largely to mobilise resources and stimulate investments in infrastructure, etc - the link between a specific industry and the type of infrastructure it requires to enable growth is not made clear. What industries/sectors are globally competitive? And how are resources being rationalised to address the need to drive investments in these sectors? It would certainly be a useful exercise to identify where the investment needs are, as a whole, which would also take into account the economic benefits to be derived from these strategic investments.

A closer look at the section of the plan titled 'Components of the Growth-Inducement Strategy' helps to highlight my point.

In anticipation of these potential shortcomings, I wrote an article in early December 2010 titled 'Capital Accumulation, Job Creation in the S&T Age' (The Gleaner, December 8, 2010), where I suggested that "it might be useful to ask Professor Harris (who authored a book in 1979 titled Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution) to elaborate for the benefit of the general public (in language that is accessible to the lay person) on why he thinks his strategy for economic growth (or more precisely, capital accumulation) will differ from the process that is unfolding on the North American mainland. In other words, will his strategy for economic growth/capital accumulation lead to significantly higher levels of employment for workers based in Jamaica?"

Responding to report

I wrote this largely in response to an article that appeared several days earlier in The Gleaner (November 24) announcing the appointment of Professor Donald Harris as the economic-growth expert and consultant to the PIOJ's GIS project. Coincidentally, the Los Angeles Times carried a report the same day with the following headline: 'Gloomy Fed employment forecast overshadows upbeat GDP data: the Fed predicts unemployment will remain high for years' (November 24, 2010).

In this regard, I made the following points: "In an era when governments are being forced to decrease the number of workers on their payroll, politicians are now dependent, more than ever, on the increase of employment of the working class by capital, in order to retain their legitimacy in a capitalist democracy. Capitalist entrepreneurs, operating in the context of intensifying global competition - in the age of the scientific and technological revolution - are being compelled to use less and less labour to produce the commodities they sell, as one of the primary means of reducing their cost of production."

I suggested that the reader view a series of videos at the following link:

http://singularityhub.com/2010/02/11/no-humans-just-robots-amazing-video... in order to get a visual impression of where the technological revolution is heading and the implications for employment of the workforce (the working class), both its skilled and unskilled components.

In light of the fact that the Gleaner report made no specific mention of how the 'growth-inducement strategies' would be directly linked to a comprehensive job-creation strategy, the question that I posed to Professor Harris would appear to be a reasonable one.

The changing structure of capital

In an attempt to bring to the fore the critical issue of the changing spatial and organisational structure of capitalist production, I mentioned, in a piece I wrote ('Caribbean Economists: In search of petite-bourgeois utopias, Part 2', The Sunday Gleaner, January 9, 2011), two important articles that graphically summarised these changes: 'An iPod has global value: ask the (many) countries that make it' by Hal R.Varian (The New York Times, June 28, 2007), and 'Multinationals have been superseded' by Samuel Palmisano (Financial Times, London, June 12, 2006).

This was another attempt, on my part, to illustrate the conceptual limitations and the economic non-viability of 'nation-centric' economic development strategies in a context where the accumulation of capital for predominantly private ends, rather than social transformation, is what drives investment in infrastructure, education and employment and shapes society's priorities. From what I have seen in the GIS plan, it would appear that Dr Hutchinson and Professor Harris are still stuck in the academic framework of 'developmental economics', a branch of economics that seemed to have had some traction between the 1950s and the 1970s, when efforts were being made to integrate the former colonised regions of the world into the process of globalised manufacturing through the process of infrastructural development.

A Concluding Note

What I have attempted to bring to the readers' attention in this brief review of the PIOJ's Growth Inducement Strategy plan is that this document, like its predecessors - The National Industrial Policy and Vision 2030 - ignores the real dynamics of global capitalism and is, therefore, not the basis for a realistic or sustainable project in spite of the smorgasbord of proposed programmes that are included to provide it with the veneer of concreteness and practicality. These programmes are not organically tied to any of the emerging industries within the global economy that would make them sustainable.

The authors' time and the Government's limited resources would have been much better spent doing a serious investigation of the far-reaching restructuring that is taking place, within all industries, as a consequence of the global economic crisis, and its impact on Jamaica. This research should then be widely distributed and discussed among all sections of the population. This information would include the nature of tools that are being used in the various workplaces, the organisation and the social relations of work and effective management of one's household, etc. It is only on this basis that any sort of collective understanding of the challenges facing all of the social classes in the society can occur.

Trevor A. Campbell is a political economist and the moderator of the 'Caribbean Dialogues', an online forum. Email comments to columns@gleanerjm.com and tcampbell@eee.org.