PNM sells out to the rich

By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 18, 2025

The People’s National Movement came into being against the backdrop of the representatives of black and brown people who met in Bandung, Indonesia, to oppose colonialism. In 1955, 29 countries representing 1.5 billion people (or 54% of the world’s population) demanded a greater share of the world’s financial resources.

Energised by a tidal wave of positive action, Eric Williams returned to Trinidad in 1955, acknowledging that colonialism was the enemy of his people. On June 21, 1955, in front of 10,000 people, he declared: “I stand before you tonight, and, therefore, before the people of the British West Indies, the representative of a principle, a cause, and a defeat. The principle is the principle of intellectual freedom. The cause is the cause of the West Indian people. The defeat is the defeat of appointing local men to high office.”

After Williams formed the PNM in January 1956, he went to England where he discussed the PNM’s draft party programme and constitution with George Padmore, CLR James and Arthur Lewis. He also had “the privilege of an interview with Madame Pandit, and we discussed the possibility of a West Indian edition of Nehru’s autobiography” (Inward Hunger).

Three years after T&T became a republic, Williams advised: “[B]uild the nation of Trinidad and Tobago, bringing in all the races, acknowledging all their contributions, elevating lowly castes, dignifying despised colours, achieving a syncretism here and a new autonomy there, raising up the poor and the lowly and giving them a positive stake in our society.” (PNM annual convention, September 29, 1979.)

The Leader of Our Grief and Sorrow became Prime Minister in 2015. In 2020 he offered a different perspective on nation-building than Williams. He said: “I am not trying to interfere with the bridge between the rich and the poor because there is nothing wrong with the rich getting richer, but the poor must come out of poverty; that is the equation. It’s not a see-saw where one has to go down for the other to come up. You have to find a way that you encourage the rich to get richer. In getting richer, they create opportunities for the poor.”

This is not an equation. An equation affirms the equivalence between two objects or states of affairs. What the Leader proposes is a desired reality. Whether such a reality is feasible is a different issue. It contradicts everything the PNM preached previously and embodies Thatcherism at its worst.

It doesn’t follow that if the rich get richer, the poor would necessarily get richer or rise out of poverty. Additionally, it does not help the precariat (people whose employment and income are insecure) who are trying to make a meaningful life for themselves. The rich usually become richer at the expense or exploitation of the precariat and the poor.

The Leader’s assertion does not even take into account the growing inequality between the rich and the poor. Prof Guy Standing of the University of London notes: “Official income statistics tend to exclude the very highest earners and the very lowest, because sampling errors are deemed too large. So if a tiny percentage of plutocrats gain more, while the poorest receive a declining share, that is not picked up.” (Financial Times, January 13.)

Karl Marx argued that the financial capital which the rich treasure and the Leader sees as the salvation of the poor is nothing more than the accumulation of dead labour. It also alienates the rich from the poor and increases social division. “Capital,” Marx said, “is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” (Capital.) In other words, capital gains value by “sucking” the living labour of workers who are primarily poor.

We can deduce three conclusions from Williams’ observations: (1) we should uphold the principle of intellectual freedom; (2) elevate the lowly castes; and (3) raise up the poor by giving them a positive stake in the society. We can do so only by breaking down the bridge between the rich and the poor.

Now that the infamy is done and the pieces of silver distributed among the betrayers, where have the latter taken the shattered remnants of the party that Williams, James, Winston Mahabir, Gerard Montano and the surging masses built from below?

They have delivered the remnants of the party into the laps of the rich, thereby creating a plutocracy: a party of the rich, by and for the rich. This is a tectonic shift for a party that poor people built. It may explain why the Leader pushed so hard to place Stuart Young at the head of the PNM and the Government, a classic case of the wealthy governing the poor.

Can the poor and lowly ever recapture their party?

—Prof Cudjoe's e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu. He can be reached @ProfessorCudjoe.

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The Slave Master of Trinidad by Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe