Online archive of Caribbean Correspondence, a journal focussing on workers control and self-management, published in Kingston Jamaica and New York City in the 1970s.
Caribbean Correspondence journal
Caribbean Correspondence #1 (1975)
A 1975 publication of the Jamaican libertarian left, two homegrown articles, the first on the magazine itself in its wider context and a second on workers self management by Montgomery Stone titled "Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean" and one republished from Point Blank! on a strike/occupation in France.
Montgomery Stone was a pseudonym of George Myers (aka Joseph Edwards and Fundi, the "Caribbean Situationist,").
The Point Blank! article is available in its original form on Libcom here.
Attachments
CARIBBEAN CORRESPONDENCE.pdf
(17.68 MB)
Comments
Historically, one of the worst handicaps of the poor and oppressed has been their own illusions
Really!?!? We thought, The rich man's wealth, his strong city; destruction of the poor, their poverty.
We must be thankful then that the good fellows of the Caribbean Correspondence are here to dispel our illusions and thus set us free. Their answer to our conundrum can be found in France, in 1973, by means of workers' self-management of the production of, wait-for-it, TIMEPIECES!
westartfromhere wrote:
Historically, one of the worst handicaps of the poor and oppressed has been their own illusions
Really!?!? We thought, The rich man's wealth, his strong city; destruction of the poor, their poverty.
We must be thankful then that the good fellows of the Caribbean Correspondence are here to dispel our illusions and thus set us free. Their answer to our conundrum can be found in France, in 1973, by means of workers' self-management of the production of, wait-for-it, TIMEPIECES!
Jump off of a bridge, cracker
Thanks for uploading this, muttworks. Your intro says 1979 but the cover seems to say 1975?
That's correct, Fozzie.
The cover art is taken from a written work of Gwendolyn Brooks, an American author and poet. She wrote a wonderful poem, Have you seen my baby, which we will try to recall from memory:
Have you seen my baby?
Last seen hanging 'pon a tree
In the City of Peace.
He is described as
Tall in stature
But small in height,
Ruddy complexioned
With pock-marked face.
Always took it to be Mary's lament for her executed son but poetry is open to interpretation.
muttworks wrote:
westartfromhere wrote:Historically, one of the worst handicaps of the poor and oppressed has been their own illusions
Really!?!? We thought, The rich man's wealth, his strong city; destruction of the poor, their poverty.
We must be thankful then that the good fellows of the Caribbean Correspondence are here to dispel our illusions and thus set us free. Their answer to our conundrum can be found in France, in 1973, by means of workers' self-management of the production of, wait-for-it, TIMEPIECES!
Jump off of a bridge, cracker
It's true though isn't it? Self-management is just us managing our own slavery. It has no impact on the political economy at all. The pillars of the building are left standing. In actual fact, we mostly manage our own work anyways.
Self-management is an illusory reaction to working class struggle, just as the Garveyite illusion of economic self-reliance is a reaction to the African liberation struggle. Just one more vestige of historic social-democracy, tinkering.
Workers' self-management of timepieces is just irony upon irony.
Fozzie wrote: Thanks for uploading this, muttworks. Your intro says 1979 but the cover seems to say 1975?
my mistake, I'll update this now
muttworks wrote:
Fozzie wrote: Thanks for uploading this, muttworks. Your intro says 1979 but the cover seems to say 1975?my mistake, I'll update this now
No worries, much appreciated.
Caribbean Correspondence #2 (1978)
"Caribbean Correspondence" , Subtitled "Workers Control and Self-Management", # 2 July 1978, entitled "Crisis Time"
This issue scanned for libcom.org by New York/New Jersey Workers Solidarity Alliance archives.
Contents
- Guyana: Strikes for Food
- Jamaica: Riots and Crisis
- St. Kitts - sugar
- NY Nursing strike
- Which Way for Blacks? - Aubrey Brown
- Peter Tosh gives warning
- Mozambique: Frelimo, African Bureaucrats
- Does Africa need an ideology? - Jimoh Omo-Fadaka
- Rastas rounded up
- Health: West Indians eating to die or live?
Attachments
Scan5751.pdf
(11.72 MB)
Comments
Good for news on the intense class war then going on in Jamaica; on class struggle in New York, Poland, USSR, etc.
Terribly poor prognosis on class struggle in Africa, claiming that the working class does not exist there; that the emancipation of the working class elucidated in the Manifesto of the communist party is not relevant to that continent.
Just because there is no indigenous African word for class does not mean that class does not exist there. There is no indigenous word for microchip technology, yet microchip technology is prevalent.
The very idea of class did not exist in traditional African society.
The feudal kingdom of Zimbabwe was not a classical (i.e. class based) society?
Comments