Scott MacDonald begins this case study with a strident methodological assertion: the theoretical literature on the Caribbean, he maintains, is dated and “flawed” (p. 6). Since there is no discussion of any of this literature, one has to take the author’s word that what he replaces it with is indeed an improvement. The replacement is a retooled version of the John J. Johnson thesis on the developmental and democratizing role of the “middle sectors.” “In making revisions on the Johnson thesis,” says the author, “a solid framework of analysis has been created for a case study on Trinidad and Tobago” (p. 7). Alas, the promise proves to be more bark than bite. First, the framework is never consistently used in the analysis but rather serves the function of summarizing thoughts in a post facto fashion. The concepts middle sectors, middle class, groups, bourgeoisie, and class/caste are all used interchangeably. One consequence of this theoretical confusion is a major tautology which runs through the study: the notion that democratic capitalism is made possible because of the existence of a “democratic-minded middle class.”
But conceptual confusion is not the most serious weakness of the case study, factual errors are. They are so numerous and blatant that no list of them is possible. How, for instance, can one cite the West Indies Year Book of 1941 for 1941-44 figures (p. 64)? How can the author cite Eric Williams as saying that qualifications for candidacy to the Legislative Council in the early 1920s were to own real estate worth $24,000 “from which they derived an annual income of $19,000” (p. 53) when on the page cited Williams clearly says that the qualifications were any income of $100 per month or capital worth at least $2,400? How is it possible to claim to have read Ivar Oxaal’s and Selwyn Ryan’s classic studies of the rise of Trinidad’s black bourgeoisie and in a chapter on “interlocking directorates” cite the following cases of the “white economic elite”: “In particular, a number of whites close to the prime minister, Bruce Procope, Eldon Warner, Ellis Clarke, Joffre Eli Serrette and Kenneth Julien . . .” (p. 69). If the author does not know that these gentlemen are not only not white and not of the economic elite, but indeed the very core of the new black bourgeoisie which the ruling party created, and that Clarke was the governor-general, Serrette the commander of the defense force, and Julien the government-appointed chairman of the major industrial complex at Point Lisas, what does he know about the middle sectors he purports to explain? The sad answer is evident and need not be belabored.