Book Description
Without dismissing the negative machinations by the U.S., internal mismanagement, and other problems, the authors argue that the events in question speak of the fragility of a national class alliance that coalesced temporarily, amidst a crisis, around a "new" politics. While incorporating radical impulses "from below" as well as socialist policies, the new politics was rooted in liberal democratic strains that had evolved historically in ways that could accommodate these impulses. The Manley project can thus be better understood as the "management" of peripheral capitalism rather than a budding socialism. In their rich historical analysis of race and class in Jamaica, the authors trace the emergence and demise of progressive "alternative paths to development" in the Third World.
