Emancipation in the British colonies in 1834 left a timeless debate that we continue to grapple with today. It is a debate between moralists who insist that freedom is an inalienable human right that should be respected where it exists and given where it does not regardless of economic calculation. Others blind themselves to human rights when it is profitable to do so and it often is.

Emancipation freed 800,000 people in the British Caribbean. It was indeed economically costly. One economic historian has calculated that the economic loss of slave labour, compensation to slave owners, and decline of plantations cost the British economy 1.8 per cent of national income a year in the six decades either side of emancipation. This compares to the provision of aid by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries at a cost of 0.33 per cent of national income a year measured for 1975 to 1996.

British aristocrats, industrialists, bankers and plantation owners were just not willing to pay this heavy cost for the sake of people's freedom. Abolitionists had to focus their attack on the abolition of the slave trade at which they succeeded in 1807 rather than on slavery itself, initially. The value of Britain's slave colonies was estimated at around £140 million on the eve of emancipation. Those against abolition, therefore, used arguments about the economic value of slavery to Britain to try to preserve that system.

LIMITS OF EMANCIPATION

The abolitionist movement nonetheless won. The moral argument was not alone in this victory. The ending of the slave trade, the inefficiencies of slavery, poor absentee management of plantations, the disruption of trade by the American civil war, and very importantly, slave rebellion and sabotage all contributed. This mix of moral and other factors left the question unanswered of how important moral positions were over profitability in securing human freedom.

The moral argument was not by itself strong enough to inaugurate human rights. Emancipation only meant freedom from slavery, anyway. It did not mean the enjoyment of human rights. Furthermore, when slavery ended a slave-like system of servitude called indentureship was almost immediately developed in its place by Britain. It made sugar production in Guyana and Trinidad competitive with that of Cuba's slave production. It was never demonstrated that free labour produced more competitively than slave labour and so slave-like labour was maintained.

Britain did not extend its model of emancipation of forced labour to Asia. Rather, it exported Asian forced labour to the Caribbean. Emancipation was a very limited victory. The world did not and has not put freedom above profit, not then and not now.

British West Indian emancipation only freed one-seventh of the New World's slaves and fewer than three per cent of all coerced labour in the world in the 1830s. Though hundreds of millions have been freed since, hundreds of millions more still remain in servitude working as coerced labour. In 1930, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) broadened its definition of slavery to include 'forced or compulsory labour'. This takes the forms of serfdom, debt bondage, sex trafficking and slavery.

MODERN DEBATE

The modern debate over freedom is dominated by advocates of liberal democracy, capitalism, and democratic globalisation who want to spread these around the world. But these systems suffer from a credibility problem. They represent only a Western world view that sees capitalism as natural. Most cultures don't. After all, it has a history of putting profits ahead of people's freedom through slavery, indentureship, and child labour and it now co-exists with inequality and global poverty, all a denial of human rights.

There are two great experiments going on. One is freedom, the idea that people should be free and that this is the only way they can make the best of their circumstances. The Caribbean has been a laboratory of this experiment. In many respects it has been a success, comparatively speaking.

The other experiment is self-interest, the idea that a market of self-interested players will act responsibly as these players compete for profits. The current world recession amid global inequality suggests that this has not been a success. But both experiments are going on at the same time. Some say the two complement each other. Others say they are in conflict with each other.

EMANCIPATORY POLITICS

Emancipatory politics is the pursuit of means to rights and equality. Profit-based systems mean that food, work, land, housing, education, health and justice are accessible through the market. But the market is controlled by a few in the economy and in the state. Emancipatory politics is about finding the means by which people can access social and economic rights with civil and political liberties in an equitable way.

Take our current predicament. If International Monetary Fund (IMF) money were to be used to help our farmers grow food so that we can grow what we eat, then it would be emancipatory. If it were to be used to build more schools and feed more schoolchildren who could then find jobs in order to make a decent living, then it would emancipatory. If it were to be used as loans to young entrepreneurs under the Youth Entrepreneurship Programme, then it would be emancipatory. But it won't be.

It doesn't make sense that the Government is to borrow US$1.2 billion (over J$90 billion) over two years that won't and cannot be spent on its flagship programmes of agriculture, education and small and medium-sized business. The global financial system is not emancipatory.

IMF money will be used to give balance of payments support. This means it will help the private importers to buy food overseas so that we don't grow what we eat. It will be used to import what we need for education and business. We won't use our own building and service industries and raw materials. It will buy from others in the developed countries from whom we import. In that way it will stimulate those economies and make ours more import dependent. This was the main reason the G20 released funds for the IMF to lend. This is the logic of the profit first economy.

The freed Jamaicans between 1834 and 1865 immediately formed organisations and wrote petitions for their true emancipation. They wanted government's help to own land, plant crops, export goods, get credit, receive training, work for fair wages, have the vote, elect each other, and obtain justice. But they were tied by laws and practices to the failing old plantations. They rebelled in 1865 under circumstances tougher than anything the IMF could have imposed. They rebelled again in 1938 under conditions that Bustamante and Norman Manley and all of us would have rebelled against.

Some are tired of rebellion. They migrate. They abandon the land or plant it with ganja. They turn to crime and escapist entertainment. There is little that is emancipatory about their demands. But they have their freedom. Can we give them the means to be profitable, the land, credit, markets, training, and management structures? If globalisation is to work they need the information technology to market themselves globally. They can do this better than most and have been doing it despite the disadvantages. The emancipation agenda is still very pertinent.

Robert Buddan lectures in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona. Email: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm or columns@gleanerjm.com.