Portia Simpson Miller, the president of the People's National Party (PNP), accused the Government of failing to take its share of responsibility for the country's economic crisis at the party's annual conference last Sunday. She referred to the deception and distraction of its 'blame game'.

She countered by listing the party's achievements between 1989 and 2007, saying that had it not been for those achievements, especially the strong financial regulations, the country's economic woes would have been worse now. She acknowledged that the party made mistakes in government and said that it was undertaking consultations to strengthen its programmes and policies in order to minimise mistakes next time.

The politics of crisis is a politics of the blame game. But it tells us about the PNP and Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), both of which represent quite different understandings of our society and how to govern it. The parties are not at all 'the same' as the refrain often suggests.

Scholars have argued that crises force people to come together and pool their resources and resolve against common danger. Small countries, the argument goes, have a better chance of national unity because they are most vulnerable. It should be relatively easy for small democracies like those of the Caribbean to agree to governments of national unity because external threats are more likely to seriously disrupt and destabilise their societies. The inherent solidarity relations in families, communities and across the nation would act as a natural support and defence system in times of crisis.

Competitive individualism

Simpson Miller greets supporters at the PNP's 71st annual conference, on September 20.

There is a different view. A newer view from some sociologists is that those traditional solidarity relations have declined. Family and community relations have been weakened by a process of individualisation. Competitive individualism means that during crisis, each person has to fend for himself and this is what society now expects. Crisis makes people more insecure and they are told to find their own way and manage their own burdens. This is justified on the basis of both competitiveness and individualism.

Portia Simpson Miller represents a party that has always favoured more collective solutions, being founded as a socialist party. But she has gone further to emphasise, not class solidarity which can be divisive along class lines, but social and community or communitarian solidarity based on family, community and nation. In this regard, she has made the PNP different. This is the model she wants for Jamaica in normal times and especially in times of crisis.

When she criticises the JLP government as being uncaring and even wicked, she is expressing anger and astonishment that a country could be asked to face a crisis without being brought together as one people.

Her party considered many possible conference themes to reflect this basic communitarian sentiment, themes like 'Bring Back the Love', and 'One People, One Nation, One Party'. Such themes emphasise sentiments that bind human solidarity, the greatest being love, and love makes for oneness. In the end, the party chose 'Renewing the Hope and Facing the Future' - something inspiring, because inspiration also binds people, and appropriate to our time of crisis. It binds people to action to go forward and face the future with hope.

the family model

Some might think the conference speech was about one party bashing the other, as you would expect in politics. But there is something more fundamental and philosophical about the speech that represents a great difference between the two parties.

The PNP leader was critical of an approach by the Government that was not in keeping with the way family members should treat each other. She felt that the public sector had been disrespected; there was confrontation when there should be consultation; there was secrecy instead of openness; and there was deception rather than truth. In the end, this led to mismanagement, causing people to be hurt.

people-centred policies

The PNP leader uses the 'family' as her model of reference both literally and figuratively. The family is a human unit with real people trying to help each other to improve their lives. But it is the building block of society in the Aristotelian and Confucian senses.

It is a model that should guide broader social and political relationships. She sees compatibility between family values and spiritual beliefs, both being based on caring and compassion. People, therefore, are to be the centre of policies. The PNP's alternative is for more consultation, a memorandum of understanding with the public sector, a more equitable sharing of burdens, more truth and a government people can trust.

Trust and solidarity were what the PNP president stressed. The plans were already there, only to be updated and refined. But they would not work if the people were not on board.

party of individualism

The JLP has always been a party of individualism, actually defensive individualism. By this I mean that its faith in markets and individual enterprise was advanced in defence against its mistaken perception that the PNP was a threat to both. It did not have a positive sense of how competition and individualism could work. This defensive individualism has come to be used unwisely to defend capita-lists from the failure of their own individualism.

Thus, the JLP finds itself in a culture in which the business class is incapable of what the Americans call 'rugged individualism'. That kind of individualism takes risks and businesses that cannot compete are allowed to fail (except really big business that are deemed 'too big to fail' and are bailed out). The problem with the JLP's model is that the Jamaican state has reached a point where it does not have the resources to bail out the capitalists whose brand of capitalism is to befriend politicians and depend on state largesse.

This makes the PNP's critique even sharper. The PNP president says that, in this time of crisis, the JLP Government is only looking out for its friends and financial contributors. According to the theory of competitive individualism, these business persons should be looking out for themselves by themselves. That theory doesn't work in Jamaica's culture of political-business familiarity and dependency.

imf concerns

Portia Simpson Miller's criticism of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) must also be seen in this light. The IMF loan, should the country receive it, will be used to pay for imports. It is not compassionate money. It won't pay for a school meal, a child's polio injection or an elderly person's medication. It won't help a farmer to get his potato or pumpkin to the market. It will pay foreigners who export to Jamaica. It will pay Jamaicans who use foreign exchange to import motor vehicles that can't feed poor people.

These kinds of economic practices make little sense where human solidarity is concerned. That is why the PNP has always had a problem with how the IMF sees balance of payments issues and how the JLP sees development. The payments don't balance out into development.

The PNP will want to attract business people to its party. But it must establish the rules for a progressive business class, one that is risk-taking, rugged, socially and environmentally responsible, rather than dependent on the state, parasitic on society and in bed with politicians. The PNP has got the solidarity part right. It must get the competitive part right too.

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