Notes sur le développement du mouvement syndical en Haïti

One of my current long-term interests is the historical and ideological foundations of radicalism, labor movements and socialism in Haiti. Although I still have a long way to go in terms of access to specific reading materials and primary sources, Notes sur le développement du mouvement syndical en Haïti, coauthored by Marxist historian Michel Hector (Jean-Jacques Doubout) and labor organizer Ulrick Joly, provides a succinct overview of the Haitian labor movement from its origins to the fall of l'Union Intersyndical d'Haiti (UIH) in 1963. While the authors have their biases as Marxist-Leninists and Joly's past in the UIH adds a personal dimension, this is an important overview of the Haitian labor movement and Duvalierism from a Haitian left perspective. 

Unfortunately, the study skips over most of the period prior to the US Occupation, and focuses for the most part on 1946-1963, covering the role of the 1946 revolution against Lescot, the brief period of democratic reforms and progressive labor laws, and then the repression of labor under Estime, Magloire, and Duvalier. While partial to the PSP, PEP, and PPLN parties, this study is more sympathetic to fignolisme and the MOP than Hector's major study of labor and socialism. Fignolisme combined charisma, social reformism, noirism, and demagogy with labor but was too limited to Port-au-Prince and its environs. The Federation of Haitian Workers (FTH in French) was more influenced by the PCH (Parti Communiste Haitien of the 1940s) and the PSP (Parti Socialiste Populaire). The other labor union federations were either phantom unions tied to the state or led by opportunists. The PSP sounds like the most coherent socialist political party with the most determined support for labor militancy and union democracy during this period (1946-1950). 

However, the main utility of this important work for me is detailed breakdown of affiliated unions with the UIH in the 1958-1963 period, when Duvalier finally cracked down on democratic labor unions. I once asked a Haitian academic about labor unions among the trieuses of the coffee sector in Haiti after reading that Jean-Jacques Dessalines Ambroise had helped organize workers in the industry, and this book gives the names of two specific unions of trieuses for Maison Madsen and Maison Vital plus their delegates to the UIH. Furthermore, the transformations in the Haitian economy during the 1950s and 1960s under US imperial capitalism helped explain why socialists and syndicalists were able to made impressive gains for labor as the number of companies employing vast numbers of workers increased, including rural areas with agro-industrial US companies and mining. Indeed, some of the strikes launched by regional peasant unions and rural proletarian unions, such as in the Nord-Est, involved thousands of people and were able to win concessions from the labor department of Duvalier into the early 1960s. 

Perhaps most useful, however, is the reflection of Joly and Hector on the weaknesses of the labor movement and internal flaws of UIH. Like economist Mats Lundahl, they point to the lack of a united front of the labor movement as the reason for its inability to defeat Duvalier, but they offer a more nuanced interpretation of the various historical actors and their role in the social totality. Like Lundahl, they acknowledge how the labor movement between 1946 and 1963 was too centered on Port-au-Prince and its environs, did not encompass the poor peasants, and was divided ideologically by fignolisme and socialist currents, but the UIH itself fell victim to economism and winning direct victories for affiliated unions instead of democratic political reforms. The pro-democratic forces were already divided, but by not actively encouraging support for it, UIH may have lost sight of the larger vision for democratic reforms to ensure protections for the growing number of unions affiliating with them. Moreover, the rise of regional federations or confederations of peasants and agricultural workers, partly tied to the political conflicts of 1956 and 1957, proved they were useful for labor organizing in the rural areas but UIH was probably not as proactive in connecting the urban working-class and countryside, despite the involvement of figures like Rodolphe Moise. 

In their defense, state repression placed limits on how much could be done, and despite their shortcomings, UIH supported literacy campaigns, a cultural center, a clinic, fought for the rights of Haitian migrant workers in the DR and Bahamas, and produced a party organ for political education. In short, the UIH, which was supported by PEP and PPLN, was perhaps lacking in a a concerted effort to promote democratic reforms to safeguard the gains of the labor movement while having to deal with an increasingly fascist regime which continued to pretend it was the natural supporter of workers. Moreover, while praising the unification of the PEP and PPLN for the formation of the PUCH by the end of the 1960s, perhaps Hector and Joly's defense of vanguardism may be a blindspot. Indeed, if fignolisme was characterized by the MOP's refusal to trust the Haitian masses with the decision making processes itself, and the UIH did indeed attempt to ensure affiliated unions and their rank and file were involved with democratic decisions of the organization, perhaps the vanguardism of the PSP and PUCH were closer to fignolisme and what Nicholls referred to as the technocratic character of Haitian socialists?

And what does one make of the paternalist mentality and belief in charismatic figures which supposedly characterizes pre-capitalist societies and helps explain, perhaps, the fatalism of the Haitian poor and working-class? Presumably, this fatalistic belief of the Haitian lower classes that a state or individual will save them is part of the same trope among other Haitian leftists that the Haitian people need to develop class consciousness as a class for itself, in itself, and take ownership of its own destiny (masters of the dew, perhaps?). Claude Souffrant once made a similar argument about the religious fatalism of the Haitian peasant. However, is it a just a strawman? Did the Haitian Left have its own CLR James or Joseph Edwards, Caribbean leftists who championed the self-activity of the workers and opposed state bureaucracy and vanguards? UIH came somewhat close to this by trying to stay accountable and include rank and file workers in the decision-making apparatus, but Joly and Hector never denounce vanguards.