Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Watch­ing Oba­ma and Rom­ney de­bate the oth­er night was an il­lus­tra­tion of what mod­ern po­lit­i­cal con­test has be­come. Two al­pha males, full plumage de­ployed, stalk­ing each oth­er as if about to pounce, who in the end man­aged to avoid say­ing any­thing of great sub­stance.

With wall-to-wall ca­ble and in­ter­net cov­er­age, the made for TV de­bate was a far big­ger draw than our own lo­cal po­lit­i­cal du­els. How­ev­er, the essence of the pol­i­tics was the same as we have here be­tween our Prime Min­is­ter and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, or their prox­ies-a school­yard squab­ble that trans­lates in­to lit­tle re­al po­lit­i­cal choice or dif­fer­ences at the bal­lot box.

To mask the small sub­stan­tive dif­fer­ence be­tween politi­cians in two-par­ty sys­tems, a de­scrip­tion is ped­dled that be­tween both these and oth­er po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents there are vast­ly dif­fer­ent choic­es on of­fer. And the po­lit­i­cal op­tions pre­sent­ed to us are as stark as choos­ing be­tween a friend or en­e­my.

This bi­na­ry of "ei­ther you're with us or against us" isn't new. George Bush I and II were fans, as is our present Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. And through­out so­ci­ety you can see this cul­tur­al log­ic all around. Poor vs rich. Black vs white. Man vs woman. Young vs old.

Such com­bat­ive think­ing is quite nor­mal and far from un­usu­al. A "bat­tle" is how many per­ceive and un­der­stand pol­i­tics. A bat­tle most­ly waged in ab­solutes. You are ei­ther right or wrong. But that is just the spec­ta­cle. And there's the trick. We ex­pe­ri­ence pol­i­tics as though it is a mat­ter of stark choic­es be­tween dif­fer­ent al­ter­na­tives. It could be; but gen­er­al­ly it isn't-so­ci­ety just rolls on.

In the UK and US peo­ple vote for two wings of the same class par­ty, while in Trinidad and To­ba­go many point out our par­ty pol­i­tics and be­hav­iour are de­ter­mined by race and eth­nic­i­ty. Sup­pos­ed­ly, we all ig­nore the is­sues un­der de­bate and on­ly vote ac­cord­ing to our per­son­al bonds to one of the two main par­ties, each of which his­tor­i­cal­ly rep­re­sents ei­ther Afro-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans or In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans.

The choice is still a bi­na­ry-and in many ways we are still vot­ing for two wings of the same class par­ty. A PNM gov­ern­ment sup­ports cer­tain peo­ple while a UNC gov­ern­ment sup­ports oth­er peo­ple. Yet in ei­ther gov­ern­ment it is al­ways a small mi­nor­i­ty rather than the mass­es that prof­it. A sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion can be said to ex­ist in mod­ern pol­i­tics in the UK and US too.

In CLR James' clas­sic The Black Ja­cobins we are re­mind­ed that while pol­i­tics is much more com­pli­cat­ed than bi­na­ries, it will still be re­duced to them. In James' ac­count of events in Saint Domingue there were many more fac­tions than black and white. And it is the lack of po­lit­i­cal sol­i­dar­i­ty be­tween the mul­ti­ple fac­tions that al­lows a pow­er­ful mi­nor­i­ty to have its way.

It is the same in mod­ern pol­i­tics. There are many more fac­tions than a two-par­ty sys­tem ac­com­mo­dates, many more in­ter­ests than two poles with­in one large po­lit­i­cal class could ever ac­com­mo­date. And as James showed off L'Ou­ver­ture, for so­cial change to have a chance, a com­mon cause or bond must be found to unite the many across their dif­fer­ences.

L'Ou­ver­ture tried to unite peo­ple across race and class with the idea of a uni­ver­sal hu­man­ism and lib­er­ty far su­pe­ri­or and more in­clu­sive than that of the Amer­i­can or French con­sti­tu­tions. We all know how that turned out for him. That should not take away that he un­der­stood the ques­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty across races and eth­nic­i­ties is im­per­a­tive if the ma­jor­i­ty is go­ing to live well to­geth­er and de­vel­op trans­for­ma­tive class pol­i­tics.

Lloyd Best once pro­posed the term "au­to­mat­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty." He asked, what is the re­sponse of peo­ple who have been trans­plant­ed from many dif­fer­ent places and forced to wear the strait­jack­et of slav­ery, in­den­ture and colo­nial­ism? His an­swer was that on ar­rival to Trinidad and To­ba­go those who had been brought had to make a new home. And for Best we did just that. He made the point that those in the strait­jack­et formed many dif­fer­ent bases of au­to­mat­ic sol­i­dar­i­ty up­on which to found a sense of be­long­ing: eth­nic­i­ty, class, race, re­li­gion, tribe, clan, home­land and more. They were dif­fer­ent bases that would lat­er or­gan­ise and con­nect in­to a na­tion.

Watch­ing Oba­ma and Rom­ney de­bate was a straight­for­ward demon­stra­tion of mod­ern pol­i­tics to­day. Pro­duc­ing "en­e­mies" and di­vi­sions is lot more im­por­tant to the sta­tus quo than fight­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­mon cause across our dif­fer­ences.

• Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an is an an­thro­pol­o­gist at UWI, St Au­gus­tine