The idea of “the Com­mons,” which was ar­tic­u­lat­ed in 19th-cen­tu­ry Britain, came to be un­der­stood as the shared re­sources of a com­mu­ni­ty that ex­ist­ed out­side of State con­trol or mar­ket forces, or com­ple­men­tary to these, and which were ra­tio­nal­ly gov­erned, for col­lec­tive, so­ci­etal ben­e­fit.

For a long time in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain was like that- a prime piece of re­al es­tate, pro­tect­ed from com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion, and ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic use and en­joy­ment- an open space, for sports, recre­ation, lim­ing and just pass­ing the time. A lot of that is now lost.

The con­cept of self-in­ter­est gained cur­ren­cy with the pub­li­ca­tion of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Na­tions in 1776; but Adam Smith’s no­tion of “self-in­ter­est” was not pure self­ish­ness. A care­ful read­ing of Wealth of Na­tions will re­veal his ref­er­ences to pri­vate in­ter­est, pub­lic in­ter­est and most im­por­tant­ly, the moral judge­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty as a re­strain­ing force to ra­bid self-in­ter­est.

Many de­scribe Adam Smith as a moral philoso­pher, and that moral as­pect is im­por­tant for un­der­stand­ing his eco­nom­ic and busi­ness per­spec­tives. Smith al­so pub­lished The­o­ry of Hu­man Sym­pa­thy af­ter Wealth of Na­tions, which elab­o­rat­ed on the ex­tent to which shared hu­man con­cern, putting your­self in the shoes of oth­ers, could serve as a re­straint on hu­man greed and the de­sire for ex­ploita­tion of oth­ers. One might call this one man’s protes­tant Chris­t­ian be­lief, in a built-in hu­man ca­pac­i­ty to sup­port jus­tice, rea­son­able­ness and fair play.

The ex­e­cu­tion of cap­i­tal­ist prac­tice and its ex­cess­es did not al­ways align well to Smith’s moral in­tent, and per­haps that is why Karl Marx and Marx­ism were so in­flu­en­tial and, so­cial­ist think­ing so per­sua­sive, in the late 19th and some of the 20th cen­turies.

Most ex-colo­nial coun­tries, from In­dia to Ghana, to the Caribbean - saw virtue in a strong State with so­cial wel­fare strate­gies as a re­place­ment for colo­nial dom­i­na­tion and lais­sez-faire pol­i­cy fo­cused on ben­e­fits for the metro­pole. Where Marx was not the dom­i­nant in­flu­ence on gov­ern­ments, the Fabi­an so­cial­ists held the moral ground of in­flu­ence. Fabi­an so­cial­ism is es­sen­tial­ly de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­cial­ism, which works to­wards trans­for­ma­tion to so­cial­ism of a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic cap­i­tal­ist state—democ­ra­cy with greater equal­i­ty.

The Man­leys in Ja­maica, fa­ther and son, were heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by such think­ing, as was Sir Grant­ly Adams of Bar­ba­dos (al­though he was more dri­ven to lib­er­al ideas and had con­ser­v­a­tive in­stincts), who served as the on­ly Prime Min­is­ter of the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion for four years un­til it col­lapsed; as was Dr Er­ic Williams in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Dr Williams did not ar­tic­u­late

“De­mo­c­ra­t­ic So­cial­ism” as Dr Rudranath Capildeo did from 1961, but the think­ing was there in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. Free health, ed­u­ca­tion; sub­sidised util­i­ty rates, ex­pand­ed State em­ploy­ment.

It may well have been this think­ing, of big State, and broad-based so­cial wel­fare poli­cies, that may have stymied the pro­lif­er­a­tion of en­tre­pre­neur­ship and small busi­ness de­vel­op­ment in T&T and, per­haps, through­out the re­gion; and sti­fled busi­ness growth from an agri­cul­tur­al base for self-suf­fi­cien­cy, tourism sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ex­port growth. So, the end re­sult of the big State with wide­spread so­cial wel­fare has been sup­pres­sion of cre­ativ­i­ty, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, busi­ness cre­ation, growth and in­no­va­tion and self-sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

An­oth­er im­por­tant con­cept is “pub­lic in­ter­est,” ba­si­cal­ly mean­ing ser­vic­ing the wel­fare and well-be­ing of the peo­ple. So good po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion is in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Look­ing out for the com­mon good is in the pub­lic in­ter­est; so, for in­stance, pro­tect­ing the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens is in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Con­se­quent­ly, gov­ern­ment giv­ing a vast boost in in­come and ben­e­fits to the leg­is­la­ture, the Ex­ec­u­tive and Ju­di­cial branch­es of the State, while of­fer­ing min­i­mal in­creas­es in wages and salaries to oth­er work­ers in the sys­tem, in a con­text of high prices and wages un­able to keep up with costs through loss of pur­chas­ing pow­er, plus wide­spread job­less­ness, could not be con­sid­ered in the pub­lic in­ter­est. Es­pe­cial­ly in a con­text in which re­duced State rev­enues are go­ing to make it very chal­leng­ing to pro­vide pub­lic goods with the same ease in the im­me­di­ate fu­ture.

This seems more like the use of pub­lic of­fice for pri­vate ben­e­fit than for the pub­lic in­ter­est.