Between Self-Determination and Dependency: Jamaica's Foreign Relations, 1972-1989

Several developments in Jamaica's external environment exerted great influence on the country's economy and polity. The official termination of the fixed exchange rate for the US dollar, the first oil crisis in 1973, the worldwide recession between 1973 and 1975, the second oil crisis in 1979 and the increasing indebtedness of many structurally dependent countries were only a few of these global developments.

For international capital and the bourgeoisie, the crisis in the world economy in the early 1970s had manifold consequences. However, for analytical purposes one will have to distinguish between finance capital and productive capital. Finance capital (and the finance bourgeoisie) certainly emerged strengthened from the economic turbulence of the 1970s. The boost which the abundant availability of petro-dollars gave to the banking business in the so-called offshore facilities allowed international finance capital ever increasing levels of transnational mobility. In other words, finance capital became more and more independent of national boundaries and legislation, allowing it to shift rapidly from places it considered unfavourable for business to more profitable locations ( Schubert 1985, 29-34; Gill and Law 1989, 186-88). This in turn tremendously increased competition between different social formations for this finance capital.

For national productive capital (i.e. manufacturing and service firms/enterprises) the world recession, its stagflationary tendencies and the (temporarily)

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