One of the important theorists and activists in the annals of the Haitian Left, Alix Lamaute was one of the victims of the massacre of both PUCH members and innocent bystanders ordered by dictator François Duvalier. Besides Lamaute, several prominent Haitian Communists were also killed, including Brisson, The attack on the village of Cazale was particularly brutal, as young Communists and locals were mercilessly slaughtered by Duvalierist forces eager to end Communist armed uprisings. By 1969, Duvalier was already president for life with apparent total rule. Nonetheless, by the late 1960s, the two main Haitian Marxist parties unified into the Parti unifié des communistes haïtiens, which would embrace revolutionary violence to overthrow Duvalier. Rebels arriving from Cuban bases or across the Dominican border made clear the degree to which left-wing rebels poised a threat to the regime, even if their influence in numbers was rather small.
Nevertheless, some of the ideas expressed by intellectuals within the PUCH are worth remembering for what it reveals of the nature of Haitian Marxism and political thought. Lamaute, whose La bourgeoisie nationale: une entité controversée encapsulates some of the main streams of Marxist thought in Haiti during the 1960s, deserves attention today for the still disturbing question of the Haitian prospects of a national bourgeoisie that could work with proletariat forces and a Marxist vanguard to transform Haiti. Lamaute, whose thought owes much to Alexis, Ambroise, Rameau, Pierre-Charles and other Haitian historians, economists, and intellectuals on the Left, presents an overview on primitive accumulation in Haiti, the idea of the 19th century Liberal party as progressive and the Nationals as feudal, and the weakness of the Haitian bourgeoisie.
Lukacs and Christian Beaulieu also make an appearance on the caste question, as the so-called feudal or semi-feudal nature of the Haitian economy prevents the emergence of a full class-based society in which the embryonic national bourgoisie can truly emerge. Caste-like features actually, according to Lamaute, hinder the development of class consciousness among the bourgeoisie. Thus, the caste-like nature of Haitian social structure of that era is linked to the semi-feudal economy of rural Haiti and the dependence of the Haitian bourgeoisie on US and foreign capital and machinery. Borrowing from Gramsci, Lamaute also describes the the mimetism of the Haitian dominant classes and the forms of alienation one might suspect earlier generations of Haitian intellectuals to refer to as cultural bovarysme. But like Beaulieu, Lamaute probably saw the supposed caste system as being weakened by increasing industrialization and urbanization in Haiti over the course of the 20th century, particularly after 1915.
The remainder of the text focuses on the prospects of a joint anti-imperialist front connecting the proletariat and local bourgeoisie. Arguing against Fanon, who saw the bourgeoisie as a still-born class in the struggles of Third World liberation, Lamaute instead sees the development of a local bourgeoisie, primarily oriented towards the internal market and directing industries using local industry and labor and products as aligning itself with the proletariat and popular masses in the name of nationalism. For Lamaute, the national bourgeoisie only needs to see how nationalism could strengthen their class position. For, a truly national bourgeoisie (instead of the existing comprador Haitian one) would and could fight for a number of economic and social reforms that would benefit the proletariat and masses (free press, state policies, etc.) as well as accentuate the coming class conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This, to the Marxist teleological paradigm of Lamaute, would eventually usher in a socialist state with the proletariat and a vanguard of professional revolutionaries constantly pressuring the bourgeoisie to avoid too much collusion with imperialist powers.
In order to truly make sense of Lamaute's argument, however, one must see it as part of a trajectory of Haitian Marxist thought dating back to the 1940s and the Parti Socialiste Populaire. Like his 1940s forebears, Lamaute saw the peasantry, who comprised the majority of the Haitian population, as incapable of leading the path to socialism. Instead, Haiti must oppose imperialism and develop its bourgeoisie and proletariat, thereby strengthening class conflict and a shift in the mode of production to capitalism. Then, and only then, would a working-class revolution ultimately succeed. To Lamaute, who cited the example of the peasantry of Bolivia as a cautionary tale, the Haitian peasant will not come to a strict class consciousness and must be led by the proletariat in any alliance. Otherwise, the peasant will be used against the proletariat by the petit or moyenne bourgeoisie, as in Bolivia. In other words, the proletariat will make the revolution or there will be no revolution. But in order to reach that point, a truly national bourgeoisie must emerge that is not a comprador one, and which would heighten the class conflicts while further eroding the semi-feudal characteristics of the Haitian economy.
One wonders if Lamaute, like Alexis, Roumain and other Haitian Marxists, may have adopted a somewhat anti-paysan perspective by viewing the religion of Vodou as encouraging fatalism. The complex question of the Haitian peasant in Haitian socialism, however, is beyond the immediate concerns of Lamaute's La bourgeoisie nationale. And after another half century, it is clear that the kind of national bourgeoisie called for by Lamaute did not emerge. If anything, an anti-national bourgeoisie strengthened itself under the rule of Baby Doc, and the question of the peasantry and democratic reforms would have to change. Nevertheless, Lamaute's treatise provides a window onto the thoughts and theoretical formulations that guided the young militants of the PEP, PPLN, and later PUCH in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.
