ABSTRACT
In the strict application of Marxist political theory and political economy, small peripheral states, arising out of the underdevelopment of their productive forces, suffer from a corresponding underdevelopment of their anti-systemic movements. Between 1952 and 1957, Saint Lucia experienced two major upheavals in the rural agricultural sector that were to have profound effects on political developments. The first was the ‘Brown Strike’ of 1952, named after W. G. Brown, a newly elected independent member of the Saint Lucia legislative council who led a strike of sugar workers in the Roseau Valley for pay increases. Just as the revolts of 1952–1957 had erupted in the context of the decay of the politico-economic structural framework of the sugar economy, then, similarly, were the peasant uprisings of the 1990s the result of shifts in the global trade arrangements for banana exportation.
