22/04/2026
A Lifetime of Scholarly Excellence: The Humanist and Political Legacy of Clive Y. Thomas
Tribute by Nigel Westmaas – March 6, 2026
It is a great honour to speak today on this panel dedicated to the enormous breadth and life of Dr. Clive Y. Thomas and I want to thank the organizers for inviting me to contribute to this tribute.
The panel organizers suggested I address themes such as his contributions to political economy, his role in structural dependency theory, his policy influence and institutional impact, and the continuing relevance of his scholarship today.
I should begin with a confession which is obviously an open secret. I am not an economist. To attempt a detailed assessment of Dr. Thomas’s technical contributions to political economy or dependency theory would take me beyond my competence.
Instead, I want to approach the subject from a slightly different angle. My focus today is on the economist as humanist, as public intellectual, and as political activist. In that sense, the third theme suggested by the organizers is especially relevant to what I hope to address, namely, the continuing relevance of Thomas’s scholarship today.
In other words, I want to reflect not only on the importance of Clive Thomas’s intellectual and economic output over time, but on the concurrent deeper moral and political orientation that has guided his work for more than five – I daresay 6 decades.
What stands out in his career is not simply intellectual brilliance, but the way that brilliance has consistently been placed in the service of social justice, democracy, and the working people of Guyana and the Caribbean.
Dr. Thomas, who retired from the University of Guyana in 2014 has been simultaneously an economist, a political activist, a trade union advocate, and a public intellectual deeply engaged with the realities of Caribbean society.
His work has examined some of the central structural questions of Caribbean development. These include the plantation complex, dependency and transformation, the nature of the authoritarian state, and the possibility of alternative development paths for post-colonial societies.
His research has also addressed very practical economic issues. For example, he conducted groundbreaking studies of the regional sugar industry and proposed strategies for diversification, including the development of ethanol production from sugar cane.
More recently, his work has examined the complex and troubling relationship between globalization, illicit financial flows, narco-economies, and the criminalization of state structures. In the context of Guyana, he has written extensively about money laundering, the phantom economy, and the challenges facing the country’s financial institutions and more importantly in present, the petrostate economy
The range of these topics alone demonstrates the intellectual ambit of his work. Yet what truly distinguishes Thomas is not simply the range of issues he has addressed, but the consistent ethical and political commitments that underpin his analysis.
One of the defining features of Clive Thomas’s intellectual life has been his independence of mind. That independence emerged at the same time as another independent-minded regional coalition of scholars and activists in the 1960s known as the New World Group, with which Thomas was closely associated. The New World Group was a pan-Caribbean network of scholars and thinkers who sought to rethink the economic foundations of Caribbean societies.
This group included major intellectual figures such as Lloyd Best, George Beckford, Havelock Brewster, and others who were trying to understand the structural constraints facing Caribbean development.
Lloyd Best once remarked on Thomas’s relationship with the group in a revealing way. While Thomas participated actively in its discussions, he also maintained his own intellectual identity.
As Best put it, Thomas made it clear from the beginning that although he was engaged with the New World discussions, he approached the issues from a socialist perspective that differed from some of the group’s ideological orientations.
That independence reflects a broader pattern in his work: engagement without intellectual conformity.
He was in touch with both major leaders of Guyana Jagan and Burnham pre and post independence. For example he was in regular touch with the pre independence Jagan govtt.
In my own archival perusals of old Guyana newspapers I noticed a number of articles Thomas published in the press especially in the Guiana graphic both before and after independence on issues as wide raging as a call for the abolition of the death penalty and as expected, analysis of the 1965 budget among others one of which I will refer to later.
Clive Thomas’s emergence as a regional and international intellectual was cemented by several important publications.
In her opening remarks for this event Dr. Dianna De Silva-Glasglow already recounted some of the vast repertoire of publications Thomas has produced for the world but there is no harm in restating some of these.
One early milestone was the collective volume The Dynamics of West Indian Economic Integration, published in 1967. The book brought together contributions from Havelock Brewster, Thomas, Alister McIntyre, George Beckford, and E. Armstrong. It remains one of the landmark studies of Caribbean economic integration.
But if that work helped introduce Thomas to a wider audience, it was by no means the defining statement of his career.
That distinction is often given to his 1974 book Dependence and Transformation: The Economics of the Transition to Socialism. The book offered a rigorous analysis of dependency structures and explored the possibilities for transformative development in post-colonial societies.
Other major works followed, including Plantation, Peasants and the State (1984), The Rise of the Authoritarian State (1984), and The Poor and the Powerless (1988).
Across these works we see a consistent theme: the effort to understand the relationship between economic structures, political power, and the lived realities of ordinary people.
One of Thomas’s greatest strengths has been his refusal to isolate academic work from real social struggles.
He has been deeply engaged with trade unions and workers’ organizations throughout his career. Over the years he has advised major Guyanese unions such as the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union, the Clerical and Commercial Workers Union, and the Guyana Mine Workers Union and NAACIE
He also served as Chairman of the University of Guyana Workers Union and remained actively involved in defending the rights of staff and academics within that institution.
Beyond formal roles, he has mentored generations of students, activists, academics, and policymakers. Many Caribbean governments and developing countries have also sought his expertise on matters of economic policy and institutional reform.
This combination of scholarship and social engagement is central to understanding Thomas’s influence.
Like many radical Caribbean thinkers of his generation, Thomas often found himself in conflict with state authorities.
His association with labour movements, his outspoken criticism of political elites, and his commitment to social justice frequently brought him into confrontation with governments in the region.
In the aftermath of the Rodney riots in Jamaica in 1968, both Clive Thomas and Joey Jagan were banned from entering the country, following the earlier ban imposed on his friend and academic colleague Walter Rodney.
Shortly afterward, the Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams refused to allow Thomas to take up employment in Trinidad and Tobago, a decision that reflected the anxieties many newly independent Caribbean states felt toward radical intellectuals.
Yet Thomas’s intellectual reputation was such that even governments that disagreed with him sometimes sought his advice.
In the early 1970s, for example, when Jamaica’s Prime Minister Michael Manley faced mounting economic difficulties and negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, Manley requested Thomas’s assistance. Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham facilitated the visit, and Thomas traveled to Jamaica to provide advice during that difficult period.
The story, which Thomas later recounted being flown to Jamaica on a Guyana Defence Force propeller plane that took nearly a full day to reach its destination. ORIGNAL QUOTE from Thomas
“Manley was faced with a dilemma about what to do when the economic crisis began unfolding regarding his Central Bank and he asked Burnham, of all people, if he could facilitate getting me to Jamaica so he could have discussions and benefit from my advice…and Burnham actually called me and put me on a plane, a GDF plane, to take me to Jamaica. It was one of those propeller planes that took maybe a day to get there…” (Interview, 2012)
Political Activism and the WPA
Thomas was not only a critic of power from the outside. He was also deeply involved in political organization.
During the late 1960s he helped form political groups such as Ratoon and the Movement Against Oppression. He actually coined the name ratoon. These organizations later became part of the coalition that formed the Working People’s Alliance.
He worked closely with the historian and activist Walter Rodney and played a role in encouraging Rodney to return to Guyana in the early 1970s. Thomas even helped secure Rodney’s appointment as a visiting professor at the University of Guyana. He and Rodney also alternated in teaching ideological classes in linden at a catholic church
Thomas also helped author several key WPA documents, including the influential pamphlet Bread and Justice published in 1976.
That text articulated a vision that linked economic rights, social justice, and democratic freedom. It argued that genuine socialism must expand freedom rather than restrict it.
As Thomas himself put it, bread cannot be traded for freedom and social justice.
Thomas’s activism did not come without personal risk.
In 1971 there was an attempted kidnapping directed at him. A group of men came to his home claiming that the respected activist Eusi Kwayana wished to meet him in Plaisance. The claim turned out to be false, and the incident was later exposed when Thomas held a press conference detailing the attempted plot.
The episode reflected the tense political climate of Guyana during that period and the perceived threat that radical intellectuals posed to the political establishment.
Despite these pressures, Thomas remained active in public life and continued to speak out on issues of democracy and justice.
Another notable feature of Thomas’s career is the consistency of his principles across different political eras.
During the Burnham and Hoyte years he was a vocal critic of authoritarian rule. Later, after the restoration of electoral democracy in 1992, he became the wpa mp also became critical of the new government when he believed it had departed from the moral and political commitments of the anti-dictatorial struggle.
Some critics interpreted his later positions as partisan or controversial. But if we look closely, what we see instead is a continuation of the same democratic principles that had guided his work for decades.
Thomas remained committed to transparency, constitutional reform, labour rights, and the fight against corruption.
Continuing Engagement
Even after retiring from the University of Guyana, Thomas has remained actively engaged, not surprisingly in public debate.
Through his weekly columns in the Stabroek News and other public interventions, he continues to analyze economic developments, including the implications of Guyana’s emerging petroleum industry.
He has also written extensively about corruption, illicit financial flows, and the broader challenges posed by globalization.
One of his more widely discussed proposals in recent years has been his advocacy of cash transfers as a means of ensuring that national wealth, including oil revenues, benefits the wider population.
He made his now famous proposal, now called the Buxton Proposal or cash transfer proposal fittingly at the emancipation day celebration in 2018 in the village of Buxton. At the time and over time, the proposal was met with criticism and with skepticism by all sides of the political equation including the two big political parties. “there is no evidential basis for cash payouts” , and ‘impractical’ were some of the responses. Dr Thomas and his party continued to defend the proposal placed the issue in global and local context. As Thomas wrote and quote: “Readers are aware, he wrote: that “payout and handouts, are often used to disparage state transfers to the poor, while incentives and fiscal relief are reserved for transfers to businesses.”
CY Thomas and the party from which the proposal was launched, the WPA, carried on its mission to popularize the idea. On Dr David Hind’ (now APNU/WPA MP)pol 101 online program, Thomas elaborated about the necessity and feasibility of the proposal while addressing the sceptics. Eventually the proposal began to catch on and now it has become, a mainstream subject and even those in government who are still sceptical, on the basis of mass support for the idea, had to use the idea while truncating and coopting it where necessary given the immensity of the value of the proposal made initially by Dr Thomas.
Once again, we see the same guiding concern: how economic policy can serve the interests of ordinary people.
Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of Thomas’s life is his decision to remain rooted in Guyana.
As a world-class economist he had opportunities to pursue academic careers at major universities abroad. Many scholars in similar positions would have taken that path.
Thomas chose otherwise.
He remained in Guyana, working at the University of Guyana and dedicating his intellectual energy to the problems of his own society.
This choice reflects not only personal loyalty but a profound belief that scholarship should remain connected to the lived realities of the communities it seeks to understand.
When we reflect on the life and work of Clive Y. Thomas, what emerges is a rare combination of intellectual rigor, moral commitment, and political courage.
He is an economist of international standing. But he is also something more.
He is a public intellectual who has consistently placed his knowledge in the service of democracy, labour, and the struggle for social justice.
In a 1965 address titled in the Guiana Graphic, “THOMAS SHOWS A WAY TO RECONSTRUCT BG ECONOMY,” after outlining the economic failures that preceded independence, he called for the decolonization of the BG economy. He stated, inter alia, and I quote:
“Decolonization is not here used in a constitutional sense – the formal transfer of power from London to Central Government in Georgetown – but in the sense of a greater popular participation in the economic processes.”
This instinctive, strategic, and deeply humanistic support for the wider public and for the poor connects the C.Y. Thomas of 1964 with the Buxton Proposal C.Y. Thomas.
While the world economy and the Guyanese economy have certainly changed during that intervening period, what links the two moments is his consistent focus on the poor and the powerless.
Today, given what is going on in the region and the world, and the new aggressive imperial mode we are facing, we still desperately need decolonization of the national and the individual mind and the practice of national integrity for both our borders and for the dignity of a nation state in regional and world affairs and independence from any power including the one that treats the hemisphere as its personal backyard
In essence, dr Clive Thomas’s personal integrity, breadth of economic and social vision is what distinguishes the man we have come to honor today from many other economists in the region.
He is a scholar who refused to separate theory from practice and morality.
For all these reasons, Clive Thomas stands as one of the most important Caribbean thinkers of his own generation and ours.
His body of work and his scholar activism continues to challenge us to think critically about development, democracy, and the responsibilities of intellectual life. We salute you cy, as we call him - on your 90 born years
Thank you.
