Review of Greed as Seen as a "god" in Telling of the Irritated Genie

Jacob H. Carruthers accomplishes a great deal of instruction and explanation of history in his short essay, book, The Irritated Genie: An Essay on the Haitian Revolution. This is the sort of book that every historian and everyone interested in understanding the other side of a historic epoch would thrill at reading and exploring in discussions with other readers, and those informed about this 1650’s through 1820 time period in colonialist world history.

Carruthers is masterful at winding several different themes into the telling of this history. The book truly is PACKED with material to pace through and consider. The dramatic interplay between the Irritated Genie and the Phantom of Liberty became the headliner, as the people of that time period on the island weighed their own personal and family visions versus the leadership. Bookman, Toussiant, Dessalines and others leaders roles are portrayed in the book, including the many heroes, as Carruthers described on page 77: “Indeed, this final phase of the war was fought by all the people of Haiti and while the leaders discussed here are male and well known, there were hundreds, even thousands of leaders and heroes, many of them women.”

Page 80: “What Dessalines emphasized is that the people cannot depend even on their leaders to give and maintain their liberty, they themselves must be committed to it. . . . ‘It is upon your constancy and courage I depended on when I first entered the career of liberty to fight despotism’.” People do have liberty to choose between their own visions and the visions of their leaders. Through history, readers get to decide if the people did well in their application of liberty.

Most troubling to me in my own study of current events and politics is the hatred people have and use as a basis for action towards other groups, and actually limiting the potential of their own groups. Carruthers helps us to see the obviously expressed and acted out hatred of French, British, Spanish, American and other whites upon the inhabitants of the island. Those whites based everything on slavery and upon their understanding of white supremacy. They were wrong. The Black, Mulatto and Colored leaders of Haiti showed the greatest progress in military triumphs when they relied upon a singled-minded, reciprocal hatred that Carruthers found in the speeches of some of those leaders and repeated throughout the book: Race Vindication.

Today, human hatred for other groups is expressed in “dog whistles” and subtly, so Race Vindication can not always be justified. We, today, must find other ways to teach and “love the hatred out” of those who base their lives on any degree of hatred and group discrimination. The inhabitants of Haiti had no other recourse. In the examples Carruthers offered, when a leader did draw back from Race Vindication, the French most prominently and other whites resumed victimizing the Blacks, Mulattos and Colored people. This victimization often heightened the recalled vengeance and hatred tantamount to maintaining white supremacy. Those crimes against the island inhabitants were answered with retribution as the Race Vindication waved again as the flag for that island full of heroes to pursue, as they rose again and again to embody the Irritated Genie.

Yet the focus of my review of this book is on the theme Carruthers first details on page 23 based on a speech given by Bookman Dutty:

“Bookman is asserting that white culture and Black culture were diametrically opposed to each other. That is, the motive force of white culture as embodied in his concept of god inspires one of crime, i.e., brutal exploitation of human beings, slavery, plunder, destruction of nature, just for power and wealth and [some] pathological impulse to master everything. Saint Domingue [French name given to the island] was a living example of the correctness of Bookman’s assessment. When Bookman implored the Black group assembled at the celebration of Ogun ‘throw away the symbol of the god of the whites’, he was doing more than spewing forth militant rhetoric, he was setting forth the first principle of Black revolutionary commitment, which had inspired the historic rebellion on the island. The white god inspires one to get as high on the pyramid of power and wealth as possible, by any means necessary, because Eurocentric success is not just liberty in the ordinary African sense but necessitates dominion as an essential ingredient of the good life. . . . As long as the motive force of Black revolt was imitation of the ‘success’ syndrome, revolution was impossible. Thus, ‘throw away the image of the god of the whites who has so often brought us to tears’ was a demand and a warning to those Blacks who had been given privileged positions relative to the masses of Blacks. Those who are motivated by those phantoms of individual freedom were admonished to abandon fantasy and join the true struggle for freedom.”

Bookman and Carruthers are not talking here about a religious god, not talking about the Christian God. They seem to direct their ire at the ethos of Europeans to gain status and wealth through “crime, i.e., brutal exploitation of human beings, slavery, plunder, destruction of nature, just for power and wealth and [some] pathological impulse to master everything.” While hatred against others has moved for us to subtle expressions, our modern world crimes committed to gain status and personal wealth, and “to get as high on the pyramid of power and wealth as possible, by any means necessary” still happen in the open, and what Carruthers offers in the story of Haiti in that respect can be mapped onto our current day culture. There is just as vicious an ethos in the unrestrained quest for wealth in our market economy.

My own study is asking if, today, we can ask those on the quest to claw their ways up the pyramid to #RegulateGreed and join a true struggle for community, civil society and democracy by abandoning the fantasy that is part of conspicuous consumption and seeking status through gross amounts of wealth and income?

Reading from page 31: The aims of some island inhabitants “represented a different philosophy fed by an attitude of the supremacy of the European way of life, including contempt for the Black masses and a desire on the part of these new leaders to retire and live the good life as the whites did.” Yes, some leaders in Haiti were supportive of enslaving the masses of other island inhabitants, with some excuses that rang of the patriarchal ugliness of many white supremacists. The stories are repeated in Carruthers’ book: for some Haitian leaders, if they saw an opening, saw an indication from white representatives, that one’s own aspirations for the “good life” could be attained by walking away from the revolutionary efforts, when they gave in to their individual greed would find themselves dupped into being subjugated by the whites once again. They were not serving themselves by these lapses in judgement and lapses in loyalty, while the fuller revolutionary movements were set back by their acceptance of deceptions.

Page 62 offers a specific example: Toussaint’s “…rejection of certain fundamental dimensions of reality was due to his philosophy – a philosophy that was dictated by a desire to share in the world created by the oppressors.” Once Toussaint reached a plateau in his military objectives, he thought that the French Generals understood that Blacks were fully entitled to the “good life.” He then expected the French to accept him and his programs for equality and liberty. Toussaint accepted their invitation to sail to France. There, he did not obtain an opportunity to represent his people. He was not offered respect in any way. Instead, he was imprisoned and left to starve to death.

Following Toussaint’s extradition to France, Dessalines commanded the armies of Haiti to continue striving towards independence as the Irritated Genie pursuing Race Vindication. Dessalines’ strategy included the total destruction of the coastal cities, leaving the French with little of value to protect and little fortification for their protection. Page 81: “This of course meant sacrifice [for the upper classes of the inhabitants, those who envisioned adopting the European way of life]. The cities were places of luxury and seats of the good life for many – so in burning them to the ground many of the more prosperous Blacks had to sacrifice their homes, their lifestyles. However total war meant total sacrifice. As Dessalines said of his own sacrifice: ‘I have sacrificed everything to fly to your defense – parents, children, fortune, and am now only rich in your liberty.’ (Rainsford. P. 446).”

Once Dessalines succeeded through his philosophy, leadership and strategy to secure independence for Haiti, this level of greed rose up again and seems to have contributed to the downfall of the nation he devised, and this level of greed contributed to his assassination.

Dessalines was growing the public domain of land ownership, under his new government, to the frustration of the previously privileged families. Picking up at the bottom of page 100 and continuing on page 101: “He often queried ‘what of the poor Blacks whose fathers were born in Africa?’ This was the central issue of governance in Haiti and the one which ultimately doomed the Dessalines constitution and brought about his assassination and the chronic disease of Haitian history. The Men of Color and many of the Black military elite wanted to gobble up the property at the expense of the masses. . . . In truth the struggle was between two [groups of] elites who were and are still clinging to the likeness of the god of the whites.”

My assessment is that today the central issue causing the greatest distress throughout nations and societies can be described as that same “chronic disease . . . [where] elite wanted to gobble up the property at the expense of the masses . . . .” The very richest and most powerful people in our world are competing with each other for status and wealth and discarding any respect for the lives of the masses. The masses must labor -- there is no other way to live in our world, there is no chance of substance farming or isolating yourself from the modern economic realities. Laboring in our corporate and market-based world means that the masses are only slightly compensated for the value they create. The economic value created by the masses gets siphoned up into the corporate structures ensuring that the corporations can demonstrate profits and distribute those profits (possible only because of the value created by the masses) are the evidence of economic exploitation that feeds the richest, as they continue the chronic disease.

Taxing the rich to have levels of government redistribute the economic value will not make a difference, as the rich restrain the government to do as little as possible along with the demonstrated inefficiencies of governments. Philanthropy cannot make any dent in the crises created by this chronic disease, since the oppressors exploit in excess and then only offer pocket change attempting to make amends. And the poor cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps when there are not enough resources left over after the exploits of the richest.

Just as Bookman and Dessalines implored the privileged people of Haiti to sacrifice for the betterment of the whole country, by some methods, current societies and nations need to implement systemic changes, changes that have the richest people limit their love of money, while maintaining interest in innovating and leading.