Introduction

In an effort to resolve the structure/agency debate in the social sciences, Paul C. Mocombe (2012, 2013, 2014), building on the structural Marxism of structuration theory, offers his phenomenological structuralism, which posits structure and agency to be a duality and a dualism. Social Structure is the reification of the material relations of production of a society via language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse (dualism). Within this conception, the origins and nature of human agency or practical consciousness are fourfold—1) the product of the drives of the physical body and brain; 2) impulses of embodied recycled subatomic particles; 3) structural reproduction and differentiation according to the rules of conduct which are sanctioned for the material relations of production; and 4) the deferment of meaning in ego-centered linguistic and symbolic communicative discourse—with those in power positions in the ideological apparatuses of the society as the final arbitrators in determining what actions or practical consciousnesses are allowed to (re) organize and reproduce in the material resource framework where the mode of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse (what Mocombe calls the social class language game) of a social structure is reified. This work applies Mocombe’s phenomenological structural sociology to understanding the constitution of Haitian society and practical consciousness as the parallel evolution and reification of two social class language games (form of system and social integration), the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism.

Haiti is not a Francophone country. It is, as the former Prime Minister of Haiti, Laurent Lamothe (2012–2014), opined, “Africa in the Caribbean.”^[1] The majority, two-thirds, of the social actors who would come to constitute the Haitian nation-state were African-born amongst a minority of mulattoes, gens de couleur, creole, and petit-bourgeois blacks (Affranchis) on the island interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the language, communicative discourse, modes of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West (the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game). As such, given their interpellation and embourgeoisement via the language (French), communicative discourse, modes of production (slavery, agribusiness, mercantilism, etc.), ideology (liberalism, individualism, personal wealth, capitalism, racialism, private property, Protestant Ethic, etc.), and ideological apparatuses (churches, schools, prisons, plantations, police force, army, etc.) of the West, the latter, Affranchis, became “blacks,” dialectically, seeking to recursively (re) organize and reproduce the ideas and ideals, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, of the European whites in a national position of their own amidst slavery, racism, and colonialism. As the colonial administrators informed the ministry of the marine of the Affranchis as early as the 1750s,

Carolyn Fick (1990) goes on to highlight about the report, “[t]he administrator’s report went on to predict, somewhat hyperbolically, that, should this pattern continue, the mulattoes would even try to contract marriages within the most distinguished white families and, worse, through these marriages tie these families to the slave gangs from which the mothers were taken” (pg. 19). Fick further notes of the Affranchis,

As the colonial administrator sarcastically observed the coloreds had an original state, which they were attempting to “wipe out” of their memory. This original state, was not solely a reference to their conditions as descendants of slave laborers or former slaves themselves, but is also a reference to their African practical consciousness. The former, African-born majority, were not blank slates, but brought with them from Africa their African languages, communicative discourses, ideologies, ideological apparatuses, and modes of production (form of social and systems integration), what I am calling the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, to the island, which they recursively reorganized and reproduced on the plantations and as maroon communities in the provinces and mountains when they escaped (Métraux, 1958; Deren, 1972; Genovese, 1979; Rigaud, 1985; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Trouillot, 1995; Bellegarde-Smith and Michel, 2006; Du Bois, 2004, 2012; Ramsey, 2014). As Leslie G. Desmangles (1992) notes of the communities the African majority would constitute,

The Vodou ceremony of Bois Caiman, August 14^th, 1791, was the gathering and unification of representatives of these “maroon republics” to address their grievances against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism of the whites and Affranchis, constitute the Haitian nation based on the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, and commence the Revolution on August 22^nd, 1791 (Genovese, 1979; Fick, 1990). The negotiations of the African maroon leaders with the whites and Affranchis, for more free days for the Africans to work their lots and less institutional violence on the plantations, during the Revolution must be seen as an attempt to balance the two forms of system and social integration as opposed to an internal struggle between the interest of the leaders of the Revolution and that of the masses as proposed by Carolyn Fick (1990). Both sides failing to compromise left the war for independence on the island as a struggle between two forms of system and social integration, the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the whites and Affranchis on the one hand; and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the Africans on the other.

Hence, following the Revolution, whereas, the Affranchis would come to recursively reorganize and reproduce their being-in-the-world as structurally differentiated black “other” agents of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game seeking equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites amidst worldwide slavery, racism, and colonialism. The majority of the half million Africans in the mountains and provinces were not blacks, i.e., a structurally differentiated “other” defined within the lexicon of signification of whites based on their skin pigmentation, lack of culture/civilization, and desire to be like whites. They were Africans interpellated and ounganified/manboified by the modes of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse of their African worldview or structuring structure, i.e., the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, which they reproduced in the provinces and mountains under the leadership of oungan yo (priests), manbo yo (priestesses), gangan yo/dokté fey (herbal healers), and granmoun yo (elders) (Métraux, 1958; Deren, 1972; Genovese, 1979; Rigaud, 1985; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Bellegarde-Smith and Michel, 2006).^[2] Against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the Affranchis with its emphasis on individualism, personal wealth, and capitalist exploitative labor, the Africans sought balance, harmony, and subsistence living. In the words of a racist colonial observer who saw the futility of attempting to establish a regimen of labor that would impose upon the freed slaves of Saint Domingue a European, occidental mode of thought and of social organization, central to which are the virtues of work, in and of itself, of competitiveness, profit incentives, and ever-expanding production; in short, the virtues of the Western capitalist ethic as practiced by the whites and Affranchis,

The “philosophy,” Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism, of the blacks diametrically opposed/oppose the Western capitalist ethic of the whites and Affranchis highlighted here by the colonial observer. It is the failure of the Affranchis, once they gained control of the Revolution and subsequently the nation-state and its ideological apparatuses, to either (re)constitute Haiti via the philosophy/practical consciousness of the Africans or eradicate it completely (via their anti-superstitious campaigns) as they sought and seek to reproduce the ideas and ideals (Western capitalist Ethic) of their former colonial slavemasters amidst their own racial-class tensions, between the creole free blacks and the gens de couleur, which maintains Haiti, after over two hundred years of independence, as the so-called poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

Following the Haitian Revolution, the majority of the Africans, given their refusal to work on plantations or agribusinesses (corvée system), migrated to the provinces and the mountains, abodes of formerly established “maroon republics,” and established a “counter-plantation system” (Jean Casimir’s term) based on husbandry, subsistence agriculture, and komes, i.e., the trade and sell of agricultural goods for income to purchase manufactured products and services. The mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois free blacks, a Francophile neocolonial oligarchy, countered this counter-plantation system through their control of the ports, export trade, and the political apparatuses of the state, which increased their wealth through the taxation of the goods of the African peasants. As Laurent Du Bois (2012) observed of the process, the former enslaved Africans,

This counter-plantation system the African majority established against the spirit of capitalism social class language game, i.e., economic gain for its own sake, individualism, personal wealth, private property, labor exploitation, etc., of the Affranchis, mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois free blacks, who were interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated by the mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses of the West, I seek to argue here, was not a reaction to slavery or the material resource framework of the island as presented by Du Bois and Casimir. Instead, it was and is a product of the ideology (konesans) of Vodou and its Ethic of communal living or social collectivism, democracy, individuality, cosmopolitanism, spirit of social justice, xenophilia, balance, harmony, and gentleness, which united all of the African tribes shipped to the island during the slave trade. What I am calling the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the Africans was, and is, reified and recursively reorganized and reproduced via the ideology of Vodou; its modes of production, komes, husbandry, and subsistence agricultural; and ideological apparatuses, lakous or lakou yo in Kreyol (yo in Kreyol is used to pluralize terms and concepts), lwa yo, ounfo (temples) peristyles, sosyete sekré (secret societies), vévés, herbal medicine, proverbs, songs, dances, musical instruments, Vodou magic and rituals, and ancestor worship (See Table 1).

Table 1. Differences between the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and the Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism in Haiti
Differences	The Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism	The Vodou Ethic and the Spirit of Communism
Language	French	Kreyol
Mode (s) of Production	Agribusiness, Manufacturing (Industrial production), and Post-Industrial Service	Subsistence Agriculture, Husbandry, and Komes (Wholesale and retail Trade)
Ideology	Individualism, Capitalism, subject/object thinking, Authoritarianism, racialism, liberalism, private property	Individuality, Social Collectivism, syncretic thinking, Democratic, spirit of social justice, holism
Ideological Apparatuses	Church, schools, police force, army, law, patriarchal family, Prisons, the streets, bureaucratic organization of work	Ounfo, peristyles, dance, drumming, lwa yo, vévés, Secret societies (Bizango, which serve as police forces of The society), ancestral worship, alters Vodou magic
Communicative Discourse	Economic gain for its own sake, wealth, status, upward mobility, class	Balance, harmony, subsistence living, and perfection
Power Elites	Upper-class of owners and high-level executives of businesses And corporations, educated professionals, bureaucrats, Managers, etc.	Oungan/manbo, bokor, gangan, dokté fey, granmoun

The African Religion of Vodou, in other words, gave rise to the spirit of communism or communal living based on subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes, which the Africans, acting as both subjects and agents of the language game, transported with them to the Americas (Genovese, 1979; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992). In Haiti, under the leadership of oungan yo (priests), manbo yo (priestesses), gangan yo/dokté féy (herbal healers), and granmoun yo (elders), they recursively reorganized and reproduced this structuring structure and its modes of production via ideological apparatuses, i.e., Lakous, lwa yo, peristyles, herbal medicine, proverbs, songs, dances, musical instruments, secret societies, Vodou magic and rituals, vévés, ancestor worship, and ounfo, used to interpellate and ounganify/manboify the human actors on the plantations, in the provinces, and mountains of the island (Métraux, 1958; Deren, 1972; Genovese, 1979; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Bellegarde-Smith and Michel, 2006). As such, by communism I do not mean the social relations of production emanating from the dialectical contradictions of capitalist relations of production as outlined by Marx and Marxists of the early twentieth-century. Instead, the spirit of communism I refer to here speaks to the agricultural and communal form of individual, social, and material relations (purposive-rationality) produced by the metaphysical, psychological, and sociological logic (konesans—knowledge) of the religion of Vodou by which the Africans went about recursively reorganizing and reproducing their material resource framework prior to its interruption by slavery, the slave trade, racism, colonization, and the Affranchis’s attempt at nation building based on the language, communicative discourse, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and modes of production of the West. An ethos, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, which emphasizes balance, harmony, perfection, and subsistence living over the economic gain for its own sake, individualism, wealth, private property, and exploitative logic of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game of the whites and Affranchis (Métraux, 1958; Deren, 1972; Genovese, 1979; Diop, 1981; Rigaud, 1985; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Bellegarde-Smith and Michel, 2006). ^[3]

Using Mocombe’s phenomenological structural sociology, this work explores and highlights how the African religion of Vodou and its ethic, i.e., syncretism, spirit of justice, gentleness, materialism, holism, communalism, democracy, individuality, xenophilia, harmony, and balance, gave rise, under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and granmoun yo, to the Haitian spirit of communism and the counter-plantation system (Jean Casimir’s term) in the provinces, mountains, and urban slums of Haiti, which would be juxtaposed against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the white, mulatto, and petit-bourgeois free black classes of the island. This latter worldview or social class language game, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, I go on to argue, exercised by the free bourgeois blacks and mulatto elites, Affranchis, on the island undermined the revolutionary and independence movement of Haiti commenced by subjects/agents, oungan yo, manbo yo (Vodou priests and priestesses), gangan yo/dokté fey, and granmoun yo (elders), of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, and made it the poorest, most racist, and tyrannical country in the Western Hemisphere (See Table 1).

Background of the Problem

The stance of early human beings vis-à-vis their experiences of the material resource framework, i.e., the earth, gave rise, for the most part, to two dispositions regarding how they reified their existence, i.e., constituted their society (system and social integration), and went about recursively (re) organizing and reproducing their material being-in-the-world (Greene, 2013). In a fruitful and bountiful environment, as early humankind encountered in Africa prior to their migration elsewhere and interbreeding with Neanderthals, a harmonious disposition towards the world took hold, which was juxtaposed against an antagonistic disposition arising from a lack of resources, etc., as was found among Europeans who migrated out of Africa to Europe. According to the pan-African theorist, Cheik Anta Diop (1981, 1988, 1989), as a result of these experiences African and most people of color on the earth shared certain linguistic and cultural commonalities that formed a tapestry that laid the basis for African cultural unity, which was diametrically opposed to the European cultural unity that would develop among the Neanderthals in the barren and harsh environment of Europe.

What Diop calls the Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model emerged among Africans and other people of color who inhabited a hospitable environment: 1) Abundance of vital resources, 2) Sedentary-agricultural, 3) Gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature with a spirit of justice, 4) Matriarchal family, 5) Emancipation of women in domestic life, 6) territorial state, 7) Xenophilia, 8) Cosmopolitanism, 9) Social Collectivism, 10) Material solidarity—alleviating moral or material misery, 11) Idea of peace, justice, goodness, and optimism, and 12) Literature emphasizes novel tales, fables, and comedy. This Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model was diametrically opposed to a Northern Cradle-Greek (European) Model: 1) Bareness of resources, 2) Nomadic-hunting (piracy), 3) Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival, 4) Patriarchal family, 5) Debasement/enslavement of women, 6) City state (fort), 7) Xenophobia, 8) Parochialism, 9) Individualism, 10) Moral solitude, 11) Disgust for existence, pessimism, 12) Literature favors tragedy.

In this work I propose three interrelating theses. First, I argue that the latter, European/Greek model, over time, and with its encounter with Christianity, became reified and recursively reorganized and reproduced as the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game as outlined by Max Weber (1958 [2003]), and the former, African model, as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game outlined above in Diop’s work. Second, both models converged on the island of Hispaniola, at the height of the slave trade and African enslavement during the eighteenth century, where the Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo (Vodou priests and priestesses), gangan yo/dokté fey (herbal healers), and granmoun yo, (elders) of the enslaved Africans of Haiti juxtaposed the latter against the former as embodied by whites and the Affranchis, mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois free blacks, in an attempt to overthrow it on the island when they commenced the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Finally, it is this dialectical struggle between the modes of production, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the majority of Africans juxtaposed against those of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game of the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks of the island, Affranchis, I go on to argue, that maintains Haiti as the so-called poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Theory and Method

Traditional interpretations of the Haitian Revolution, and subsequent to that the constitution of Haitian identity, attempt to understand them, like the constitution of black diasporic and American practical consciousnesses, within the dialectical logic of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic (Genovese, 1979; James, 1986; Fick, 1990; Trouillot, 1995; Nicholls, 1979; Du Bois, 2004, 2012; Buck-Morss, 2009; Ramsey, 2014). Concluding that the Haitian Revolution represents a struggle by the enslaved Africans of the island who internalized the liberal norms, values, and rules of their former French masters, for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution within and using the metaphysical discourse of their former white slavemasters to convict them of not identifying with their norms, rules, and values as recursively (re) organized and reproduced by blacks. Haitian identity/practical consciousness, as such, was and is a simulacrum, of European practical consciousness and identity, which is universalized and presented as the nature of reality as such. This position, predominantly held by white Westerners, is usually juxtaposed against the postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial approaches of Haitian and other black bourgeois intellectual elites (i.e., Aimé Césaire), which highlight the hybridity, ambivalence, négritude, syncretism, and créolité, of the Revolution and Haitian consciousness (Genovese, 1979; Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Trouillot, 1995; Bellegarde-Smith and Michel, 2006).

Both interpretations, contrary to the position of Haitian intellectuals such as Jacques Roumain (1940) and Jean-Price Mars (1928), who advised the Haitian intelligentsia class to look to the provinces and the peasant classes to constitute Haitian culture, identity, and nation-state, are problematic in that they are ethnocentric and racist. They both overlook the initial African practical consciousness of the majority of the Africans on the island for either the practical consciousness or discourse and discursive practices of the mulatto and petit-bourgeois black elites, Affranchis, looking (because of their interpellation and embourgeoisement) to Europe, Canada, and America for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution, or for their (Affranchis) logic of postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories to undermine that African presence in favor of notions of hybridity, créolité, négritude, syncretism, intersectionality, double consciousness, etc.

In their assumption of control of the state and its ideological apparatuses, i.e., schools, churches, police force, laws, military, etc., in other words, the Affranchis, as the whites before them, attempted to repress, “silence,” through anti-superstitious laws to outlaw Vodou and economic policies to undermine its mode of production, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the Africans for their own Euro-centered purposive-rationality, even though, paradoxically, many of them exercised aspects of the latter in secrecy (Fick, 1990; Desmangles, 1992; Trouillot, 1995; Du Bois, 2012; Ramsey, 2014). Furthermore, their dialectical, postmodern, post-structural, and post-colonial textual productions, as seen in the works of Louis-Joseph Janvier, Thomas Madiou, Beaubrun Ardouin, Hérard Dumesle, and Anténor Firmin among many others, minimized and minimize the African structuring structure to highlight hybridity, créolité, négritude, ambivalence, and contradictions. In other words, they accentuate and substantiate the European practical consciousness as recursively reorganized and reproduced by whites, mulattoes, and petit-bourgeois blacks, but minimize the African in the ambivalence, creole, négritude, and hybrid language of postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial discourses, which are still, dialectically, Western in origins and constitution.

There is no creole, négritude, ambivalent, hybrid, etc., consciousness by which Haitians reified and reify their social structure and went/go about recursively reorganizing and reproducing its ideas and ideals as their practical consciousness. Instead, Haitians, the minority Affranchis, either recursively reorganize and reproduce as an “other” the ideas and ideals of the Republican state, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, as their practical consciousness or those of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the mass majority.^[4] Postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial discourses are the language, ideology, and communicative discourse of post-industrial Catholic/Protestant capitalist social relations of production recursively reorganized and reproduced by the Affranchis in the language of créolité, hybridity, indigénisme, négritude, double consciousness, etc., for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their former colonizers and slavemasters. That is to say, ambivalence, hybridity, liminality, créolité, négritude, double consciousness, etc., are the psychological processes, concepts, pathologies, and practical consciousness of the Affranchis bourgeoisies as they desire and struggle for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites by reproducing their ideas and ideals as their practical consciousness in order to convict them (whites), amidst their racism and discrimination, for not identifying with their values and norms as revealed by black practices. As though by highlighting their alleged ambivalence, double consciousness, négritude, and syncretism as opposed to the singular “African” otherness, reflected in the practical consciousness of the masses, which allowed for them to be discriminated against to start with, affords them, Affranchis, their desires (equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution) and the sympathy of whites.

Using Mocombe’s phenomenological structural sociology, to account for the constitution of consciousness and identity (practical consciousness) as a duality and dualism based on the structural reproduction and differentiation of the mode of production constituted via language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse that discriminate against alternative practical consciousnesses, communicative discourses, ideologies, and ideological apparatuses. In this work, I undertake an “ideal type” analysis of the sociohistorical origins and nature of the originating moments of the Haitian Revolution and contemporary Haitian consciousness within the French and subsequent American dominated global Protestant capitalist bourgeois social structure/world-system. Specifically, I reinterpret the historiography of how the institution of slavery, the slave trade, racism, and colonization impacted, shaped, and re-shaped African practical consciousnesses in Haiti. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Africans were introduced, interpellated, embourgeoised, and differentiated into an emerging global Protestant (liberal) bourgeois capitalist social structure as slaves, mulattoes (gens de couleur), creoles, blacks, and petit-bourgeois blacks. Given their economic material conditions, their African practical consciousnesses, what I am calling the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game and its ideology, ideological apparatuses, modes of production, and communicative discourse as constituted by oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and granmoun yo, were represented by European whites as superstitious, primitive, animistic, and informal forms of being-in-the-world to that of the emerging dominant white Protestant (capitalist) bourgeois social order with the ever-declining significance of Catholicism following the Protestant Reformation (Weber, 1958[2003]; Patterson, 1982; James, 1986; Fick, 1990; Du Bois, 2004, 2012).

From this sociohistorical perspective, I illustrate the structural forces—religion, race, class, and status—that eventually, under the “contradictory principles of marginality and integration” (Patterson, 1982, pg. 46), (re) shaped a minority of African consciousness in Haiti as a “racial class-in-itself” (blacks), a “racial caste in class,” divided between a minority group of mulatto elites and free bourgeois blacks (who I am calling the Affranchis) who, given their differentiation, interpellation, and embourgeoisement via the church, French schools, language, social roles, class, race, ideology, and ideological apparatuses looked to white (blancs) Catholic liberal France for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution, on the one hand. And on the other, a majority of Africans and first generation Haitians (creoles and maroons) in the provinces, mountains, and enslaved on large plantations, interpellated and ounganified/manboified under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, looking to hold onto, and recursively reorganize and reproduce their African traditions and religiosity (philosophy), the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, its ideological apparatuses, i.e., peristyles, Lakous, secret societies, etc., and modes of production, komes, husbandry, and subsistence agriculture.

This embodiment or forced internalization, embourgeoisement, of liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant racial ideas and ideals among the mulatto elites and black petit-bourgeois minority in Haiti, I conclude, in keeping with traditional readings of the Haitian Revolution, eventually made the struggle to obtain equality of opportunity, distribution, and recognition with their white liberal Catholic bourgeois French counterparts amidst racial and class discrimination their goal. This goal, brilliantly embodied in the personhoods of Vincent Ogé, Pierre Pinchinat, Toussaint Louverture, Alexander Pétion, André Rigaud, Jean-Pierre Boyer, Henri Christophe, and the majority of the political and economic elites of Saint Domingue/Haiti turned a minority group of mulatto elites and free blacks on the island into Haitians, in the words of Frantz Fanon (1963), with “black skins and white masks.” A Francophile neocolonial oligarchy, who like their white counterparts, discriminated against the mode of production, language, communicative discourse, ideology, ideological apparatuses, religiosity (Kreyol, African, and Vodou), and practical consciousnesses of the newly arrived and enslaved Africans (pejoratively referred to as Congos and Bossales) on the island who were seeking, under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, to recursively reorganize and reproduce their African worldview via their subsistence agricultural mode of production, husbandry, and komes; Vodou Ethic and ideology; and ideological apparatuses, i.e., Lakous, lwa yo, peristyles, herbal medicine, proverbs, songs, dances, musical instruments, ounfo, ancestor worship, etc.

As such, contrary to the logic of postmodern, post-structural, and post-colonial theories, whose concepts constitute the practical consciousness and psychology of the Affranchis, my position is that the majority of the Africans of Haiti did not (re) produce a creole, syncretic, and hybrid culture in the mountains, provinces, and urban slums. They recursively reorganized and reproduced an African mind or structuring structure (form of system and social integration), which incorporated under the leadership of their power elites other concepts and processes in their form of system and social integration, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, as it stood against the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game of the whites and Affranchis. Créolité, hybridity, etc., emanates from the practical consciousness of the Affranchis using the theoretical logic of postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories to Westernize the African structuring structure (which is recognizable and acceptable by whites) for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their white counterparts. Hence their (the Affranchis) subsequent usurpation, with the assassination of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, of the Haitian Revolution and nation-state from the newly arrived and enslaved creole/Kreyol Africans on the island who commenced it on August 14^th, 1791 at Bois Caiman, turned the aim of the Revolution and Haitian consciousness towards the substantive and purposive-rationality, i.e., economic gain, status, and power, of the Affranchis. They (mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks) dialectically attempted to achieve equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites, by convicting and attempting to repress the society for not identifying with their norms and values (the norms and values of the French initially and subsequent to them the Americans), which the Affranchis embodied and recursively (re) organized and reproduced in their practices as an “other.” Against the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism (what Jean Casimir calls the counter-plantation system) social class language game of the Vodou leadership of the masses of Africans in the provinces and mountains of the island, the Affranchis sought to establish a capitalist periphery state within the capitalist world-system based on agribusinesses and exportation initially, and subsequent to that tourism and textile manufacturing performed by the Africans. The latter, Africans, in the Western logic of the Affranchis became superstitious masses and peasants whose practical consciousness was co-opted and commodified to entertain tourists, and their labor power were/are exploited as wage-laborers in white-owned, and Affranchis administered, factories and agribusinesses.

Conversely, the Haitian Revolution as initiated on August 14^th, 1791 at Bois Caïman by oungan, Boukman Dutty, and Manbo, Cecile Fatiman, Edaïse, etc., was led by the African-born majority, under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo (elders) seeking to recursively reorganize and reproduce their African/Taino practical-consciousness in the world against the Catholic/Protestant bourgeois liberalism and capitalism of whites and the Affranchis class of Haiti, who would subsequently, with the assassination of oungan Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806, undermine that attempt for a more liberal and French purposive-rationale, similar to that of the black American civil-rights movement, which would reintroduce wage-slavery and peonage on the island. As Eugene Genovese brilliantly highlights in his work, From Rebellion to Revolution (1978), it is this initial, “restorationist,” divergent path against slavery and liberal bourgeois Catholicism/Protestantism that sets the majority of Haitian practical-consciousness and the originating moments of the Haitian Revolution under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo apart, as a distinct phenomenon, from the bourgeois desires and purposive-rationale of the Affranchis in Haiti and liberal black Protestant bourgeois male preachers of America and the diaspora, seeking to serve as the bearers of ideological and linguistic domination for the so-called black masses by recursively reorganizing and reproducing the agential moments of their former white slavemasters and colonizers.^[5] To only highlight the latter, liberal bourgeois Protestant/Catholic initiative, or submerge the former, originating moments of the Haitian revolution under the Vodou leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, under the purview of a Hegelian master/slave universal dialectic—as so many theorists, including the work, Black Jacobins, of CLR James (1986), and Susan Buck-Morss’s (2009), Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History—or the (Affranchis) logic of post-modern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories is to deny the existence of the African practical-consciousness that has been seeking to constitute its practical consciousness in the world since the beginning of the slave trade, world-wide racism, and slavery in favor of the liberal bourgeois Protestantism/Catholicism of whites, petit-bourgeois blacks, and the mulatto elites.

Fortunately, the Affranchis have yet to stamp out, as was done to the blacks in America and elsewhere in the Caribbean, the African linguistic system, Creole/Kreyol, and practical-consciousness, Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism, of the Haitian/African people. In fact, it is this continuing struggle between the Western ideas and ideals of the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks fighting for control of the state and its ideological apparatuses on the one hand, against the leadership of the African people in the provinces and mountains seeking to recursively reorganize and reproduce their Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism on the other that plagues Haiti today within the American dominated Protestant capitalist world-system.

Discussion and Conclusion

The aim of this work is to relationally examine the origins and purposive-rationale of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game and the originating moments of the Haitian revolution vis-à-vis the purposive-rationality, the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game, of the Affranchis who would come to dominate the Revolution, the African people, and the state with the help of French, Canadian, German, and American merchants and capitalists. The book will identify their ideological and practical divergent paths, which, contemporarily, has made the former, the African Haitians, the pariah of the West and the latter, the mulatto elites, petit-bourgeois blacks, and foreign merchant class in Haiti, colonizers, i.e., a Francophile neocolonial oligarchy. The argument here is that the purposive-rationality of the originating moments of the Haitian Revolution at Bois Caïman originates out of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the masses and their Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and gran moun yo, and diametrically opposed the purposive-rationality of the liberal agents of the whites and Affranchis on the island. The latter three sought to recursively reorganize and reproduce the practical consciousness of their former white slavemasters for equality of opportunity, distribution and recognition, while the agents of the former did not. Instead, at Bois Caïman, the originating moment of the Haitian Revolution, Boukman Dutty, Cecile Faitman, Edaïse, and subsequent to them Macaya, Sans Souci, Sylla, Mavougou, Lamour de la Rance, Macaque, Alaou, Coco, Sanglaou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines among many others, sought to recursively reorganize and reproduce their African practical consciousness, Vodou, Kreyol, and communism embedded in the counter-plantation system, husbandry, and komes of the Haitian/Africans against the purposive-rationality of their former slavemasters and the Affranchis. In fact, my argument concludes by suggesting that it is the usurpation of the Revolution by the Affranchis that would give the Revolution (and Haitian consciousness/identity) its (postmodern, post-structural, postcolonial) liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant orientation, which makes Hegel’s master/slave dialectic, postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories appropriate heuristic tools for understanding the subsequent developments of the Haitian Revolution and nation-state following Bois Caïman and the death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806. This (postmodern, post-structural, postcolonial) liberal bourgeois Catholic/Protestant orientation is the basis for the subsequent exploitation and oppression of the African masses on the island by the Affranchis seeking, like their black American and diasporic counterparts, continual equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with their former white masters through the re-enslavement (via the tourist and textile industries, sports, and agribusinesses) of the African masses who grow poor and sick so that a few of their fellow citizens can live lavishly within the liberal bourgeois Protestant capitalist world-system under American hegemony.

This latter traditional liberal bourgeois (postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial) interpretation of the Haitian revolution and the purposive-rationality of the Affranchis attempts to understand their denouement through the sociopolitical effects and dialectical logic of the French Revolution when the National Constituent Assembly (Assemblée Nationale Constituante) of France passed la Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen or the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen in August of 1789. The understanding from this perspective is that the enslaved Africans, many of whom could not read or write French, were a blank slate who understood the principles, philosophical and political principles of the Age of Enlightenment, set forth in the declaration and therefore yearned to be like their white masters, i.e., “freemen and women” seeking liberty, equality, and fraternity, the rallying cry of the French Revolution. Although, historically this understanding holds true for the mulattoes and free educated blacks, Affranchis, who used the language of the declaration to push forth their efforts to gain liberty, equality, and fraternity with their white counterparts while attempting to hold on to slavery. This position, however, is not an accurate representation for the 201 representatives of the one Taino and nineteen enslaved African tribes/nations, “maroon republics,” and their Vodou leadership who organized and assembled (minokan in Vodou) at Bois Caïman, Macaya, Sans Souci, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines who would assume the reins of the Revolution following the capture and death of the Affranchis, Toussaint Louverture.

Although Dessalines, unlike Sans Souci, Macaya, and many of the African leaders who assembled at Bois Caiman, was an “illiterate” (in the Western sense) creole, the argument highlighted by oral historian Byyaniah Bello and the Vodou community is that as a field slave, he was interpellated and ounganified (my term for internalization of the Vodou worldview) by the ideology (Vodou) and ideological apparatuses (Lakou, peristyles, lwaes, Kreyol proverbs) of the Africans as opposed to the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the French and Affranchis. As such, his early (1804–1806) reins as emperor of the country was an attempt, like the Africans of the maroon republics who negotiated with the whites and Affranchis during the Revolution, to constitute a new nation-state amidst two opposing worldviews or structuring structures, the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism of the African masses and their leadership on the one hand, and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism of the Affranchis on the other. Dessalines did not simply attempt to recursively reorganize and reproduce the ideas and practices of the whites as embodied in the ideology and practices of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism as I am suggesting that the Affranchis would do in constituting the Haitian nation-state following his death. Instead, he attempted, with the aid of his lwa mét tét (Vodou spirit), Ogou Feray, to weigh and reconcile the ideals of both worldviews amidst their antagonism as represented by the Affranchis desire for a liberal/capitalist state based on plantation export agriculture, and the subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes of the African masses.

Conversely, the Affranchis, embodied in the persons of Toussaint, Boyer, Pétion, and Christophe, for examples, like their black bourgeois counterparts in North America and the diaspora, pushed for liberty, equality, and fraternity with their white counterparts at the expense of the Vodou, communal discourse, and Kreyol language of the Vodou leadership, oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, who were not only discriminated against by whites but by the slave-owning mulattoes and free blacks as well who sought to reproduce the French language, Catholic Religion, and liberal capitalist (mercantile) laws of their former slavemasters on the island. In fact, what role should mulattoes and free blacks play in the Revolution is at the heart of a bitter disagreement between Toussaint and Dessalines. The latter, Dessalines, a oungan, Vodou priest, given the brutality he experienced as a field slave, which stood in contradistinction to Toussaint’s experience as a literate free Affranchis, wanted to kill many of the free and mulatto Affranchis along with the whites because Dessalines discerned that they played a role in their yearning to be like their white counterparts in oppressing the enslaved African masses, and given the opportunity they would reproduce the slavery system and the ideas (structuring structure) of the whites on the island (Du Bois, 2004, 2012; Buck-Morss, 2009). Hence Dessalines, like the African Jeannot who Toussaint and Jean Francois would murder for his brutality against the whites, promoted a form of racial slaughter grounded in “an eye for an eye” ethical discourse, “we have rendered to these true cannibals [(the whites)], war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage; yes, I have saved my country: I have avenged America” (Jean-Jacques Dessalines cited in Morss, 2009, p. 143).

It is not enough, however, to view Dessalines’s discourse and discursive practices along the inverted black-nationalist and pan-Africanist lines of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm-X, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin Robinson Delaney, and W.E.B. Du Bois as highlighted by Susan Buck-Morss (2009) and David Nicholls (1979). To do so, would make his position a structurally differentiated dialectical response to enslavement, i.e., an “other” seeking to recursively reorganize and reproduce the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism in a national/racial position of his own. My position here is that his response, like the Africans Jeannot’s and Sans Souci’s positions, was “enframed” by the structuring logic, Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism social class language game, of the masses and their Vodou leadership on the one hand and that of the Affranchis on the other. As such, his movement as highlighted in the discourses of the Haitian oral historian Byyaniah Bello and Vodouizan, Max Beauvoir, was not only racial, but it was also class-based enframed by the cultural and structural logic of the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism as constituted at Bois Caiman as it stood against the spirit of capitalism of the whites and Affranchis. Dessalines, under the guidance of his Vodou lwa mét tét (Vodou spiritual guide), Ogou, was seeking land and economic reform, racial and cultural pride, and social justice for the African masses on the island “whose fathers were in Africa” at the expense, some believe, of the interests of the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois black property owners on the island who assassinated him for doing so (Dupuy, 1989; Nicholls, 1979; Du Bois, 2004, 2012). As Dessalines declared, “the sons of the colonists’ have taken advantage of my poor blacks. Be on your guard, negroes and mulattoes, we have all fought against the whites; the properties which we have conquered by the spilling of our blood belong to us all; I intend that they be divided with equity” (Dessalines quoted in Nicholls, 1979, pg. 38).

In order to commence his nationalization project, Dessalines, following the Revolution, did not seek to recursively reorganize and reproduce the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism of the French. Instead, he rejected everything that was French, i.e., language, culture, and system of organizing existence, for the metaphysics and practical consciousness of the Vodou leadership who originated the Revolution. He, guided by Ogou, nationalized the land; disallowed whites, outside of the five thousand polish and Germans who fought with him during the Revolution, ownership of land on the island; amidst state owned plantations he allowed the masses land to reproduce their subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes; named the island Ayi-ti to honor the Taino natives and African ancestors who spilled their blood during the Revolution; erected a red and black flag to represent the people and the blood they spilled for their freedom; removed all racial and class distinctions by denoting all persons on the island blacks divided between laborers and soldiers; and sought to make the entire island of Ayiti an independent black nation for all blacks in Haiti and the diaspora. As Leslie G. Desmangles highlights,

[d]uring the first three years after independence (1804–1807) under Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s administration, Haiti was united economically and politically. . . At the outset of his administration, Dessalines. . . divided the citizens of the country into two categories, the laborers and the soldiers. Fearing the return of the French army, Dessalines. . . organized all those who had actively participated in the war of independence into an army of 25,000 men. . . Those who had been on the plantations during the war continued as laborers and cultivated the large acreages the government had annexed from the white planters. . . The newly militarized agriculture. . . produced largely sugar, cotton, and coffee, which mulatto overseers divided according to certain state-established criteria. . . The overseers were to transmit one-half of the crops to the state: one half of this was used for export, and the other half paid the rent on the land. Another quarter of the total crop yield was retained for the workers’ salaries, and the remaining quarter paid the salary of the plantation overseers (1992, pgs. 38–39).

These efforts, i.e., his eye for an eye morality, establishment of an empire ruled by an oungan, honoring the Taino and African ancestors, social justice, communal living, social collectivism, equitable distribution of resources and salaries, and consultation with his lwa mét tét, etc., which the Affranchis deplored as it took away their properties and status, were a by-product of his interpellation and ounganification/manboification via the ideology and ideological apparatuses, Lakou, peristyles, etc., of the Vodou Ethic, and not an arbitrary reaction to his treatment as a field slave.^[6] In other words, they emanated from his African mind or structuring structure (form of system and social integration), which the Affranchis rejected while in many instances practicing aspects of its religiosity in secrecy.

Unlike Toussaint, who was interpellated and embourgeoised by his slavemaster via the church and his schooling, Dessalines was predominantly interpellated and ounganified/manboified in the language, communicative discourse, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and mode of production of his African parents and Aunt Mantou, who were not reactionary natives to their material conditions. Instead, they were agents of the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game, which they went about recursively reorganizing and reproducing on the island via the Vodou religion; its mode of production, subsistence agriculture, husbandry, and komes; and ideological apparatuses, lwa yo, lakous, herbal medicine, proverbs, songs, dances, musical instruments, ounfo, and peristyles. They interpellated and ounganified/manboified Dessalines within the aforementioned practical consciousness amidst his interpellation in the Western structuring structure as a field slave, which he would escape from when he turned 30 years of age. Dessalines, following his escape, continued his ounganification/manboification in the African maroon communities of the North under the leadership of Francois Papillon, Jeannot, and Georges Biassou. As such, with his assumption of the leadership of the Haitian nation-state following the Revolution, Dessalines attempted to constitute it within two opposing structuring structures, the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game on the one hand, and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism on the other, both assuming to represent the nature of reality as such. That Dessalines would go about suppressing elements of Vodou following the Revolution is not on par with what Toussaint and the rest of the Affranchis—with the exception of Faustin Soulouque and Francois Duvalier—would go about doing to remove it entirely from the nation-state. Instead, Dessalines attempted to minimize the effects of political instability and magic done against him by the Petwo elements of Vodou (Desmangles, 1992, pg. 45).^[7]

Toussaint, a practicing gangan/dokté fey himself, however, also interpellated and embourgeoised by the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the West, believed that the technical and governing skills of the blancs (whites) and Affranchis would be sorely needed to rebuild the country, along the lines of white civilization, after the revolution and the end of white rule on the island. In fact, Toussaint was not seeking to constitute the island as an independent country, but sought to have the island remain a French colony without slavery. Hence Toussaint rejected the practical consciousness of the Vodou leadership and the masses for the structuring logic of the West. Although Dessalines’s position would become dominant after the capture of Toussaint in 1802, his (Dessalines’s) assassination by a plot between the mulatto, Alexandre Pétion, and petit-bourgeois black, Henri Christophe, who sought to pattern their leadership after Toussaint, would see to it that the Affranchis’s purposive-rationality would come to historically represent the ideas and ideals of the Haitian quest for independence and the Republic, which it produced. After the death of Dessalines,

the country became divided between north and south, and between two rival political factions led by two ambitious men—tyrants who maintained political power solely by military force. Henri Christophe crowned himself king of the northern kingdom of Haiti in 1807 and ruled until 1820; his political rival Alexandre Pétion served as president of the south between 1807 and 1818. Haiti was reunited politically in 1822 during the presidency of Jean-Pierre Boyer (1818–43), Pétion’s former personal secretary and minister. . . In both the south and, particularly, the north, the first part of the history of independent Haiti is a story of servitude supported by a militarized agriculture whose government was drawn from the mulatto class. Their despotic rule early in the republic paved the way for the emergence of a rigid new social structure in which former affranchis were to become an elite distinctly separated from the black masses (Desmangles, 1992, pg. 38).

This purposive-rationality of the Affranchis, to adopt the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game of whites by recursively reorganizing and reproducing their God, language, French, and exploitative ways of being-in-the-world, liberalism and capitalism, is, however, a Western liberal dialectical understanding of the events and their desire (captured in their postcolonial, post-structural, and postmodern discourses) to be like their white counterparts, which stands against the anti-dialectical purposive rationality of Boukman, Fatima, Edaïse, the rest of the maroon Africans who congregated for the Petwo Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman/ Bwa Kayiman, and the subsequent positions of Macaya, Sans Souci, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. (It should be mentioned that many of the African-born soldiers and leaders, such as Jeannot and colonel Jean-Baptiste Sans Souci, distrusted the creole Africans—seemingly because of their desires to be like the whites, vacillations during the war, and ties to the whites—such as Dessalines and Christophe, and in many instances refused to fight under their leadership. In fact, Christophe would murder Sans Souci, and name his famous palace in Milot after him, on the count that he refused to recognize his leadership.).

The events at Bois Caïman and Jean Jacques Dessalines’s position, I want to suggest here, do not fit well within the attempt by many Western scholars, blacks and otherwise, to conceptualize the social agency of Dessalines, the African participants of Bois Caïman, and the masses they would interpellate and ounganified/manboified within the Hegelian master/slave dialectical, postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial thinking of the Affranchis. Instead, the events at Bois Caïman represent an anti-dialectical rejection by the Vodou leadership of white culture, language, God, mode of production, ideology, and ideological apparatuses for the actualization of their African ethos (structuring structure), the Vodou ethic and the spirit of communism, as a “class-for-itself,” a group of people with their own Gods, language, mode of production, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and culture, who rejected the inhumanity of the whites, their gods, ideology, ideological apparatuses, exploitative modes of production, and communicative discourse. What the African Vodouizans insist is that,

No living person has the right to possess another, for possession means the mounting and the controlling of a person’s will. . . It means that the possessed person’s gwo-bon-anj is temporarily displaced by the influence of a foreign element whose incommensurable power accords that person the capacity to perform feats that are humanly impossible under ordinary circumstances. The possessed lose their memory, intelligence, and responsibility for their actions, and no living person can impose such a will on the living (Desmangles, 1992, pg. 81).

Be that as it may, the Africans, because of their “philosophy,” constantly fought against slavery, and sought to be free with allegiances to Bon-dye, lwa yo, and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism as it stood against the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game of the whites and Affranchis.

Sociologically speaking, in other words, two worldviews or ethos (form of system and social integration) for organizing the material resource framework emerged in Haiti during and following the Revolution. Both worldviews, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game on the one hand, and the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game on the other, are distinct from one another, and the former is neither a structurally differentiated practical consciousness, nor does it emerge out of the dialectical unfolding of the Western worldview. It emanates out of the Vodou metaphysics, psychology, and sociology of the Africans who sought to recursively (re) organize and reproduce it in their new environment. This Haitian/African structuring structure (form of system and social integration) remained on the island, as the dominant discourse and discursive practice, until the death of Jean-Jacques Dessalines when the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks assassinated him and made dominant the Catholic, aristocratic, and feudal (republican) order of France, and subsequently, the Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game of America. The latter would come to dialectically displace the former, as it stood against the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism of the Haitian masses, which they (the Affranchis) sought to erase/ “wipe out” by co-opting and incorporating it in the European objects of thought as irrational, backwards, damned, and informal. Albeit the Vodou Ethic and spirit of communism was not eradicated or converted into Africanisms as found amongst other blacks in Africa and the diaspora. Instead, it remained in the provinces, mountains, and urban slums reified (via its ideology, ideological apparatuses, and mode of production, which were used to interpellate and ounganified/manboified the masses) as the dominant discourse and discursive practice, i.e., practical consciousness, of the majority of Haitians against the practical consciousness of the Affranchis, who attempted and attempt to replicate French/American practical consciousnesses via the apparatuses of the Haitian state and its ideological apparatuses. Contemporarily, they, the Affranchis, attempt its (the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism) incorporation into the state through the postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial logic of créolité, hybridity, etc. in their continual desire for equality of opportunity, recognition, and distribution with whites, not as an enframing ontology by which to interpellate and constitute the human actors of the state. That is, the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism of the masses is co-opted and incorporated in the modes of production, language, ideology, ideological apparatuses, and communicative discourse of the bourgeois state as a means for profit in the capitalist world-system under American hegemony where it is used to entertain tourists.

This work, in the end, explores the black racism and classism by which the Haitian mulatto and free black petit-bourgeoisie, like their white counterparts, sought and seek to constitute the Haitian nation-state of Haiti by discriminating against and marginalizing the economics, ethic, and linguistic system, creole/kreyol, of the African masses on the island, which remains in the provinces and practical consciousness of every Haitian under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo.

The term black is used here to refer to people of African descent in the diaspora, that is, America and the Caribbean. The present author will also use the term black culture generically throughout the course of this work to describe diasporic cultures. Moreover, Kreyol terms will be used interchangeably with their French counterparts. For example, in some instances I will utilize Bwa Kayiman (Kreyol) for Bois Caïman (French), loas (French) Lwa (kreyol), Kreyol, etc. The intent is not to confuse the reader; instead, it is in part to highlight the linguistic dynamics of the Haitian people amidst the discriminatory effects of the mulatto elites and petit-bourgeois blacks. Lastly, the term Affranchis, as in the work, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, of Carolyn Fick (1990), will be utilized to represent both the mulatto elites and free petit-bourgeois blacks. The logic here is that their interpellation and embourgeoisement via the ideology and ideological apparatuses of the West renders their practical consciousness identical amidst their class and racial tensions. I have also chosen to highlight the purposive-rationality or structuring structure of the Affranchis as the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game to accentuate the fact that although they would adopt the Catholic religion of the French, they exercise their Catholicism as agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, the emerging practical consciousness or purposive-rationality of modernity. Modernity, for me, building on the work of Max Weber (1958 [2003]), simply reflects the ever-increasing rationalization of a form of Protestant Christianity via the discursive practices of capitalist relations of production. As such, the purposive-rationality of the Affranchis, like their white counterparts, became, and is, economic gain for its own sake, wealth, etc. Albeit, contemporarily, with the prosperity discourse coming out of post-industrial Protestant capitalist relations of production economic gain for its own sake coupled with material wealth as a sign of God’s grace and blessings dominates the ethos.

The underlining hypothesis of the work is that the early freedom and reluctance of the Haitian/African-born masses, under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo/dokté fey, and granmoun yo, to adopt the western metaphysics of their former colonizers over their own structuring structure made them pariahs of the global capitalist world-system discriminated-against by both black and white agents of the emerging Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism world-system. Initially, the work will assess the theoretical basis regarding the constitution of black cultural and religious identity in Haiti and the black diaspora. This theoretical reevaluation will be followed by chapter two which will present an alternative, structurationist, methodological and theoretical framework, phenomenological structuralism, within which to understand the constitution of modernity as the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism and Haitian cultural and religious life in Haiti as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism. Chapter three provides an historical overview of a structurationist interpretation of the constitution of modernity as the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism; and chapter four does the same for Haitian/African practical consciousness as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism. Chapter five explores and highlights the convergence of the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism and the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism on the island of Hispaniola, and how the former was used to attempt to overthrow, oppress, and discriminate-against the latter. In other words, the origins and constitution of Haitian cultural and religious life as the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism, which led to the Haitian Revolution will be assessed and evaluated against the Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism of modernity and the Affranchis. The chapter concludes the work by highlighting how the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism social class language game of the mulattoes, petit-bourgeois blacks, and foreign merchant elites, who would come to gain control of the ideological apparatuses of the nation-state of Haiti following the Revolution underdeveloped the island, and made it the so-called poorest country in the Western hemisphere against the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of the Haitian masses under the leadership of oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo.

Notes

Former Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe speaking at the 22nd Ordinary Session of the African Union, which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia January 30, 2014.

I use the terms, ounganified/manboified, similar to how Althusser utilizes the term “embourgeoisement” as it pertains to the socialization process in the “Catholic/Protestant Ethic and spirit of capitalism social class language game” (my term) of the West. Albeit in my usage ounganified/manboified refers to socialization within the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism social class language game of oungan, manbo, gangan, and granmoun yo. Similarly, as the nation-state system in the West would come under the leadership of agents of the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, the same holds true for kingship organizations of the African tribes and nations. Their kingship leadership and political culture emanated from their socioreligious life, i.e., the Vodou Ethic and the spirit of communism. During the Revolution, the African leadership was organized around their kingship and African military tactics, which was grounded in their religiosity (see Du Bois’s Avengers of the New World, 2004, pgs. 108–109). It should also be mentioned that the majority of the early leaders were either oungan/manbo themselves or consulted with oungan yo and manbo yo.

My position here differs from Leslie G. Desmangles (1992) work, The Faces of the Gods: Vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti, which highlights the symbiotic nature of Vodou with Catholicism and Native American religions. Whereas Desmangles views Vodou as an “African-derived religion whose theological development has allowed its adherents not only to rekindle many of their African ethnic traditions, but to transform these traditions according to their environmental, sociocultural, and economic situations” (1992, pg. 172). I view Vodou as an African religion, a form of system and social integration, recursively reorganized and reproduced by the African people of Haiti as their practical consciousness amidst its transmogrification by the power elites, i.e., oungan yo, manbo yo, gangan yo, and granmoun yo, of the system. So I accept Desmangles’s notion of symbiosis, over syncretism, to highlight the evolution and reification of Vodou in parallel to Catholicism in Haiti, but I reject his idea that it became an African-derived religion. For me, Vodou is an African religion in which its power elites maintained and sustained in the face of persecution and oppression.

Many Haitians may utilize the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism as their public face, and practice aspects (not its entire practical consciousness) of Vodou in secrecy. Others may solely practice one or the other. But the social structure was not reified as a syncretism of the two, which in turn interpellated and ounganified/manboified the masses as agents of the two via its ideological apparatuses. The two social structures emerged together, albeit the Catholic/Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism had more power given its ideological apparatuses, i.e., army, police force, etc.

Genovese’s work juxtaposes marronage in the colonies as the attempt of the Africans to restore their African modes of life against slavery, the “restorationist” movement, which stood against the “bourgeois-democratic wave” of the Age of Revolution. My work builds on this dichotomy in that I view the Affranchis goal in the revolutionary period of Haiti as being that of the latter, and the events of Bois Caiman and Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s position as that of the former.

In the Vodou pantheon of 401 lwa yo, Jean-Jacques Dessalines is associated with Ogou Feray.

As heads of the Haitian nation state, Faustin Soulouque and Francois Duvalier, following Dessalines, openly, incorporated Vodou in their administrations and forms of governance.