Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter by Mr. Milton Bruce, `Burnham’s revolutionary ideas had the country buzzing’, SN, April 18, 2016. It was one of the refreshing departures in the regurgitation of banal history that we often see in the letter pages. Sadly though Mr. Bruce did not take his revisionist polemic to its logical conclusion and I believe that was because of the inherent flaw in the admirers of Burnham in that they refuse to juxtapose the brilliance of Burnham with his immense political flaws.
Mr. Bruce was on solid ground when he observed; “There was a period when this country was buzzing with excitement under Mr Burnham’s leadership, buzzing with the internal thought of helping to create a landmark country within the Caribbean. It was buzzing with accomplishments, whether it was in agriculture or education, self help houses, and new roads. Entrepreneurship ideas were abounding, nascent businesses were coming into play. But they all came to a screeching halt under the era of the reformist ideas, better known as the `post self reliance era’ of Mr Hoyte who took us backwards as he desired to please some people.” (Unquote)
Then Mr. Bruce took some large missteps when he continued with the following two questions; “…why then did the WPA oppose Mr Burnham’s ideas, which were definitely revolutionary. Was it just ego? What political concept could they have grasped that Mr. Burnham would not have known or understood.” I don’t think I want to give Bruce the benefit of the doubt because the material on the Burnham period of the seventies is very plentiful for Mr. Bruce not to know the answer to his question.
The study of the Burnham problematic in Guyanese history by Burnham admirers has a flawed binary and Mr. Bruce did not escape this luring trap. The methodology that should be used to ascertain Burnham’s place in history is not developmental economics but political economy. What Mr. Bruce did is that he separated the two. You cannot do that in the study of society. When you govern a country you cannot do that too. Castro did that and Cuba remains a failed economy. Burnham did that and he ran into Walter Rodney
The WPA was born in the womb of post-colonial expectation of power to the masses. All over the Third World, radical trade unionists and leftist intellectuals were putting pressure on reformist leaders who inherited the Governor’s throne to empower the masses not by eradication of poverty only but actual input into the shape of national liberation. Burnham separated politics from development. Armed with a blueprint for revolutionizing the economy of Guyana, he didn’t see political inclusion of trade unions, human rights groups, left-wing intellectuals as necessary partners. Because of Burnham’s temperament, he would have felt such a partnership was not necessary because he had the leadership qualities to bring about a post-colonial paradise
The immediate post-colonial atmosphere was thus a boiling cauldron and both Rodney and Burnham made mistakes. But I would lay the blame on Burnham. I don’t think Burnham had the moral authority to stop a Third World liberator like Walter Rodney from working at the country’s state owned university. Why was that necessary? Many political thinkers at that time described this drama in “the die-is-cast” mode, meaning the battle had begun. That was Burnham’s cruel and crucial mistake. It confirmed for the population that the post-colonial leaders would not allow greater freedoms. Would things have turned out differently if Rodney had become a UG professor? I think so. I definitely think so. The denial of a UG appointment to someone of the intellectual standing of Rodney in world scholarship traumatized Guyana and made Burnham into a figure of hate. It marked the tragic beginning of the end of Burnham’s dominance in Guyana and his influence further afield.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
