Dear Editor,
Please allow me to respond to the letter from Mr Hydar Ally, SN, May 20, in which he claims that “The main architect of our independence struggle undoubtedly was Dr Cheddi Jagan.”
I know Mr Ally to be a sensitive and thoughtful critic and wonder what would have motivated him to pen such a tactless, if not careless and clumsy piece. I am not a little disappointed that Mr Ally would allow his politico/ideological education/background to abandon him at such a crucial moment. I do believe that while we disagree on some things we also have some political/ideological affinities that require surveillance to ensure minimal compliance and at least comradely political respect – some want of political correctness, if you will.
I need hardly remind him that acknowledged curmudgeon and old man of communism, Karl Marx, had already seen through the maze. In the opening statement of his 18th Brumaire he said: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great facts and personages of history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add, however, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.
There is another little ditty in that opening page that follows and says something about, “Men [sic – the old encrusted gender preferences] make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living”.
If he paid attention to the text at all he would also have known that this view of history had in fact become, dare I say, standard socialist fare and what in fact attracted, and still does, many to its fold. In his 1869 Preface to the 2nd Edition of the text the old man took on Victor Hugo (of Les Miserables fame, 1862) and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Philosophy of Poverty 1846) trashing both for their idealist view of Napoleon after the coup of 1851 – the one by seeking to place Napoleon outside of history, a “bolt from the blue”, the other justifying his triumph on historical antecedents, “a historical apologia for its hero”. Marx had no doubt about what he was after and made bold his claim: “I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.”
I am not certain Mr Ally would want to place his “hero” on the same politico/ideological stage and still claim for him the acknowledgement he seeks.
Yours faithfully,
Rishee Thakur
