Dear Editor,
The month of March has just ended. It is an important month in the calendar of commemorative events observed by the PPP and the Cheddi Jagan Research Centre (CJRC) at Red House. It is the month where the birth and death anniversaries of the Jagans are observed and three separate public events were held to celebrate the life/work of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. The first attracted a packed audience while the second was attended by an appreciative gathering. A third was held in April due to the unavailability of the guest speaker in March. These are events where those gathered, look forward to learning about the Marxist views and radical politics of the Jagans. As I sat and listened to some who spoke at the first two events, I could not help reflecting on how far-reaching the political and ideological landscape in Guyana has evolved since the passing of Cheddi and Janet Jagan. Subsequent events were to prove their passing as ‘the end of an era’ in the true meaning of the phrase. Dr. and Mrs. Jagan were best known for their Marxist views and radical politics. In the USA, and UK, conservative and colonial circles branded the Jagans ‘communists’ and so was the PPP, the party they led along with other outstanding, progressive Guyanese. Nowadays, questions are being asked whether the PPP remains ideologically and philosophically the same as it was in the times of the Jagans.
What bothers me, is the fact that the political and ideological landscape has evolved to where Marxist thought and socialist-oriented discourse has long disappeared. There is no political party in Guyana that can be considered politically nor ideologically on the radical left. Insofar as its propagation is concerned, the Michael Forde Bookstore, the only bookstore in Georgetown that sold progressive and Marxist literature, has long been shuttered. Universities are usually incubators of left-wing and radical political ideas but not so in Guyana. There is a view that strict labeling of political parties should be avoided and that an open-minded, rather than an oversimplified and judgmental outlook, be adopted. However liberal the understanding is of the nature of political parties, the point is we cannot understand their programmes and policies unless we do so from a class point of view. Marxist ideas and left-wing politics emerged during the colonial period in British Guiana. The Jagans were the first to introduce this ideological genre of politics in the colony. Its main thrust was aimed at winning political independence. These radical ideas and policies were reflected in articles published in the Political Affairs Bulletin, the forerunner of ‘Thunder’, the official organ of the PPP (now folded), the Mirror newspaper, and speeches at street-corner public meetings. In essence, the PPP’s left-wing politics at that time was practiced through its mass struggles and its grassroots activism in favour of, and concern for, the economically and socially disadvantaged.
During the 1964 to 1985 period, the PPP’s struggle at home and abroad assumed an anti-imperialist character, though it continued to fully support the national liberation and anti-dictatorship struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. This was clearly manifested in Cheddi Jagan’s books, namely, ‘The West on Trial,’ ‘The Caribbean Whose Backyard?’ and ‘The Caribbean Revolution,’ as well as his ‘Straight Talk’ articles published in the ‘Mirror’ newspaper. The themes of PPP Congresses and Central Committee Reports presented at Party congresses and conferences were no different. But how times have changed! The somewhat rhetorical question being asked is, what has become of the Marxists and left-wing politicians in Guyana? In a vibrant democracy where ‘a thousand flowers are expected to bloom,’ parties, whose programmes and policies are considered left of the political spectrum are expected to occupy a reasonable amount of political space because of the vagaries and failings of a free market economy, environmental concerns and labour issues. We see for example in Europe where, Left and/or radical parties, such as Green Parties flourish and occupy seats in national and the European Parliaments. Some, as in the case of Germany, are in
government. In Latin America, left and progressive democratic political parties are on the ascendancy. They are winning elections and assuming government with majorities in Congress. In some cases, their victory is stymied by political forces who are either on the rise, or manage to maintain their electoral strength and political relevance. In the USA, ‘Occupy Wall Street,’ the ‘Sunrise Youth,’ ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Me Too’ movements, along with Bernie Sanders’ ‘Socialist Platform’ that advocates a ‘Political Revolution’ in the United States and Elizabeth Warren’s calls for ‘Big structural change’ in America, are indicative of a left-ward shift in American politics. In the UK, Greenpeace, Oxfam and the Global Justice Movement cumulatively, represent movements of a left character who have successfully managed to maintain their longevity and relevance politically.
But the challenge for the left has more to do with the economy than with governance since it is at the economic level, where those who are meant to act as the ‘engine of growth’, exert greater influence on the executive and political superstructures of liberal democratic nation-states. As far as those on the left of the political spectrum are concerned, in a market economy, contradictions between labour and capital are bound to arise, save and except in a few whose form of governance and political economy have been branded ‘autocracies’ by some in the West. Those on the left contend, that while market forces are hard at work at the global and national levels, the State is limited to playing a regulatory role as in the case of Guyana’s Local Content Law. The vision peddled by some, of a country soon to be awash with petro-dollars in peoples’ pockets, has given rise to an increased yearning in favour of consumerism and commodities as obtains in liberal democracies. The evolving but persistent ideological drift has helped transform the Guyanese political landscape, making it barren of any left and/or Marxist political tendencies. A weakening in the militancy of the labour movement and absence of pro-Marxist intellectual discourse is all pervasive. These developments should be viewed in the context of the changed economic and social conditions in Guyana. However, so long as economic and social inequalities, poverty and unemployment throttle the market economy’s inability to resolve these problems by innovating and recreating the economic structure from within, society will be chasing after its dreams. Neither social or liberal democracy can solve permanently the people’s problems, they can do so only temporarily by delaying a process that is inevitable. Under prevailing conditions in Guyana, whatever or whoever remains on the left of the political spectrum, they should be considered temporarily down, but not out.
The theory and practice of Marxist and socialist-oriented politics and discourses that characterized the era of the Jagans are no longer with us, but since society is constantly in motion, and evolving, the resurgence and influence of that genre of ideology and politics should neither be over nor underestimated. That said, it is only by force of convincing and factual arguments, healthy debate and constructive discussion, reminiscent of the Jagan era, about the economic model and form of governance relevant to Guyana, can a shift in the ideological and political spectrum take place in Guyana.
Sincerely,
Clement J. Rohee
