Dear Editor,
Two items of interest attracted my attention in yesterday’s SN.
The first is Christopher Ram’s letter on Cedric Joseph. If Mr. Joseph is not the world’s leading expert of the history of the Guyana-Venezuela Border Controversy, he is among the top three. He is certainly Guyana’s. I have the honour of sitting regularly with Mr. Joseph as part of the Ministerial Advisory Committee. His knowledge and wisdom are simply spectacular. I do not believe that Mr. Joseph, a retired public servant of great modesty, is looking for an award for his contribution to the protection of Guyana’s territorial integrity from Venezuela’s aggression. The system of national awards has been long abandoned, except by the last government. But the Government can do no better than making Mr. Joseph’s book, Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Reopening of the Guyana-Venezuela Boundary Controversy, widely available at subsidized cost to the Guyanese public. It is much needed at this time.
The second is your editorial on `Becoming petty bourgeois.’ The phrase “petit bourgeois” or “petit bourgeoisie” are almost never heard nowadays, although it has a specific sociological meaning associated with Marx’s analysis of class. As SN has belatedly discovered, the characteristics of the petit bourgeois are very important in understanding class relations and how these will develop. I would hesitate to attribute the growth of the petit bourgeoisie to Bharrat Jagdeo’s alignment with that strata of the population. His determination was to build a “capitalist” economy. He made no secret of that ambition. But the PPP governments which he led, and the current one, have devoted increasingly large budgetary allocations to social services, including housing, agriculture and small business development, especially in recent years. The building of a “capitalist” economy, combined with the above and local content, especially in the era of oil, will see an even more spectacular development of the petit bourgeoisie. The political challenge is to mobilise this strata of the population for the support of politically and socially progressive policies and for an understanding that their interests coincide with those of the working class.
Yours,
Ralph Ramkarran