MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 8 March 1985.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg with thanks to Matthew Quest.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
“Albion too” wrote one of the finest poets in the world, who hails from St Lucia and whose name is Derek Walcott “was once an isle like ours / Torn by the vast expanse of bitter faction”. The Caribbean islands and coastal nations, like England once, are at this time “torn by the vast expanse of bitter faction.” In Guyana it is most bitter, and there a solution, even a period of transition, is most urgent. And not just urgent, but vital to the entire Caribbean.
Last week when I wrote on Guyana, little did I expect a deluge of phone calls, from overseas, many from Barbados, and several from Guyana. I was stunned. An Outlet published on Friday in Antigua, was eliciting response by Sunday and Monday from Guyanese resident in Barbados, from Guyanese in Guyana and from Guyanese in the U.S.! News travels almost with the speed of light. Not all were complimentary, though most were. But all, said that the article was a useful contribution to arriving at some new perspective about Guyana and the Caribbean. It had been photocopied and handed around.
One particular caller from Barbados insisted that the respected Dr C.Y. Thomas, had written an article in this month’s Contact which refuted much of what I had said. I read the article immediately. It sounded like Dr C. Y. Thomas and on reading the anonymous article closely it did seem to be C.Y Thomas a leader of the Right social-democratic wing of the Working People’s Alliance in Guyana. I will come to that head-on later.
Since the debate about Guyana is now raging I must continue in this issue to make the case for a negotiated political solution in Guyana, in order to emphasise that it is not just a Guyanese concern, but a matter of interest to Caribbean progressive forces.
I begin without further ado this way this time. “The People’s Progressive Party is a mighty force to be reckoned with in this country and there can no government or political solution in Guyana without the PPP. That the ruling PNC is seeking dialogue with the PPP is recognition of this fact.” So said the formidable Cheddi Jagan in Parliament during the Guyana Budget debate.
I want to juxtapose this with Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham speaking on Saturday 23 about an event in Guyana on Saturday February 16. Here is Burnham:
“Last week Saturday, as I saw thousands upon thousands of workers pass through this Square in the annual Workers parade, and the multitude that stood to cheer and admire I sat and I wondered, I looked and I was thrilled. It was undoubtedly the largest, most representative and enthusiastic parade ever witnessed in the history of this country.”
This mass parade organised by Burnham’s PNC in terms of massive size was independently confirmed by a Trinidad Trade Unionist who was present in Guyana and witnessed the parade.
Against both of the above statements by first Jagan and then Burnham, I want to counterpose this from the anonymous article which is believed to be written by Dr C.Y. Thomas. Says he:
”This exercise [dialogue between the PPP and PNC toward national unity] is evoking little interest since neither party enjoys support.”
Now, one suspects that the writer above has made the wish the father of that thought. To say that neither PPP nor PNC enjoys mass support is to belie history and concrete evidence to the contrary. They both have their loyalists, mostly, but not entirely, within their respective racial blocs.
In actual fact that statement denying any mass support, to either party, allegedly written by C.Y. Thomas, was written in order to state this:
“More importantly” said the anonymous Contact article “the mass of Guyanese who are totally fed by with both parties (PPP and PNC) versions of socialism would welcome the opportunity to aim their rejection at the same target”.
That may or may not be so. It is in the realm of ungrounded and unfounded speculation.
We have to stay with this Contact article some more. Earlier it stated that “a political alliance (of PPP and PNC) it is calculated, would bring the IMF State Department et al. to heel”. And there the writer leaves the matter. He refuses to say whether bringing “the IMF and State Department to heel” in Guyana, is not a good thing for Guyana and for the entire Caribbean. It is in my view, a very good thing.
More than that the writer writes with obvious glee that “an interesting addition” to the scenario in Guyana “is President Reagan, who appears ready to call the PNC’s bluff, leading to a more prolonged stand-off between the IMF and the Burnham government in the past.”
One can hardly miss in this support for President Reagan as he turns the screws on Guyana and requires the IMF to put more pressure if not on Burnham, but on the Guyanese people. To be sure, this is a sorry state for anyone to be in. Far less a professed anti-imperialist economist who is openly seen to be delighted at Reagan driving the nails in the coffin of doom.
That is entirely unacceptable to me. It is a denial and rejection of Caribbean sovereignty.
I stand, absolutely opposed to such people and such imposed solutions from outside the region.
It is therefore not an accident that, the renegade writing in Contact opposing unity talks in Guyana between the two long-standing parties PPP and PNC, had to condemn Cuba as claiming that “Cuba’s weakness is their arrogance and basic contempt for their smaller (Guyana inclusive) English-speaking neighbours”.
This statement is designed not only to shoot history and economics in the back but to deny the positive, helpful and socialist solidarity showed by Cuba to Jamaica and Grenada. As well as Cuba’s unique and courageous assistance of Angola in its hour of dire need in resisting racist South Africa. The statement is also designed to show that the writer belongs to an anti-Cuba faction, which is open to Reagan chastising Guyana and hopeful of Reagan’s support for the political advancement of his faction in Guyana. The proof is unmistakable.
With that said we have to return to the heart of the matter. Can Guyana pull itself out of its present morass? And what is this morass?
We know that in Guyana Gross National Product fell a devastating 10.6% from 1982. Burnham, like Reagan, claimed there was economic recovery, in Guyana, in 1984, in that in Guyana GNP was up 2%. Burnham claimed that this 2% so-called growth indicated a turn-around, even recovery. The fact of the matter is that GNP in Guyana is 8% behind what it was in 1982! We are told too, that in Guyana per capita income is less than that in 1970, and one-third below that of 1975! This is a shocking situation for the working people of Guyana!
If it is not yet unbearable, it is, for sure, intolerable. Worse, this awful State of affairs in Guyana mean that it is not Burnham alone who is trapped in his state-capitalist form, which poses and passes as socialism. Far from it. The entire Caribbean, after the example of Guyana and Jamaica, has come to believe that socialism brings increased suffering on the mass of working people. Instead of socialism bringing increased benefits and social advancement to the working people, it has brought more hardship, more suffering, and unrelieved disasters on the working people. In spite of the fact, that Rightist regimes are in the same plight as Guyana, the alternative, socialism, looks no more attractive than Rightist dependence on Reagan because of the situation in Guyana and the Jamaican past. I want to posit though, that the situation in Guyana is not as was the case in Jamaica the result, in the main, of the IMF, the international capitalist crisis, or imperialist pressure. Though all of these have had some effect.
The Guyana situation is the direct result of the fact, that Guyana has been in a state of civil war, though Civil War without guns.
In plain terms, a political Civil War, which has produced the statification of the Guyanese economy, the resultant corruption as the lower middle class use the state as its means of accumulating capital. On the other hand it has produced declining productivity among the mass of sugar workers and rice farmers in Guyana, as resistance to an all powerful state which achieved power by armed force, and. maintains that power by force and fraud.
Had the two forces PPP engaged in armed confrontation it would have taken on the aspect of race war. But let me interject here the recently released findings of the Avebury Commission which a few weeks ago issued a 50 page report entitled Something to Remember on the last elections in Guyana which took place in 1980.
The distinguished team of international observers headed by British peer Lord Eric Avebury found that in the 1980 elections in Guyana:
“There was a relatively high turnout of voters in opposition areas, and a low turnout in former strongholds of the ruling party.” You can win power that way, even govern with the passive acquiescence of the population, but you cannot develop anything thing that way. Because, the essential ingredient for socialist oriented development is automatically destroyed by the Fraudulent acquisition and maintenance of power. That essential ingredient is this - the enthusiastic participation of the people in setting, planning and achieving national goals.
With it everything is possible. Without it nothing is possible, but decline and decay into barbarism. Either Socialism or barbarism. The team also found that “the military presence in some areas was intimidating. The boxes collected by military personnel who prevented accredited officials of the opposition, sometimes by force or the threat of force, from accompanying of following boxes. Military personnel refused accredited representatives of opposition parties access to the count at gunpoint in some cases”. The military and the gun were the means to ensure fraud, and power by fraud.
Now I have been present when people lambasted Jagan for participating in these rigged elections. But what was he and the PPP to do? If they didn’t participate their non-participation would have legitimised Burnham. If they participated and were defeated by fraud, could they then move to arm struggle to unseat an illegitimate government? The PPP could not. For doing so would have resulted in a race fratricidal war too bloody and too horrendous to contemplate.
It is to Jagan’s eternal credit that he chose not to take this course of armed struggle. Conscious of the over-riding race context of Guyana, and the horror which would have fallen on Guyana, Jagan had to wait until Burnham learnt that politics was a concentrated expression of economics. As such, economic resistance by the people would have brought Burnham’s capitalism to a dead-end of economic decline verging on starvation and barbarism. In the meantime Burnham sought to legitimise himself, by nationalising the foreign plantations, Bauxite mines and plants, and bringing 85% of the economy under state control. He sought history’s absolution by ending foreign domination.
However, at the very same time the political will of the Indian majority having been frustrated, the farmers and workers concentrated their efforts on keeping productivity at that level which allowed for their existence, but which did not allow for meaningful growth, far less national development.
Any examination of Guyana’s production statistics proves this point beyond dispute. Burnham was thus hoisted on his own petard.
Thus was a Civil War fought without guns. Workers vs the State as Owner. The State vs the Workers as Labour. But race constantly mediated the conflict, preventing resolution.
The point has now been reached where the PNC regime has to acknowledge that it has been fought to a stalemate, and it needs the unity of the working people. That unity implies an end to State Capitalism à la PNC. It implies the possibilities of genuine national control, through worker participation and direction. To miss the boat because of hatred for Burnham is understandable, but to allow hatred of Burnham to permit anyone to support Reagan-putting Guyana on the rack, is reprehensible to the highest degree.
The PPP and the progressive wing of the WPA, with Walter Rodney dead, are called upon to demonstrate, that the struggle for socialism is not just about the attainment and maintenance of State power in a nationalised economy. The struggle for socialism is about the unity of the working peop1e, African and Indian, organised as an association of co-operative producers, and with the surplus from their own production determining freely and fully the economic and social structures they want to create for their own advancement, which at one and the same time, involves the progress of all society.
Such a development in Guyana can lift the entire Caribbean out of the doldrums to a higher plane, worthy of the Caribbean people.
But such a development in Guyana given the fact that the lower middle-class nationalised State as Capital and the workers as Labour, though in serious conflict, neither class can win out conclusively because the over-riding race factor, makes class struggle into race war.
The transitional stage involves a national programme, cementing the working people as African and Indian, united in a national endeavour to reclaim their destiny from the IMF and from the nationalised statification and stultification which is Guyana today.
The hope is that the formidable team Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and the PPP, together with the redoubtable Eusi Kwayana, Rupert Roopnarine and the progressive wing of the WPA can seize this realize historic moment and make Burnham realise at stake is not power in Guyana for power is but a means to an end not an end itself. The end is the advancement of socialism in Guyana, with a view to creating a socialist community in the Caribbean which can impact on Africa and India, and save humankind. That is no small matter.
Last updated on 30 May 2022