The struggle against poverty in Guyana: Time to reset the ‘socialist’ passion and vision?
Nigel Westmaas teaches at Hamilton College
A few months ago Gerald Pereira, the leader of the Organisation for the Victory of the People asked a bold, pointed question in a letter to Stabroek News: “Where are all the socialists and anti-imperialists in our midst?” Pereira’s point is offered in the context of the collapse of the socialist experiment locally and globally. It could also be read as a concern with the current political and social climate in Guyana and the region amid the political and social conservatism of the last two decades. The decline of Caribbean Marxism and the trade union movement in general have seen a vacuum in strategic, theoretical and political action on behalf of the working people throughout the region, not only in Guyana.
The fear of the very notions of “class struggle”, “socialism” and “anti-imperialism’ in contemporary Guyanese politics is understandable insofar as they are a response to the unfavourable and anti-democratic experience with the socialist experimentation in the Eastern bloc and the sometimes negative socio-economic experience of people who lived under socialist regimes in different sections of the “third world”.
In like vein I disagree with Pereira’s uncritical exaltation of Burnhamist socialism. But his remonstrations against the inaction on the part of successive Guyana governments to the fundamental question of social justice and equality are relevant and timely.
We are in essence in an age of passivism, of acceptance of the ravages of global capitalism, and its “now hidden, now open” struggle against trade unions, concealed under the haze and glare of new technology and social media and the “normalization” and acceptance of the power of big corporations like Exxon Mobil.
Criticism of the global class system has dimmed, almost completely disappeared. Small countries face the power of international corporations without any effective strategic response or principled ideological riposte. There are timorous reactions to the characteristic power of multinationals to befuddle and control governments that do not possess the ability to supervise the technological and financial operations on such a vast scale like Exxon Mobil’s foray in Guyana’s Liza Fields.
All this fails to explain the lack of energy in fighting for the poor and powerless in Guyana.
But the debate is slowly opening up. More and more Guyanese are calling for more direct action to stem the economic and social collapse. Not all agree on “socialism” in concept and practice, but they tend to assemble around the theme of the structural, social, political and even psychological changes needed in the body politic and offer a fresh focus on the plight of the poor.
In in his daily column, Freddie Kissoon unfailingly laments the condition of the poor though without directly calling for an alternative social and political system. He deems Guyana a “cruel, uncaring, indifferent society”, one consistently “failing poor people.”
Scientist and Pan Africanist Ras Dalgetty has critiqued the unfortunate symbolism in President David Granger’s and Raphael Trotman’s visit to the Exxon oil rig in 2015, shortly after taking office, asserting that “the struggle for political independence is also the struggle to end the colonial mentality of Guyanese.”
For his part, independent commentator Ramon Gaskin frequently criticises the lack of decisive approaches to the status quo in Guyana and has even endeavoured to establish a socialist party.
Red Thread has often raised the issue of the effect of the economic approaches taken by successive governments on working class women and families.
None of the recent Guyana Presidents has demonstrated any vision against poverty. Instead, the language and actions continue to favour neo-colonial models.
Every economic or policy concept is framed in a way that appears to evade a need to support all Guyanese and bends over backwards toward the ABC countries and their “technical” support. This has now been the pattern for the last twenty plus years. There is palpable evasion on the strategic and tactical need for a local, regional and international fight against poverty. There is no energy to engage. The trade unions that once generally represented their members with vibrancy are frozen, their leaders inactive, except for a few lone voices like Lincoln Lewis.
Likewise there is no collective outrage that hits the