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Jagan’s Legacy

Mar 04, 2013 Editorial

This Wednesday will be fifteen years since Dr Cheddi Jagan, the founder of the PPP and the independence movement died. For one who studied in the US and spent most of his adult life fighting against what his generation called ‘American Imperialism”, it was rather ironic that he died in the US. He had been rushed to the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, after suffering a heart attack here. Walter Reed would have housed wounded or sick army personnel who had fought in wars against which Jagan would have railed.
With his passing, following that of LFS Burnham, the other political leader whose political shadow loomed as large over Guyana, a new era had begun. Most observers assumed that Jagan’s post-independent era successors would have worked to consolidate his legacy. After fifteen years and three separate presidencies (one a double term and one truncated) it might be as good a time as any to critically examine that assumption.
What was Jagan’s legacy? First and foremost there was his Marxist ideology. Marxism for Jagan was not just an epistemological tool but an ontological reality. Jagan was one of the true believers in Marxism as a total world view. What is the status of this position in the PPP today? Basically shunted aside or jettisoned. What might have been Jagan’s pragmatic acceptance of the US-directed economic programme via the IMF/World Bank in 1992 became within five years of his death a root and branch acceptance of the neo-liberal orthodoxy.
We can see this in the PPP’s dealings with the bedrock of Jagan’s Marxist social stratum that was to inherit the earth – the working class.
Against all the empirical evidence Jagan had insisted that working-class unity had been forged in Guyana during the struggle for ‘free and fair’ elections. He therefore expected that the PPP’s development programme following his accession to office in 1992 would have been widely supported by that class. It was not to be.
While he blamed the PNC for polarising the situation ethnically, that orientation had already been evident in the very election that brought him into office. The PNC had received the exact percentage from the same ethnic constituency that had traditionally supported it. The neo-liberal economic plans deepened by Jagan’s successors further widened the divide in the working class because in the market becoming the arbiter in determining economic development, the historic ethnic specialisation of the workforce became exacerbated.
For instance, ‘small government’ – a mantra of the neo-liberals – in Guyana meant reducing the number of public workers who were generally from the African Guyanese segment of the population.
But the acceptance of the profit motive as the driving force behind business, which was defined as ‘the engine of growth”, meant that Jagan’s legacy of the ‘working class’ as the centre of development had to be abandoned in toto. The new model determined that the poor – which in Guyana was just another label for the working class – were to benefit from what ‘trickled down’ from the top.
The focus was now on encouraging and facilitating the business class – they were not called ‘capitalists’ any longer – through a slew of ‘incentives, to generate even greater levels of profits. Tax holidays, duty free inputs, concessions on resources etc became the norm. Unfortunately, there were no measures to ensure that the ‘trickle’ to the poor working class increased in tandem with the increased profits. Inevitably the gap between the top 1% and the remaining 99% became ever larger- as it has in the model being followed – the USA.
The present crop of leaders who succeeded Jagan still genuflect to his ‘working class’ orientation but it seldom goes beyond mouthing the words. In the Opposition ranks, while they have no reason to be loyal to Jagan, it should not be forgotten that Burnham also defined himself as a ‘socialist’ dedicated to uplifting the ‘working class. They also have shifted their locus of development elsewhere. It would appear then, that within fifteen years of the passing of Jagan, his legacy is dead.

 

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