Guyana Government is not fascist

Nov 25, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Mr. Freddie Kissoon, in his evident deep seated compulsion to attack the PPP, has incorrectly characterized the PPP regime as “fascist” and “Marxist/communist” at the same time – which is a contradiction – in recent columns.
His further insinuation that the late Dr. Jagan was “fascist” maligned a great man’s name and I should note that I have very sharp disagreements with the views of Jagan and the PPP.
I think Freddie either misunderstands the doctrine of fascism or is deliberately misapplying the concept to demean the PPP. “Fascism”, after all, earned an undying association with depravity because of the murder of six million Jews by the fascist Hitler and his Nazi underlings. Fascism is a good “cuss” word among “wanna be” intellectuals who use it to describe those with whom they disagree.
I studied fascism under Prof. Bertell Ollman of NYU, Prof. Gregory Massell of Hunter College, and Prof Dangerfield of the Graduate Center. Fascism is a political ideology, that is a product of the European Enlightenment – just as present day democracy and marxism are. But while they have the same roots in “rationalism”, they diverged radically in their praxis.
While fascism may have taken a totalitarian form as did the Marxist regime in Russia and the Eastern Bloc (to use Ravi Dev’s terminology, their procedural aspects were similar,) substantively it is completely opposite to Marxism to which Dr. Jagan subscribed). Fascism combines authoritarian nationalism (bordering on racialism or ethnic prejudice) with a corporatist (government directed) economic system. It is a reactionary, rightist movement as compared with Marxism, which is a leftist movement that proposes state ownership of the “commanding heights, of the economy” and reject outright ethnic prejudices.
Under Fascism (which originated in Italy after WWI under Mussolini and spread elsewhere – as for instance to Germany and Japan)  all socio-politico activities are subordinated to the state which reorders society based on an extreme form of nationalism that borders on the purity of the ethnic group or race.
Fascism is totally opposed to the Marxist doctrine (theory of Karl Marx that was advocated in Guyana by the PPP) of class conflict or class struggle, and rejects the economic and materialistic conception of history of Marx and Engels. In fascism the leader representing the essence of the nationalistic imperative, unlike Marxism where the party representing the proletariat, is supreme. And the differing stance on ethnicity is the most pertinent distinction between the two doctrines when it comes to Guyana and what we have is Freddie’s puerile effort to conflate the two doctrines. Whatever my disagreements might have been with Dr Jagan’s insistence on his Marxist ideology, we all have to admit that Marxism’s rejection of ethnicity as “false consciousness” could not have provided Jagan and the PPP with the tools for ethnic supremacy as Freddie accuses them of practicing. We can’t have it both ways – either Jagan/PPP were fascists that practiced ethnic supremacy or Marxists that eschewed it.
Another fundamental belief of fascism is people are motivated by glory and heroism rather than economic motives.
It exalts nation and the ethnic group above individualism. Where can Freddie point to either the PPP or Dr Jagan practicing this?
Aside from Germany, Italy and Japan, there were a few European and Latin states that experimented with fascist rule during and after WW II. Some critics of Burnham have suggested that he may have displayed fascist tendencies by his rejection of communist beliefs, his embrace of Afro-nationalism, his anti-Indian policies and his encouragement of US Black Power “refugees” to emigrate to Guyana in the early seventies, but I do not accept that theory.
I suggest Freddie read Prof. Clive Thomas’s thesis on the “fascistization of the Guyanese state” during the Burnhamite dictatorship.
The late Dr. Jagan and succeeding PPP leaders were not and are not fascist – in fact they were uniformly hostile to individuals and groups that showed signs of encouraging Indian nationalism – recall what happen to Balram Singh Rai and other Indian nationalists.
Fascism by nature is everything a Marxist party like the PPP is against. Fascism is out of sync with Jagan’s positions on the state and how a government should be organised. Right now there are two trade unions that are locked in struggle with the two main economic entities in Guyana – sugar and bauxite. This would never be permitted in a fascist state. Even some of the harshest critics of Jagan and succeeding Presidents, would concede that while retaining the “Marxist” label in their party’s constitution, the PPP has not utlised Marxist economic principles in the development of the country. Guyana is a democratic state in which governments are freely elected in fair elections and there is a functioning unfettered press.
The fact that Freddie can call Jagdeo or Jagan a fascist and all kinds of names, in and of itself, proves that Guyana is not a fascist or communist state. Imagine calling Hitler or Stalin or Mussolini “hypocrite” and still have your head on – thousands were killed for criticising these dictators! It behooves an academic like Freddie to be objective in his description of the PPP regime. Fascist it is not.
Vishnu Bisram

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