Elected dictatorship and semi-fascism in Guyana: A “Marxist” analysis

Feb 12, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The argument to follow, if it is to be effective, has to be involved, meticulous and multi-dimensional. Space will not allow for that, therefore this essay should properly be considered as brief notes. Let me make a vital point before my contentions are outlined.
It is important to distinguish Marxist scholarship from communist politics. The post-war world (and I will force Antonio Gramsci into this period though he died before WW2 was over) has produced some fantastic thinkers of the Left from all over the world, that have used Marxist methodologies to analyze social phenomena with brilliant results.
This efficacy is in no way related to communist politics. What these thinkers have done is not only to show how useful Marxist perspectives are to scholarly investigations, but they have also sought to democratize communist theory, seeking to rescue it from the plausible philosophical assault Hannah Arendt made on it.
It is important to note that Arendt didn’t prove the overlapping of communism and fascism through the practice of diabolical power by Hitler and Stalin.
She actually made use of historical and philosophical categories to show how identical the two ideologies are. None of the politicians in the Third World whose frenetic embrace of communist ideology paid attention to these democratic Marxist writers, and none of them turned out to be democratic, as we clearly see from the public lives of Dr. and Mrs. Jagan and the protégés that they left to rule Guyana.
The list of great minds that have explored 20th century civilization using Marxist paradigms and have given birth to profound analytical concepts that today offer us newer insights into the human condition is too long to mention. Some of us have our own favourites.
For me, the Pakistani theorist, Hamza Alavi, is included among the greats. Four West Indians cannot go unmentioned – Lloyd Best, Walter Rodney, CLR James and Franz Fanon. There is the Frankfurt School with Herbert Marcuse leading the way. We can think of Nicos Poulantzas, Jean Paul Sartre, Louis Althusser, among others.
Marxist concepts hold a crucial key in understanding the anti-humane use of power in post-colonial societies. For me, Hamza Alavi’s theory of the “over-developed state” best explains the descent into semi-fascism under both Burnham and Mr. Jagdeo and other third world countries, particularly Arab states.
Written in 1972 in his study of post-colonial Pakistan, Alavi argues that the post-colonial administration had to be coercive because it inherited a huge, overdeveloped state apparatus –security agencies and bureaucracy – that was extremely logical to the European in the colonies if they were to subdue their subjects and preserve their possessions.
In 2004, my perception that the fascistization of the Guyanese state was becoming visible found expressions in many columns on this page. In one piece, I polemicized that the bureaucracy in Guyana was being shaped along the lines of fascist European countries in the early 20th century.
That process is complete for me, thus my label of the semi-fascist state to describe the PPP Government. I have combined this with the typology adumbrated by American theorist, Fareed Zakaria; his paradigm of elected dictatorship.
One spin doctor from New Garden Street lifts pages out of Zakaria’s book that suits his defence of the PPP Government. He barefacedly omitted the seminal argument of Zakaria that a democratically elected government can descend into authoritarian rule if it does not observe the constitutional framework of liberalism.
Zakaria explains that popular rulers can use their mandate to destroy the liberal foundation of constitutionalism. This is what has happened in Guyana since 2002. Now we hear talk about overseas voting. It is all taking shape – the simultaneous existence of semi-fascism and elected dictatorship are going to produce more devastation of liberal constitutionalism in this country.
Finally, in Guyana what we have is a deadly combination of the overdeveloped state and the psychological effects of colonialism. Hundreds of texts have posited a connection between the nature of colonial rule and the lacerated psyche in the Third World that it left behind after Independence came.
Colonialism was a brutal, violent process. Its overriding culture was one of coercion. This is the only language the post-colonial leader knows. Coercion is ubiquitous, creativity is non-existent. Guyana is no exception. From Parliament to Cabinet to party underling, all we see from these quarters is bullying commands.
Even money for Haiti collected by this newspaper has been greeted with a coercive hand. Elected dictatorship and semi-fascism will eventually meet their Waterloo when rigged elections, perhaps later this year, is met with more than just tempestuous rejection by the people of Guyana. Dictators never learn. They never will.

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