A cursory examination of alternative systems for Guyana – Part 2.

Nov 19, 2017 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I wish to urge all of Guyana’s remaining independent-minded politicians within both the PPP and the Coalition to ensure they understand the implications of this letter. I also urge all of our civic leaders at home and abroad to ensure that the members of their organizations become familiar with its contents. While I have made every effort to present the ideas in every-day language, some aspects may need clarification.
Therefore, while some of us may be excused, our politicians and civic leaders cannot escape the responsibility of their posts on this occasion. Here I have examined more closely Russia’s experience with socialism under Lenin since there is much here that is instructive.
Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following the execution of his brother Aleksandr Ulyanov who on May 8, 1887, was hanged along with four others following an assassination attempt on Alexander III of Russia.
At the time, Lenin’s brother had become the main ideologist and chemist making bombs for the terror faction of Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) party, which had dedicated itself to fighting autocracy. It was noted that his brother’s death may have sparked Lenin’s radicalism against the political powers of the day.
I would suggest here that his brother’s death ignited intense hate and a desire for revenge against the system of government in place at the time. This drove him to lunacy in his quest for power, since after elections were held subsequent to the revolution in which his Bolshevik party (the party of the Proletariat) lost by a huge margin, securing about 25 percent of the votes to his major opponent’s (the Socialist Revolutionaries, or Party of the Peasants) almost 50 percent, it was noted that he contemptuously dissolved the Constituent Assembly, calling his action ‘true democracy’ because he knew the needs of the proletariat better than they did themselves.
By the end of May 1918 Lenin had expelled opposition parties from the Central Executive Committee. Trotsky (a communist theorist and agitator, a leader in Russia’s October Revolution in 1917, and later commissar of foreign affairs and of war in the Soviet Union ) justified this by saying that, ‘We have trampled underfoot the principles of democracy for the sake of the loftier principles of a social revolution’.
By the time of Lenin’s death, political opposition parties had been formally banned. (https://www.historytoday.com/russel-tarr/lenin-power)
The lesson from Russia’s early experience with socialism is that it is founded in violence and the overthrow of whatever system of government happens to be in place. Secondly, it maintains power through violence against its opponents, and oppression of, and suppression of the rights of the masses as a principle of its administration of government.
‘As stated by Lenin himself, his overturning of the majority of the electorate was ‘true democracy,’ or ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat,’ (https://www.britannica.com/topic/dictatorship-of-the-proletariat) since he, the dictator, declared that he knew better the needs of the proletariat than they did themselves.
For his part, Karl Marx has been variously described as an economist, philosopher, historian, sociologist and revolutionary. He was born in 1818 in Prussia. In 1842 Marx became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung newspaper, and succeeded in trebling its circulation. The Prussian authorities suspended it for being too outspoken.
During his sojourn in France, he co-edited a yearbook in which he first raised the call for an ‘uprising of the proletariat’ to realize the conceptions of his philosophy. Consequently, he was expelled from France and in 1845 he left for Brussels, followed by Engels.
Marx thought that the proletariat should form its own political party and fight against the prevailing parties on the political field. He died in March 1883 in London.
While it is debatable whether Marx intended that the resulting government from his socialist revolution continue with the use of violence and oppression as a means of administering the affairs of the state, what is clear, from experience at least, is that his notion of violence as a means of establishing his socialist government facilitated reliance on it as a means of the resulting government retaining power and control, this ultimately yielding to a dictatorship.
The above sheds some light on Guyana’s own experience with socialism under the Peoples National Congress under Burnham when he introduced his brand of ‘cooperative socialist revolution’. According to him, the ‘cooperative’ is to be the “principal instrument for achieving socialism…making the small man the real man.”
Under this theory, the ‘cooperative sector’ is to be the ‘dominant sector. He began nationalizing companies with heavy foreign interest, such as the Demerara Bauxite Company (DEMBA), a subsidiary of the Canadian bauxite company, ALCAN. The massive sugar industry was nationalized in 1975.
An External Trade Bureau (ETB) was established to monitor imports and exports. During the 1973 elections, Two PPP supporters, Jagat Ramesar (17) and Jack Parmanand (35), in an attempt to prevent the seizure of ballot boxes, were shot and killed in Corentyne. While the police harassed and intimidated Indian voters outside, PNC party members and government officials at the polling stations employed technicalities to curtail the PPP vote.
To my mind, Granger’s recent recommitment to the ideals of Burnham given Guyana’s experience in the 70s and 80s raises questions about his sanity and sincerity in moving Guyana forward. His claims in his recent speech in Georgia, USA on Saturday November 04, 2017 that, ‘We established a democratic party,’ may be subject to scrutiny by persons more knowledgeable than myself, but what is abundantly clear to us all is that democracy as a system of government was lost in Guyana given that it has been established that elections from 1968 through 1992 during which time elections are generally acknowledged as being rigged.
I have said elsewhere that Burnham’s ideas have failed us before, and will fail us again. This is the road to disaster. A declared socialist organization, the Peoples Progressive Party found itself trapped by Guyana’s financial arrangements with international financial organizations like the IMF, IBRD and CDB, and could do little to implement its socialist ideology on its assumption into office in 1992. The following article examines the PPP’s failures during its 23 year run in office up until 2015.
Although the preceding discussion suggests that any form of socialism is at odds with Guyana’s current cultural values, I had initially intended to briefly evaluate its appropriateness as system for allocating a nation’s productive resources and the principles which underpin its government. While not exhaustive, the following I think provides enough information to facilitate an intelligent decision. Communism is a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party. Socialism is a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
The theory in the transition to communism is that workers or proletariat would engage in a socialist revolution which suppresses opposition to the cause, and would result in the dictatorship of the proletariat or working class, and the proletariat, or workers themselves.
Obvious weaknesses of this type of system is that it is next to impossible for government agencies to correctly estimate and produce the required types and amounts of goods and services in a timely manner. Secondly, general dissatisfaction by workers usually leads to reduced quality with and potential decay in economic activity nationally.
Thirdly, the regimented structure does little to facilitate much innovation and creativity in workers, essential elements for survival in today’s globally competitive environment. Corruption and mismanagement feature heavily in this type of administration.
Lastly and most importantly, oppression/repression/suppression of ideas and thinking among workers and intellectuals become part and parcel of the system of government administration and control under socialism. Attempts to speak out against injustices and promote equality and conditions better than what obtains are usually met swiftly with mechanisms for silencing dissension.
As an alternative to what obtains under our present political parties, I have drafted some ideas which I would like to share for consideration and discussion as we consider our options going forward.
Craig Sylvester.

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