The Full Circle of Opportunism

Oct 06, 2018 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Forbes Burnham was the ultimate political gardener. He came back to Guyana from law studies in England and presented himself as a socialist ally of Cheddi Jagan, bent on removing colonial rule and implanting socialism. However, when political ambition got the better of him, he re-branded himself as a moderate socialist.
This was so that he could project himself to the very imperialists that he once loathed as the lesser evil than Jagan. In a visit to London, he described himself as social democrat.
When in opposition to Jagan’s PPP in Guyana, Burnham was careful to demonstrate that while he had socialist sympathies –something that Jagan always believed – he was different from Cheddi. He made it clear that he was neither slave nor servant to either western capitalism or communist-styled communism.
He was careful in arguing that the then British Guiana need not be with pro-East or pro-West. In courting western favour, he admitted that he found a great deal of attraction in Marxism, but said that he would not accept it as a whole, nor would he be a Stalinist. This was in 1960.
Speaking in the National Assembly in that same year, Burnham however made clear one thing about his views. He equated Marxism with hatred for private property. He said any Marxist who admitted that he did not say that he hated private property was saying that he was not a Marxist.
Of course, Burnham had in the same presentation admitted to finding a great deal attractive about Marxism. But this was his ploy in presenting himself as the lesser evil to Jagan, while at the same time driving home domestic fears that Jagan was viciously opposed to the idea of private property because Jagan was a communist sympathizer.
Burnham was to come full circle in the 1970’s. Forced by the Black Power riots in Trinidad to move Guyana towards a socialist economy, he changed his tune and his views on private property. Speaking at a public gathering organized by the Jaycees in Linden on May 22, 1975, he attacked the movement’s promotion of economic justice through free enterprise. He called on the local body to either rewrite their mission statement or dissociate themselves from their parent body.
He made it clear that he accepted Lenin’s theory of imperialism. He also made it clear that cooperative socialism was only the vehicle to achieve socialism, but that his objective was no different from any other socialist. In other words, he was like any other socialist, only that he was using cooperatives to achieve socialism.
The die had been cast. Burnham had come full circle. Socialism was socialism, whether it was cooperative socialism or some other brand. The distinctions that he had been making in the 1950s and 1960s had disappeared. One thing however remained though, his opposition to private property and private enterprise.
The following year, he consolidated the nationalization of the commanding heights of economy. He had gotten a little help from Cheddi’s PPP in this regard. They were the ones who supported the amendments to the Constitution of Guyana that allowed for the nationalization.
The PPP was always in favour of achieving workers’ control over the commanding heights. And so reading from the same page as Burnham, in so far as nationalization was concerned, they gifted him the constitutional power to nationalize.
What they did not cater for was that this power would have been used to viciously expropriate the private properties of the Guyanese. There needs to be cataloging of all the private properties Burnham seized and took away from private individuals, including those for which he offered 1939 compensation and those for which nothing may have been offered.
Nationalization of foreign assets had widespread public support. But the seizure of the private property of locals was something that stirred strong local resentment and forced the propertied class in Guyana to move much of their moveable assets out of the country.
What was done to private landowners under Burnham was a grave injustice. The PPPC administration that took power in 1992 did nothing to redress this wrong. But the effects on those land seizures hurt this country in a major way.
Persons were nervous about Burnham’s plan to revamp property relations and the relations of production in Guyana. And the propertied class began to demobilize their assets in Guyana and move them outside of these shores.
Many were however unable to do so and their properties were expropriated in the name of the State. For those unfortunate persons, justice has remained elusive onto this day. It is about time that this issue be addressed through the work of the COI, which was established by President Granger to look into land disputes. Those persons whose land were expropriated by Burnham at 1939 values should file claims to the COI.

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