Politics and the economy

Jun 07, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The “low-intensity civil war” which has existed between the PPPC and the PNCR since 1957 has created the illusion that it is this political crisis which accounts for Guyana’s relative underdevelopment. Little consideration is given to the notion that what has hampered our development is not so much how power should be shared, but rather, how the economy should be organised.
The period of 1964-1968 saw Guyana practice a free-market system. The commanding heights of the economy were still in the hands of foreign multinational corporations. Foreign investment flowed. The United States was keen to prop up the coalition and gifted the government a new highway from Soesdyke to Linden.
The Black Power uprising in 1968 in Jamaica led by Dr. Walter Rodney failed to expose the limitations of the prevailing model of development to bring meaningful improvements to the lives of the masses. It made the mistake, often repeated afterwards, that the organisation of power relations was necessary to bring about the desired change. This has been a terminal fault line of Pan Africanism.
Burnham panicked after the problems faced by Eric Williams in Trinidad and Tobago, not long after Rodney was expelled from Jamaica. Burnham sought to avoid becoming a victim of any emergent movement by radicalising his politics. He moved from being an opportunistic pragmatist to a disciple of socialism. His nationalization of the bauxite and sugar industries were done out of desperation in the hope that he could redistribute wealth more rapidly under State control.
The cooperative socialist experiment, which he launched was a bogus attempt to giving power to the people. In addition, Rodney himself would expose Burnham as a fraud. Burnham brought almost 80% of the economy under state control.
The consequences were devastating. What Venezuela is experiencing today, Guyana endured far worse under Burnham. The nation was impoverished because the economic model adopted by the PNC was a grand failure.
Desmond Hoyte went back to the pragmatist approach. But government did not appreciate that for neo-liberalism to succeed, there had to be democracy and respect for human rights. The absence of a progressive capitalist class also handicapped the development of a market economy under Hoyte.
It was left to the PPPC to do so. However, buried down in external debt and tormented by post-election protests, the PPPC found it difficult to achieve the sort of improvements, which it thought was possible. It was saddled with a private sector, which wanted to make money in Guyana to finance lavish lifestyles overseas.
Under the neo-liberal policies of both Hoyte and Jagdeo, the rich got richer and the gap between them and the poor was widened. The neo-liberal model has proven ineffective in reducing inequality, and no one needed the PPPC or the PNCR to tell them that. The experience of neo-liberalism since the end of the Cold War has been a widening of the gap between rich and poor.
Guyana continues under the APNU+AFC to pursue a flawed neo-liberal economic model. Oil or no oil, the neo-liberal model is not going to work in Guyana. It will only increase inequality.
APNU+AFC is not radical enough to change course. It does not have an economic solution to the problem of Guyana. The supporters of both parties have been deluded into believing that it is politics of Guyana rather than the failure to find a suitable economic plan which is the cause of Guyana’s backwardness.
APNU+AFC does not have the answers to Guyana problems. The economic thinking is too myopic. If neo-liberalism is the chosen path, then what is needed are leaders who are less risk averse, willing to take big chances and endure some market failures for the sake of huge successes. What Guyana needs are leaders who can think big economically.
Sadly, the main debates are about how power should be shared. Most people assume that once the two main political parties can set aside their differences the country’s problems will vanish.
Everyone has a political solution. No one seems interested in coming up with a new way of organising our economy. Everyone seems to have accepted that the neo-liberal way is the sure path to progress, only if we can get our politics right. They are dead wrong.
It is the economic organization of society, which needs remedying. The fact that both neo-liberalism and socialism have failed does not mean that there is no alternative.
What Guyana needs are economic thinkers. Because the problem we face is more about economics than political.

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