Knee on democracy’s neck

Jun 08, 2020 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Walter Rodney, who was assassinated 40 years ago, never underestimated the importance of race. He appreciated how race could transcend class and how it could be easily manipulated by the political and economic elites to divide the working class.
Walter Rodney was a Marxist. He, however, did not commit the cardinal sin of so many other Marxists who treated race as subsidiary and secondary to class.
According to Alex Dupuy (Race and Class in the Postcolonial Caribbean, 1996), Rodney had come around to rejecting the notion that racial contradictions were the most fundamental source of social cleavages and conflicts. Rodney, favoured, a class perspective within which racial divisions and contradictions expressed themselves.
Dupuy argues that Rodney had arrived at the conclusion that the postcolonial Caribbean petite bourgeoisies had become a new ruling class with its own interests which was opposed to those of the working classes. Rodney saw racial identification as having the potential to divide the working class. “As a class, therefore, the postcolonial petite bourgeoisie was no longer a progressive force that could be counted on to advance the cause of equality and social justice.”
Rodney cautioned against race being used to camouflage class interests. In History is a Weapon he wrote about the foolishness of race and warned both Indians and Africans about being deceived by the myth of race.  He observed that time and again this myth had been used to deceive the masses.
This is what he said:
“It is clear that we must get beyond that red herring [race] and recognise that it is intended to divide, that it is not intended in the interest of the common African and Indian people in this country. Those who manipulated in the 1960s, on both sides, were not the sufferers. There were not the losers. The losers were those who participated, who shared blows and who got blows. And they are the losers today.”
Race continues to be used to divide the working class and to camouflage the interests of the bourgeoisie and petit bourgeois. The economic elites want to keep the working class divided because a strong working class reduces economic exploitation which is at the heart of capitalism. What better way to divide the working class, in multiracial societies, than to do so using race.
Race can also be used for narrow political ends such by elements within Rodney’s party, the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA). They are betraying Rodney’s political and intellectual legacy by invoking race rather than seeing beyond the camouflage. Their actions are dividing rather than uniting the working class.  Rodney must be turning in his grave to see what some of his former colleagues have become.
The working class is divided. The two main political parties, the PNCR and the PPP in Guyana have long been seized by the petit bourgeois and economic elites. The PPPC has long been seized by the bourgeoisie. The middle-class elites within the PNCR will never allow a working class leader to take control of that party or to pursue anything other than neo-liberal policies.
A strong alliance was forged between the economic elite and certain Ministers in the APNU+AFC government. This has allowed for the APNU+AFC to become an instrument of rich and powerful business interests who have reaped rich rewards at the expense of the working poor.
Eight weeks into the lockdown and workers who live day to day have not yet received any hampers to tide them through a most difficult period. But a decorative glass front, costing millions, is being applied to the 2 billion plus dollar sanatorium on the East Coast. By the time that facility is finished the COVID-19 threat may have passed but quite a few persons would be smiling all the way to you know where.
There is no working class party in Guyana. None. A New and United Guyana (ANUG), the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and all the other small parties cannot be classified as working class parties even though they appeal to the working class for support. These parties have failed to define themselves ideologically, which is another device used by right wing and right of center parties to gain popular appeal. They can easily be subsumed by the petit bourgeois. There is one small party which has rejected neo-liberalism but it does not espouse a working class ideology.
The WPA has once again resorted to racial mischief. One of its leaders is espousing African victimhood in Guyana no doubt hoping to use it for narrow political ends. This is another attempt at dividing the working class along the lines of race rather than seeking working class solidarity across ethnicity.
The working class has no friends at present among the country’s political elites. What we have masquerading as mass-based parties are large political groupings, divided along the lines of race and which are controlled and dominated by political and economic elites.
Had the WPA been true to Rodney’s legacy, it would have retained its working class roots rather than becoming a victim of ethnic politics. It has fallen victim to the very virus which Rodney cautioned against: the division of the working class along the lines of race.
If there is any knee on any neck in Guyana, it is on the neck of democracy. Electoral democracy is being suffocated by those who are using race to camouflage their naked class interests.
Democracy is being denied in Guyana by those who want to use the working class so that the interests of their rich friends are not jeopardized. And unfortunately, the working class is going to allow itself to be divided and continue to be the losers.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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