Applying Marxist methodology to Guyana

May 07, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – One of the problems young PPP leaders had during the anti-dictatorship years from 1970 onwards, was their too rigid application of Karl Marx’s categories to the Third World. Marx lived in the 19th century where he studied industrial Europe. He did not apply his concepts to the underdeveloped Third World (TW).
The major contribution of Vladimir Lenin, the main actor in the 1917 Russian revolution was his brilliant application of Marx to parts of Europe that were less industrialised. Perhaps the seminal re-designation of Marx’s philosophy was the great Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci.
After the USA became a post-modern capitalist juggernaut after 1945, Gramsci’s methodology with his concept of cultural hegemony became more applicable in understanding class domination. The colonial TW did not resemble Europe. The major difference was the TW classes were weak, and so were the relations of production.
To understand the class structure of the TW, the works of Franz Fanon, CLR James and the school of Dependency Theorists, including our own Clive Thomas, the Pakistani scholar, Hamza Alavi, Palestinian thinker, Edward Said, among others, will prove more efficacious than Marx’s, though Marx remains the unmatched icon for introducing dialectical class struggle to understand the nature of capitalism.
This column here is a correction to a whole page letter in the Kaieteur News of April 27, 2022 titled, “The class struggle between Guyanese and Trinidadians” by one of the longstanding hierarchical leaders of the PPP, Clement Rohee. Rohee’s piece needs to be corrected because there are too many misunderstandings of the nature of class structure in Guyana and young scholars need to be offered a countervailing analysis.
I cannot elaborate on all of the flaws of Rohee’s analysis so I will select what I consider as important. (1) – Rohee confuses, in the Guyanese context, the middle class (MC) and the petty bourgeoisie (PB). There are two distinct classes that have almost nothing in common except at the beginning of the 1960s when the PB entered politics through the United Force, the MC embraced it for anti-Jagan reasons. The MC is more of a cultural (not cultured), intellectual class. The PB is a moneyed, propertied class.
Since the demise of the United Force, that section of the PB which consisted of local Portuguese and foreign Whites are gone forever from local politics. The old petty bourgeoisie that consisted of Indians and the new petty bourgeoisie that is mostly Indians that emerged from the Economic Recovery Programme of President Desmond Hoyte are not interested in formal politics.
They are supportive of the PPP for four survivalist reasons. One, is the riots in the sixties made them anti-PNC and sympathetic to the PPP. Secondly, the totalitarian nature of the PNC administration from 1968 to 1988 completely alienated the Indian PB so by the time President Hoyte began to court them, their Freudianism had become absolute.
Thirdly, they felt the period 1992 to 2015 was the justified rise of the PPP that Cheddi Jagan was long denied. The various PPP presidents did accommodate them thus, they felt comfortable with PPP leaders. Fourthly, the PNC’s return to power was viewed with massive suspicion by the PB. The final nail was the five months of rigging.
Space is running out but before I go to the huge political mistake of Rohee, it needs to be noted that his discussion left out the birth of an Indian nouveau riche class during the Hoyte residency which does not overlap with the traditional PB and the emergent PB under Hoyte that took roots under the different PPP presidents. This class has characteristics that cannot be explained using Marxist analysis.
So we come to (2) – Hoyte and the “Putagee Mafia.” Rohee said that Mr. Hoyte’s use of that derogatory term was an attack on the Portuguese business community. This is simply untrue and is an alternative fact. There is absolutely no factual foundation in Rohee’s statement.
By the time Hoyte made his outburst in 1991, he was on very good terms with the few Portuguese businessmen who since 1970 had stayed out of politics. It was Mr. Hoyte who permitted two eminent members of the Portuguese community –David DeCaires and Miles Fitzpatrick – to start the Stabroek News in 1986.
In an emotional outburst in Linden, President Hoyte used the term to refer to DeCaires and Fitzpatrick and Father Andrew Morrison, the Editor of the Catholic Standard. Please see my column, entitled, “The Fall of the Robb Street Empire” of January 17, 2007. Both papers were critical of Mr. Hoyte’s refusal to call the general election in 1990 when it was due. There is no statement or policy from Mr. Hoyte during his presidency that was directed against the Portuguese business community.
(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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