Tag: politics

The Media and the Construction of Reality

The original philosophical enterprise, as it is outlined in Plato’s philosophy, and as such has been handed down in the tradition, seeks to distinguish between reality and appearance.  S. Morris Engel puts it this way

“….the leading and dominant idea round which all philosophy turns is this insight regarding the existence of two worlds – the world of Reality and the world of Appearance, the world as it is in itself and the world as it appears to us.”

The philosophical path leads from opinion, which has as its object, shadows and images, through belief, to knowledge, which deals with the intelligible realm of forms.  In the simile of the cave, Plato paints a picture of prisoners chained in a cave, who can see only the images and shadows of objects, and the ascent into the light of the sun where true reality is known.  Seen in this way, philosophy is fundamentally concerned with truth as distinguished from illusion.  Indeed, according to Plato, the true philosophers are “Those who love to see the truth.” It is this love of truth that leads the philosopher to seek knowledge rather than be satisfied with opinion or belief, through the process of dialectic which is “…the procedure which proceeds by the destruction of assumptions to the very first principle so as to give itself a firm base.”

            In the original philosophical enterprise, this process of acquiring truth, of gaining knowledge of reality, is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, and involves the acquiring of virtue, that is, self-control, courage, justice, and wisdom.  These virtues are intimately tied up with the pursuit of truth and knowledge of reality.  Without them, the philosopher will make no progress along the path towards knowledge of reality.

            This process of acquiring knowledge or reality is therefore accomplished through education which is the turning of the mind “…away from the world of change until its eye can bear to look straight at reality, and the brightest of all realities which is what we call the good.”

            Education begins from an early age and involves a censorship on the type of stories with which children are presented, so that the “…first stories they hear shall aim at encouraging the highest excellence of character.”5 Censorship aims at carefully controlling the type of information presented, with a view to controlling the type of information presented, with a view to nurturing the right beliefs, particularly about good and evil.  Education culminates in dialectic, which makes it possible to ascend to first principles, and eventually to the idea of the Good.

            Philosophy was concerned therefore with truth, with formulating true knowledge of reality from the information that is presented to us.  What does this concern with true reality translate to in contemporary terms?  That is, to what does the contemporary interpretation of the on-going philosophical quest lead?  What do the Platonic concerns translate to, and what does the concern for truth mean in contemporary society?  For philosophy can be seen essentially, from this point of view, as the search for truth about reality.

            What do we mean when we speak about reality?  Perhaps the most appropriate way of looking at the question is in terms of an information model.  Information is presented to an observer, and this information is processed and organized, hypotheses and theories are formulated about the nature of the information.  It may be about physical objects, social or psychological realities.

            S.I. Hayakawa speaks about two realities – verbal reality and extensional reality.  In “Language in Action,” Hayakawa states,

“It is through reports, then, and through reports of reports, that we receive most knowledge about government, about what is happening in Korea, about what picture is showing at the downtown theatre – in fact, about anything that we do not know through direct experience.”

Hayakawa distinguishes between a verbal world, which is knowledge obtained about the world through words, and an extensional world, which is knowledge acquired through direct experience.

            Contemporary society is termed an information society, because of the so-called information revolution, the immense increase in the ability to gather information and the technological means to process this information.  As such, what Hayakawa would call the verbal world has increased tremendously as compared with the extensional world.  Our world is thus very different (in terms of the information we receive) than ancient Greek society. Marshall McLuhan examined the difference in the conception of our own reality, with respect to the media through which we receive information.  The tremendous increase in information alone, however, is sufficient to ensure that the way we deal with reality is different.  In our contemporary society, verbal and visual reports are very much utilized than direct experience in providing us with information about reality.  To a great extent, we may say, information is reality.

            If information is so important is contemporary society, then the means by which information is disseminated is also important.  The mass media fills the role of disseminating much of the information in society.  It is through the media therefore, that our conception of reality is shaped to a great extent.  Our reality is constructed in terms of “a global village” rather than in terms of the narrow domain of extensional information that must have been so significant in shaping reality in the ancient Greek city-states.  Social events are measured against the background of global events; hence, they acquire meaningfulness from the perspective of this larger domain.  McLuhan’s ideas about the “global village” are very relevant here.  Our view of reality is shaped not merely by our experiential field but more so by our “verbal’ field.  With the arrival of satellite television, an intricate system of inter-connected flow of information has been made possible.  The debate over the consequences of this information is disseminated becomes a crucial factor in determining the nature of that information and the intended or unintended effects of that information.

            The information age, the sophisticated and powerful telecommunications technology, the one-way flow of information, are all responsible for the substantially novel way in which our reality is shaped.  Schiller has said that the American imperial structure depends on “…a marriage of economics and electronics which substitutes in part, thought not entirely, for the earlier ‘blood and iron” foundations of more primitive conquerors.”

            Our reality, that is, how we view the world, is shaped by powerful and omnipresent media, fed by telecommunication technology.  When events occur, therefore, we view these events in the light of whatever information we have received about these events.  We make judgments on the basis of this information.  The science of information manipulation, semantic juggling, has become crucial to World Empire.  The importance of the media in this process cannot be overstated.  The media, indeed, are the means of transmitting information on a daily basis, the means of creating our reality.

            Conventional wisdom about the media is quite widespread.  There is a common perception that the purpose of the media is to inform and entertain, and is quite objective in its function.  The free press is considered essential to democracy, for if democracy is government by the people, then decisions made must be informed decisions, and the media play the role of providing objective, impartial information about events, etc.  The intention, therefore, of information is simply to inform, or so it is claimed.

            Our analysis of language and communication in the previous chapter discloses that the purpose of any communication can be traced to a pure purpose, an objective which is not the sub-objective of any other.

            The matter is not as simple as conventional wisdom would have it.  Schiller and others, for example, have associated the media with the propagation of the American empire, and empire not primarily based on “blood and iron” but on “economics and electronics.”  We have to investigate the motives that lie behind the “transmission of information,” and it will be quite naïve to think that the only motive is simply “to inform.”  “To inform” is not a pure motive.  As Hayakawa says, “How then can we ever give an impartial report?  The answer is, of course, that we cannot attain complete impartiality while we use the language of everyday life,” and furthermore, “…. Even if explicit judgments are kept out of one’s writing, implied judgments will get in.”

            Rather than merely informing and entertaining, the media appear to be concerned primarily with justifying and legitimizing beliefs, attitudes and actions.  Information, therefore, must be seen within this context.  The juxtapositioning of facts, the timing of news releases, slanting of reports, the use of particular “loaded” words and phrases – all these play a part in the process of justification and legitimization.  It should be remembered, however, that the effectiveness of the media depends largely on how credible it is perceived to be.  The acquiring of credibility is therefore a pre-requisite to media effectiveness.  Credibility is achieved through a process of gradualism, of moderateness, of finesse; the intention of the information must be carefully disguised.  Truth and good intentions must therefore be mixed with falsehood and deceit.  The greater effectiveness of the American media over the Russian media, for example, is precisely because of its greater finesse, its lack of extremism.  It is this mixture of truth and falsehood that is in fact, ironically, so effective.  To be effective, therefore, the media has to go through that process of establishing credibility and must continue with a certain amount of credibility.

            The idea of “freedom of the press” is a particular effective tool for propagating believes and values.  Schiller again says,

“Freedom of speech, however, interpreted to signify the unrestrained opportunity for the dissemination of messages by the American mass media in the world arena, has developed in the years since Truman spoke as an equally significant support in the American imperial arch.”

And furthermore,

“…the championing of freedom of communication (or speech) most often had as an indirect benefit, the global extension of American commerce and its value system.”

The tremendous imbalance of information flow between the western world and the Third World means that ‘freedom of the press” is merely a means of justifying the spread of particular beliefs and values.

            With the development of telecommunications technology, and the popularization of democratic ideals, direct communication with the masses was seen as an important aspect of foreign policy.  As the committee on Foreign Affairs Report No. 2 on “winning the Cold War the U.S. Ideological Offensive” states:

“… the recent increase in influence of the masses of people over governments, together with greater awareness on the part of leaders of the aspiration of people, brought about by the concurrent revolutions of the 20th century, has created a new dimension for foreign policy operation. Certain foreign policy objectives can be pursued by dealing directly with the people of foreign countries, rather than with their governments.  Through the use of modern instruments and techniques of communications, it is  possible today to reach large or influential segments of  national populations – to inform them to influence their attitudes, and at times perhaps to motivate them to a particular course of action.  These groups in turn are capable of exerting noticeable, even decisive pressures on their government.”

            The events occurring throughout the world today demonstrate the success of this course of action, and the immense part that the media and telecommunications in general, plays in shaping contemporary history.  In the report of the Intra-Governmental Committee on International Telecommunications 1966, it is stated “…telecommunications has progressed from being an essential support to our international activities, to being also an instrument of foreign policy.”

            These reports from the 1960’s were presented at a time when telecommunication technology was still in a relatively undeveloped stage;  advances in technology have made the role of telecommunications even more significant, as Schiller says, “telecommunications are today the most dynamic forces affecting not only the ideological but the material bases of society.”  

Truth and Power: Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Mahatma Gandhi is a revolutionary thinker. Underneath the simple words and phrases that appear almost as platitudes, there is a meaning, a philosophy that challenges modern western thought at its core. This book is written as an attempt to uncover the meanings hidden in those simple words and phrases.

Gandhi used the term satygraha to name the strategy and philosophy he was using. The word satygraha literally translated means ‘truth-force’. On September 11, 1906, in South Africa, Gandhi explained his use of the term. “None of us knew what name to give to our movement. I then used the term passive resistance in describing it. I did not quite understand the implications of passive resistance as I called it. I only knew that some new principle had come into being. As the struggle advanced, the phrase passive resistance gave rise to confusion and it appeared shameful to permit this great struggle to be known only by an English name. Again, that foreign phrase could hardly pass as current coin among the community. A small prize was therefore announced in Indian Opinion to be awarded to the reader who invented the best designation for our struggle. We thus received a number of suggestions. The meaning of the struggle had been then fully discussed in Indian Opinion and the competitors for the prize had fairly sufficient material to serve as a basis for their exploration. Shri Maganlal Gandhi was one of the competitors and he suggested the word Sadagraha, meaning firmness in a good cause. I liked the word, but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to Satyagraha. Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth.”

The question is why did he use this term. Was there, in Gandhi’s mind, a power associated with truth, a power that could bring down the British Empire? What is the relationship of truth to power? Nietzsche, arguably one of modern Europe’s most influential philosophers, has examined this relationship quite rigorously. Gandhi, therefore, may be compared with Nietzsche who is perhaps the most radical of modern western thinkers. They are, however, on opposite sides of the fence. Gandhi champions the “moral order” of the universe; Nietzsche dismisses it. Indeed the gist of this book is that Gandhi presupposes a cosmic spiritual struggle between good and evil, a struggle that takes place in the minds of human beings. It is a struggle between two opposing philosophies, two ideas, two world-views – a struggle between light and darkness, truth and untruth.

Nietzsche thinks that truth is merely the intellectualization of the ‘will to power’; he has been considered the foremost ‘philosopher of suspicion’. In comparing these two thinkers, it can be claimed that Gandhi turns the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ unleashed by Nietzsche on morality, on its head. This is the key to understanding Gandhi and this is what makes him probably the most revolutionary of thinkers. Whereas Nietzsche excludes himself from the probing light of the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, Gandhi subjects every modern position to this suspicion.

Nietzsche’s ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ had subjected every post-Socratic philosophical position, every philosophical foundation, and all morality, to skepsis. His historical genealogy sought the genesis of morality in the ‘will to power’. All ascetic ideals were attempts to weaken and to destroy the affirmation of life. Nietzsche points to a struggle between life affirming forces and life denying forces, a struggle that occurs throughout history and in the history of thought.

For Nietzsche what is life affirming is all that enhances the ‘will to power’. For Gandhi, life affirmation is the discovery of the self as distinct from the ego. The self is the source of power; this is, of course, the classical Indian philosophical position. Nietzsche and Gandhi thus stand on opposite sides of what constitutes power. For Nietzsche, the ‘will to power’ is constrained and negated by conventional morality. What passes for morality, from this point of view, is a means of weakening the strong. For Gandhi, on the other hand, finding the true self means mastering the ego, and this is the source of power. These opposing viewpoints stem from different ideas about what is real and about what is true, and about the relationship of truth to power.

It is necessary to understand the differing ideas of how truth is related to power in both thinkers. For Nietzsche truth is related to power in the sense that every truth is an attempt of the ‘will to power’ to assert itself. For Gandhi, the self, the atman, is the source of power and of truth. What distinguishes these positions is the position of the will in the search for truth. Nietzsche locates the will prior to knowledge and in a sense directing knowledge, Gandhi thinks that the ego must be “reduced to a cipher” (i.e., the will must be ‘bracketed’, to use a phenomenological term) and truth is found only when the will is removed from the act of knowing, that is, when the self is found. The relationship of truth to power is crucial, therefore in understanding Gandhi’s philosophy.

Michel Foucault, who has been influenced by Nietzsche, has commented extensively on the relationship between truth and power. In his essay “The Subject and Power”, Foucault speaking about the effect of a ‘form of power’ says, “This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity: imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him.”1 Truth is intimately connected with power; it gives power its unique intentionality. Power relations “…are imbued, through and through, with calculation…”2Every truth has as its objective – power. In this, Foucault is deeply influenced by Nietzsche. “Nietzsche’s genealogy of the way power uses the illusion of meaning to further self gave him good reason to be critical of hermeneutics both in its form of commentary on everyday life, and in its related form of deep exegesis of what everyday practices cover up.”3

In opposing hermeneutics then, specifically Heideggerian hermeneutics (for Heideggerian hermeneutics results in a critique of the will to power and its relation to truth), Foucault returns to Nietzsche. Heidegger’s philosophy, his attempt to place ‘Being’ beyond the ‘will to power’, is itself subject to Nietzschean hermeneutic suspicion. Has Nietzsche then triumphed over Heidegger, and what does such an overcoming mean? Does it mean that Nietzsche is truly the end point of Western philosophy and that the connection between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ is the final word? Is every ‘truth’ connected to a ‘will to power’, and what is the relationship of all of this to Gandhi’s thought? Does it mean that Gandhi was a naïve premodern thinker unacquainted with the thrust of Nietzsche’s critique?

The author proposes that in fact Gandhi’s thought is a fundamental critique of Nietzsche’s position, in so far as Nietzsche’s thought permeates all postmodern western philosophy. Gandhi’s philosophy is in fact a critique of modern and post-modern western philosophy, in so far as it critiques the fundamental relationship between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ made by Nietzsche. Such an interpretation of Gandhi’s thought attempts to make explicit what is implicit in Gandhi’s philosophy.

In the author’s view, Gandhi had grasped the essence of modern western philosophy. He realized that modern western philosophy denied that there was any objective truth, and instead held that all views about reality originated from particular perspectives (every truth is related to the will to power). To this perspectivism he proposed that there is truth; that truth is being and being is truth. What Gandhi realized was that the view that there was no objective truth was a view that ultimately legitimized and rationalized the western ideology of imperialism and exploitation and was an effective method to silence its conscience. If objective reality, the thing-in-itself, either did not exist or was unknowable, then reality could be subjectively interpreted according to one’s agenda. To Gandhi therefore the view that ‘truth’ was linked to the “will to power” was itself a view created by the ‘will to power’, so whereas Nietzsche would insist that the link between any ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’ was a fact, itself the only truth, Gandhi would insist that this view linking any ‘truth’ to the ‘will to power’ was itself generated by the ‘will to power’ and would fall victim to its own logic.

This is the inexorable logic of Gandhi’s implicit critique of perspectivism and Nietzsche’s philosophy. Nietzsche himself, considered a ruthless seeker of the truth, is found to be the greatest camoflager of the truth. Nietzsche, of course, wore many masks, he pointed this out himself, so that the problem becomes which is the real Nietzsche, this is part of his strategy, to playfully put on masks and speak sometimes without a mask, so that only the discerning would understand. However, which is the real Nietzsche, and did he not deceive most of all, the “discerning”, was this not also his strategy? Gandhi would hold that all of Nietzsche was masked, particularly his ideal of the connection between ‘truth’ and the ‘will to power’.

This, to Gandhi, would be the greatest mask of all. For in putting this relationship forward, Nietzsche covers up what makes this relationship so necessary – guilt.  Nietzsche, who presents himself as this most uncompromising seeker after truth, covers up the motivating source of his ideas – namely guilt. It is the guilt of Europe caused by the conflict between its Christian values and the violence of its actual history, its merciless exploitation and oppression of the non-western world that motivates Nietzsche’s ideas. Guilt, in this sense, would be the awareness of what one has done – the consciousness of one’s actions and the implications of one’s actions. It is a sense of having done wrong and the sense of impending doom or punishment. Nietzsche considered a great psychologist, disguised the psychology of his thought, for in order to remove guilt, Nietzsche has to overthrow a whole system of thought.

For Gandhi, there is truth, and truth is precisely this kind of self-awareness – a consciousness of what one has done. Untruth arises through the covering up of this awareness, through the rationalization that suppresses this awareness. Gandhi acts therefore as a psychotherapist who aims to uncover this awareness. Once awareness of this truth is uncovered, then one has to confront one’s actions without the justifications, rationalizations, etc. This is how truth acquires its power and this is the basis of satygraha or truth-force.

It is this satygraha, this truth-force, which Nietzsche, in a sense, sets out to combat. The truth appearing within man as the ‘good’, the conscience, announces itself as a force, a power that demands a response from man. Nietzsche combats this by labeling this power as a ‘fiction’, a pious fraud. This is his grand strategy. By presenting the ‘good’ as a fiction, and all fictions as generated by the ‘will to power’ Nietzsche can now create a genealogy of this ‘fiction’ and in doing so explain it and further disempower the ‘good’.  Nietzsche thus reverses the cause and effect: firstly the cause, the ‘will to power’ then the effect, the fiction of the ‘good’.  It is not now the ‘good’ and its effect, the power of the ‘good’, or of the conscience. The inversion of the relationship between the truth, the ‘good’ and the ‘will to power’ enables Nietzsche to disempower the conscience.

However, what is there to exclude Nietzsche from being subjected to a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’? The only reason is that Nietzsche presents himself as a ruthless seeker after truth whose uncompromising pursuit of truth leads him to reveal its insubstantiality. It is his mask of integrity that puts him above suspicion, but can this be allowed? Nietzsche cannot be above suspicion – can this be why Foucault, in speaking about the hermeneutics of suspicion, claims that it “… dooms us to an endless task …?” 4

This suspicion directed towards Nietzsche would be fatal to Nietzsche’s thought since if we question the idea that all ‘truths’ are generated by the ‘will to power’ and claim that this idea is itself generated by the ‘will to power’, then Nietzsche appears as the great deceiver, one whose greatest truth is itself a deception. He appears as one who attempts to cover truth itself. Thus, when Gandhi insists that there is truth, he claims all of this.  Nietzsche’s thought and Gandhi’s thought cannot coexist. Nietzsche has a genealogy of morals wherein he examines the psychology that lies behind the adoption of particular moralities. Gandhi can be said, on the other hand, to have a genealogy of immorality and this understanding of Gandhi’s genealogy can be used to critique Nietzsche’s thought.

At the basis of Western ‘materialism’, Gandhi’s term for the western rejection of the idea of ‘the good’, Gandhi sees desire – desire in particular for wealth and power.  Gandhi sees this desire for wealth and power as coming in conflict with Christian values, the value system that had shaped medieval western civilization. Beneath the dialectical jousting between modern western thought and Christian thought, Gandhi sees the real motive as the desire for wealth and power. The entire system of modern western ‘materialism’ is therefore driven by the desire for wealth and power. The claim of being objective, of being motivated by the desire for truth, Gandhi would deny as being merely the façade behind which stood the desire for wealth and power.

Gandhi is not claiming here that every stated intention is a façade, behind which lies a hidden deeper motivation, he is not subscribing to a universal hermeneutics of suspicion.  Rather he examines each case as a particular instance. It could be that a stated intention is not a façade but describes things as they are. Each instance is particular and must be judged by ‘the fruit that it bears.’

In the case of the West, Gandhi finds that the fruit of western materialism is western exploitation of the rest of the world.  Modern western philosophy, its denial of ‘the good’, its rejection of Christianity, is a consequence of the ulterior desire for wealth and power.  Gandhi sees this motive behind the entire history of modern western thought.  This is what modern western civilization really is – a desire for wealth and power that results in the rejection of true Christianity.

Gandhi would consider Nietzsche thought as the culmination of this whole process – as an attempt to justify and legitimize modern European civilization in the face of the critique that arises essentially from Christianity.  This critique sets up the ‘good’ as that which determines the validity of any action.  A sense of guilt is the consequence of transgressing the moral order.  Even though the whole idea of the ‘good’ and of a moral order had been challenged (sometimes implicitly, sometimes covertly) since Descartes, its power – to paralyze action, to infuse action with doubt, to infuse life with death – still lingered on.  Nietzsche attempts to exorcise this power of the lingering idea of the ‘good’.

‘God is dead’ he intones. The ghost of the ‘good’ must be laid to rest; it must be buried so that no reminder may linger on. The effect of this lingering sense of the ‘good’ is nothing other than a sense of guilt. Nietzsche philosophy can be seen there as an attempt to exorcise this sense of guilt: guilt occasioned by the idea of the ‘good’, manifested internally by the conscience. Nietzsche attempts to exorcise this sense of guilt by explaining it away, by tracing the genealogy of morality. What Gandhi does is to analyze the attempt to explain away the sense of guilt. Gandhi attempts to trace the genealogy of immorality so that Nietzsche’s hermeneutic of suspicion is turned against itself. 

In doing so, Gandhi is saying that the conscience exists, it is an existential fact and the attempt to explain it away is itself generated by ulterior motives. The conscience, the moral order manifested within man, acts as an obstacle to the actualization of one’s desires, of one’s instinct to the ‘will to power’. 

There is a link between this attempt to disempower the conscience and modern civilization – this is Gandhi’s thesis. Modern civilization has disempowered the voice of conscience in order to accomplish its ends. The means of this disempowerment is to connect all morality to the ‘will to power’ so that the hermeneutic of suspicion is turned against morality, ethics, spirituality and the conscience. The way is made clear, in this manner, for a philosophy of ‘hardness’5,of elitism, where the man of integrity is he who denies this ‘falsity’ of moral pretension, this claim of acting on behalf of compassionate motives.  The truthful man is thus he who acts without this moral pretension, he who acts with ‘hardness’.

This philosophy justifies and legitimizes imperialism, colonialism, and the exploitation of the ‘weaker races’ by modern western civilization. It is a justification of the imperial, of pre-Christian Roman imperialism. It is a philosophy that allowed modern civilization to reject its Christian aspects of love, compassion, and to return to its older imperial and elitist nature, a tendency initiated by Machiavelli in modern times.

Gandhi says therefore, there is truth; truth is the bedrock of his worldview. Man’s relationship to truth is one of responsiveness, one of being responsive to truth as revelation. The subjectivism toward reality is checked, man does not create truth, he must be responsive to it; he must allow it to be revealed through him. Yet at the same time, the danger of distorting truth to serve one’s own purpose is not overlooked. This awareness produces the very criterion for truth – ‘one must reduce oneself to a cypher’6, one must be continually aware of one’s motives; one must be continually self-conscious and self-examining.

‘Hardness’ for Nietzsche becomes the mark, the sign, of nobility and integrity.  ‘Hardness’ means, within the Nietzschean perspective, the attitude of overcoming the temptation to act with moral deception; indeed, for Nietzsche, all acts of compassion arise out of self-deception, that is, out of a sense of moral righteousness that is merely a cover for the ‘will to power’. The ‘will to power’ disguised appears as compassion, etc., whilst the ‘will to power’, uncamouflaged and true to itself, appears as ‘hardness’. Since all actions, all moral positions are ultimately linked to the ‘will to power’, then the ‘will to power’ undisguised, uncamouflaged is truth.  ‘Hardness’ from this Nietschean perspective is linked to truth. Thus, modern civilization justifies itself.

Gandhi by claiming, implicitly though it may be, that this connection between all positions and the ‘will to power’ is itself a product of the ‘will to power’, cuts the ground from below the entire Nietzschean perspective. Truth, therefore, becomes the central point of Gandhi’s philosophy – there is truth, and there is a power associated with truth.  Such an idea delinks the statement, or idea proposed, from the motive behind that idea.  The whole problem of doubt, introduced by Descartes into modern philosophy in its most radical form, de-links and disconnects man from any reality out there, and thus makes any statement about such a reality ultimately a matter of motives. Nietzsche’s’ philosophy is a direct consequence of the Cartesian epistemology. Gandhi’s challenges it by a more fundamental hermeneutic of suspicion and, having done this, clears the way for the idea of the existence of objective truth.

Gandhi challenges therefore the whole tradition of the subjectivism of truth, which began with Descartes. He does this by unleashing a hermeneutic of suspicion directed against western philosophy, wherein the supposedly unbiased objective search for truth is linked to an attempt to overthrow the conscience and justify actions that are exploitatitive. He is the anti-Nietzsche. Thus, Gandhi enables Christianity, Platonism and philosophies of the ‘good’, to counterattack the Nietzschean offensive; he provides a powerful defense of the legitimacy of non-violence, ahimsa and ethical values.

At the same time, he seems to be saying that the classical values of the West, its Christian values, and what Gandhi calls ‘ethical religion’ (meaning the essential aspects of all religions), have been rejected by the West and have found a new home in the oppressed Third World. What is ironic about Gandhi’s position is that in rejecting ‘modern civilization’, he is in fact championing classical western values and the idea of universal ethical values, for these find resonance in the ancient way. The modern West, according to Gandhi, has rejected these values.

This, therefore, is the dynamic that we must become aware of in understanding Gandhi’s ideas. One the one hand the West, after thousands of years of being the propagator of classical western values, Christian values and universal ethical values (the essential aspects of which Gandhi claims underlie all religion), appeared to have rejected them, whilst the oppressed Third World has become a home to these values. These values coincide with those of the ancient traditions by their emphasis on the ethical, the moral and the spiritual. The torch of civilization itself is being passed on to the oppressed peoples of the world. Gandhi sees his role as reconciling the ancient traditions to the coming of classical western and Christian values and the advent of what he calls ‘ethical religion’.

To accomplish this, Gandhi must reinterpret and reform the ancient tradition; he must uncover its pure form from the slag of centuries of deterioration and decay. In doing so, Gandhi prepares the tradition for its encounter with the West. Gandhi reforms through reinterpretation, one that Gandhi considers to be closer to the original interpretation.

Truth and Power: Gandhi’s Political Philosophy

Darryl Naranjit, Truth and Power

Gandhi’s diagnosis of the disease of modern civilization concludes, therefore, that it was because of the covering over of reality, which was in truth governed by the moral law, and the creation of a world grounded in untruth and deception, that the oppressed were suffering at the hands of the oppressors. In a world grounded in truth, men would see the ‘ordered moral government of the universe’, and would see behind it the hands of a just God. Good would triumph over evil in such a world. Violence, oppression, injustice appeared to be ascendant because of the pervasiveness of untruth. The solution that Gandhi proposed was to oppose the untruth with truth – satygraha, the force of truth.

Truth, when insisted upon, when proclaimed, overcomes untruth and ignorance as light dispels darkness. According to Gandhi, the web of maya, the deceptive power of maya, must be fought by proclaiming and insisting upon the truth. Non-being persists when the truth is not known, or when falsehood is deliberately propagated. Since untruth is ultimately violence and destruction, it can persist only when it takes the form of the Good, when disguised as the Good, otherwise its destructive nature would be immediately seen.

India, according to Gandhi, had fallen into the clutches of imperialism because India had lost sight of its ancient wisdom – the importance of the Good, the unity of all Being, the ‘ordered moral government of the universe’, and had become morally decrepit.  Untouchability and other social evils had dulled its moral sensibility. It was, therefore, prey to modern western civilization, which under the guise of the ‘mission of civilization’, exploited its people. The ‘mission of civilization’, the banner under which the West exploited the ‘dark races’, was a veneer which hid the real motives of the West – love of wealth and power. Thus the British, Gandhi believed, could not be driven out of India through violence, but only through uncovering the reality behind the facade of its ‘mission of civilization’ by insisting on truth – satygraha. The truth would set you free, Gandhi believed.

For Gandhi, one must prepare oneself if one is to realize the truth. He compares it to solving mathematical problems, “No person, even if grown up in age, is qualified to understand difficult problems in Algebra without preparation,” and he says further, “Tapascharya is certainly necessary for the realization of truth.” The satyagrahi must first insist on the purity of his motives. He must realize swaraj in his own life – self-rule, literally – where he is in control of his own desires. He must practice ahimsa, not only in the negative sense of non-violence, but also in the positive sense of love for all existing creatures. Only through a stringent process of self-transformation is the satyagrahi ready to insist on truth from his opponents.

The function of the satyagrahi is to transform the world, by being the spokesperson for truth, by being the conscience of the world. The satyagrahi, by insisting on truth, by speaking on behalf of truth, becomes the agent of truth, the point where the light of truth shines forth to dispel ignorance and untruth. His duty is to educate the people about the truth. The satyagrahi, however, is also a political being who must organize the people to achieve political goals. The satyagrahi must have absolute faith in God, for faith in God is the antidote to violence. The satyagrahi must be convinced that, by the will of God, good triumphs over evil. He must see the ‘ordered moral government of the universe’.  The satygrahi must also be able to communicate this absolute faith to the people, so that they too believe in the eventual triumph of good over evil, truth over falsehood.

Gandhi thought, therefore, that modern western civilization had become entrenched throughout the world because the non-western world had fallen asleep, had become intellectually and spiritually dead. As such, the task of the satyagrahi was to awaken those who were sleeping, and quicken and resurrect their spirit. The people had to turn back to the ancient path from which they had departed. They had to be imbued with a sense of mission, since ultimately they had to construct a new civilization based on the values of love and the unity of all existence.

Gandhi embarked upon then no less a task than building a new civilization, based on ahimsa and truth, to replace modern civilization that was, in his opinion, responsible for creating an exploitative world order; an order which was designed to serve the self- interest of elites in imperialist countries. The agency for this transformation of the world was this invisible group of satygrahis, connected only through shared beliefs and ideals, who would see themselves as having the responsibility of bringing about true civilization.

This new civilization will be based upon the realization of an ‘ordered moral government of the universe’, to which human beings, in order to find liberation, should have faith in. In submitting to the moral order, man would find true happiness. This moral order operates in all spheres of human activity, as the governing principle that guides man in his economic, social and political activities. When human beings are guided by the moral order then the world is aligned to its true purpose and it develops according to God’s will.  When human beings transgress this moral order then the world loses its way and becomes a violent, meaningless and unhappy place.

In order to bring the world back on course, the satyagrahi must know, firstly, that it is untruth, maya or ignorance that brings about this disorder. The satygrahi must, therefore, insist upon truth and take upon himself/herself the task of restoring the moral order. To do this he must awaken the people and help build the true world civilization through his sacrifice and toil.

Guyana: Ideological Opportunism

  1. The IMF/World Bank Intervention into Guyana

Guyana has had a long and fitful relationship with the IMF and World Bank. In the 1960s, Guyana was hard pressed to obtain foreign aid. Jagan wrote, “Actually, US foreign aid has dropped from US$3.5 billion during the Kennedy period to $1.4 billion in 1969” (Jagan 1968). Aid had been used historically in an attempt to shape the politics of Guyana. In fact aid was used both as a carrot and a stick in an attempt to defang Marxist economics. In the late 1970’s when Burnham was under threat by the WPF, aid was forthcoming in the form of an IMF loan. According to Premdas:

Significantly, the year 1978 was also the year when the Guyana (sic) received a significant loan from the International Monetary Fund. Changes in the U.S.-Guyana relations became identifiable when the U.S. extended a sum of US $24.7 million to Guyana in 1978. In the same year, the IMF agreed to provide the PNC government with a standby loan of US$135 million…From practically losing all U.S. aid by 1975, Guyana, according to U.S. Ambassador George Roberts, was receiving the highest per capita aid from the United States during 1978-1979…The Washington Post noted that the sudden massive aid to the Burnham regime as of 1978-1979 onwards, was part of ‘U.S. efforts to check the spread of leftist influences in the Caribbean’ (Premdas 1995, 131-132).

By the 1980s, however, with the advent of the Reagan administration in the United States, a new philosophy guided the distribution of foreign aid. The Washington Consensus tied aid to the implementation of Structural Adjustment policies. These adjustment policies began in the early 1980s under Burnham and necessitated a reduction in the size of the Public Sector, something that affected supporters of the PNC more than those of the PPP. Burnham led a campaign against the IMF because of the layoffs in the Public Sector and by 1985 Guyana became the first country to be refused access to IMF funds (Ferguson 1995, 54-55). With the death of Burnham in 1985 and the accession of Desmond Hoyte to the Presidency, a new era in relations between Guyana and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) began. Tyrone Ferguson gives a comprehensive account of the effect of Structural Adjustment (SA) on Guyana. He makes clear the connection between Structural Adjustment and Good Governance under the Hoyte administration.

According to Ferguson, Hoyte was open to instituting economic reform to the socialist model that Burnham had established. “The new administration began in 1986 in unmistakable terms to define a different vision of political economy by articulating its commitment to a project of market-oriented development and the imperative of normalizing relations with the Western financial community” (Ferguson 1995, 56). Ferguson also points to the association of Structural Adjustment with good governance and the impact of its requirements on the politics. Ferguson writes, “a fundamental element of good governance is the implantation of political democratization in those adjusting countries which are, in fact, distinguished by the absence of a tradition of competitive electoral politics, perceived and deemed to be free and fair by domestic participants in, and external observers of, the process” (Ferguson 1995, 204).The requirement for free and fair elections was held out to the opposition PPP as an incentive so that they would become part of the Adjustment process. The opposition forces and the unions had opposed the implementation of SA. The opposition, feeling that the PNC was continuing Burnham’s opportunistic policies, was distrustful of Hoyte’s intentions. SA loans seemed to be just another lifeline thrown out to the PNC to perpetuate their rule. The idea of good governance, however, held out some promise. SA Loans were tied to free and fair elections. Ifill states:

From the early months in 1990, a large number of external actors (both governmental and nongovernmental) brought their individual and combined influence and pressure to bear on the Hoyte regime to force extensive electoral reform. They all publicly and unmistakably alluded to the connection between SAP and electoral democracy. The most significant and influential pressures emanated from the US authorities and culminated in the US government’s decision to discontinue financial support to the ERP in 1991, and the clear association between its resumption and conducting free and fair elections. The British and Canadian governments followed suit, linking potential aid to the holding of free and fair elections. (Ifill 2002)

Not only were SA loans dependent on free and fair elections, the opposition PPP, in order to gain the benefit of free and fair elections, had to accept the free market, SA assumptions. Ifill claims, “It is important to note that explicit support from major Western donor, in particular the US, did not occur until there were explicit statements from the political opposition, in particular Cheddi Jagan, indicating that he had moved away from his radical leftist, anti-capitalist stance and had accepted the principle of laissez-faire in economic affairs” (Ifill 2002).

Jagan was accused by the PNC of pursuing “Machiavellian politics”. Jagan himself said that he had moved away from leftist politics and had accepted free market principles. In an interview with Fred Rosen and Mario Murillo, Jagan said “Let me just say that socialism is not on the agenda in Guyana. We can speak of a period of national democracy” (Jagan 1997, NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 31:1.  Copyright 1997 by the North American Congress on Latin America). In that interview, he appeared to be saying that his Marxism was a product of the historical circumstances of Guyana, and that one should not be ideological when it comes to economic policy, but do what is best for the country, a philosophy that seems remarkably close to pragmatism. In all fairness to Jagan, at that point he could do little to oppose the IMF/World Bank policies considering the economic crisis that faced Guyana. In this sense Jagan’s turn towards free market economics resembles Michael Manley’s similar conversion.

Ferguson outlines the effect of Structural Adjustment on the exchange rate, fiscal policy, monetary policy and public sector reform among other things and he analyses the consequences on various sections of the populations. There were winners and losers in the post Adjustment Guyana. According to Ferguson, in writing about the IMF-EFF agreement in 1980 and the World Bank SAL programme of 1981 – “These two programmes gave a stronger focus to the supply-side of the economy, but within an ideological context that was concerned to reverse the existing situation of a dominant public sector in economic activities” (Ferguson 1999, 359). The consequences of rolling back the state’s activity in the economic domain “…presented the PNC government with a major dilemma” (Ferguson 1999, 360). It would be beneficial mostly to those opposed to the PNC government. Ferguson makes these observations –

The main losers from any such programme could only be the PNC’s core political support – the urban-based African group which, when sugar was taken out of the equation, provided the bulk of public sector employees… Importantly, also, private sector led growth had another significant implication of prime political import. Its beneficiaries would come primarily from ethnic groups opposed to the PNC government and more directly the East Indian group that was basically aligned with its main political opponent, the PPP. (Ferguson 1999, 360-361).

Ferguson’s observations can be brought into sharper focus – those who benefited in the society by privatization and liberalization were private sector elites, many of them being East Indian, along with Chinese and white businessmen – the latter being the very sector that both PNC and PPP had initially fought against. The political history of Guyana can be recounted as: the domination by elites, the struggle against this domination and the eventual return to precisely that domination by business elites (albeit now expanded ethnically to include numerous East Indians). The ideological change of direction can be taken, from one interpretation, to be an indication of the failure of socialism and nationalism to engender economic well being (or as Manley had put it – to bring about growth), and its replacement by free market principles. However, this study argues that a more accurate interpretation may be that the private sector led liberalization policies promoted by the IMF/World Bank have been ideologically based, and underpinned with a political agenda – the re-colonization of the Third World.  

Apart from emasculating the state and benefiting business elites, has this ideologically driven free market reform (as opposed to pragmatic reform) been beneficial to Caribbean people as a whole? Certainly in Guyana some have prospered, however, many have not. In 1993 statistics, the income of the lowest 40% of the population was 17% of the total income of Guyana; the income of the highest 10% was 32% of the Guyanese national income (2000 World Development Indicators). The gap between rich and poor is significant and increasing. The same holds for Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The elites have certainly benefitted. The middle classes are disappearing. The poor sink into deeper poverty. The cycle of ethno-politicization in Guyana continues with new winners and new losers. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – one might be tempted to say.

Guyana: Ideological Opportunism

  1. Burnham and the PNC years

Elections were again held in British Guiana in 1957. Jagan’s PPP won nine seats, Burnham’s PPP won three seats, other minor parties, the NLF and the UDP (United Democratic Party) won one seat each. The Jaganite PPP became the government and Jagan became the Minister of Trade and Industry. After the elections of 1957, the ethnic divide hardened. The Burnhamite PPP merged with the conservative UDP to form the PNC (People’s National Congress). The question can be asked – was the split engendered by racism or ideology? According to Garner, “The initial phase of ethnopoliticization in British Guiana was completed in 1956 by the splitting of the nationalist movement (at every level) into two opposing camps within which, one or the other of the two largest ethnic groups were dominant” (Garner 2008, 107). If the distinction between ‘Marxist’ Jagan and ‘socialist’ or ‘moderate’ Burnham is allowed then a case can be made that ideology was indeed a factor. However, if Burnham’s later policies were taken into account, then it is clear than the distinction between Marxist Jagan and socialist Burnham can not hold. Opportunism, in the face of British and American opposition to Cheddi Jagan’s avowed Marxism, would seem to be a more accurate explanation of Burnham’s moderation.

Burnham could be seen, from one perspective, not as a principled socialist or Marxist, but as an opportunistic politician who was not ideologically committed to a particular position but who would adopt whatever political posture that suited his political objectives. The argument could be made, however, that Burnham’s public postures should be assessed as strategic posturing. Hence the idea that Jagan was politically naïve, while Burnham was more ‘politically intelligent’ has been advanced as an explanation. Ethno-opportunism, however, if defined as a community colluding with foreign interests in pursuit of political power, seems to be a more viable explanation in the light of the distinction between word and deed. Ethno-opportunism, however, has its downside. It means that collusion with foreign interests results in a competition for approval from the colonial powers and as the PNC was to discover later – two can play at that game, particularly when the financial persuasion of the IMF/World Bank ‘Washington Consensus’ became utilized.

In the 1961 elections, there were a number of political parties competing, among them were Jagan’s PPP, Burnham’s PNC and Portuguese businessman Peter D’Aguiar’s UF (United Force).The PPP won with 20 seats, the PNC won 11 and the conservative UF won 4 seats. The period after the 1961 elections was characterized by destabilization and violence. An account of that period posted by the US Department of State on the relations between Washington and Jagan and Burnham states:

Jagan believed with good reason that Washington’s opposition was one of his main problems. While these diplomatic efforts were underway, the U.S. Government acted on a covert political plan to defeat Jagan by funneling secret financial support, campaign advice and expertise, and other assistance to the two main opposition parties, Linden Forbes Burnham’s People’s National Congress (PNC) and Peter D’Aguiar’s United Front (UF). (370) Realizing that Burnham, as the leading Afro-Guyanese politician, was Jagan’s most able and by far his most popular opponent, the U.S. Government focused its efforts on him and the PNC. (391, 414) The U.S. Government supplied anti-Jagan films and publications, cut almost all aid to British Guiana, and refused all of Jagan’s overtures for high-level meetings with U.S. officials, hoping to undercut his prestige. (US Department of State, 2005)

After the 1961 elections, the PPP introduced its austerity budget of 1962. This budget advocated a regime of progressive taxation, and a compulsory savings scheme on salaries above G$100 per month. Trade unions antagonistic to the PPP, and as St. Pierre and Garner have claimed, influenced by American trade unions (the AFL-CIO), agitated against the budget (St. Pierre 1999, Garner 2008, 139). St. Pierre writes, “Thus by February 1962, when rioting broke out, American trade union influence was well established” (St. Pierre 1999, 148). The 1962 riots escalated and ethnic violence broke out in many areas. The question uppermost in the minds of British and American officials was how to deal with this jostle for power between ‘communist’ Jagan and ‘socialist’ Burnham and their respective ethnic communal supporters. Jagan, it must be remembered, had been democratically elected in 1953, 1957 and 1961.

There was one school of thought that envisioned weaning Jagan from his communist ways; that Jagan was not a committed communist although there were close associates who were ideologically so defined (Garner 2008, St. Pierre 1999). Another school of thought viewed Jagan as an unrepentant communist who would be another Castro in the Caribbean and who therefore had to be rendered politically impotent. Both Maurice St. Pierre and Steve Garner have detailed the intervention of Britain and America into the politics of British Guiana, and their attempts to keep Jagan out of power, seeing him as representative of that communist threat and another Fidel Castro. Suffice to say, Proportional Representation (PR) was imposed on the country as the best means of keeping Jagan from winning the elections. PR was implemented in British Guiana before the 1964 elections. “On 2 October 1963, COLOFF official R.W. Piper called in an American Embassy Officer to explain that, in an effort to solve the BG constitutional problem, HMG would probably convene a conference on 22 October, during which time Sandys would state that HMG was ‘imposing’ a solution involving a new electoral system based on proportional representation”  (St. Pierre 1999, 187).

There were three major parties involved in the 1964 elections held under the new PR format: the PPP, the PNC and the United Force (UF). The results showed that the PPP won 24 seats with 45.8% of the votes, the PNC won 22 with 40.5% of the votes, and the UF won 7 with 12.4 % of the votes. The 1964 elections were conducted under a State of Emergency which continued until December 1966. Since none of the parties had more than 50% of the votes, the PNC and UF formed a coalition government that administered the country from 1964 to 1968.  During this time, Forbes Burnham would, according to Premdas, “proceed to erect, slowly initially, a thoroughgoing system of ethnic control in Guyana” (Premdas 1995, 115). The UF, necessary at first to ensure a majority in Parliament, became a millstone around the neck of the PNC in the view of Burnham (Burnham 1970, 153). D’Aguiar’s party represented the old privileged class, who were aligned to Western interests and who were intent on keeping their positions of superiority in the society. After a number of MP’s crossed over to the PNC, the UF was expelled from the coalition and the PNC gained full control of the government (Premdas 1995, 118).

Premdas describes how the PNC consolidated its power after the 1968 elections which “would be incontrovertibly established as rigged elections” (Premdas 1995, 118). The process entailed a radical reformation of the economic structure of the country, which had “favoured big businessmen, large property owners, and foreign companies” and which did not favor his party’s “communal supporters” (Premdas 1995, 119). Burnham’s socialism, in other words, was a consequence of his objective of seizing economic power from “communal supporters” who opposed him and bestowing it on his own supporters. Garner suggests a similar process, adding “militarization” to nationalization as the means of “enabling the PNC to extend it patronage network” (Garner 2008. 157). By 1970, Guyana was declared to be a “Co-operative Republic”. According to Premdas, “From private enterprise, the economy was to be founded on co-operatives as the main instrument of production, distribution, and consumption” (Premdas 1995, 120). Burnham maintained power through rigged elections and through manipulating the legal system to legitimize political authority. The majorities obtained through fraudulent means were used to change the constitution of Guyana. According to Garner:

Between 1968 and 1980, the distinction between the Guyanese state and the PNC was steadily eroded by a series of constitutional amendments, referenda and pieces of legislation. By 1985, the PNC had become the Guyanese state, as Burnham had declared in his 1974 ‘Declaration of Sophia’ that ‘the party should assume unapologetically its paramountcy over the Government which is merely one of its executive arms’. (Garner 2008, 157).

The economy, meanwhile, was undergoing profound changes. John Gafar gives a detailed account of the performance of the Guyanese economy in the period 1960 to 2001 in his book Guyana: From State Control to Free Markets. Suffice to say, while GDP and per-capita GDP rose from 1964 to 1976, after 1976 up to 1990 there was a catastrophic decline in GDP (from approximately G$24000M to about G$16000M) and per-capita GDP (from approximately G$35000 to G$19000) (Gafar2003, 38). Gafar writes that the state of crisis in the economy was due to “falling production, mounting arrears on foreign debt payments and widening trade deficits due largely to inappropriate domestic expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, and financial mismanagement” (Gafar 2003, 43). Ferguson states that “Guyana was in a virtual state of collapse by 1985” (Ferguson 1995, 32). This decline in economic performance had far-reaching political consequences because of its effect on PNC supporters.

While the PNC was facing this economic crisis, the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA), led by one of the Caribbean most illustrious intellectuals, Walter Rodney, organized demonstrations and strikes against the government among traditional supporters of the PNC. Premdas writes: “The PNC regime, especially since 1977, had become embattled. It was attacked by Rodney’s WPA and the other left-wing groups; threatened by the withdrawal of support from the  middle class professional group which managed the day to day operations of the government; and bewildered by the demonstrations and strikes mounted by its own supporters in its traditional strongholds …” (Premdas 1995, 131). In June 1980, Rodney was assassinated and Burnham resorted to increased repression to continue his hold on political power. Guyana descended into a reign of terror that was to end only with the death of Forbes Burnham in 1985 and the assumption of office by Desmond Hoyte, who, realizing that the repressive nature of Burnham’s rule had created an explosive social situation in Guyana, decided to initiate changes in the political and economic policies of the government. Melissa Ifill claimed that:

Desmond Hoyte’s accession to the president’s office after the death of Forbes Burnham in August 1985, gave rise to fundamental changes in the political and economic direction of the state by the early 1990s. The Hoyte administration quickly confirmed its desire to institute policy changes in the local economy despite opposition from some influential members within the PNC. Under Hoyte’s stewardship, several strategies and policies were adopted that conflicted with the co-operative socialist ideology that the PNC, under Burnham’s leadership, had espoused. (Ifill 2002).

In fact, the economic crisis was too profound to ignore. Aid was critical if the economy had any chance of being resuscitated. In 1985, Guyana had become the first country to be declared as being ineligible to have access to the resources of the IMF (Ferguson 1995, 55). International Financial Institutions, therefore, had to be assuaged. The relationship between the IMF/World Bank and Guyana had been a strained and erratic one, and it is this intervention of the IMF/World Bank into the Guyanese drama that played out in the 1980s to 1990s that will be looked at next.

Guyana: Ideological Opportunism

  1. Ideology, Pragmatism and Ethno-Opportunism

Ferguson has claimed that Jagan displayed an “essential ‘innocence’” that was responsible for much of his political problems with the United States and the United Kingdom, while Burnham “displayed a clear-headed grasp of the realpolitik of his environment” (Ferguson 1999, xi, xii). In this regard the conflict between political pragmatism and ideological purity needs to be examined. Certainly in the heady days of the 1960’s, when the Third World was aflame with independence and liberation movements, political idealism was not unusual. But the argument holds that Jagan was perhaps carried away by the revolutionary geist and rhetoric of the age.

Ferguson states:

The Burnham-Jagan nationalist coalition of forces in the early 1950’s for a brief moment galvanised the Guyanese people and inspired hope for a unity of purpose in nation-building. But this short-lived unity of the nationalist forces across class and race was irretrievably ruptured and has left in its wake the political debris – including recriminations, attribution of blame, deep personal enmities and the like – for a persisting and intractable alienation of the two major racial groups in Guyana. Stoking the embers of the emergent racial alienation at the time were exceedingly powerful external interests that unabashedly exploited this crucial political divergence in pursuit of their own geo-strategic imperatives, linked to the Cold War.

In this connection, Jagan and the PPP provided the two major and relevant Western powers of the period, the US and the UK, with a ready-made reason for their divisive interventionism. In the harsh Cold war context of the moment, the Soviet-oriented communist sympathies of the PPP’s top leadership were objectionable to them from their strategic vantage-point of the life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union. This was the basic stuff of realpolitik, conceived as external policy and behaviour linked closely to power and national interests and divorced from considerations of morality and principle. Within the framework of the prevailing global ideological contestation for supremacy, the fate of Jagan and the PPP was effectively sealed. (Ferguson 1999, xi)

The question arises – when does pragmatism dissolve into opportunism? What are the limits of pragmatism and ideological purity? For small, militarily non-powerful, Caribbean states, the question is critical. The PNM’s post-1991 championing of the private sector as the engine of growth, Manley’s conversion to the doctrine of the private sector as the engine of growth, Jagan’s acceptance of the same doctrine, all of this points to the vulnerability of Caribbean states in the American Lake and the success of the “ideological offensive” of neo-liberalism (or neo-conservatism) in the post Cold War age. How is the limit of resistance to the curtailment of autonomy in the region to be gauged? For certainly Ferguson’s comments do not advocate a purely rubber-stamp role to Caribbean governments. They raise a critically important and legitimate issue, particularly in light of the fact that governments in the region, including Guyana, have embraced the doctrine of market led reforms anyhow. The PPP no longer advocates a Marxist state; its policies are avowedly market oriented.

If the question of pragmatism and ideological purity is one way of assessing the history of Guyana from the 1960’s, Ralph Premdas’ study introduces another perspective. For Premdas the history of Guyana since that split in the PPP produced two ethnically based parties, competing in a struggle to the death for dominance. The moment of reconciliation was irretrievable lost. According to Premdas:

The moment of opportunity to build a new basis for inter-group relations and a new society was lost forever it seemed, when the two sectional leaders parted company, formed their own parties and pursued their own ambitions for personal acclaim and power. The moment of reconciliation is a rare event in a multi-ethnic state suffused with all sorts of underlying predispositions for ethnically-inspired behaviour. What makes the loss of that opportune moment even more unbearable is the following sequence of events in which the old divisions embedded in the social structure were exploited and exacerbated by a new form of mass politics. A new type of party emerged, constructed on the discrete ethnic fragments into which the old unified party had been broken. (Premdas 1995, 45)

One may ask – what caused this moment of opportunity to be squandered? If the events leading up to the split in the PPP are analyzed, it is clear that pressure was brought to bear on the publicly proclaimed Marxist PPP by both the United States and the United Kingdom. As Ferguson writes – “The British had their clear strategic concerns in Guyana. Apart from safeguarding their colonial economic interests, a major concern, echoing that of the Americans, had to do with ensuring that Guyana was not ruled by a communist government, closely aligned with the hostile Soviet Union… the Guyana debacle of the early 1960’s was unfolding in the context of the Cold war at its height…” (Ferguson 1999, xii, xiii).

Maurice St. Pierre describes the events after the election of the PPP in 1953 (St. Pierre, 1999, 103-128). British troops were sent to British Guiana in October of 1953 to prevent “Communist subversion of the Government”. A number of PPP government ministers were detained. Tensions between PPP supporters and the colonial administration under Governor Savage escalated. (For a description of these events, see: St. Pierre 1999, 103-128; Jagan 1997, 123-146; Burnham 1970, xix) The constant pressure brought to bear on the PPP exacerbated the fault line between ‘moderates’ and ‘Marxists’.  Finally in February 1955 a motion of no-confidence in the executive was moved by the Burnham faction. It was clear that the British government was sending a message that Burnham was a more acceptable leader than Jagan, and that message was having an impact on Burnham and his supporters.

The motion of no-confidence led to a walk-out by the Jaganite faction. At this point a new executive was voted in and Burnham was chosen as leader of the party. The Jaganite faction reacted to this by expelling Burnham and some of his main followers – Jai Narine Singh, and Dr. J.B. Latchmansingh – and disciplining other supporters of Burnham (St. Pierre 1999, 135). Eventually the party split into two factions, one headed by Jagan, the other by Burnham. The pressure put on the party and on the society as a whole by the events following the elections of 1953 and the election of a publicly declared Marxist PPP government was the trigger that fractured the party and the society.

Premdas writes about “triggers” that precipitate ethnic conflict. He claims:

The factors that triggered ethnic conflict were clearly identifiable but occurred at different times during the evolution of the problem. These factors were: (1) colonial manipulation; (2) introduction of mass democratic politics; and (3) rivalry over resource allocation. It is necessary to cumulatively conceive of the problem in which these factors at different points served as precipitating ‘triggers’. At various times, a particular triggering factor deposited a layer of division which in turn provided the next step for the deposit of a new layer of forces to the accumulating crisis. (Premdas 1995, 185).

The pressure put on the government and the society after the 1953 elections by the colonial powers were indeed a form of “colonial manipulation” designed to prevent what these powers conceived to be a “communist subversion”. There is no doubt that the geo-politics of the era was the deciding factor in that intervention. As Ferguson says, “In the harsh Cold war context of the moment, the Soviet-oriented communist sympathies of the PPP’s top leadership were objectionable to them from their strategic vantage-point of the life-and-death struggle with the Soviet Union” (Ferguson, 1999, xi).

The issue becomes then – how do Caribbean governments draw that line between pragmatism and ideology? How do Caribbean governments represent the interests of the masses who elect them in the face of the possibly opposing interests of hegemonic powers? Again the construction of a political language, which allows maneuverability by governments in the region, seems vitally important. Certainly, without that common political language, the distinction between “pragmatism” and “opportunism” is a difficult one to make. Such a distinction can be made only by reference to the actual political outcome of the various political actors time in office, i.e. their deeds.