Dear Editor,
As we continue to look for solutions to our problems we need to reorganise our thinking process. One of the most important issues that confronts us in the struggle to develop Guyana is our perception of our social and economic reality. We seem to have an understanding of our needs but so many preconceived ideas act as blocks to a clearer understanding of this reality which prevents us from moving in an objective and scientific way to achieve these needs.
There is a strong tendency, and understandably so, for many to appreciate the nature of short-term interest and long-term well-being. We seem unable to understand the very vital role we as individuals need to play in order to create a viable country that we may be proud of; a country that can provide a future for our children.
While help is necessary we have to stop thinking that the developed countries in the final analysis are going to solve our economic problems. We have to stop thinking that the onus of solving the problems facing us falls on the country, the government or some external force, and instead ask what we can do to help the country, our community and our people.
What we do on a day-to-day basis may contribute to an extent that we cannot foresee to our community and our country’s development. This type of understanding is not just the position of the writer or for that matter an approach by the peoples of the third world, but is actually being advocated by intellectuals in the developed countries.
Sam Gindin in his article ‘Social Justice and globalisation: are they compatible?’ suggests that present globalisation strategies are incompatible with democracy and social justice. The available statistics definitely confirm this conclusion. These statistics indicate clearly the plight of the developing countries as they become poorer and poorer while the developed countries become richer and richer. Statistics at the same time indicate that within the developed countries the poor become poorer as globalisation strategies are imposed on them. As a consequence there is a growing emphasis on the search for alternatives within the developed countries.
Sam Gindin speaks of, “Two apparently opposite alternatives that try to find some compatibility…” While these alternatives may not necessarily apply to Guyana they make us aware of the need to discuss alternative strategies. The first alternative sees the solution as the return of capitalism’s “golden years” while the second emphasises a community based “social economy.”
This writer, while calling for a reexamination of the structure of the capitalist economy, has pointed out that the emergence of capitalism was a historical necessity. He has pointed out that capitalism contributed immensely to the world’s economic growth but also said that it would eventually develop serious contradictions that would prove to be retrogressive in relation to the prospect of development. The writer has in past articles and will continue in future articles to argue for the economic restructuring of the present national and global economic structures and asks readers to join with him in that examination.
Gindin also does not feel the golden years were that golden. He feels that these years fell far short of any ideals of social justice: “internal poverty persisted; the gap between the first world and the third, despite decolonisation, widened; it was hardly ‘golden years’ for women or for US Blacks; workers still sold their labour and potentials to others, gaining the power to consume but not actively to shape their community; and corporate rules were not reduced but reinforced.”
He referred to the youth uprising of the ’60s and stated that workers reacted at the contrast between their “civil rights in society and the authoritarianism of their workplace.”
Gindin stated that in any case we could not turn back history. In fact neoliberalism and the speeding up of the globalisation process were a reaction to gains by workers during the golden years: “Capitalism as a social system, could not live with the rise in equality and security for workers.” According to him these gains were threatening profits, class power and class rule.
What were seen earlier “as measures of progress – higher wages, better social programmes, greater security – were redefined as barriers that blocked capitalism’s own needs. And it was those needs which demanded the deepening and expansion of market logic.”
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Bissessar
