In response to a complaint by Dr. Terrence Campbell that higher wages and salaries by government and foreign companies are attracting workers away from local businesses which cannot compete, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo responded that “people want the vestiges of socialism still to hang on…” (Dem Waves Jan 9). It appears that the Vice President meant that the plea for the protection sought for local business is tantamount to relying on the ‘vestiges of socialism.’
Dr. Campbell, a successful businessman, was probably relying on the State’s duty to protect local business, a principle of capitalist development, until it was swept away in the developing, not the developed world, by globalization. He may have been au fait with the policies of the governments between 1957 and 1964 which were noted for their promotion of local business development. Symbolic of this policy was the front page photograph of Cheddi Jagan, who hated the taste of alcohol, courageously drinking from a bottle of Banks beer when Banks Breweries opened production in 1961 to demonstrate his government’s support for local business.
