Articles by Cheddi Jagan 1964-1992
Strategy For Economic And Social Development
by Cheddi Jagan
Guyanese, like many others throughout the world are concerned about the explosive problem of unemployment and deteriorating living standards.
In the past, many panaceas had been prescribed. But these failed largely because they were not based on the realities of the situation, and because they did not get down to the roots of backwardness - poverty, disease, illiteracy and unemployment.
Dependency
The majority of the "third world" countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America are largely tied by a "Gordian knot" in a colonial or neo-colonial political relationship with the developed capitalist states. This "dependency status" creates an unbalanced, distorted type of "development," integrated and geared not to the needs of the developing countries but to the imperialist states.
The result is progressive pauperization. The share of world income of "third-world" countries declined from 54% in 1800 to 42% in 1900 and only 18% in 1962.
This has come about because of:
1) foreign economic domination - between 1950 and 1965, there was a net outflow of US$16,000 million in profits from Asia, Africa and Latin America; since then, the drain has increased;
2) unequal international trade - as a result of buying dear and selling cheap, "third-world" countries lost US$4,000 million in 1960; this amount will increase to US$24,000 million by 1975 and US$30,000 million by 1980; their share of world trade declined from 27% in 1953 to 19.3% in 1966;
3) a local "clientele class" of political, bureaucratic and "comprador" capitalists who defend foreign rather than national interests and buttress foreign domination.
Any strategy for economic development and social transformation must therefore aim at the surviving of the "Gordian knot," at eliminating the status of dependency, at breaking up the economic, political and social structure.
Failure
Precisely because there was not an overall, microscopic view, previous strategies failed.
The advocates of the Puerto Rican model of economic planning which was introduced in the 1960's in the Caribbean and which constituted the basis of our prematurely collapsed $300 million 7-year plan (1966-72), did not see backwardness as a condition resulting from imperialist domination.
Rather, they viewed somewhat mechanically and simplistically development as dependent on the availability of capital. They saw the need for outside capital and advocated the creation of an investment climate. They did not concern themselves with the fact that foreign capital was so directed as to perpetuate the colonial economic structure which kept developing countries as raw material producers and markets for manufactured goods.
Nor did they see the sum total of incentives offered to foreign capital (investors should be able to recover investments in 3-4 years) would result in the same thing they sought to overcome; namely, the shortage of capital.
ECLA
The rationale behind the ECLA (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America) model is that international terms of trade have operated against the primary-producing, one group and/or one-mineral economies of the Latin America countries; that import substitution would bring about industrialization; that industrialization would make for local decision-making and create a national bourgeoisie which would weaken the traditional oligarchies based on land ownership (latifundio) and import-export trading (comprador capitalism tied to imperialism); that import substitution coupled with land reform would stimulate the economy and cause income redistribution.
Here again, emphasis was placed on foreign investment and foreign aid - industrialization, it was felt, would require massive injection of foreign capital.
Industrialization greatly expanded. But it came more and more under foreign, mainly US domination. Instead of becoming a liberating force for the Latin American countries, industrialization further subjugated their economies and became integrated into the foreign economies. The vehicle through which this was achieved was the giant multinational corporations, which established branch-plants to assemble, package, tin or bottle, and/or relatively more labour-intensive-factories, which had become prematurely obsolete through the scientific and technological revolution (automation and computers), mainly to produce for the internal Latin American market.
The main props of the ECLA model were import substitution and regional integration (Latin American Free Trade Association and Central American Common Market). Regional integration, it was argued, would provide larger markets and economies of scale. But this only facilitated the multinational corporations, and incidentally US imperialism to keep out its European competitors.
The ECLA strategy, like the Puerto Rican, has also failed. By 1970, despite the big ballyhoo about the Alliance for Progress, Latin American countries achieved a rate of growth of only 1.5%, far short of the limited goal of 2.5% set by the Alliance in 1961.
And problems have escalated. There are over 25 millions unemployed. And the gap between the rich and the poor countries to widen even in the most industrialized like Mexico and Brazil. And because of rampaging inflation, (40% increase in cost of living in 1971, and 11% in January, 1972), a 48-hour general strike paralyzed Argentina in March, 1972.
These adverse conditions have come about because in every year after 1967, drain of super profits from investments in Latin America increased to over US$1,000 million a year; share of world trade shrank from 11% to 5.1% between 1950 and 1968; and as a result of falling prices, foreign trade losses were over US$500 million a year. Debt repayments (capital and interest) have also skyrocketed to over US$500 million per year.
Partnership
Because of the patent failure of the ECLA model and the explosive political situation in Latin America, the imperialist strategies devised the idea of "partnership" - local people and governments buying shares in foreign companies, and local personnel, being prompted to leading positions as managers and directors; thus, the creation of a new social class to buttress foreign domination.
The ECLA model with regional integration (CARIFTA), import substitution (bans on imports) and partnership (buying of shares in Bookers Stores, Diamond Liquors, Demerara Tobacco Company, etc and joint ventures with government participation) is being introduced in Guyana by the PNC regime and in Trinidad by the PNM regime. But it will fail in Guyana and the Caribbean as it has failed in Latin America. Besides, today, capitalism-imperialism is in growing crisis - economic, monetary, political - and the slowdown in its economy with increasing unemployment is bound to be reflected in an aggravation of the problems in the Caribbean and other "third-world" areas; as the saying goes, when the USA sneezes, Latin America catches a cold.
Marxist
What is needed is a strategy based on a Marxist-Leninist economic model, which is anti-imperialist, pro-democratic and pro-socialist in content and which includes the following:
(1) Nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy - foreign-owned and controlled mines, plantations, factories, banks, insurance and foreign trade;
(2) Expansion of the public sector; planned proportional development of the economy with simultaneous concentration on industry and agriculture rather than on infra-structure; transformation of the economy from primary to integrated production;
(3) Foreign policy based on genuine non-alignment and meaningful relations - cultural, aid, trade and scientific - with the socialist world;
(4) Emphasis on education to raise the cultural, ideological, scientific and technological levels of the people;
(5) Land reform;
(6) Rent, price and exchange controls;
(7) Full democracy, workers control and involvement of the people at all levels.
These measures, like the various wheels inside a clock, are closely interlinked; they must be implemented simultaneously, and not taken ad hoc from time to time.
A correct planning strategy with progressive domestic policies must be linked to a progressive foreign policy. And corruption, nepotism and discrimination must be ended. Democratization of the Guyanese society will not only end these evils but also bring about voluntary and meaningful participation by all Guyanese in the exciting process of nation building.
Instead of embarking on a coordinated anti-imperialist programme, the puppets and apologists of imperialism resort to demagogy and sloganeering. They peddle half-truths, "split hairs," talk about agriculture instead of simultaneous development of industry and agriculture, and emphasize cooperatives, community development and self-help while the foreigners continue to own and control the commanding heights of the economy and drain-out capital, and the nation is swallowed up in debts.
The time has come for the Guyanese people as a whole to grapple with the problems of unemployment and deteriorating living conditions. Unless a radical course is taken, they will worsen. Anti-communist hysteria and fears must not be allowed to prevent the resolution of our problems on a national basis.
More and more non-communists are following the lead given by the communists. Genuine Christians like President Julius Nyerere, have adopted the Marxist-Leninist economic model because it is national and because it succeeded in the Soviet Union and China, and is succeeding in Cuba. Once backward areas which constitute the Central Asian republics of the USSR have been transformed. This strategy offers a way out of the widening gap, firstly, between the rich imperialist states and the poor developing countries; and secondly, between the rich and poor peoples in the capitalist and "third" worlds.
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2000
(The following is a Straight Talk article written by Dr, Jagan in 1967, which was later published in a booklet
"The Role of the CIA in Guyana and its Activities Throughout the World)The response to Thomas Braden's apologia of the CIA in which he said he gave money to Irving Brown, Walter and Victor Reuther, the Top Brass of the American trade union movement, was sharp.
George Meany, the head of the AFL-CIO blasted Braden's story as "a damm lie... Not one penny of CIA money has even come in to the AFL or AFL-CIO to my knowledge over the last twenty years."
One has to take this statement with a grain of salt. Remember Richard Ishmael's denial of any CIA connection with the 1963 strike when the CIA plot was exposed by the New York Times in February. Note too that according to the National Guardian, Ishmael and Meany held discussions at the Commodore Hotel in New York soon after the 1961 elections when help was asked to stop the "Cubanization of strategic British Guiana".
According to Newsweek, US magazine (May 22) "Only Walter Reuther, of all the principles involved, admitted knowingly taking CIA money - and then only once, in an emergency situation, to his subsequent regret. Reuther added his one postscript - that Braden had tried recruiting brother Victor as a CIA agent and that Victor had emphatically rejected the bid. Braden denied that."
One is more likely to believe Braden in this sordid affair.
Walter Reuther has always posed as a progressive liberal. Recently, after the expose of the CIA plot, but before Braden's defence of it, Walter Reuther and three of his lieutenants resigned from the AFL-CIO. But Reuther's past is no less that of a cold warrior than George Meany's.
Walter Reuther's influence in past -1947 was largely behind the expulsion not only of the democratically-elected communists and militants from unions, but also of unions, such as the United Electrical, from the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO). The difference between Reuther and Meany is a matter of degree, the same as between Harold Wilson and George Brown.
According to Victor Riesel, witch-hunting labour journalist, as reported by Workers World, March 17, 1967), the feud between George Meany and Walter Reuther started when Meany blocked him from getting $2 million CIA money in 1962.
"Reuther, said Riesel, asked for $2 million of CIA money in 1962 to finance an amalgamation of pro-Communist and anti-Communist unions in Italy. Reuther contacted Robert Kennedy, then Attorney General, who had connections with Reuther as well as the CIA. Kennedy was interested in the deal, called in Gen. Maxwell Taylor and others to confer with Reuther on it."
"Meany got wind of what was going on, went to John F. Kennedy, the President, and killed the plan on the basis that "boring from within" a Communist-led union by anti-communists was lightly to create more Communists rather than less."
This explains why I never succeeded in talking to Reuther. Someone has suggested that I should talk top him about AFL-CIO involvement and tie-up with the CIA in its activities in Guyana. Well, I said, arrange it. Nothing came through, however; Reuther was too busy, I was told.
Later I was introduced to him rather casually in the lobby of the United Nations headquarters in New York. "I would like to have a chat with you at some time convenient to you", I said. "I would let you know later." was his reply. I heard nothing.
No doubt, I didn't get a reply because the AFL-CIO had already plotted behind the scenes to get rid of the PPP. Recall the AFL-CIO support for Burnham as was clearly pointed out by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in his book "A Thousand Days". This is how Schlesinger put it: "Thus far our policy had been based on the assumption that Forbes Burnham was, as the British described him an opportunist, racist and demagogue, intent only on personal power. One wondered about this though, because the AFL-CIO people in Guyana thought well of him." It was the same AFL and CIO which engineered the split in the World Federation of Trade Union (WFTU) in 1949 and set up the CIA-backed International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). And through ICFTU and its regional organizations the Inter-American Regional Organisation of Workers (ORIT) and Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), the shipping and air-blockade was imposed on Guyana during the 80-day strike in 1963.
Elsewhere, Meany and his lieutenants did the same. In Africa, they attempted through the African-American Labor Center to sabotage the attempts of Dr. Nkrumah and others to set up the All-African Trade Union Federation. the aim of which was freedom from cold-war influences. Jay Lovestone considered Nkrumah's brand of neutralism as "aide-de-camp" of communism.
In the Latin American area, Meany's foreign relations manipulator, Jay Lovestone, renege of the Communist Party, was the principle link in the business of espionage, infiltration and subversion abroad. According to the New York Post of February 16 "One of Lovestone's 'institutes' actively helped top train Brazilian unionists here to participate in the military coup against Goulart's Brazilian regime,... an alleged leftist but constitutional government... replaced by an oppressive tyranny of the right."
The New York Post also charged that money from the CIA had been paid regularly to AFL-CIO agents and that an inquiry would show "innumerable instances" in which AFL-CIO agents "collaborated with CIA cloak and dagger men" in various coups and undercover intrigues.
In the Dominican Republic, the late Fred A. Somerford, US Labor Attache, was the guiding light of CONATRAL which ran an advertisement in the newspapers calling on the people to put their faith not in the regime of the elected President Juan Bosch, but in the " armed forces". An obituary on Somerford, a year after Bosch's downfall said "George Meany wrote a personal letter of commendation to the deceased for his outstanding contribution to the Democratic Labour Movement of the Dominican Republic.
Farther back in 1951, George boasted about AFL achievements on the world front. "Primarily due to our effort," he said, "there has been established ... the Force Ouvriere." In Germany it "was the AFL which broke the Communist stranglehold on the trade unions." "Our European representative, Irving Brown, participated in cleaning the port of Marseilles of Communist control." "We have established numerous contacts with resistance movements behind the iron curtain." "On the China mainland, we are aiding the underground democratic forces."
Neil Sheehan writing in the New York Times on February 21, 1967 in a special article headed "CIA Is Linked to Strikes That Helped Oust Jagan" said that "Operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency working under cover of an American Labour Union, helped organize strikes in British Guiana in 1962 and 1963 against Dr. Cheddi Jagan, a marxist who was Prime Minister there."
The union referred to was the State, Country and Municipal Employees Union, which operated in Guyana through the London based Public Services International.
"The Union used agency (CIA) funds for four and a half-years from 1959 until May 1964 - to finance its overseas activities, mainly in Latin America," said Sheehan.
Other CIA links with the US trade union movement, in addition to the unions already named, were though the Retail Clerks Union (through which came to Guyana Gerald O'Keefe, one of the 50 persons named in the Security Branch report "A Research Paper in the PNC Terrorist Organisation," which gave the gory details of arson, dynamiting of government buildings, etc.); the International Federation of Food and Drinks Workers and the Newspaper Guild, the union of practising journalists in the United States.
The latter received $1 million (US) of CIA money with which it helped to finance its subversive activities in Latin America through the inter-American Newspapermen's Association. this body was headed by the arch anti-communist, Dubois. And many Guyanese journalists unwittingly took part in conferences in Latin America sponsored by this association in the name of freedom and democracy.
The kind of freedom, which the Guild and its associates were defending was clearly brought out in the case of their attacks against the PPP government. When the government tried to block Gene Meakin's stay in Guyana in 1964, the Reporter blamed me and the PPP for attacking the "free trade union movement" and infringing upon the "freedom of the press."
The US government, the CIA and their stooges and puppets have certainly made a farce of the world "free". They have prostituted it for their sinister purposes.
According to Sidney Lens, (The Nation, July 5, 1965) "What the US government does not do directly, because it would be flagrant meddling with the internal affairs of other nations, and what the CIA cannot do because it is suspect, the AFL-CIO does on their behalf. In ostensibly innocent relationships between unions of one country with another, the AFL-CIO throws its weight toward the making and unmaking of governments, with the purpose of instilling abroad the phobic anti-communism that has become entrenched at home. Jay Lovestone holds no public office, but it would be naive to deny that he influences national policy."
Lens then continued. The Meanyites, working in collaboration with the CIA "can claim credit since 1945: -
1. Helping to split the French and Italian Labour movement.
2. Encouraging the emergence of conservative leaders in many German unions, and keeping them on the narrow cold-war path.
3. Involving themselves -some of them, not all- in the gathering of hard intelligence which has nothing to do with legitimate trade union work.
4. Subsiding questionable elements in Marseilles and other European ports to break dock workers' boycotts of American arms shipments.
5. Giving support to unionists in British Guiana in an effort to depose the elected Jagan government
6. Endorsing right-of-centre labourites in the Dominican Republic who were dissatisfied with Juan Bosch and played a role in his ouster.
7. Training Brazilians who joined the generals in jettisoning the constitutional regime of Goulart.
8. Infiltrating American embassies with many labour attaches who share their views and put them into practice.
9. Defending every military intervention by the United States including, most recently Cuba, Vietnam, the Congo and the Dominican Republic; and condemning nationalist forces, such as those in panama, who oppose U.S. policy.
10. "Educating" literally tens of thousands of unionists in the lovestone brand of anti-communism and setting them loose, with money and inspiration, against unions with left-of-centre leadership."
Clearly "freedom" and "democracy" are convenient works used by the USA to spread US ideology and to cloak the deception of the people.
© Nadira Jagan-Brancier 2000
Trade Aid and Debts - Feb 18, 1968
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