Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 22, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
One of the problems I have with Dr. Henry Jeffrey’s polemics on Guyanese politics is his complete misunderstanding of the role individuality plays in ontology. Maybe there is a Freudian secret buried deep in his mind that the individual is just a cog in the wheel.
I know Jeffrey is familiar with the philosophy of both Marx and Hegel and therefore he may be a complete embracer of the relentless working out of the dialectics whereby broad social movements determine history.
Many students of both Marx and Hegel believe this. Dr. Mark Lilla in analyzing eight excellent 20th century philosophers in his superb book, “The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics,” devotes a chapter to Alexandre Kojève who more than any other philosopher popularized Hegel’s dialectics in the 20th century.
Smitten by Kojève’s elaborate description of Hegelian dialectics, Francis Fukuyama wrote his seminal work that, like the recent text on Marxian economics by French professor, Thomas Piketty (“Capital in the Twenty First Century”) took the academic world by storm.
If Kojève was an obscure early 20th century European philosopher, Fukuyama brought him global fame. Using Kojève’s demonstration of Hegelian determination of dialectics in history, Fukuyama wrote his famous text, “The End of History and the Last Man,” which argues that the dialectics have a climax in history and when the USSR dissolved and global communism failed, the climax was reached in the form of liberal capitalist democracy.
One wonders if Fukuyama ever read Jean Paul Sartre. Kojève wrote in the first half of the last century; Sartre in the second. Sartre then would have contradicted many of Hegel’s elegant points one of which is the relation between the dialect and the individual. Sartre puts it poignantly when he asserted that the dialectic makes man and man in given circumstances makes the dialectic.
Sartre‘s contribution to Hegelian dialectics and Marxist philosophy lies in the role of the individual in history. This is a contribution that Jeffrey needs to understand if he is going to polemicize on Guyanese politics.
Two weeks ago, Jeffrey rejected the theory of Dr. David Hinds that the Jagdeo regime has left Guyana in an ethnic trap. Hinds reasoned that since Jagdeo perpetuated ethnic hegemony, then a new administration has to de-hegemonize state institutions and that means the loss of patronage by Indians.
Jagdeo, in order to strengthen his power base, saturated the state sector with Indians. In very simple terms, Hinds submits that when you cleanse the state of Jagdeoite inputs, Indians will be put out in large numbers. This is what he meant by the ethnic trap.
Jeffrey says there is no ethnic trap. What Jagdeo did is what is endemic to political competition in Guyanese history. He posits that the PNC government in the past practised ethnic favours and the PPP did the same. It is the politics of pragmatism and realism (my use of the two terms). I agree with Jeffrey and all (not most, but all) of us who study Guyanese politics would conclude with the same assessment. But there is the role of the individual that Jeffrey gives no recognition to.
Desmond Hoyte and Bharrat Jagdeo offer two extremes in analyzing the role of the individual in relation to broad social forces. I will briefly mention Hoyte and go on to support Hinds’s theory of the ethnic trap. Hoyte underwent a psychic metamorphosis when he became president. He felt that de-Burhamizing the state would rid the practice of politics of all its attendant depravities as he knew it.
Hoyte then democratized state power and in that configuration frowned on the ethnic basis on Guyanese politics. Hoyte did not see ethnic patronage as part of his staying power and he did not practise it.
On the contrary, Jagdeo saw ethnic protection in extreme terms. Whereas Jagan and Burnham knew survival rested in part on ethnic satisfaction of constituencies and thus consolidated power through ethnic favours, the extreme was never reached, because both men had an ideological approach that made extremism useless and unworkable.
Jagdeo came from a totally different cultural ambience. His ideological flow has deep ethnic underpinnings that Burnham and Jagan never had. Jagdeo felt that if he was to remain in power the state had to be possessed through Indian hegemony.
What happened then is a rampage. Jagdeo and to a lesser extent, the PPP, saw survival through ethnic domination. The routine and normal ethnic generosity of Burnham and Jagan was surpassed by Jagdeo because whereas Burnham and Jagan saw ethnic placation as a tool, Jagdeo saw it as a mode of survival. The state then had to be Indianized.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
Apr 24, 2024
Round 2 GFF Women’s League Division One Kaieteur Sports – The Guyana Police Force FC on Saturday last demolished Pakuri Jaguars FC with a 17 – 0 goal blitz at the Guyana Football...Kaieteur News – Just recently, the PPC determined that it does not have the authority to vitiate a contract which was... more
By Sir Ronald Sanders Waterfalls Magazine – On April 10, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States... more
Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.
Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]