Ideological Confusion

Ideological confusion

While Burnham and the PNC were experimenting with its foreign relations, the PPP had moved even further 'left' with its formal induction into the Communist International in July 1969. These developments were partially the result of that party’s increasingly pro Soviet stance, sealed and formalized with its public entry into the Soviet International in 1969. This was after Dr. Jagan returned from a Conference of Communist and Workers Parties in Moscow in the same year. Thereafter, the PPP became a disciplined adherent of doctrinaire Marxism and the long-standing Marxist-Leninist organisation became even more prominent on committees of the Communist International ranging from the World Peace Council to the World Federation of Free Trade Unions (WFTU) and acquired easy access to senior personnel in the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the PPP, was experiencing further turbulence and withdrawal from its own ranks at the leadership and mid-leadership levels. Others have traced unrest to the internal ‘authoritarian’ nature of the PPP. The Weekend Post noted that the Rice Producers Association, the Maha Sabha, the Guyana Council of Indian Organizations(GCIO) and the Islamic Anjuman, all of whom the PPP relied for its ethnic support base were increasingly alarmed with the party’s Marxist trajectory and were “trying to free themselves from the communist PPP.” This assertion was justified in the prevalence of public dissension in the ranks, not all of which was ideological.

To complicate matters even more, there was no evidence in Guyana of a right-wing force capable of countering the left. The major right -wing party, the United Force, which was at its height in the early 1960s, was not nearly as active as it w...

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...tional role of political parties in Guyana and other Caribbean societies.

Later in 1974, the formal launch of the Working Peoples Alliance brought together the moral and organizational strands consecrating the vision of the new politics in Guyana. The founding organizations did not surrender their identities and held veto power until some time afterwards, when the unitary organization was consecrated. The new politics, with its threads was ensconced in the form of a multi-racial alliance; a development not seen since the 1950s.

Summary: the elements of the new political culture 1. New left – consideration of democratic avenues to socialism- Christian-Marxist 2. Multi-racial in theory and practice 3.demographic element 4. Economic justice for the working people 5. Visible inattention to the woman question 6. Element of culture as part of the struggle