Within a fortnight, three major figures in the so-called Third World have passed away. Deng Hsiao Ping, Cheddi Jagan and Michael Manley "" three figures of the Left, of the anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle "" but how different was their ideological trajectory. Indeed, the way in which Deng and Manley moved from the Leninist perspective to a market-oriented one, and Jagan refused all his life to move, makes a significant story of development and socialism for the 20th century.
Deng's story is the best known and needs no repetition. But a very significant thing about him is that he managed to change his views without any obvious influence, practical or theoretical, from outside. Although the Chinese elite has direct access to outside news and books than they allowed their people, one can be pretty sure that Mao's influence and his self-confidence in his own theory must have shut out much outside news. So Deng's conversion to the market is self-generated, perhaps from a deep Chinese trait of pragmatism, a trait that makes the Chinese so successful in business and practical affairs wherever they go. Mao, when he started, had that pleasant practicality but he lost it somewhere in the early years of power. So Deng must have figured out for himself that whatever he had read all his life, the truth was otherwise and staring in his face. It was his decision to abandon the Lenin/Mao model in agriculture first and then in industry, that put China on the path of double digit growth for the
last 20 years.
The trajectory of Cheddi Jagan is very different. While he was a life-long socialist and was often suspected by the Americans of being a communist, he was a democrat. What is more, in a world of ethnic and racial politics, he was all his life committed to a politics based on class rather than race. Although he was Indian, rather than African, in the context of Guyana, he tried his best to rise above racial stereotypes. But Jagan's world view was constructed in the New Deal/ Popular Front period. He believed, as many did in the early 1950s, that Soviet-type planning adapted to a democracy was the best bet for rapid growth for Guyana. This meant dislodging foreign capital "" in Guyana's case, the paternalist, capitalist sugar manufacturers, Bookers, whose head Jack (Lord) Campbell was himself a socialist of sorts. It meant public ownership and industrialisation.
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Jagan was tricked and removed from office. His deputy, Forbes Burnham, became president but continued with American connivance a dirigiste, but racially divisive, economic rule. Eventually, this drove Guyana into near-bankruptcy. When Burnham died and his successor came, the whole edifice crumbled and after a patient wait of 30 years, Jagan came back into power. But by that time in the 1990s, the world had changed. The model of development that he believed in, the one which Paul Baran had taught the leaders of the Third World, had gone under. The Asian Tigers had shown how the market could be governed and the capitalist path used to combine growth with equity. China has gone the same way. Even the struggle against apartheid was ending peacefully and Mandela was going to head a reformist government. Guyana too could change its path and integrate into the global economy. With a population of under a million and relatively resource abundant, Guyana could move into
resources and tourism and enhance its income.
I had the good fortune to meet Jagan on two occasions "" the latter, when I visited Guyana as his guest for a week. He flew me over the landscape of Guyana and we talked for hours on two occasions. I tried to explain to him why I though the world had moved on and how the new tenets of public finance were really poor-friendly and how the old tenets, even as followed by his rivals, had ruined Guyana. But he remained an Old Left person. He wanted globalisation to be fought by an alliance of progressive forces from the North and the South. He wanted a new New Deal. A second Marshall Plan. I tried to convey my scepticism, but his optimism was solid. He died as he lived "" a fiercely honest politician of integrity who fought all his life for the betterment of the poor. He did change his views, but this after a lot of thought rather than from dogma. One thing can be said about Jagan which cannot be said about most other politicians; he gave his best to politics and did not aggrandise on the backs of the poor.
Michael Manley was another Left-wing politician, charismatic and dynamic. He too had one spell in power when the truths of the Old Left were held dear but were beginning to be under strain. Like Jagan, he too faced American hostility and replacement by Seaga, who was much closer to American leaders. But Seaga failed to solve Jamaica's problems and Manley came back in. This was when he had learned the lesson and adapted his thoughts to the new globalised world. He was able to deliver growth with equity for two reasons. Unlike Seaga, he cared about equity and unlike his earlier self, he was now able to pursue policies which delivered growth.
There is thus a lesson to learn after all. Those who advocate liberalisation merely saying that the market works, get it wrong. The market works, but it can also fail. And so can the State. The argument for liberalisation is that its growth-raising potential can be harnessed to reduce poverty. But also by imposing fiscal discipline, liberal reform makes any country face up to its priorities. Are its subsidies for the really poor or only for the well-organised who can riot in the streets of the capital? Are the tax concessions real incentives which will enhance revenue and increase growth or are they the same people bribing each other in the name of incentives and wrecking the budget? The dream of a poverty-free country is no more outdated because we are globalised; it is the means to achieve that dream that have been transformed.