Publisher's Synopsis
Cheddi Jagan (1918-1997) was the first major politician in the Anglophone Caribbeanenraptured by Marxism-Leninism as espoused by the Soviet Union - the beacon for the radicaltransformation of colonies like his country, British Guiana (Guyana). Moreover, he sought topersuade US President Kennedy, that although this was the essence of his post-colonial vision,it would not vitiate the fundamentals of liberal democracy.Jagan's political mission of fifty years was deeply rooted in his repulsion by 'bitter sugar' - ananti-sugar plantation, anti-Booker obsession refracted through Marxism/Leninism. Engrossedby class analysis at the core of his epistemology, he routinely minimised, if not circumvented, theracial anxieties and religious and cultural complexities of colonial Guyana. Yet his aspiration tocreate a communist society never did resonate with African Guyanese, nor was it apprehendedby his unfailingly loyal Indian supporters, most of whom disclaimed that he was a communist.But this work establishes that Jagan's fidelity to Marxism was incontrovertible from theinception; and this was at variance with America's Cold War susceptibilities, in their 'backyard.'Seecharan locates the intellectual origins of Jagan's 'secular religion' - Marxism - as a 'purescience' applicable to human societies, equally valid as the natural sciences and validated by thesupposedly irreproachable Soviet example. This was what led to his sleepwalking into the ColdWar on the side of the Soviets and the Cubans. As early as 1960, enchanted and emboldened bythe Cuban Revolution, Cheddi deemed Fidel Castro the greatest liberator of the twentiethcentury.Jagan lost power in 1964 through subterfuge hatched by the Kennedy administration, with thebelated connivance of the British, who had magnanimously counselled him (in 1961 inWashington) not to divulge his Marxist predilection to President Kennedy. Cheddi ignoredthem. This precipitately facilitated the resurgence of the clever, slick, and ideologicallyamorphous L.F.S. Burnham, culminating in his fading Guyana to Independence. InSeecharan's words, 'Cheddi had all the trumps in his hand and still lost the game.' By hisideological intransigence, he opened the door for Burnham's 'Cooperative Socialist Republic,'thereby entrenching electoral rigging, the undermining of liberal democracy, economicstagnation, and the flight of the country's best and brightest of all races to the heartlands ofcapitalism.This study does not duplicate the well-documented subversion of Jagan by the US and Britain.Its principal aim is to explore the prompting and character of Jagan's Marxism, particularly hisconviction that the Soviet Union was paving the road to the communist utopia. In so doing,Seecharan does what no other researcher has done - dig deep into the vast writings of Jaganhimself, publications of his People's Progressive Party and its precursor, dating back to the late1940s; in addition to the hitherto unexamined copious correspondence between Cheddi, his wifeJanet and Billy Strachan (their foremost ideological mentor), a leading communist in theCommunist Party of Great Britain. The work is enhanced by a series of interviews with severalnotable personalities who worked with or against them.
