Reopening sugar estates would be a disaster

Dear Editor,

It appears that, ceteris paribus, the PPP/C will be back in power, emphasis on the word back since politics in Guyana is all about regurgitating the same old cud on different days.

However, I am somewhat concerned that Mr. Irfaan Ali is going to try to keep his campaign promise to re-open the sugar estates closed by APNU+AFC.

And this is going to be a big disaster.

I have argued for nearly fifty years that the viability of sugar rests mainly on the relationship between labour and ownership. Not in any multi-billion-dollar capitalization or “CPR” programme as I believe Mr. Ali is planning to do. There will obviously be temporary appeasement, but I am convinced that in the medium to long term such an endeavour will have a more adverse socio-economic effect, given the historical and demographic dynamics of the population.

I am only taking the pre-slavery arguments of Dr. Eric Williams, and developing them to apply to post-slavery sugar production. Dr. Williams is well known for his masterpiece thesis, Capitalism and Slavery, in which he shattered the myth that slavery was abolished (purely) for humanitarian reasons. He proved and expounded in a most exhaustive research that the slavery mode of production had become unviable, slaves and slavery could no longer be maintained by ownership, hence the termination of slavery per se as a mode of production.

Why then did sugar again become profitable with the introduction of indentureship, and continued to be until the 1970s? My contention, briefly stated, is that indentureship was a more exploitative form of slavery, which I, using in part, several Commission Reports on the Sugar Industry, was able to substantiate in a paper I did (and still have) for Labor Economics at UG about forty years ago.

But sugar again began to be unprofitable with the emergence of strong labour unions and competition from substitute sugars despite on-going massive inputs of capital, and heavy government subsidies.

And it will remain unprofitable, unviable, and eventually become a serious socio-political canker, unless and until labour is an integral part of ownership and management.

My argument is that sugar has always had a close affinity to slavery, and never, never morally and psychologically moved away from this mode of production. It smelled the same as a rose by different names whether it was African slavery, Indian indentureship or neo-colonial, present-day wages. The antagonistic relationship between labour and ownership/management persisted, evolved, mutated, but still existed.

Until this relationship is changed it will forever fail – you can spend billions of dollars on resuscitation, it is bound to fail. The dissatisfied labour will continue to throw a spanner in the wheel. But there are a hundred other ways the people (from CEO to management to the lowest labourer) destroy the industry. The CEO will continue to be a party hack and exploit the industry for personal gains, the ownership, management, and complete operation will remain racialized and politicized.

No other industry in Guyana has been so guilty of self-destruction.

The solution is simple – peasantize the industry under the formula I have kept recommending to the PPP and APNU for 28 years now.

Yours faithfully,

Gokarran Sukhdeo

Former Economist, Guyana Ministry of Agriculture