it would appear we are witnessing the beginning of the end of sugar in Guyana. But the government seems determined to prove Marx right when he said, “history repeats itself – first as tragedy and second as farce.” The “farce” not being the repeated actions, but our refusal to learn from history: “Fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me.”
Back in 1838, one “ending” of sugar was predicted at the abolition of African chattel slavery when the owners of the industry saw themselves “ruined”. Even though they received £20 million pounds compensation (equivalent to £17 BILLION today) from the British government for the “loss of their property”, which is what “chattel” is. Many planters took the money and ran.
The freed Africans, not surprisingly, insisted they be now paid “fair” compensation for their labour. Economists like Adam Smith, in the half century preceding the abolition of slavery had insisted “free labour” would be cheaper than slave labour. In fact this was one of the reasons Britain abolished slavery. Another was wanting to dismantle the then dominant “mercantilist” system of trade that mandated trade be kept “in the imperial family”.
As Britain’s industrial revolution – built on profits from its imperial exploitation – spewed out manufactured goods, it made “economic sense” to move on to “free trade” and sell its goods to a wider market. But this meant buying goods from these countries – including cheaper sugar. So we should forget about the “humanitarian” impulses the British narrative insists made them realise the error of their ways to “freed the slaves”. It was all about what was best for Britain.
If those “humanitarian” impulses were central in the new dispensation, then the slaves should have been compensated, for being treated as “chattel goods”. Payment to the planters merely reinforced the “rightness” of the chattel premise.
Additionally, the Guyanese planters knew the freed Africans had the option of leaving the plantations and squatting on Crown Lands or abandoned plantations even before the end of the “apprenticeship period” (in which the freed Africans were supposed to be “socialised” into “free labour”). But they were facilitated by the government to import indentured Portuguese from Madeira as early as 1835 to undercut the bargaining power of the supposedly “free labour”. Interestingly they also secured freed Africans from the smaller islands especially Barbados, where wages remained depressed because the “free labour” had no options but to remain on the plantations.
The planters would argue that under the new “free market” basis of free trade, their preferential tariffs in Britain would be soon equalised and they needed cheap labour to compete with more competitive producers such as Mauritius. They would also have to make capital investments in factory equipment such as vacuum pans and new field implements and fertilisers. The Africans were successful in securing increased wages after their strike of 1842 but the planters countered by turning to India and China for a more secured supply of cheap bodies that could be disciplined into the plantation regimen.
By 1848 when the Africans struck again for higher wages, more than half of them (41,000) had moved from the plantations to live in towns, settle in their new villages or prospecting in the interior. This strike was unsuccessful because by then15,747 Portuguese, 12,897 Africans from the WI; 6,957 Africans from Africa and 8,692 Indian indentureds – 44,293 total – had replaced them.
In this way, sugar survived, and production even tripled from the days of slavery by the end of the 19th century. But only because the indentured labour was willing to work for ever DECREASING wages since the system kept bringing more from India to undercut the bargaining power of those who had completed their Indentureship.
The “farce” that is unfolding, of course, is as Guyana faces the almost identical conditions of the post emancipation period – loss of markets, high costs of production, loss of low wage labour, and inappropriate manufacturing technology – the new planter class in the government seems oblivious to the plight of the human element that should be at the centre of all economics. (Next week…The farce)
