HOW THE PAST IS POLITICALLY
   INSPECTED AND HISTORICALL Y
PRODUCED:REVIEW                         OF W.RODNEY'S
     A HISTORY OF THE GUYANESE
       WORKING PEOPLE 18Q8-1905
                             Bonaventure Swai
                          Department of History
                         Ahmadu Bello University
                              'Zaria Nigeria.
         How we look at our yesterday has important bearings
        on how we look at today and how we see possibilities for
        !omorrow. The sort of past we look back to for inspiration
         In our struggles affects the vision of the future we want
        to build.
        What's fought out at pen point is often revolsed at gunpoint
        with the possible overthrow of one class by the other. or
        the oveJ;1uming of the existing and apparently fixed sta-
        tus quo.!
Summary
     This article is primarily aimed to review Walter Rodney's
A History of the Guyanese Working people 1881 - 1905 which
was published posthumously by the Johns Hopkins University
Press in 1981 and which, given its historical significance, parti-
cularly in the West Indies, s~w an early reprint the following
year.2 But the article also attempts to place the idea of 'inspect-
ing the past' and 'producing history' politically, within a wider
theoretical context, especially in view of the growing popularity
of this approach of writingihistory among committed intellectuals
within dominated social formations; J and given the confused,
belief among some of such intellectuals of th~ existence of a kind of
'mental space' between the 'world of politIcs on the one band,
                                  119


  UTAF/T/- Vol 9 No      1  /987
  and the economic processes of capitalist transformation' on the
  other. The approac;h. supposedly implies the possibility for 'forms
  of sristence and social consciousness of the people' to have a I~fe
  of their own, unencumbered by the production and reproduction
  of hegemonic politics, and thus giving the false impression that
  emancipation of oppressed peoples can be realized without se-
  rious organization on the part of those committed to the social
'liberation of such social categories"
 The Agenda.
       To learn from history. Mao Tse-tung once urged his fellow
 Chinese revolutionaries, 'is to be historical and materialist', This,
 for him, was regarded as the more necessary because it is a stand
 which would enable people 'to learn that they are capable of trans-
 forming and changing themselves; that they have the' resources
 to accomplish this', But such a realization, Mao also warned,
 'only comes from a political inspection of history which reveals
 the myriad suppressions of alternative social forms and social
 development "buried" within historical experience'. This. he
 argued, is' the only' way that people can be made to understand
 that they could be 'more than what they seem,' if they are not to
 go on enduring in a state of equivocation and helplessness/'
       This position acknowledges the fact that the production of
 knowledge, and for our purpose here - historical knowledge,
 is a social and political act aimed to either mystify and reproduce
 the existing material relations of production or expose and histo-
 ricize them with the intent to overthrow and bury them once and
 for all. Knowledge becomes either hegemonic and dominating
 or oppositional and potentially Iiberatory - according to that
 very central question: 'By whom and for whom is it produced?'
       It is necessary to understand that knowledge does not come
 about through the process of mere assertions and refutations,
 scholastic or empirically based. ~ather, such theses, false, or lo-
 gically true.     are given sustenance by material relations of domi-
 nation and opposition and have their form or substance changed
 in accordance with the contradictions arising from such relations.1t
       These statements are of special importance to professional
 historians who are most prone to the malaise ~f abstracted empi-
 ricism, given the fact that their object of study. the past, is accor-
                                    120


                                          Swlii-Past-lnspectionl production
  ding to the dictates of commonsense removed from the present
  and can therefore be studied clinically, without much influence
 from prevailing social and political conjunctures. Yet, it has to be
 poiNted out that it is through the study of the anatomy of man that
 we can get a clue ofthe anatomy of the monkey. Historians, after
 all, have to live in the present with all its strifes and contradi-
 ctions besides thinking about and delving into the past! What
 makes them conscious' of the past is not the discipline of history,
 which is itself nonetheless historical, but conditions, social and
 political, prevailing here and now! For how else can we explain
 the changing interpretations of the past historically rather than
 dogmatically and idealistically? Can history change because of
 history or the past? I pose this tautological question since many
 practising historians seem not to be bothered about it.
       Socially informed historians, foremost among which Rodney's
 works - and especially the one under review - have always
 attempted not to reduce history to a footnote of the hegemonic
cultL!re of domination, but rather to see it as constituting a dIale-
 ctical relationship with contemporary social reality; as a reflection
 of such reality and as representing 'a political intervention which
 contributes to the forces determining the movement of a parti-
 cular present towards a particular future'.7 This means that,
the writing of history is turned into a 'focal theoretical base
through which to critically analyze and clarify the social condi-
tions of oppression, exploitation and domination our people have
been struggling to live in'. The production of history therefore
becomes an enterprise, not just pursued for its own sake, but
one which is guided by the very important question. 'How does the
undertaking transform me and my oppressed people?'S
      Such a question attempts to inspect the past and tries to
produce and organize historical knowledge politically, with the
possibility of correctly piacing it in the hands of the people to be
turned into a liberating force. This kind of organization of histo-
rical knowledge, rather than sheer academic refutations, poses
a threat to the neo-colonial set-up~ because as Ngugi wa Thiong'o
{lptly observes: 'What's fought at pen point is often resolved at
gunpoint' .111
      Reviewing a book like Rodney's A History of the Guyanese
Working People presupposes a thorough understanding of its
contents and also, a detailed comprehension of the political con-
                                  121


 UTAFITI- Vol    9 No  1   1987
jucture, the social context or the conditions    under which it was
produced.
Guvana of the 1970s.
      Walter Rodney returned to Guyana, the West Indies, in
1974. II He was confronted with a country in total crisis. Unlike
the legendary King Midas, everything the Guyana dictator For-
bes Burnham, touched, turned into 'shit'}2         The country was
witnessing the neo-colonial politics of what Fanon once aptly
described as the 'process of retrogression' .
      'Rodney singled out the following as the main features of the
neo-colonial syndrome obtaining in Guyana:
    I. the concentration of power in the hands of the petty bour-
        geoisie;
   2. the destruction of popular political expression and parti-
        cipation;                     .
   3. the manipulation of race and other divisions among the
        people;
   4. the institutionalization of corruption;
   S. the extension of political repression and victimization:
   6. the vulgarization of 'national culture' as a tool for class
        rule and.
   7. the deliberate distortion of revolutionary concepts}4
      Rodney observed in Guyana what he had seen elsewhere
in the West Indies and Africa: a bankrupt economy run by an in-
competent petty bourgeois olicharchy schooled in parasitism,
rather than production: a class held und17 the firm hand of multi-
national corporations, including the imperialist arm of the Inter-
national Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This criminal cabal
of compradore and imperialist forces against the people of Guyana
was turning the country into a desert. Pr(}9uction of material goods
was declining markedly. The Guyanese dictatorship responded
to this situation by employing all kinds of socialist rhetoric,
through nationalizations which were objectively aimed to repro-
duce its own corrupt ilk on an even wider scale, and by appealing
to the International Monetary Fund for loans to help it weather
the ecoriomic crisis. The Fund condescended, but at a price: a
'viryual surrender of natfonal soverei.gnty-inc1uding    cuts in pu-
                                 122


                                            S",a;-Past-!nspect;on / production
  blic spending, a wage freeze, a freeze in social service spending,
  removal of subsidies on basic items, and increased prices and
  taxes' .1'
       In other words, the people of Guyana were being forced to
  pay for the incompetence of that country's petty bourgeois oli-
  garchy and imperialist parasitism. Resistances against this af-
  front followed, or rather, got intensified. The Guyanese dicta-
 torship replied with violence and murders. It attempted to deepen
 the race question between the Indo and Afro-Guyanese so as to
 fractionalize the force of a popular upheaval. In 1974, Guyana
 was therefore a political knot frought with seeds of the future,
 it was beleaguered by state terror condoned by imperialist forces,
 and a corrupt hegemonic culture bandied around as if it were
 natural and ahistorical.
       It has been argued that Rodney maintained no separation
 between his professional practice and his political commitments,
 since he saw no particular difference between the two engage-
 ments,I6 and that, in the course of producing history, uppermost
 in his mind was the question: 'How, for whom and by whom is this
 enterprise practiced?' Thus a leading Zairean social scientist,
 E. Wamba-dia-Wamba, has remarked with regard to his How
 E urnpe Underdeveloped Africa:
          In Rodney's historical work, one has the feeling that the
          ultimate criterion of validity of historical knowledge is not
         .iust its conformity to the theoretical and technical requi-
         rements of the community of historians, their scientific
         ideology - so to speak - but more than that its liberating
         impact. An historian who does not grasp the social condi-
         tions of production and reproduction of his/her professi<rn
         resting on the basis of a separation of intellectual labour
         from manual labour for example - fails even to know him-
         self/herself honestly and correctly. He/she does not then
         practice the epistemologico-historical guidelines of his/
         her work. It is the masses who make history and class
         struggle is the motive force of history. And science 'sans
         conscience n 'est que ruine de l'ame '. The historian must
         know with clarity his/her own history, his/he ....present as
         history. Rodney insists on this 'historical consciousness'
         and it is almost this 'consciousness' that he calls 'being
         concrete' 17
      But while viewing the present as historical, Rodney was
also conscious of the fact that the present cannot be reduced to
                                    123


 UTAFITI- Vol    9  No  I  1987
 the past and vice versa. since the two constitute a dialectical
entitv. For Rodney. as a revolutionary historian. there was a sense
 in which the concern with changing the present helped sharpen
 his understanding 'of the past, and similarly a comprehension
of the past helped sharpen his grip ofthe present. and in that man-
 ner equipped him with the possibility of having a glimpse of the
future.lR
       True to Rodneys commitment to the cause of the suffering
 masses. and knowing. as Fanon before him h:Jd commented, that.
 '\\C arc nothing on earth    if we are not. first of all, "laH:s of our
cause, the cause of the people, the cause of justil'C, the cause of
 liberty'. Rodney sought to contribute his own share towards
 l1lakin.~ his country a better place to live in, Fanon, at another
point said: 'I do not carry innocence to the point of believing that
apl'l',ds to reason or to respect of human dignity can alter reality'.
and that for 'the Negro who works on the sugar plantation in Lc
 Rohert. there is only one solution: to fight', I'! SO Rodney decided
to or~anize this fi,ght against the Guyanese dictatorial leader-
ship. and thus. in 1974. was born the Working People's Alliance,
'a combination of parties opposed to the government of Guyana. '2<1
      One problem constantly bedeviled the eoaliti.'n: the raci,';
question in Guyana. The neo-colonial ruling oligar:hy had time
and again orchestrated the racial situation aiming to divir' e and
so weaken the struggles of the working people. Rodne)' Jrese-
nted the racial situation as a natural phenomenon. and sought to
situate it historically so as to clarify the strategy and tactics of the
Working Peoples Alliance. C.L.R. James. once observed in his
famous book. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L 'Ouverture and
the San Domingo Revolution. which although 'historically               in
form ... drew its contemporaneousness         ... from the living strug-
gles(s)' of Black Pan-Africanists in Britain and those of the work-
ing peoples of Africa against imperialist ravages in the conti-
nent:!l . 'The race question is subsidiary to the class question in
politics. and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous.
But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only
less grave than to make it fundamental'. 22 Rodney therefore,
concentrated his study on the struggles of the working people
of A.frican and Indian anc~stry in Guyana to show how this racial
question was treated fn practical politics. and to demonstrate
                                    124


                                          SI1',,;-P"SI-{"'f'f'ct;"f// pm""ct;"1/
 the shortcomings of this history so that the Working People's
  Alliance could draw some lessons from it.23
 The Book.
       Lucidly written and extensively researched, from archival
 sources in Guyana and Great Britain, oral history of plantation
 workers and urban dwellers undertaken between 1975 and 1977,
 Rodnev's A History of the Guyanese Working People sets out
 its limits as the years of what the working people of Guyana cal-
 led the 'hard times', between 1881 when the Guyanese were
 still predominantly prone to the politics of mendicancy and 'ap-
 peared as supplicants before the Poor Law Enquiry Commission
 pctitioning for their depressed conditions to be alleviated through
 thc mediation of the colonial state'; and 1905 during the 'Ruin-
 veldt Riots' when 'three-fourths of the population of Georgetown
 secmed to have gone stark staring mad', took to the streets in-
 vading, among other things, the Public Buildings and 'forcing
 His Excellency the governor to take refuge behind locked doors
 in the Court of Policy hall' .24 But the book also offers an admira-
hie background to these years, availing an extremely useful
sources of information concerning nineteenth century Guyanese
l'l'pnomy. class structure. power relations and the dynamics of
societal change.
       Guyana comprised of a predominantly plantation economy
located on the coast. based on the production of sugar under-
taken under the most severe local environmental and international
contraints. The heavy waterlogged clay soils and the constant
threats of drought and flooding which 'jostled each other within
each year' demanded unusual efforts to tame and humanize na-
ture. The labour for such a task came from black slaves imported
from Africa, they toiled under the supervision of the Guyanese
planter class which controlled the economy and dominated poli-
tical power in the country ensuring a smooth process of their own
reproduction and accumulation.
       Humanizing nature in coastal Guyana was a herculian under-
taking. It has been estimated that the system of dams, dikes and
canals required for drainage to prevent waterlogging, irrigation
during droughts. and defence from 'direct inundation from the
sea' a$ well as th..e overflow of fresh water from behind the back
                                  125


  UTAFITl-    Vol 9 No   1 1987
 dams' meant that to polder one square mile of land entailed the
 moving of at least one million tOftSof soil by the working people
 of Guyana 'with shovels in hand, while enduring conditions of
 perpetual mud and water' .
       Initially, slaves did the work, but with their emancipation,
in the earlier part of the nineteenth century, notwithstanding the
planters' invention of the strategy of 'apprenticeship' the Guya-
nese plantation economy was faced with what amounted to a crisis
of labour. The ex-slave Afro-Guyanese, in order to extract as
 higher wages as possible from the planters, began organizing
themselves into 'mobile task gangs, visiting different plantations
 and checking out the conditions of work before cmmitting them-
 selves to any agreement with. an employer.' Moreover, 'women
 and children started withdrawing from the fields creating general
 reduction of labour at times when it was most needed.' Thus ex-
 slaves in Guyana lay down terms and conditions of their 'naked'
 and 'free' labour.
      Worse still, 'sugar cane was the kind of crop that had to be
gotten from the field to the factory within a very short time' as
'excessive delay could mean ruination'. Ex-slaves as well as Pla-
nters understood this urgency; the latter panicked: the former
watched with pleasure. Planters, with the colonial state behind
them, resorted to intimidation: ex-slaves became more adamant.
Thus, Planters turned to indentured labour, starting with Portu-
guese, then Chinese and eventually Indians from South Asia.i2~.
Consequently plantation labour in Guyana acquired the following
compsotion: indentured labourers who were predominantly In-
dian, 'free estate residents who were usually time-expired immi-
grants and their Creole descendants', and 'Creole villagers who
were mainly Afican' !6
       Each section had its own role to play in the plantation eco-
 nomy. Generally there was a tendency for Creole Africans to move
'away from the fields because most of the skilled and better-paid
jobs were available in the factory.!? Indians were left to per-
 form the more laborious and less paid jobs in the fields, a condi-
 tion which made many of them believe that indentured labour,
notwithstanding the sophistry, was not any better than slavery,
 its precedent in Guyana.
       Indeed words such as 'overseer' and 'driver' which were
 used under slavery found their way into the systemn of indentu-
                                  126


                                            Swai-Past-inspection/ production
  reship. Indentured labourers' wives were abused just as in the
  days of slavery. Indentured labour, like slavery before it, needed
 to be 'seasoned'. But what is strange is the manner in which pla-
  nters racially justified the hierarchy of labour in the plantations,
  arguing that Indians who performed the most exhausting tasks
 were more hardworking than Africans who in view of their 'inde-
 pendence' were more prone to withdrawing from the estates to,
 assert their demand for higher wages.l'                                    .
        Race and culture were utilized emensely by planters, and sub-
 sequently the Guyanese petty bourgeoisie sought to escape the
 enslavement of estate labour, to fractionalize the common efforts
 of the working people of the country. Work specialization, which
 was imposed on the Afro and Indo-Guyanese by capital, tended
 to reinforce this racial separation. Indeed the 'hard times' of the
 latter part of the nineteenth century brought about by the capi-
 talist crisis of that time demonstrates at a local level, the second
 constraint bedevilling. plantation agriculture!9 in Guyana.
       In the years 1870 to 1905, the capitalist world system was
disrupted by five depressions whose 'impact extended outward
from the capitalist centres to zones of production such as the Ca-
ribbean'. ~o For Planters in Guyana, this meant a shrinking and
an unfavourable market for their sugar. They resorted to techno-
logical innovations to try and cut costs of production, but without
much success. Thus, they began reducing wages of plantation
labour, threw Afro-Guyanese skilled labour out of work and re-
sorted to the importation of more indentured labourers from India
with increased state subsidy. The racial myth that 'Negroes'
were lazy and 'Indian coolies' hardworking, was re-orchestrated
more than ever before.
       Afro-Guyanese protested against the ccmtinued importation
of Indian labour during such hard times. Planters persevered
with their 'ideological confusion and psychological oppression'
which was 'crucial to the maintenance of the plantation system'
by continuously repeating the old shibboleths of the "lazy nig-
ger' and the 'hardworking Sammy'. But this Eurocentric arro-
gance was put to a stop by the riots of 1905 when plaaters were
forced to run for their lives because 'Sammy' and 'Quashie'
sought violently to abolish their conditions of exploitation and
oppression.
    n  Rodney.sees the riots as.a culmination of Ioca1ized protests
                                    127


 UTAFITI- Vol   9 No    1 1987
and rebellions which punctuated the history of struggle of the
working people of Guyana since the beginning of the nineteenth
('(~ntury. 'Quashie' and 'Sammy' had both been struggling against
the' intolerable conditions of the plantation system, albeit 'semi-
autonomously', given the nature of domination of capital and. the
peculiarities of the politics of fetishism in Guyana.~l The 'hard
times' and the social consequences ofthis period offered a broader
context within which the riots were precipitated.               'Hard
times' meant 'unemployment, poor wages, atrocious living co-
nditions.
      The riots, started by the dockworkers of Georgetown, spread
to the Ruimveldt estate and the downtrodden of Georgetown
city, and eventually to fhe other estates of the coastal strip of Gu-
yana and beyond. among workers of the mines in the interior of
the country. The composition of the crowd in Georgetown com-
prised of 'dockworkers. bakers. artisans, clerks. housewives,
hucksters, and the lumpen. who were generally referred to as
centipedes '. The demonstrators 'even included some respecta-
ble middle-class citizens', some posing as people who could be
relied upon 'to serve as mediators or negotiators on behalf of the
workers'. These, Rodney considers to be 'middle-class allies of
the workers' as they 'remained loyal to populist ideals' . ~2
      The grievances of the 1905 riots burst to the fore spontane-
ously'.33 Not that there was no leadership. Rodney. paraphra-
sing Trotsky, observes: 'there are always such leaders, even
when there is no overt organization and even when the personae
arc left nameless as far as historians are concerned;'~4 Indeed
the state, through its coercive machinery of the police, concen-
trated on arresting and shooting what were considered strike
leaders. Such victims of terror and violence comprised what Rod-
ney calls 'vanguard workers'. Nevertheless. Rodney emphasizes
that the riots showed more spontaneity than organization. and
there the weakness of the movement rested.~5 Thus then he co-
ncludes:
        What is beyonQ dispute is that Guyanese workers in 1905
        lacked any organization equal to the conduct of uncompro-
        mizing struggle. The embryonic working class organiza-
        tions of the late 1880s had not survived. The People's
        Association had called for the formation of a trade union,
        but this had not materialized. The result is that grievances
        burst to the fore spontaneously in November 1905,_and
                                  128


                                          Swaf-Past-/nspectionl production
        there were no structures to plan or guide the worter mo-
        vement either at the place of wort or in the streets. At best
        ad hoc committees of workers sought audience with em-
        ployers and with the colonial authorities. Alternatively
        middle-class spokesmen presented themselves as nego-
        tiatprs.~
Fallacy of the People's'        Autonomous Domain' •
      The emergence of neo-colonial states in the post-world war
helped produce material conditions which made it possible for hi-
storians to start refuting eruditely, the ideological moorings of
Eurocentrism which had been elaborated so efficiently, during the
era of classical colonialism. Eurocentric ideologies were articu-
lated and elaborated under material conditions of colonial para-
sitism with the view to subverting the cultural resistance of co-
lonial peoples. The post world war period made it possible for ideo-
ological struggles to be waged against this tendency in order
to 'restore' the 'cultural autonomy' of the hitherto classically
colonized and imperialized peoples.
      Historically such ideological struggles implied locking horns
with the elitist colonial. historiography whose material conditions
were undergoing dramatic changes and the neo-colonial histo-
riography which was being elaborated in the centres of the impe-
rialist world. The struggle against this elitist historiography, in
the African context, produced, in the first instance, a tradition
which was a 'mirror image' of the colonial orthodoxy it was op-
posed to, given particularly, the 'cult of erudition and intellectu-
alism' coupled with the method of 'counter-factualization',                in
which it was mired. And secondly, it produced a populist tradi-
tion which aimed to recover the so-called people's initiatives to
assert their own will on the making of history especially during
the era of classical colonialism. 51
      The former tradition sought to discover the 'underlying
sedimentary       ...  African substructures'     of the pre-capitalist
era, so as to show African social dynamism and the possibilities
that Africa could have acquired the same dignified international
status like Europe, had it not been for colonialism. The later at-
tempted, largely, to oppose the elitist 'goodwill', interpretation
of African nationalism, showed the treachery of the petty bourge-
oisie in the struggle for independence, and asserted the people's
                                   129


 UTAFlTl-   Vol 9 No    1 1987
contribution to this struggle which it considered to be of para-
mount importance in the pr~ss            of decolonization. ~3 Emphasis
was placed upon the study of 'marginal classes' which, it was
believed. uncontaminated by colonial capitalism, had a gleater
i:radition of radicalism and resistance than, say, the petty bourge-
oisie who had much to lose if the imperial equation extant in Afri-
ca was radically revised.'9
      At the bottom of it all is the populist belief in the 'people'
and their 'unity', as well as the understanding          that colonial hi-
story did not merely comprise of some mechanical process of ex-
ternal stimulus and internal response, but rather, an autonomous
domain or mental and intermediate space which implied that 'how-
ever much the ruling classes, controlled 'the themes and content
of politics or the sources of history', the people could always ma-
nage to make themselves heard. This, on the part of the people,
could be demonstrated by their constant 'tendency towards re-
sistance and a propensity to rebellion', something which enabled
them to always outstrip the limits, political and ideological, set
by the ruling classes.40
      Indeed, exploitation and oppression have been a perennial
source of revolts among the poor. But it needs also to be pointed
out that this process has always been mystified and fetishized
by the domination.classes through the practice of hegemonic po-
Iitic~. Not "that such hegemony has ever been total. But this, by
itself, cannot provide the justification for indulging in a search
for the people's 'uncontaminated autonomous domain', an enter-
prise which is akin to classical anthropology and which has 'al-
 ways looked to the unconquered, the "exotic' to find the autonomy
 and specificity of subjectivity, ..i .
       Moverover, as the Italian revolutionary, Antonio Gramisci,
 once observed:
         The history of subaltern groups is necessarily fragmented
         and episodic. There undoubtedly does exist a tendency
         to ... unification in the history of these groups, but this
         tendency is continually interrupted by the activity of ruling
         groups. Subaltern groups are always subject to the acti-
         vity of ruling groups '1 even when they rebel and rise up;
         only 'permanent'      vi<:jtory breaks their subordination.'42
       The subjectivity of the! oppressed is not a closed mental
 space. Undue emphasis on the 'autonomous domain' of the peo-
                                     130


                                             Swai-past-lnspection/ production
    pIe coupled with their capacity for spontaneity has the danger of
    foreclosing the 'possibilities of education, propaganda and agi-
   tation', and thus making the 'unity oftheory and practice an im-
    possibility'. True revolutionary change will only come about if
    attention is paid not merely to the peoples' ability to make history
   but also to the importance of vanguard functions in this process.45
   Conclusion.
         This article has attemped to place Rodney's A History of the
   Guyanese Working People within the broader perspective of the
   use and functions of history in society and tried to show what can
   be learnt from the past in the course of making history. The years
    1881 to 1905 had for a long time been neglected or deliberately
   distorted in the history of Guyana. With the background of the
   contemporary Guyanese political conjucture, Rodney sought to
   study this period with the aim of showing how the people of Gu-
   yana have attempted to put to a stop the crudity of exploitation,
   oppression and its mystification, so as to build a better future.
         In doing so, Rodney tried to give back to the Guyanese wor-
   king people their own real history, a history of strife. He attempted
   to make the past a living memory' of the current generation.
  This is very much in line with his own belief that the writing of hi-
  story must be 'a way of ordering knowlege', which should' act
  as 'an active. part of the consciousness of an uncertified mass
  of ordinary people, which could be used by all as an instrument of
  social change'.~'      As an historian, Rodney was painfully aware
  that the working people of Guyana must be made to understand
  the historical origins of their oppression, and how, from ~              ta
  time they have struggled against it so as to have it overthrown.
  This, he had also done with regard to the history of A&ica,
  particularly in his famous book, How Europe U1UlerdevJoped
  Africa.'.At. .
         For Rodney, the production of history had to contribute to
  the ideological struggles of the day. This had to be undertatat          in
  a manner which did not unduly glorify the past, as bas ........ y
, bc:en the case with neo-colonial historiography. The past c:umpri-
\es not just victories of the oppressed, but also failan:s. fiom
  which a good deal can be learnt .
       . Much as Rodney praised the •spontaneity , and ..............
                                     131


  UTA6IT1-Vol    9 No   1 ~1987.
 domain' of the working people of Guyana, he also saW' something
 wrong with this kind of glorification. 'Thus, in ~nclu<;ting his study
 of the worting people of Guyana, Rodney underlined the fact
 that notwithstanding their 'enormous potential ... the weaknesses
 of the working people were most evident on the sugar estates'
 where 'racial and cultural distinctions ...     increasingly came to
 coincide with job specialization        and residential    separation' .
 Rodney argued that racial conflict was far less pronounced than
 might have been expected from the manner in which the two
 main races were thrown into competition'; but this 'crucial aspect
of historical reality' cannot be minimized, the more so because
 'it held back the development of a plantation workers' movement
 until long after the period in question' .46
       This observation had influenced Rodney greatly when the
Working people's Alliance was being formed in 1974. He was
aware of the fact that the 'race question' in Guyana 'was much
more a historical and social question rather than a biological pro-
blem' and in 'an effort to get to the minds of the youth, his last
project was the completion of a children's story book on the hi-
story of races in Guyana'. 47 On the level of practical politics,
he addressed himself to the working people of Guyana as Guya-
nese, rather than Afro - and Indo-Guyanese. He emphasized the
need for 'vanguard functions' through the Working Peoples Al-
liance rather than relying purely on people's subjectivity and
spontaneity, the major weakness of the 1905 riots.
                                   132


                                                     Swui-Pust-Inspection/  production
 NOTES
  I. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 'Mau mau is coming back,' Journal of African Marxists.
     4.1983, pp. 20-21.
  2. W. Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People 1881-1905. Battimore
     and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981 (Reprint, 1982).
 3. I will in this case wish to cite only three examples: R. Constantino. Neo-
      Colonia Identity and Counter-Consciousness,         London 1978; H.G. Slater,
      'Shaka Zulu, apartheid and the politics of the Iiberationist historiography of
     South Africa', Dar es Salaam 1982, mimeo; and E, Wamba, 'Towards an.
     introduction to the critique of Cheikh Anta Diop's School of African Historio-
     graphy', Dar es Salaam 1983, mimeo.
  4. J. Alam, 'Peasantry, politics and historiography: critique of new trend in rela-
     tion to Marxism', Social Scientist. 11, 1983, p. 43.
 5. F. Corrigan and others, For Mao, London 1979, pp. 3-4.
 6. Wamba, op.cit .. pp. 2-3. See also H.G. Slater, 'The production of historical
     knowledge at Dar es Salaam,' Dare Es Salaam, 1982, mimeo, pp. 1-3.
  7. Slater, Ibid .. p. 1.
 8. E. Wamba, 'Water Rodney and the role of the revolutionary intellectual in
     the neo-colonial countries,' Maji Maji, 43, 1980, pp. 50-51.
 9. Wamba, 'Towards an introduction to the critique of the Cheikh Anta Diop's
     school of African historiography', op. cit., p. 7.
10. See Ngugi wa Thiog'o., op. cit.
II. For the activities of Walter Rodney before his return to Guyana see my 'Rod-
     ney on scholarsbip and activism', Journal of African Marxists. 1/2, 1981/82.
12. W. Rodney, 'People's power: on dictator' Georgetown 1980. mimeo. p. 12.
13. E. Kw~yana, 'Walter Rodney lives', in Walter Rodney Memorial Committee
     Sign of the Times: A Memorial BooHet to Commemorate our Fallen Teacher
     on the First Anniversary of his Death. June, 13. 1981, London 1981.
IS. WPA support Group (UK), 'Crisis in Guyana,' in Ibid .. pp. 1-2.
16. Swai. op.cit .. and A.J. Temu .. nd B. Swai, Africa and her illtellectuals: A
     Tribute to Comrade Walter Rodney, London: Bogle L'Ouverture, forthcoming,
17. Wamba, 'Walter Rodney and the role of the revolutionary intellectual in the
     neo-colonial countries,' op.cit .. p. 51.
18. Swai. op.cit.
19. In E. Hansen, 'Frantz-Fanon: portrait of a revolutionary intellectUl;!'. Transi-
     tio1/. 46. 1974, p. 36 ..
20. F.W. Knight and R. Price, 'Editors' note', in Rodney, A History of the Guya-
     nese Working People. op.cit .. p. xiii.
21. C'.L.R. James. Nkrumuh and the Ghana Revolution, London 1977, p. 66-68.
22. C'.L.R. James. The Black Jucobins. New York 1963, p. 283,
23. G. Lamming. 'For~word', in Rodney, A History of the Guyanese K<orking
     people. op. cit. p. xix.
24. Rodney, ibid .. pp. 191,219.
25. 1hid .. pp. 32-33, but the whole of chapter 2, is very useful. This piece can also
     be found in his 'Guyana: the making of the labour force', Race and Class,
     XXII, 1981, pp. 331-52.
26. Ibid .. p.34.
27. Ibid .. p. 45.
28. Ibid .. p. 176.
29. Ibid .. pp. 19-30.
30. Ihid .. p. 19.
31. Ihid .. pp. 179-I 98.
                                            133


 UTAFITI-       Vol    9 No     1987
32.   Ihief .. pp. 200-10.
3.1.  Ihief .. p. IQR.
34.   Ihief .. p. 208.
3:;.  Ihief .. p. 221.
36.   Ihief .. pp. 198-99:
31. E. Stokes. 'Traditional resistance movements and Afro-Asian nation ..lism:
      the context of the 1857 mutinv rebellion in Indip, Past alld Present. 48, 1970.
      W. Rodney. 'The British colo~ialist School of African historiography and the
      question of African independence', Dar es Salaam, mimeo, n.d.
38. Rodney. ihid. M.M. Tukur, 'A critical evaluation of Professor Ayandele's
      boOk, The Educated Elite in the Nigerian Society', Zaria 1981, mimeo. S. Osoba
      'Considerations on some conceptual and ideological aspects of Nigeria under-
      development in historical perspective, 'lle-Ife 1980, mimeo.
39. A 'Agh, The Recent State of Imperialism and Non-Alignment. Dar es Salaam
      1980, eh. 3.
40. Alam, op.cit .. p. 45. But see also S. Bhattacharya, 'History from 'below'
       Social Scientist, II, 198~, pp. ~-20, and P. Chitterjee, 'Peasants',    politics
      and historiography: a response', Ibid., pp. 58.65.                             '
41. Alam, Ibid .. p. 47.
42. A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prisoll Notebooks, New York 1971, pp. 54-55.
43. Alam, op.cit .. p. xvii.
44. Lamming. op. cit., pxvii
45. H. Campbell, 'Walter Rodney: Peoples' historian', in Walter ~odney Memo.
     rial Commiuee. op. cit., pp. 29.~5.
46. Rodney. A History of the Guanese Working People, op. cit., p. 219.
47. Campbell, op, cit., p. ~4.
                                          134