The Ordeal of British Guiana

Abstract

What is so appealing about the Guianese endeavor for socialism is that a country so little, and with resources so limited, has challenged empires so powerful and taken on problems so difficult. Three centuries of Dutch and British colonial rule must be lifted from Guiana's government administration, her social planning, and her economic enterprise. Half of her agricultural wealth and practically all of her mineral production are foreign-owned. There is a minimum of manufacturing; the largest Guianese-owned factory employs fewer than eighty workers—to make beer, rum, and exorbitant profits for the government's bitterest enemy, a collaborator with semi-fascist forces in the United States.

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