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Irrelevant dinosaurs
published: Sunday | October 14, 2007
Dawn Ritch, Columnist
I take the strongest possible exception as a Jamaican, to being lectured in Marxist-Leninist terms by an ex-communist living overseas.
He himself is an irrelevance in every sense. The Marxist dialectic has fallen apart, except as a tool to examine ancient history, and Professor Don Robotham does not even live here any more.
Long ago, when he did, he was a member of the central committee and politburo of the Workers' Party of Jamaica (WPJ), a communist organisation founded by Dr. Trevor Munroe. The latter was, in the early 1980s, highly supportive of the Grenada Revolution and Maurice Bishop, and then highly supportive of Bernard Coard.
Both of these men were middle-class intellectual revolutionaries. This revolution involved a horrific event where over 100 people jumped off a cliff to their deaths, to say nothing of an armed invasion.
One of the inspirations for Bishop's New Jewel Movement was Jamaican, Dr. Trevor Munroe. He is alive and well in Jamaica, and eagerly seeking public office and preferment.
Professor Robotham is only too happy to accord it, even though he has, as far as I am concerned, absolutely no standing in the matter. Furthermore, as a former member of a communist organisation, he can hardly be described as a disinterested observer.
This didn't stop Robotham from concluding that Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller was an idiot for not making Dr. Munroe, Donna Scott Mottley and Floyd Morris senators. This demonstrated, according to Robotham, that she had isolated the People's National Party (PNP) intelligentsia and proved herself a lumpen.
Failed politician
Also writing in this newspaper, Arnold Bertram, a failed politician and leftist relic from the long-gone past of the PNP, said:
"The Portia antagonists insist that the former Prime Minister should take full responsibility for the extremely low levels of supportive administrative and managerial capacity with which she surrounded herself. For them, the new palace guard had just too many sycophants, loose cannons and opportunists.
"They were worried by the isolation of the intelligentsia and openly critical of the substitution of the cult of the personality for the party as an institution. As far as they were concerned, the PNP had been overrun by elements which were, for the most part, ignorant of its traditions and disinterested in its historical role in nation building."
It seems, therefore, that a fresh perspective and first blood in the PNP have angered Bertram beyond words.
It's as though the two commentators were in the same room writing together, with the same mission. Yet, one lives here and the other lives overseas. If their objective is to promote Dr. Peter Phillips for the presidency of the PNP, then they are one very good reason why he should not have it.
Robotham has written three Sundays in a row ranting about the lumpen. He wants them isolated, eliminated and destroyed, presumably as evil incarnate. On September 23 he wrote: "If the sensible tendencies united, isolate the lumpen, and reach out to the centre, this will not only be good for the PNP; it will be good for Jamaica as well."
The centre to which he refers is not conservativism, but the politburo. The so-called PNP intelligentsia, since neither Robotham nor Bertram noticed, isolated Simpson Miller from the beginning for reasons best known to themselves. They openly said she didn't have two thoughts to knock together.
She still won the internal election for the presidency of the PNP, and more seats in the general election than they probably deserved, considering the disgusting public behaviour and comments coming from them about their own vice-president.
The casual ease with which they cast about class prejudice and racism was, and continues to be, absolutely appalling. Here is Robotham writing in the first of his series of articles, 'Do the math'.
The urban poor are not more than 15 per cent of the total population. At most, they are 10 per cent of the electorate and are concentrated in the Kingston garrisons. A stratospheric 70 per cent approval meant Mrs. Simpson Miller's initial acclamation reached deep into the upper-middle class.
She even had significant supporters from the light-skinned business élite - 'Labourites for Portia' - the rich brigade. But all this collapsed. That's the thing about the Marxist Leninist perspective: It can't abide independence - whether political, financial or intellectual.
'Lumpen proletariat'
It should be noted that 'lumpen proletariat' was the term used by the Soviet regime to identify those marked for extermination. Usually, they were recalcitrant peasants and craftsmen. Eventually, as the decades wore on, they became the urban poor.
The proletarian could be organised, but the lumpen could not. The latter were not interested in revolutionary advancement.They and any other inconvenient people were, therefore, sent in their tens of millions to die in the gulags of Siberia. Even today, the Russians speak in whispers for fear of being overheard saying something bad.
People like Marx, Engels, Stalin, Lenin, Robotham, Bertram and Munroe get to decide who is good and who is bad. They get to decide who is brown, black, or light-skinned, who can be rich, who can be poor, and whom those people may or may not have permission to support politically. Either that, or be sent to the gulag.
Robotham has a piece of nerve to advocate the disposal of those he finds inconvenient. Only a horrid little man could make such a proposal to Jamaica from the safety of foreign climes.
But all communists are like that, even ex-ones. They have no compassion, only a theory disgraced the world over by the contempt in which it holds human life. Yet, he calls himself a Jamaican. I would much rather he renounce it, but that's up to him.
As for Bertram, he lost his PNP constituency to the neophyte Verna Parchment when she ran for the JLP. Is this someone with the credentials to lecture anyone on politics? These two dinosaurs are best relegated to the nearest museum.
published: Sunday | October 14, 2007
Dawn Ritch, Columnist
I take the strongest possible exception as a Jamaican, to being lectured in Marxist-Leninist terms by an ex-communist living overseas.
He himself is an irrelevance in every sense. The Marxist dialectic has fallen apart, except as a tool to examine ancient history, and Professor Don Robotham does not even live here any more.
Long ago, when he did, he was a member of the central committee and politburo of the Workers' Party of Jamaica (WPJ), a communist organisation founded by Dr. Trevor Munroe. The latter was, in the early 1980s, highly supportive of the Grenada Revolution and Maurice Bishop, and then highly supportive of Bernard Coard.
Both of these men were middle-class intellectual revolutionaries. This revolution involved a horrific event where over 100 people jumped off a cliff to their deaths, to say nothing of an armed invasion.
One of the inspirations for Bishop's New Jewel Movement was Jamaican, Dr. Trevor Munroe. He is alive and well in Jamaica, and eagerly seeking public office and preferment.
Professor Robotham is only too happy to accord it, even though he has, as far as I am concerned, absolutely no standing in the matter. Furthermore, as a former member of a communist organisation, he can hardly be described as a disinterested observer.
This didn't stop Robotham from concluding that Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller was an idiot for not making Dr. Munroe, Donna Scott Mottley and Floyd Morris senators. This demonstrated, according to Robotham, that she had isolated the People's National Party (PNP) intelligentsia and proved herself a lumpen.
Failed politician
Also writing in this newspaper, Arnold Bertram, a failed politician and leftist relic from the long-gone past of the PNP, said:
"The Portia antagonists insist that the former Prime Minister should take full responsibility for the extremely low levels of supportive administrative and managerial capacity with which she surrounded herself. For them, the new palace guard had just too many sycophants, loose cannons and opportunists.
"They were worried by the isolation of the intelligentsia and openly critical of the substitution of the cult of the personality for the party as an institution. As far as they were concerned, the PNP had been overrun by elements which were, for the most part, ignorant of its traditions and disinterested in its historical role in nation building."
It seems, therefore, that a fresh perspective and first blood in the PNP have angered Bertram beyond words.
It's as though the two commentators were in the same room writing together, with the same mission. Yet, one lives here and the other lives overseas. If their objective is to promote Dr. Peter Phillips for the presidency of the PNP, then they are one very good reason why he should not have it.
Robotham has written three Sundays in a row ranting about the lumpen. He wants them isolated, eliminated and destroyed, presumably as evil incarnate. On September 23 he wrote: "If the sensible tendencies united, isolate the lumpen, and reach out to the centre, this will not only be good for the PNP; it will be good for Jamaica as well."
The centre to which he refers is not conservativism, but the politburo. The so-called PNP intelligentsia, since neither Robotham nor Bertram noticed, isolated Simpson Miller from the beginning for reasons best known to themselves. They openly said she didn't have two thoughts to knock together.
She still won the internal election for the presidency of the PNP, and more seats in the general election than they probably deserved, considering the disgusting public behaviour and comments coming from them about their own vice-president.
The casual ease with which they cast about class prejudice and racism was, and continues to be, absolutely appalling. Here is Robotham writing in the first of his series of articles, 'Do the math'.
The urban poor are not more than 15 per cent of the total population. At most, they are 10 per cent of the electorate and are concentrated in the Kingston garrisons. A stratospheric 70 per cent approval meant Mrs. Simpson Miller's initial acclamation reached deep into the upper-middle class.
She even had significant supporters from the light-skinned business élite - 'Labourites for Portia' - the rich brigade. But all this collapsed. That's the thing about the Marxist Leninist perspective: It can't abide independence - whether political, financial or intellectual.
'Lumpen proletariat'
It should be noted that 'lumpen proletariat' was the term used by the Soviet regime to identify those marked for extermination. Usually, they were recalcitrant peasants and craftsmen. Eventually, as the decades wore on, they became the urban poor.
The proletarian could be organised, but the lumpen could not. The latter were not interested in revolutionary advancement.They and any other inconvenient people were, therefore, sent in their tens of millions to die in the gulags of Siberia. Even today, the Russians speak in whispers for fear of being overheard saying something bad.
People like Marx, Engels, Stalin, Lenin, Robotham, Bertram and Munroe get to decide who is good and who is bad. They get to decide who is brown, black, or light-skinned, who can be rich, who can be poor, and whom those people may or may not have permission to support politically. Either that, or be sent to the gulag.
Robotham has a piece of nerve to advocate the disposal of those he finds inconvenient. Only a horrid little man could make such a proposal to Jamaica from the safety of foreign climes.
But all communists are like that, even ex-ones. They have no compassion, only a theory disgraced the world over by the contempt in which it holds human life. Yet, he calls himself a Jamaican. I would much rather he renounce it, but that's up to him.
As for Bertram, he lost his PNP constituency to the neophyte Verna Parchment when she ran for the JLP. Is this someone with the credentials to lecture anyone on politics? These two dinosaurs are best relegated to the nearest museum.
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