The Truth About Bauxite Nationalisation - Cheddi Jagan PPP of Guyana 1972

Vintage Leftist Leaflet Project

See the end of this post for details on the project.

Leaflet: The Truth About Bauxite Nationalisation - Cheddi Jagan PPP of Guyana 1972

Written by the late Cheddi Jagan, General Secretary of the People's Progressive Party of Guyana and one of the towering figures of Guyanese history, this leaflet that is a compilation of articles in the Mirror newspaper is interesting for a number of reasons.

First, it talks about Canadian imperialism and the contradictions between the interests of Canadian imperialism and capital and those of the United States. This serves as a reminder that Canada was always an integral part of the imperialist camp.

Second, it outlines in very effective form why nationalization does NOT equal socialism in anyway -- a common error such as when we see memes with slogans like (paraphrasing) "Hate Socialism? Then I guess you hate the post office and fire department" etc., that confuse services and corporations being public with being some nascent example of a socialist economy. 

Jagan notes that the type and intent of nationalization and even more the CONTEXT of nationalization vary considerably and that there are objective differences between capitalist and reformist nationalization and a genuinely socialist program of nationalization. 

(Click on scans to enlarge)

When The Left Chapter began part of what I wanted to do on the blog was to show and highlight vintage public leftist election/political leaflets and booklets. While many of these have been offered with commentary to date, a very large collection of hundreds of them from several different sources remains and to preserve these often quite rare documents we will be posting them on a regular (almost daily) basis now often without or with minimal commentary so that people may have access to them as quickly as possible as an historical resource. 

While these will all be leaflets from a variety of different leftist viewpoints and countries, they are being posted as an historical/study resource and the views or opinions expressed in them do not necessarily reflect the views of this blog or blogger.

All of these posts (as well as posts made to date) will be listed on the page: Vintage Communist/Socialist Leaflets (which is still being updated with past posts).


If you have any public, vintage leaflets or booklets you would like to contribute to this project please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com