Six years ago on March 6, President Cheddi Jagan died, leaving a variety of legacies as instruments to fulfill the dreams of the Guyanese people.

His lifelong concern was to bring happiness to the working class, using clear and concise convictions with an eye for philosophical adjustments, wherever necessary, and which was evidenced numerous times in his political life.

The People's Progressive Party's (PPP) 28 years of persisting opposition required as a pre-condition for survival, the capability of activating credible and substantial adjustments amid intensified and mature oligarchic conditions, orchestrated by the People's National Congress (PNC).

This political persistence in the wilderness years the PPP embellished with great success, for inability to make needed adjustments would have meant failure in opposition.

THE NEW GLOBAL HUMAN ORDER
In effect, if one system does not work, it may be time, as Mill put it, to modify it or seek an alternative. Jagan's mature resiliency to adjust his ideological thinking persuaded him to comply with what can be called Mill's maxim.

This thinking has, today, become the foundation for his enduring legacy, the idea to advance the cause and better the conditions of the working class. This legacy is the idea of the New Global Human Order or the global village that President Cheddi Jagan boldly initiated in 1996.

The view of the global village is remarkable, and is aimed at revitalising poor developing nations with an unexploitative moral involvement from the developed world.

Jagan, for the first time since 1992, clearly, outlined his philosophic vision for Guyana in a speech in 1996 to the International Conference on the Global Human Order. What he presented was quite provocative for the squeamish but practical, and requires endorsement and implementation.

In the Epilogue to the last Edition of The West On Trial, Jagan explained why a new global human order was necessary and where anything less was insufficient, thus: "Market-driven economic globalization and unbridled modernization, coupled with inhumane and ill-designed structural adjustment programs, are leading to a spiral of marginalization and exclusion. The gap in living standards between the rich and the poor in both the North and the South is getting wider: the rich, "the included", "the Haves" are getting richer at the expense of the poor, the 'excluded", the "Have-nots"."

The social and economic discrepancies between the advantaged and the disadvantaged found nationally, also are located internationally. In effect, the fight to eliminate poverty and restore human dignity has to be waged across national borders.

SUPPORT
Jagan knew all along that the fight for Guyana's freedom was intertwined in the fight for world freedom, and so he took his battle to the international fora.

His formal call to wage war for the restoration of human dignity worldwide started with his address to the United Nations in 1993, and since then, there has been no turning back.

The following developments attest to Jagan's resilience and fortitude in his aggressive promotion of the New Global Human Order: appeal to world leaders in 1994; paper presented for the UN-sponsored World Hearings on Development, 1994; paper presented to the European Commission, 1994; address to the Commonwealth Heads of Government in New Zealand, 1995; letter to the President of the World Bank, 1996; paper presented at the Global Development Initiative Advisory Group at the Carter Center, 1996; address to the World Food Summit in Rome, 1996; Memorandum disseminated at the hemispheric Summit on Sustainable Development in Bolivia, 1996.

The Guyana Parliament in 1994 approved a resolution on the New Global Human Order.

In 1996, an international conference on the New Global Human Order took place, culminating in its participants endorsing the proposed new order.

Then in 1977, CARICOM, The Group of 77 and China (G 77), and the UN General Assembly, endorsed the New Global Human Order.

The UN General Assembly has now scheduled this new order proposal for debate at its next meeting.

IDEOLOGICAL THRUSTS
Let's examine some of his ideological thrusts.

Jagan recommended the need for an appropriate theoretical perspective, a viewpoint that not only considers capital accumulation, but also the workers' relations and their conflicts at the workplace.

All the more reason we need to remind ourselves that capital accumulation, private ownership of the means of production, self-interest and the profit motive, and free competition are important components of capitalism. The unifying feature is individual competition.

This is fine if everyone starts on a level playing field. However, this is not the case in a market economy. Jagan expresses support for these capitalistic elements.

However, he quite rightly argues that capitalism or the market economy by itself, is not sufficient to produce the desired development for Guyana. Some adjustment is needed where capitalism can take on a human face.

Jagan believes that the developmental strategy also should focus on the relationship of the worker to the products of his labour and on the process of producing that product. The worker's lack of control of his own product can result in feelings of helplessness (alienation).

Alienation occurs in the context of an imbalanced relationship between the worker and the capitalist, and operating to the advantage of the capitalist and to the disadvantage of the worker.

In effect, the capitalist's needs dominate over the needs of the worker.

What Jagan proposed was for the worker to experience creative and purposeful activity through work in a society in which material needs are balanced with cultured needs. Balancing material with cultured needs will promote the development of a society in which a stability is struck between individual needs and social cooperation.

People should have the opportunity to fulfill their individual needs, but at the same time, they should not be effected at the expense of society's needs.

The capitalist's needs are, generally, pursued at the cost of societal needs.

Jagan wanted to correct this discrepancy through the global village where both worker and capitalist can operate through a framework of promotive interdependence. In this situation, both receive mutual rewards.

Capitalism is driven by the pursuit of individual interests; this approach could be of great satisfaction to a large number of people, except for the presence of gross structured inequalities that help some persons and obstruct others from advancing to higher levels in life.

Through no fault of their own, many of those prevented from reaching their potential, may never fulfill even some basic needs, due to large-scale institutionalised inequalities and discrimination in the society.

Jagan's advocacy for a complementary relationship between capitalism and socialism is well taken, and could represent an enduring legacy.

Establishing such a system is long overdue. An alternative to this mixed strategy is impoverishment and disparities in wealth and income.

Obviously, the absence of a mixed economic system comprising capitalism and socialism can hardly promote moral development, as espoused by Jagan's global village. Jagan's prescription endorses this joint philosophical approach.

Jagan's vision of blending the market economy with governmental interventions for nation building purposes is on target and must be vigorously pursued.

ELIMINATING UNEVEN AND UNBALANCED DEVELOPMENT
The foundation of President Jagan's global vision is a bona fide relationship between developed and developing nations, a relationship based on democracy, mutual trust and benefit, and interdependence. The playing field between these parties at the present time is uneven and unbalanced, making it difficult for developing societies to receive essential benefits.

The advanced nations participate in a global village. But this village is driven, determined, and dictated aggressively by the pursuit of profit, and not by moral and ethical development.

Further, this global village or global economy is controlled by developed nations. Any interference with this global economy resulting in loss of profit or a loss of comparative international trade advantage, may not be tolerated

by these centre nations.

The moral outlook of Jagan's global village is completely opposed to the uneven and unbalanced development internationally. Jagan's global proposal should not be discarded. The best days ahead for it has to be in Guyana, and indeed, the Caribbean.

The global village would become more of a reality in an economic system driven by a mix between capitalist and socialist principles, rather than be solely applied within a capitalist economic system. This mix is scarce on the international scene.

Therefore, a useful starting point for activating the global village concept, has to be initially rooted nationally. Guyana can be the cradle for this experiment.

Jagan's political struggles and achievements should be motivators for promoting the idea of the global village.

Democracy wilts under the poverty of inhumane capitalism with its accompanying poverty and human indignity.

Many developed nations are beginning to understand the contradictions of this inhumane capitalism, particularly, in the area of retardation of human development. They see this contradiction as gradually inducing a decline in people's democracy and human development.