Ours is an anti-people, foreign dominated state

By Wickramabahu Karunaratna

(February 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Now the question is, what about the workers? Yes, what about them? They are also human. Hence they are also divided according to the political currents in society. But the difference is that they do join unions irrespective of their political alliances.

In fact they inevitably go to the union which appears to be the most radical union at the workplace. Radicalism need not be related to class struggle. Hence even guerrilla leaders are considered to be fighters for workers rights and proletarians join unions led by such leaders. But soon they realise that some of these playacts of such leaders are just misplaced radicalism. Hence they slowly drift out. Chauvinists and racists do appear as radicals. Very often I have been identified as a JVPer in spite of my sharp differences with that party. For the ordinary masses all red radicals are fighters against exploitation. It takes some time to learn that chauvinist radicalism is in fact opposed to the interests of the working class. If you look at the role played by the JVP today you will realise that it is a double crossing party of the highest order. On the one hand, they want to be in the good books with the president while on the other hand they also want to bark at him. In fact their politics is not very far from that of their ex-comrade Wimal Weerawansa. The Weerawansa chinthanaya is very straight forward. Wimal says this government is on the right path as they are conducting an uncompromising war against Tamil freedom.

Kinky theory

The present state of Lanka, according to Wimal, is an emerging nationalist state countered by imperialists in many subtle ways. Revolutionaries must defend the consolidation of this growing nationalist state against all kinds of enemies supported by imperialists. He justifies, that at the same time, their task is to internally seek corrections to the ills of the incipient national state. Hence while supporting Mahinda they criticise corruption and other misdeeds of the political leadership. Of course, according to Wimal these drawbacks of the government are not very serious. Certainly these are secondary compared to the massive task of building the national state!

Now the JVP of Amarasinghe accepts most of this kinky theory. In fact this was created by Amarasinghe and the JVP leadership. But the pressure from the rank and file, especially those who are based in workplaces, made JVP rethink some of the axioms of this national state theory. They see that the so called nationalist state is really, even according to their vision, a reactionary bourgeois state working closely with multinational corporations and other Western powers. In fact the war is financed and supported by Americans, Indians, Europeans and other global powers. But as a party based mostly on Sinhala petty bourgeoisie they cannot revise their poisonous conclusion that the LTTE is an agent of global capital. On that basis they cannot oppose the ‘sacred’ war policy of the government. Hence the contradictory policy of on the one hand, supporting by voting for war expenditure and emergency regulations, and on the other hand opposing in the streets the rising prices and military excesses in the South.

Global capitalism

Is the regime of Mahinda, which is following an economic policy tied to the agenda of global capitalism while carrying out an extreme repressive policy towards Tamil speaking people, a progressive entity? Is it better than a possible Wickremesinghe regime, which will follow the same economic policy tied to global capitalism, while pursuing a policy to unite the country on the basis of negotiations, maybe as a federal state? I believe the answers, of both Somawansa and Weerawansa, would be ‘yes’ to both questions. Unfortunately both parties do not recognise that the war mongering policy by its own dynamics has created the danger of a barbaric repressive regime in Lanka. Anybody following the same military policy most likely would have got caught to the same military tide. So it is not what Wickremesinghe stood for yesterday, or what a lovely friend Mahinda was a few years back, that matters. It is the reality of the dynamics of military policy that need to be countered. Whatever the beauty of the theory of a nationalist state, what we have got is not a people’s nationalist state but just the opposite - an anti-people, foreign dominated state.

We must have a strategy to go forward from here.-Sri Lanka Guardian