THREE HUNDRED delegates to the conference of the Sri Lankan Nava Samasamaja Party (NSSP -New Socialist Party) voted for affiliation to the Fourth International at their conference at the end of November.
The NSSP has around 3000 members and leads two important trade union federations. which makes it a powerful force leaders, Vasudeva NanayakThe debate between Ernest Mandel of the Fourth International and Chris Harman of the British SWP on the crisis of the Soviet Union and Easter Europe, and the tasks for Marxists in the eastem bloc today.
Includes Emest Mandel's previously unpublished 45-page 'Fallacies of State Capitalism', summing up the debate.
Send £3.95p + 90p p&p to Socialist Outlook, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. US: send $8 surface mail, $10 airmail. Wifte for bulk rates. Page-6 Dec. 14, 1991 No. 13 kara ('Vasu' to everyone on the island) is an MP and among the Lankan left.
Two questions dominate the tasks of the working class and the politica! Left in Sri Lanka: the IMF-sponsored austerity and privatisation policy imposed by the UNP Party) government of prime minister remadasa, and the prolonsed war between government forces and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) whoseckan independent Tamil state.
DEBATE USSR At the conference there was a lively debate about the policy to be followed in the fight against the NSSP leaders, the bourgeois op position SLFP party and the opportunist left (LSSP, SLMP and Communist Party) are trying to force all anti-goverment forces Into dedo by the cor e relice. NSSP leaders pointed out that the bourgeois opposition had no clear alternative policy to that of the The NSSP put forward the proposal for a four point platorm for a principled oppost• Opposition to the IMF plan, privatisations, rade zones' handed over to foreign firms. • Stop the war against the Tamils • Land reform - Jand to the tiller' • The formation of united workers committees to nant tor these objectives, and support for mass struggles like those of currently going on Given powerful role played by the NSSP in Sri politics a big campaign against the policy of the N$SP is eing waged by the bourgeois In particular they want incorporate the popularty of Vasu into their popular front.
mmediately before the conference Colombo newspapers reported that 30 government ambush by the Tamil Tigers. Ahe real to hospitais mech figure was much higher. The war in the north and cast of the island, far from being a sporadic campaign, is a daily war on a huge scale. Armed police, soldiers and sailors guard road-blocks over Colombo, despite its distance from the war zone.
The NSSP calls for self-determination for the Tamil-speaking people, but does support to the LTTE. NSP leaders Ispoke to compared the Sing Path gterrilas in Path guerrillas Peru, and the Pol Pot's move ment in its early stages. The Tigers murderously repress all other Tamil organisations in its sassinated NSSP members.
During the last decade Sri Lankan socialists have faced enormous difficulties in mainganisation. Between 1983-5, the VISSP was banned and operated underground with its key leaders in hidin Between 1987 and 1990 the Singhalese terrorist organisation, the JVP, waged a fierce campaign the governescores NSSP general secretary Vickremabahu Karunarathne Banu to the sn Lankan ler seriously wounded in a JVP machine-gun attack in 1989.
In response to the JVP campaign the government unleashed a rein of terror by security forces and death sentation at the Peoples Bank, the largest in Sri Lanka.
addition to ›olitical erspectives the NSSP con prence held debates on interna tion. At the centre of the debate on international perspectives was the question of the semi-collapse of Stalinism.
While recognising the offensive against socialism which international captar nas sauneres, delegates stressed the new possibilities for building the international Trotskyist movement. The international resolution, including the proposed affiliation to the Fourth International, was carried with just one abstention.
Looming large in the organisation debate was the special problems which women have in participating in Sri Lankan politics. Women are a very low proportion of the NSSI's memership, although the party has a sers compared with other parties. The party leadershig stressed the importance of making it casier for women to join the party and become part of its leadership.
For historical reasons, Trotskyism plays a particulariy important role in the life of the lett in sn Lankan pontes. tor example, the old Lanka Samasamaja Party (LSSP), which joined a bourgeois coalition 64, and is today a social democratic party, still calls itself Trotskyist A large ure 4' still adorns the front of the But the NSSP conference showed the possibility exists of building a mass Trotskyist move ment in that country.
From disgrace to adulation, Czech Jeader Dubcek that there is a direct and logical economic reforms and political democracy, 'freedom and political Deng Xiaoping's model is a the many third world countrics which combine neo-liberal authoritarian forms of state Morcover, the recent Chinese experienceshows that although mar econome cor temporarily solve certain difficulties created bytureaucratic centralised planning.
and equally generates new acrious problems: unemployment, rural exodus, corruption, itation, growing social the qualities, decline in social sersubordination of the economy to the multinational banks.
he crimes committed in the Iname of communism and socialism by the bureaucratic regimes - from the bloody purges of the 1930% to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 -have deeply injared the very idea of a socialist future and reinforced bourgeis ideology among large sextions of the population, both in the Bastand But the aspirations for a free and egalitarian society, for social and economic democracy, for self-administrationand conrooted among significant parts both in the East and West.
this standpoint, socialism and communism, not state, but as a is an existeni programme which has inspirer emancipatory struggles of the victims of capitalism and im serialism for a century and a salf will remain alive as longas ne demonstrations have culminated in the new 3-way block of Siavic republics exploitation and oppression.
in the present situation of crisis, one can find among many leftists a deep state of ideologi cal confusion, disarray perplexiy. Even sone waw are not yet ready to give away the whole Marxist heritage are preparing themselves for a retreat in good order.
The dominant tendency on the left, both East and West -with the exception of a few heretics who still believe in the need for social revolution -ques for 'modernising" Markinm, adapting it to the ruling dividualism, social positivism, and above all to the market, its idols, its rituals, and its dogmas In this view, the failure of 'really existing socialism' has its origins in the attempt of the Russian Revolution to break away (at least partially) from the model of capitalist civilisation, from the world market; the modernisation of Marxism would therefore imply a certain return to the canons of the system.
The social-democratisation of several communist parties, both in the Bastand West. isone of the major forms of this atgram. What is being thrown away with the (extremel v) dirt bathwater is the baby - the idea of moving beyond capitalism toward democratically platura etonomy What are put forward in this attempt at reconciliation with Hegelian formula) are not the negated or Stalinism democratas treedom of expresston, social equality, solidarity - but those publicised by Wester elites - free competition', 'free enterprise', monetarism, here is no doubt that Mar1 xism neede to be questioned criticised, and renewed, but this should be done exactly for the opposite reason from shar given by its bourgeols critics:
with the pecause productivist pattern of in lustrial capitalism and with the bourgeois civilisation was not Marx and Marxists have often walked in the footsteps of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in presenting the development o productive forces as the objec tive foundation of the revolution and as the main argument examaans societest In certain forms of vulgar Marxism, the supreme aim of the social revolution is not a fraternal and egalitarian reorganisation of society, not a utopia with a new way of producing and living, with productive forces of a qualitatively different nature, but simply to remove those relations of production which are obstacles to the free develop ment of productive forces.
One can hardly find in Das Kapital - excepting one or two phrases - any elements for understanding that the 'growth of productive forces' can endanger numan survival Dy threatening to destroy the As a social scientist Marx did not always transcend the mechanical model, based on the arbitrary extension to the historical sphere of the model of the natural sciences, with its objective prediction, and lincar La tendency pushed to its logical conclusions by a certain kind of East German protestors overthrew Stalinism Marxism, from Plekhanov to where - in the philosophy• praxis and the dialectical materialist method, in the analysis of commodity fetishism and of capitalist lienation, in the perspective o the workers' revolutionary self emancipation and in the utopia of a classless and stateless society. This is the reason why Marxism holds an extraordinary potential for critical and subversive thought and action.
The renewal of Marxism must start with a humanist democratic, dialectical heritage to be found in Marx and his best followers. Luxemburg. Trotsky, ( Gramsci among others, a traditon wien was dereatea duni the 1920s and 1930s by counter revolution, Stalinism and fascism.
Moreover. to radicalise its break with bourgeois civilisation, Marxism must be able to integrate the practical and theoretical chal enges raised by the ecology and feminist movements, liberation (neoloxy and pacuism This requires the vision of a new civilisation, which would not be just a more progressive version capitalist system basco on statecontrolled development of the productive torces, bul a new way of life, based on use No. 13 value and democratic planning; renewable energies and ecological care; race and gender equality; fraternity, sorority, and international sondarity The pre esent worldwide triumoh of neo.liberalism and bourgeois modernisation results from the impossibility of both Social Democracy and post-Stalinism to offer a sig nificant - that is both a radical and democratic - alternative to Are than ever, Marxisn Mmust be as Marx sugthe 'ruthless Rejecting the modernist apologies for the established order, the realistic discourses legitimising the capitalist market despotism, Marxism represents what Bloch called the Princip of Hope, the utopia of an emancipated society.
But it has no ready made answertoall theguestions of the transition to socialism: how to combine representative and direct democracy, how to articulate democratic planning. market, how reconcile economic growth with ecological imperatives. Nobody can claim to have the monopoly of truth, nese questions call to. open and pluralistic debate in a Process o mutual reatin Dec. 14, 1991
33% Edward II anachronisms worked better