• The Socialist Equality Party Prez candidate Pani Wijesiriwardena opines that such is the result of systematic betrayals & distortions by pseudo-Marxists/socialists

Throughout the world, the political literacy of the working class remains at a very low level. Notably, today, various ideologies promoted by pseudo-left organisations, which represent interests of the upper-middle-class while pretending to be socialists, remain a massive obstacle against the development of the political consciousness of the working class. Noting this, the Socialist Equality Party’s (SEP) Presidential candidate Pani Wijesiriwardena explained that his interest is mainly about the political literacy of the working class or the political consciousness of the working class. 

During an interview with The Daily Morning in the run-up to the 2024 Presidential Election, he explained how many socio-economic issues, in addition to the low political literacy among the citizens, have been directly or indirectly influenced by capitalist forces and the elite, among other groups. He also opined that reducing the economic crisis to a result of frauds, corruption, and bribery is a conscious attempt by the defenders of capitalism. 

Following are excerpts from the interview:

What are your policies and strategies for economic recovery?

All political parties and various organisations are speaking about ‘saving the country from the crisis’. However, what is this country? On one side, a capitalist class, and on the other side, the working class and their allies such as poor people. When talking about ‘saving the country from the crisis’, they are talking about saving the capitalist class from the crisis. 

We are concerned about the dire social conditions of the working class. The Government and the capitalist class are heaping the burden of the crisis on them and have created intolerable living and social conditions. 

How can this situation be solved within the capitalist system? Production and distribution and all the other levers of the economy are in the hands of the capitalist class. The economy should be reorganised in order to serve the majority of the society, that is the workers and the poor, and not to serve the profits of the few capitalists. That means that the defence of the living and social conditions of the workers and the poor can be achieved only through the reorganisation of the economy on the basis of socialist lines. We are differentiating from those capitalist parties’ slogan of saving capitalism from the crisis. 

The crisis of the Sri Lankan capitalist class is part of the crisis of the global capitalist system. The collapse of the global financial system in 2008 and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have deepened the crisis. The United States (US)-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) war against Russia in Ukraine and the genocidal war of Israel in Gaza with the backing of imperialist powers are further intensifying the crisis. In fact, the global capitalist system is going through a historical crisis. The systemic collapse is a result of deepening contradictions of the capitalist system. They are the contradiction between the private ownership of productive forces and the socialisation of production, and the globalisation of production and the rival nation State system. Taking out the crisis in Sri Lanka from this historical context and reducing it as a result of frauds, corruption and bribery is a conscious attempt by the defenders of capitalism. Amid this international crisis, major powers are preparing for wars for colonisation once again, while all capitalist regimes are heaping the burden of the crisis on the backs of the working people. There is no other alternative for the ruling classes. The wars that are developing towards a catastrophic world war that will wipe out mankind from the planet can be prevented by building an anti-war movement of the international working class on the basis of socialism - that is through the frontal assault on the global capitalist system and the fight for the world socialist revolution to end the profit system. 

We, the SEP, and our world movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), are fighting for this programme. On this basis, we call for the repudiation of the repayment of all foreign loans, the redistribution of wealth by nationalising banks, big companies and big plantations being brought under the workers’ control, seizing the accumulated wealth of billionaires and using them for social programmes, and providing subsidies for the needy.

What sort of an approach do you think Sri Lanka should take when it comes to loss-making State institutions?

The question of dealing with unprofitable State corporations has been raised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Government led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, and all other parties. Their solution is the privatisation or commercialisation of these corporations. Many of these institutions were established in the past to provide subsidised services or goods for the people. They are facing the same crisis within the capitalist system. 

The solution of privatisation and commercialisation is aimed at releasing these sectors for domestic and international investors. This is their demand. One of the conditions of the IMF when it approved the United States Dollars (US $) 3 billion bailout loan was ‘reforming’ State owned enterprises on this line. This programme will lead only to job destruction, wage cuts and intensifying workload. We call for the placing of all these corporations under the workers’ control as part of the fight for the socialist programme. 

What type of solutions do you have to resolve the North and East national ethnic issue, including the full implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution?

The 13th Amendment was portrayed as granting the democratic rights of the Tamil people in the North and the East. It is false. It was imposed as part of the agreement between the then Indian and Sri Lankan governments in July 1987, for the disarming of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) while granting limited devolution of power to the Tamil elite. Because of the opposition of Sinhala racialist groups and all Colombo-based governments allied with them, even this limited power sharing model has not been implemented. 

However, this arrangement between capitalist governments and the Tamil elite will not end ethnic discrimination and the suppression of the democratic rights of the Tamil minority. From the outset, we did not support the 13th Amendment on this basis while opposing and exposing the racist campaign against it. This discrimination and suppression of democratic rights began in 1948 with the establishment of a unitary State while removing the citizenship rights of the Tamil plantation workers in order to divide the working class. It went down to making Sinhala as the official language and Buddhism as the foremost religion in the country’s Constitution. Such discrimination of minorities and provoking ethnic tension were part of the class based strategy of the capitalist ruling class to divide and weaken the working class and defend the capitalist system. It led to the 26-year-long communal conflict which resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Tamil civilians. 

The SEP and its predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League, opposed the conflict and demanded the withdrawal of the military from the North and the East. At the same time, we opposed Tamil communalism and separatism. We fought and are fighting for the unity of the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers, and rallying the respective oppressed people to overthrow capitalism as part of the struggle for international socialism. Without a frontal attack on capitalism, which is the source of all discrimination, national oppression cannot be eliminated. 

We base our struggle on the theory and program of the Permanent Revolution, advanced by Leon Trotsky, the co-leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution along with Vladimir Lenin. The Russian Revolution was based on this program. The Permanent Revolution explains that the bourgeoisie in countries of belated capitalist development is unable to address democratic rights. We see how bourgeois ruling classes in Sri Lanka, India, and in similar countries have been using ethnic divisions to pit one section of the masses against the other to facilitate their reactionary rule. 

The SEP is fighting for a Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka-Eelam as part of the Federation of Socialist Republics of South Asia and internationally. This is not a utopia. This is the only realistic programme. Look at the historical lessons of this country and internationally. Other programmes have created one disaster after another for the masses.

How do you propose to strengthen the rule of law in Sri Lanka?

Bourgeois parties and governments claim that they are for maintaining the ‘rule of law’. You see that this claim is false in the past and the present. They use their power to preserve their rule and wealth. They don’t care about the law and violate the law that they themselves have created. This signifies the crisis of capitalism and the degeneration of democracy within this system. They are drifting rapidly towards dictatorship.

 We expose how the governments and other sections of the ruling class who violate the rule of law undermine even the limited democratic rights for their class related interests. However, we are not begging the ruling class to establish the rule of law, but instead fight for the defence of democratic rights. We explain that the workers cannot defend their democratic rights within the capitalist system.

What are the measures that you propose to improve State revenue? What is your opinion about the existing tax system and the tax burden on the people?

Ruling classes around the world, including those in Sri Lanka, are placing the full burden of the economic crisis on the working class and the oppressed masses. Capitalist governments, which are imposing a massive tax burden on the working people to increase public income, are granting substantial tax concessions, including tax holidays, to big business. The IMF insists on a further increase in public income. Under these conditions, whichever government will be elected through the Presidential Election, will definitely impose more and more tax burdens on the working people and the oppressed masses. 

The results of these IMF-dictated austerity measures, including the massive tax burden on working people, will push down the overwhelming majority of the population into poverty and further increase social inequality. According to the latest World Bank reports, poverty in Sri Lanka has increased from 11% in 2019 to 26% in 2024 – more than doubled. In relation to social inequality, the top 1% of the population enjoys 31% of the national wealth while the share enjoyed by the bottom 50% is lower than 4%. 

Under these conditions, those pseudo-left parties, such as the Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) which are working to defend the bourgeois State at any cost, are advising bourgeois governments that they can bring the country out of the economic crisis by collecting the due taxes from big business or by pressurising them to do so. These pseudo-leftists are advising and pressurising the same governments which are working to defend the interests of big business. We have no interest in defending bourgeois states like those pseudo-left parties. Therefore, we have no proposals on increasing the income of the bourgeois state. We propose that the working class come forward to prepare its own political counter-offensive based on international socialist policies to defeat all austerity assaults of bourgeois governments, including the massive tax burdens.

What is your opinion about Sri Lankans’ overall political literacy, and how do you propose to improve it?

In this case, our interest is mainly about the political literacy of the working class or the political consciousness of the working class. Not only in Sri Lanka, but also in all countries from advanced capitalist countries to under-developed capitalist countries, the political literacy of the working class remains at a very low level. It is a result of betrayals and distortions carried out by Stalinist, social democratic, Pabloite and Maoist parties, which have promoted various anti-Marxist theories and ideologies, pretending to be Marxists and socialists. These systematic betrayals carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy which usurped power from the Soviet working class culminated in its dissolution of the Soviet Union in December, 1991. This created an immense political confusion and setback within the international working class. 

Today, various ideologies promoted by pseudo-left organisations, which represent interests of the upper-middle-class while pretending to be socialists, remain a massive obstacle against the development of the political consciousness of the working class. As an example, the FSP is promoting a short-term programme of winning some reforms by pressurising the bourgeois Parliament through so-called people’s councils being formed as an ‘outside power’, while postponing ‘socialism’ into the distant future as a ‘long-term programme’. Such actions of the FSP create a damaging impact on the development of the political consciousness of the working class by tying them to the bourgeois Parliamentary framework and the state. 

The political consciousness of the working class can be developed by bringing the historical experiences of the international working class and the Marxist movement and lessons from the political and theoretical struggle waged by the Marxist movement, today’s  Trotskyist movement, against various anti-Marxist ideologies, into the working class. Today, that task is being carried out by the ICFI, the World Trotskyist Movement, and its sections – the Socialist Equality Parties. The World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org), the official Internet organ of the ICFI, is playing a central role in it. I urge workers, the youth, intellectuals, and the oppressed masses to become regular readers of the WSWS and join with the SEP and its youth and student wing, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), to develop the political consciousness of the working class to prepare it politically and theoretically for the task of socialist revolution.