I went to see
Harischandra at Peradeniya Teaching Hospital. After reaching ward 2, I
felt relieved as I saw Haris coming towards me with a broad smile. My
mind went back to the days when I was a student at the Peradeniya
Engineering Faculty.
Then Haris was
attached to the hall services. But unlike many others in that service,
Haris was interested in politics and philosophy.
That was a
turbulent time in politics. The LSSP had entered into a coalition with
the SLFP, but the government could not survive for long. Those who
broke away from the LSSP over the issue of coalition politics, Bala
Tampoe and Edmund Samarakkody, helped the UNP to defeat the government
in parliament.
Even dedicated
revolutionary workers, who came with Bala and Edmund, could not digest
this ultra Left action. Their revolutionary Sama Samaja Party was split
into several factions.
In 1965 when I
met Haris he was an important member of one of the factions. His
faction was affiliated to the international current led by Gerry Healy.
It was a breakaway current from the fourth international launched by
Leon Trotsky. The break occurred over the theories of Michel Pablo on
the development of revolution in the post World War period.
It was Michel
Pablo who came out with the theory of revolutionary populism in order
to explain the Cuban revolution and the possibility of this model for
the third world.
It was not a complicated theory. He argued that radical movements based on rural masses, particularly the youth, could move beyond capitalism because of the pressure of worker states such as Russia and China. He pointed to the radical movements in the third world such as Nasserism, Benbelaism, Bandaranaikism, Gandhism, Sukarnoism, Peronism, etc all claiming to be socialist, in order to justify his conclusions.
Gerry Healy was
one of the staunchest opponents of this theory. But he could not give
an explanation to the socialist clamour of these populist forces. In
fact he simply ignored the rise of populism.
In reality both
the social democracy of the developed world and the populism of the
third world were products of the capitalist boom. The latter was based
on the Bretenwoods Agreement, hence one could argue that the rise of
both social democracy and populism was a political by-product of the
Bretenwoods Agreement!
By now, with the end of the capitalist boom, both the welfarism of social democracy and the anti capitalism of rural populations have come to an end. Social democracy has become the cynical modern instrument of capitalist exploitation. A leader who can only play a traditional social democratic role is not a social democrat. Obama does not claim to be a social democrat, though the role he has played so far falls into that category. As far as I know both Michel Pablo and Gerry Healy are dead, leaving others to rethink the theory of Permanent Revolution.
Much re-evaluation
I do not
believe that Marxist theories need much re-evaluation. What is
necessary is to study them and to apply them to specific situations the
world over.
Many believe
that the application of Marxism means socialism. It is foolish to put
such demarcations. Most problems of democracy can be resolved only by
the use of Marxist tools.
A good example is the problem of nationalities in one country. This is a problem in the domain of bourgeois democracy. But an in-depth understanding can be obtained only by the Leninist approach. In particular the Tamil national problem, which has gone beyond the boundaries of Lanka, can never be resolved without re-reading what Lenin said about the national problem.
Harischandra
and I debated Marxism within the Sama Samaja movement. A large part of
our lives was spent in the atmosphere of intellectual debate within the
Peradeniya campus.
I am still fighting against my expulsion from the campus. The campus authorities refused to accept the decision of the cabinet headed by the president, the Supreme Court and the Human Rights Commission. It is unbelievable, but campus autonomy is more powerful than the president, parliament and the Supreme Court. In the meantime Haris retired from service in the campus as an official in the student welfare section.
I am sure his ailment is nothing serious and he will be able to serve the Left movement for quite some time.