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A spontaneous mass movement has emerged which has been the biggest Sri Lanka has seen in decades. The sort of social unrest that we're seeing now in Sri Lanka we can expect to see all around the world in the period to come. So it's important that we pay keen attention to these events and draw the lessons as they unfold. On that note, with us today is Ben Curry, a writer and activist with the International Marxist Tendency who has recently been reporting on these events for Marxist.com, the website of the IMT. Hi Ben, how's it going? I'm very well, Jack. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm great and it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. So I guess just to jump straight into things, could you sort of explain what's happening in Sri Lanka right now and what are the latest developments? Yeah, well I mean events in Sri Lanka have been picking up pace really for the past few weeks. For the past month really you've seen protests on the streets of Sri Lanka and these protests are against the deplorable living conditions which people are facing. The country is essentially on the, well it has now actually declared that it's not going to repay its debts. It's declared bankruptcy effectively. It's run out of foreign reserves. And you're running out of basic essential goods, cooking fuel, petrol, diesel, electricity, blackouts that last well now up to 13 hours long in a day, bearing in mind of course there's only really 15 waking hours in the day. So the majority of the day the electricity is out and living conditions have become utterly desperate for the majority of people. Inflation is skyrocketing in double digits but food inflation is something like 30% and even the price of a candle has become unaffordable for vast parts of the population. So life has become unbearable and that really precipitated a massive explosion on the 31st of March. So the end of last month, two weeks ago almost exactly now, when you saw mass protests erupt spontaneously there was no leadership to this, no political party, no trade union or anything like that in the leadership. Just the masses have their back up against the wall and you had this explosion of anger and in particular the focus of that anger was the president and the prime minister. They're both brothers actually. They belong to a clan known as the Roger Paxchers. And there was a huge amount of anger demanding that these people resign saying where is our stolen money, pay for the debt with the Pandora dollars. In other words, a reference to the fact that this family has been implicated in the Pandora papers, embezzling money, public money and just a huge outburst of anger across Colombo, which is the capital city. In particular you had thousands of people descended upon the president's own personal residence and a state of emergency was quickly declared, a curfew which lasted the whole weekend and the government panicked, but the protests have only really escalated from there. The weekend after this explosion of anger in Colombo you saw an escalation of protests across the whole island and people from all backgrounds have been involved in this. Tamils, Christians, Muslims, it's cut across religious divisions, other divisions within society. All of the masses have been swept up with this, particularly the youth at the forefront of this movement. And it has caused a crisis in the government and in parliament as well. You've seen 42 MPs have resigned from the governing coalition. All of the vast majority of the ministers from the cabinet have resigned and the government's unable to find anyone to replace them with because basically no one wants to be tarred with association with the Rajapaksas. But it's not just the Rajapaksas themselves who have been the target of the anger of the masses. Another slogan that has come out from the streets as well as these slogans that really demonstrate a class anger has been as well as Go Home Gotta, which is a reference to the fact that he has gotta by a Rajapaksa, the president has American citizenship. He has a very nice life, has a residence in the United States, as does the rest of the members of his clan. That's what that's a reference to. The other slogan that's been raised as well is Go Home 225, a reference to the 225 MPs in the parliament. In other words, there's a massive distrust, not just of the governing pro-capitalist bourgeois party of the Rajapaksa clan, but of all of the bourgeois parties, a sick and tired anger towards the entire establishment that the opposition included who've tried to cloak themselves as if they're sympathetic to this mass movement. Of course, they're not sympathetic whatsoever. They've had their hand in preparing the conditions which are now making the suffering of the Sri Lankan people unbearable. This movement has reached a peak really last Saturday when you had 100,000 people marched in Colombo and particularly occupied a luxury park area on the beach side called Goreface Green, which is adjacent to the presidential secretariat building. That's been overwhelmingly youth. There's a sense of euphoria in this mass occupation basically. There's been a continuous occupation since then of tens of thousands of youth, particularly in the evenings. It's swelled to 40,000, 50,000 every night. That's been going on come rain or shine. It's the monsoon season is coming on in Sri Lanka at the moment and there's extremely heavy downpours as you can imagine. The people have stayed there despite that. They're continuing to occupy despite the fact that it is the Sinhala and the Tamil New Year now. Festivities are going on, but the masses are determined to stay on the streets until the Rajapaksa clan is ousted from power. Fundamentally, it is the crisis of capitalism which has driven the masses onto the streets. I'd just like to go back to something you said at the beginning there. You referenced state debts and this sort of bankruptcy. Basically, the government have declared bankruptcy. To whom do they owe this debt? I think I read in your article recently that the government have appealed to the IMF, for example, but also I know that China as well are quite heavily invested in the Sri Lankan economy as well. How does this tie basically to the different imperialist powers that have swayed the Sri Lankan economy? I think the short answer is that the Sri Lankan state is in debt to a whole number of capitalist interests, to Western imperialism, to Western capitalist, to Indian capitalist, to Japanese capitalist, and also, yes, to China as well. Of course, it's the latter in particular which is inflated in the Western media because, of course, China is the main bogeyman of Western capitalism, but in fact, only 10% of Sri Lanka's debt is actually to China. You have this narrative that is kind of put forward in the Western media that you have this Chinese debt trap, basically, that China is lending money to so-called third world developing countries, and that when they are unable to pay these things, that then various parts of the infrastructure are given over to China, and a famous example of that is the port on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. But actually, large parts of Sri Lanka's infrastructure have been given over, not just to Chinese capitalists, but also to Indian capitalists, to American capitalists. Sri Lanka is a playground for foreign imperialism fundamentally. But I think there's nothing unique, really, about the crisis in Sri Lanka. In many ways, it reflects similar processes which we're seeing going on around the world everywhere. And in many ways, Sri Lanka, I think, shows much of the world its own future. It's obviously in a very acute phase of this economic crisis. But it's the same fundamental driving forces that we've seen going on everywhere in 2020, of course, when the pandemic first erupted onto the scene, you had a situation where the rich countries could, to a certain extent, cushion themselves. They could bail out their own domestic capitalists. They could even bail out workers to a certain extent. And of course, you did see a ballooning of state debt, but you didn't have the layers of fat in these poorer countries, and they were hit in a number of ways that the rich countries were not. Each country in its own particular way. In Sri Lanka, for example, you saw a complete drying up of tourism, which was a big sector of the economy. That had already been massively impacted by the Easter bombings in 2019 in Colombo, which obviously deterred a lot of tourists from going there. You saw remittances dry up, not just of course in Sri Lanka, but Sri Lanka in particular, one of the biggest exports, if you can describe it as that, is remittances, human labour. It's workers that go abroad and then send money back, but many of those workers returned home with the onset of the pandemic to bail out basically the Sri Lankan capitalists, which by the way, the Rajapaksas, when they came in, on the back of the bombings in 2019, they had the overwhelming support of the Sri Lankan capitalists last. One of the first things they did was introduce massive tax cuts to benefit the Sri Lankan capitalists. They had the backing of the Sri Lankan ruling class. They introduced these tax cuts, and of course that then immediately preceded the pandemic. You had this sort of combination of government income already being slashed because of these tax cuts to the rich. Then of course, government income also collapsing and foreign reserves dwindling because of a massive accumulation of debt and also the main exports being impacted by the pandemic. From all of these different angles, you see the crisis of capitalism has caused a real crisis basically of government finances. But also a large part of that has been the Rajapaksas themselves who have compounded this with their incompetence, with their stupidity. It's just like we see in Britain today. Of course Britain has been lurching from one crisis to the next, from Brexit to the Scottish independence referendum, one thing after another, political scandals and sleaze. But of course the crisis of British capitalism is compounded by the crudeness, the stupidity of the representatives of British capital. And we see the same thing in Sri Lanka. Yes, it is the crisis of capitalism, but it's also aggravated by the crudeness, the ignorance, the stupidity, the corruption of the ruling clique itself. There's been a very important factor in that situation. But there's nothing fundamentally unique, I don't think, about the situation here. What we're seeing is countries around the world are facing a similar situation where they are being poorer countries, particularly since 2020, are being crushed by huge amounts of debt on the one hand, and on the other side of course massive spiraling inflation, which is precisely what we see in Sri Lanka. It's interesting too, the countries that have come with a certain amount of money to try and bail out Sri Lanka have been India on the one hand and also Bangladesh, which has lent several hundred million pounds worth of its foreign reserves to Sri Lanka. Now why is that? For one reason and one reason only is that these countries in the region want to basically help bridge this social explosion. They are worried about the contagion of revolution basically. So there's nothing fundamentally unique about Sri Lanka in that respect. Yeah, I think that's a very important point to make. Now just to go on to the response of the government to this movement, you've mentioned their ineptitude and their crudeness. What has been the response to this movement? I've seen incidents online, for example, the government using quite heavy handed measures to deal with these protests, which have been in large part a very peaceful protest. I think I saw a tweet where there were some armed forces with automatic weapons, for example. So it seems at least to me that the response has been so far one of repression, but has there been any attempt at sort of a carrot and stick approach where there's promises of reforms, for example? It seems like Rajapaksar is in a pretty awkward situation. He's back into a corner now. A lot of his own ministers and so on don't really want to help him anymore. So what lies ahead for the government and what has their response been so far? I think that the first thing is it's worth taking a step back. The Rajapaksars were in power before in 2005 to 2015. Actually it was the brother of the current president, Mahinda Rajapaksar, who was the president at that time. You see how these people just rotate positions. It's your turn now to be president and I'll be prime minister and then you can be financed. You can see this rotten clique, this family that are in power, the sheer nepotism of this government. But when they were in power then, they enacted an extremely brutal regime. In 2009 they put an end to the war in the northeast, crushing the Tamil population, carrying out all sorts of atrocities to finally snuff out the Civil War against the Tamil Tigers. Not only that, but in 2019, they came to power in two elections in 2019 and in 2020. You had elections which brought the Rajapaksars once more into government. They came to government on the basis of really right-wing chauvinist demagogy after these terrorist attacks, which is uncertain who's the author of these attacks by the way. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for these bombings in Easter 2019. On the back of that you had a wave of anti-Muslim riots, burnings of Korans and sacking of mosques and this sort of stuff. A chauvinist wave and there is some indication that, there's some suggestion I should say that actually the state may have had a hand in this and it wouldn't be the first time that we've seen the ruling class, the turn of blind eye to terrorist attacks or terrorist conspiracies in order to ride the wave of chauvinism that follows in their wake. But on the back of these attacks in 2019, that was when the Rajapaksars came to power. They came to power on the back of basically fear of going back to the violence. They said to people, we were the ones who put an end to the Civil War back in 2009. Vote for us, otherwise there's going to be a return to this violence. We will be the ones who will protect the Sinhala Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka against the other groups who want to deprive you of your rights and so forth. So it was really on the back of this chauvinist wave, racial division, all of this sort of stuff. Now one of the most remarkable features of this mass movement has been precisely the fact that it is cut across all of this racist poison, everything like that. This mass protest and occupation in gold face green, you see Christians, Muslims, Tamils, as well as even young members of the, from the young monks, Buddhist monks turning up to the protest as well. Incidentally that the hierarchy of the Buddhist hierarchy are reviled actually because of the role they've played in bigging up the Rajapaksars. But there's been unity across the divisions that the ruling class and particularly the Rajapaksars have attempted to spread in society. And so the, yeah, there's been an attempt to sort of, you know, demagogy on the part of the Rajapaksars. They've tried to sort of spread poison and this sort of thing and division. But the masses are resisting this. They've seen through this game. They've had several years of this sort of, you know, verbiage of this sort of, these sort of speeches and now look at their conditions. They're not, they're determined not to be divided in this sort of manner. But yes, the immediate response of the government was to issue threats. It was to denounce the protests, particularly a couple of weeks ago when they were outside the doors of the president. And the Monday after you had huge protests all around Colombo and else across the island in fact. And outside many of the minister's houses, those ministers shortly after resigned, but you had big protests of people outside the houses. And they were denouncing these as the result of violent agitators and extremists where there has been violence. It seems, of course, it's actually been on the part of the states who've used tear gas and water cannon and this sort of thing. And also have tried to infiltrate the protests with agent provocateurs to try to justify repression. But they've had to move quite carefully the Rajapaksars because there have been indications of members of the police force actually cheering on the protests and this sort of thing. Small indications of the mood, but it's not quite clear that the rank and file of the police and of the armed forces are 100% in spirit with the Rajapaksars. They are affected by the inflation. They're affected by the long power cuts. They're affected by all of these things. They're affected not just the working class, but also middle class layers and all different sections of society. Yeah, I'd also like to ask as well what has been the response of the other parties and organisations as well. You mentioned that some of the parties in parliament have tried to co-op this movement to an extent. I think members of the SJB, which is one of the opposition parties, a bourgeois opposition party, have been holding their placards and mimicking the slogans that have been thrown up by this mass movement. Do you think this is going to work or do you think the masses are just going to see straight through this? Well, yeah, I think that the attitude of the opposition has been to sort of try to present themselves as on the side of the people. But they've had a much easier time of it when they've been in the parliamentary chamber than when they've been outside on the streets. You have had attempts by opposition MPs to turn up on the streets and they have been by and large chased off and given very little time by the protesters. And in fact, one of the key slogans that has been raised has been precisely this slogan out with the 225, out with all of the MPs. And the SJB, the main opposition, actually comes from the UMP, which is basically the traditional party of the Sri Lankan capitalist class. Now they are accusing the Rajapaksas of playing with chauvinism and of strengthening the presidency to create this authoritarian presidential system. But they were the ones who started along this route. They were the ones who have, just like we see all around the world, the liberals and the centre-grounds, complaining about the Trumps and the Boris Johnson's and Brexiteers and the Marine Le Pen's. Not remembering the fact, of course, it was they who allowed these people to rise to power. They were the ones, they flirted with chauvinism, they've attacked the working class, they've discredited themselves, they've opened the ground for these demagogues. So the parties like the UMP now calling itself the SJB, they've prepared the grounds for the people like the Rajapaksas. So they have a much easier time pretending that they're on the side of the people when they're in the parliamentary chamber. But their aim is fundamentally the same as the Rajapaksas, that their means of achieving it is different. They want to get the masses off the street, whereas the Rajapaksas are biding their time and trying to prepare the ground for repression, which is very difficult when the mass movement is so strong and moving forward. The opposition wants to tie this movement up in the parliamentary games, in preparing the ground for, you know, we need to change the constitution, we need to introduce an amendment to the constitution to clip the wings of the president, this sort of thing, as if there is some improved perfect bourgeois democracy that is possible in Sri Lanka. The Bonaparte's character of the Sri Lankan constitution, and it does concentrate a lot of power in what is called the executive presidency, is an expression of the fact that the social polarization in Sri Lanka is and has been for decades extremely acute and the only way to achieve a certain semblance of stability is to place a lot of power in the executive and in the presidency. That is what has caused the rise of this increasingly authoritarian presidential system that you see in Sri Lanka. So what we would say is that the masses should have no trust in any of these opposition parties and no illusion that you can create some better, more perfect bourgeois democracy in Sri Lanka. In actual fact, this crisis is, as I mentioned before, you know, it is a crisis of capitalism and it's only the working class that can fundamentally offer a way out. Now, there is something very progressive in this slogan of, you know, out with the 225 MPs. It shows a healthy distrust of all of the bourgeois parties, but it also has its weak side as well because it's not just enough to know what you're against, you have to know what you are for as well. And the masses instinctively rejecting all parties and all organisations, that has a healthy side. It means that the movement can't be co-opted, it means it can't be bought off, but it also has a very weak side as well because, of course, the masses need a leadership. They need a party, not of the type of the bourgeois parties, but a party of the working class to offer a clear program, to offer a clear way out for the masses. You mentioned that the movement is strong, but of course, you know, it is spontaneous as well and there is a healthy element to that. But, you know, it seems to me that it isn't, you know, very organised at this stage. Has there been any sort of like political expression, any kind of political leadership that's been offered by any of the sort of existing parties, the trade unions or anything basically at the minute, because it seems to me like without that leadership and without a sort of program to give this movement cohesion and sustain it, that it will just fizzle out like many of these movements do. So, does anything exist currently? And yeah, what will it take for this movement to carry on forward? Well, I mean, there are opposition parties that exist in Sri Lanka. There is a party, for example, called the JVP, which actually, if you look at Sri Lankan, this is the tragedy of Sri Lankan history, is that you have had massive left-wing parties, even Trotskyist parties. You had the LSSP, the Lanka-Sama Samajya Party, was actually a party which, you know, it was a Trotskyist party, it was a section of the Fourth International. And in the 1950s, it led a heroic struggle of the workers. And in 1953, I believe, they led a hartal, which was basically a general strike in Sri Lanka. But that party betrayed it, sold out, and it went into a government which was a popular front with the bourgeois parties. And that led to it becoming discredited. And the rise actually of the Maoists, the JVP party, who launched a number of insurrections basically in their own way, they tried to seize power, but they fundamentally had an incorrect conception of how to seize power. They tried to carry out these insurrections disconnected from the masses, mostly based in the youth. They were crushed as a result of that. Now, this party continues to exist, but its program is a traditional Stalinist program of two-stage approach, basically. What we need first is a bourgeois democratic revolution, which creates the best conditions for bourgeois democracy and capitalist development, presumably, in Sri Lanka. But as I said, the point is that there cannot be any perfection or any further development, really, of capitalism on the basis of capitalism in Sri Lanka. It is capitalism as a world system. There's imperialism, which is dragging society down, which is draining the lifeblood out of the country, which is sucking out its foreign reserves and leaving the people in pitch darkness at night. It's capitalism as a system. As a global system, there isn't some special kind of national capitalism or capitalism with a smiling face. There's only one global capitalist system, and that system is dragging Sri Lanka into the maya, as it is all other countries around the world. But this party, up until the recent wave of protests, was gaining to a certain extent. But it too has found it very difficult to intervene in these protests. It's tried to do so. In Goreface Green, for example, it's sent its members down, but they're not able to present themselves clearly as a party. And it too has been discredited to a certain extent in the process of this mass movement. But its program is basically, well, we need, in two or three years' time, we need to elect a new president. You need to elect us as president or what have you. Complete parliamentary cretinism, while the masses are on the street. To call for the masses to vote for your party in two or three years' time is completely reactionary. It's to diffuse the movement, to sow illusions in parliamentarism. When really, if we look at the situation now, power is in the hands of the masses in Sri Lanka. The fact of the matter is they're simply not conscious of this fact and that no party is giving it an expression and no trade union is actually giving it an expression. What is interesting about this occupation of Goreface Green in Colombo is the initial protest on the weekend, of course, when everyone's off work, you have 100,000 people marching down to Goreface Green. Now you have a small, you've had a camp established there with tents and so on and it's very similar to what you've seen in the Occupy movement and these sort of things that we're maybe familiar with in other countries. Where there has been spontaneous organization by the masses. You have kitchens established, mobile phone charging areas, rest areas, shelter and raincoats for when the torrential rain comes down. So there is the capacity for organization. But the fact is that this occupation dwindles to a few thousand during the day and it's in the evening at night when people are off work because there is no general strike going on, people are still going to work and then they come down and it swells to tens of thousands of people in the evenings and at night time. In other words, the trade unions are not providing a lead whatsoever and in this situation if the trade unions were to provide a lead because in many instances workers are going down independently without being called to go down to Goreface Green in Colombo by the, they're just doing so spontaneously. If the trade unions began agitating in all of the workplaces called mass assemblies in all of the workplaces explains the needs for an all out general strike to bring down the Rajapaksa regime established workplace committees in all of the workplaces and called for their establishment in every community, in every fishing village, in every single part of the country and then connected up these committees the working class would have power in its hands and everything that is accidental about this mass movement would be brushed aside and it would be stamped with a clear class character and the working class would bring the rest of the masses in behind it behind a program for what? A program to basically abolish capitalism in Sri Lanka to take over the commanding heights of the economy and one of the articles that I wrote recently you have these positive statements coming out from all of the big capitalists in Sri Lanka like the biggest supermarket was saying how it respects the rights of its employees to go down there it's like you, the biggest supermarket that's ratcheting up prices to squeeze the Sri Lankan people to make your profits, the bigger power companies it reminds me actually of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States where all of the masses are on the street burning down police precincts and extremely radical moods and then you have Nike and Ben and Jerry's and stuff like that putting Black Lives Matter and all of their stuff it's the same sort of thing but I think if the working class came in in an organized way it would clarify all of that it would bring clarity to the movement but unfortunately as we see in many countries as we see all around the world the leadership of the working class is the decisive block in the movement moving forward fundamentally and if the movement doesn't move forward then it has to move backwards we're at a bit of an impasse at the moment the masses are on the street in large numbers but of course they can't stay there indefinitely they either have to move forward in a decisive way or they have to move backward and when they move backwards the reactionaries who've been waiting in the wing because they're not strong enough at the moment they're demoralized, they've lost confidence they will gain confidence in themselves and of course we've seen the Rajapaksas what they're capable of in Goreface Green there is a gallery of the portraits of journalists killed in the last Rajapaksa government from 2005 to 2015 they're an extremely brutal reactionary and repressive regime they are waiting to get their revenge against this movement and if the movement doesn't move forward and it is forced to take a step back and people become exhausted, they become tired they go home as inevitably they must if there isn't a decisive breakthrough then the regime will be there and they will be ready to exert its revenge so that's the key question is the question of working class leadership Yeah, I entirely agree Is there anything else that you'd like to say? Any final points? Well, I suppose my only final point would be that of course the struggle in Sri Lanka is part of a global struggle all around the world there are many lessons from it you can see that the situation in Sri Lanka it bears many similarities to the Arab Spring of ten years ago it bears many similarities to the movements that we've seen in 2019 in Chile, in Iraq and elsewhere it is part of a global struggle to fight against capitalism it's part of the same struggle that we're involved in in every part of the world as the international Marxist tendency we do have a small group of supporters in Sri Lanka who are doing their best to build the forces of Marxism and I would simply appeal to comrades listening and sympathisers who are listening if you haven't already joined the international Marxist tendency or socialist appeal in Britain or the international Marxist tendency in any part of the world, join us and help us build this organisation because the work that we're doing to build here will also help to build in Sri Lanka it will help to build in all other parts of the world so that's the final thing I'd like to end on is to appeal to join this organisation and help to build that revolutionary leadership that the working class needs to transform society so I think we'll leave it there for this week's episode thanks very much Ben for coming on the podcast thank you very much as well if you'd like to stay to date with the constantly moving situation in Sri Lanka then please head to marxist.com the website of the international Marxist tendency where you can find regular news and analysis from a Marxist perspective dealing not just with the events in Sri Lanka but indeed across the world to find out more head to the link in the show notes of this podcast and if you agree with the analysis and the perspectives that Ben has put forward and you want to help to build the forces of Marxism worldwide to carry out a socialist programme I would encourage you to get involved with the international Marxist tendency which is organised in many different countries across the world on that note we're also pleased to announce that the IMT's International Marxist University will return this year promising four days of exciting talks on the fundamental principles of Marxism including Marxist economics dialectical materialism the philosophy of Marxism as well as historical materialism the Marxist understanding of history it's only by understanding and using the method of Marxism that we can make sense of the turmoil that surrounds us today and provide a practical basis to the fight for our future so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in head to the link in our show notes to find out more make sure you stay tuned for upcoming episodes on the fall of Afghanistan as well as the French elections and thanks once again for listening to Marxist Voice the podcast of socialist appeal