DEEPENING CRISIS AND THE PERSPECTIVE OF POWER
The state of emergency, imposed by the Mahajana Eksath to make it clear that the M EP government can no longer Peramuna government of Premier S W R D Bandaranaike on the occasion of the communal riots, as described in our last issue, continues, and its use has now been extended from the communal to the class sphere. Not that the danger of further communal outbursts is past: the Sinhalese communalists are recklessly playing with fire by attemping to launch another attack, this time on the Indian workers, a particularly concentrated and key ethnic grouping. But in a more fundamental way, the centre of gravity is shifting from the communal to the social plane.
This is because the "socialist" M EP government (supported by the Stalinists in return for diplomatic recognition of the Soviet bloc and Peiping) has its back to the wall. It has proved incapable of carrying out any of its electoral it has esow openly postponed to the Greek kalends. in such Nationalization of the foreign-owned plantations fields as investment, employment, education, and public Most important of all, the basic situation of the Ceylonese its failures have been complete and fully recognized. economy is rapidly worsening. The steady and uncontrollable rise in food prices is producing more and more widespread indignation among the masses. Unemployment — whose increase to 70,000 (official figures, for the reality is infinitely greater) was one of the main causes of its victory over the United National Party in the 1956 elections - far from being reabsorbed, has risen further to 113,000 (official figures), and continues to rise. The budget deficit is at least 750 million rupees, and the state finances are so confused that it is questionable whether even the government itself knows the exact amount. The Ceylonese rupee has become so shaky that, despite all government denials, devaluation will probably have to be resorted to. Foreign loans are reportedly being sought, to date unsuccessfully — even though the guarantees offered to foreign capital are such as even pretend to any anti-imperialism whatsoever. By its Trade Disputes Act and its anti-working-class actions in strikes in both the public and private sectors, it has exposed itself as fundamentally anti-labor.
In the union field, the Stalinists, by their support of this increasingly unpopular more and more forfeiting any trust the workers had in them, and in union after union those workers are turning from their class-collaborationist tendency to the tendency following the class-struggle line of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Ceylonese Section of the Fourth International, which now has become the greatest single influence in the whole Ceylonese trade-union movement.
The entire situation is rapidly sharpening. The Ceylonese masses have, by tradition and instinct, a tendency to direct action. But any action at all now runs up against the stateof-emergency regulations. Pressure is thus being built up toward an explosion.
In their profound disillusion and discontent with the M EP government, a very small sector of the masses tends to drift back to the UN P. But far more numerous and active sectors are turning toward the L S S P, which is fighting the emergency regulations and demanding restoration of all civil liberties. It is still too early to permit detailed prediction of the rhythm or the exact forms that the continuing struggle will take; but, barring armed intervention by imperialism, steadily in toward the eventual perspective of the L SS P in power.
That party, on October 1ith and 12th, held its annual after exhaustive democratic publish in our next issue.
Greece