Ceylonese masses. It was the end result, as we shall see, of the wearing out of a revolutionary leadership. The Origin of the LSSP
The LSSP always occupied a unique place in the Fourth Inter~ national, Its origin was completely different from that of all the other sections of our movement, In brief, our movement everywhere else was born in more or less profound struggles within an established labor movement. In Ceylon, the labor movement itself was created toward the end of the thirties by a tcam of young revolutionaries educated in the English universities, who, attracted toward Communism just as the great struggle of the Left Opposition against Stalinism reached its height, decided in favor of the theory of the Permanent Revolution.
It is necessary to add that they came to national prominence in a period when the Ceylonese bourgeoisie did not itself attempt to mount the least struggle against British imperialism, not even by way of imitating their Indian neighbors,
During the war, the leadership of the LSSP expelled the Stalinists, who wanted to collaborate with imperialism, The Trotskyists were persecuted, arrested. Some of them escaped to India and continucd their struggle in the underground, Thus, following the war, they returned to their own country with great prestige and at. .. the head of the labor movement. 7 foe
Like every political formation, the LSSP underwent many . internal struggles. Petty-bourgeois currents were eliminated, while the majority.of the leadership likewise held in check the well-known opportunist tendencies of N.M.Perera, who gained his. authority through systematic trade-union work,
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The real leadership of the LSSP, composed of a group of figures that included Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Gunawardene, Bernard Soysa, Doric de Souza, and Edmund Samarakkody, was of high intellectual capacity and great militancy. It was recognized throughout Ceylon as constituting the genuine leading team, This team has now. broken up, the majority having gone to pieces politically. This is the real tragedy which the LSSP has just experienced, What were the causes of this event? How did it come about?
It is necessary to say that alongside most excellent quali~ ties, this leadership had weaknesses, the consequences of which have. now become fully apparent,
In the first place, on the level of political education there was a big gap between these men, who followed the activities of the international Trotskyist movement, and most of the party rank and file, who knew no English and lacked adequate material in their own language for a political education. This leadership followed the life of the International, but was not sufficiently immersed in it nor inclined to bring the party as a whole into it.
This weakness was well-known among the leaders of the Trotsky=ist movement on an international scale. Whatever other issues tomporarily divided them from time to time, there was common concern about this problem, The general organizational and financial weak-. ness of the Fourth International made it impossible to bring more vigorous measures to bear such as sending Trotskyists of top capacity for sustained work in Ceylon to help bring up the political level of the party. The split in 1953 did not help, as was recognized by both the International Secretariat and the International Committee; and the reunification undertaken last year was not granted sufficient time to bring new united efforts to bear ina strong healthy way in this situation,
The second weakness of the majority of the LSSP leadership was that the parliamentary successes following the war developed parliamentarian tendencies which were not combatted vigorously from the beginning and the ultimate consequences of which were not visuelized, Even the intensive activities of tho party centered on struggles for the conquest of seats in parliament,
A third weakness was, so to spoak, the exclusively labor" character of the party during its first years, Through their activities, the leaders of the LSSP had won the confidence of the major~ ity of the Ceylonese workers (workers of Colombo, transport workers, . white-collar brackets, etc.). But for a long time they have not ‘tackled the most important part of the: proletariat of Ceylon, the plantation workers, consisting of Indians “imported" originally by the British and who today have no citizenship -- neither Ceylonese nor Indian... The LSSP at one time registcred.good gains. in this field, controlling. a strong trade-union organization of these workers, But, with this exception, they scarcely penetrated the rural masscs who
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constitute the majority of the population.
Ceylon, it might be mentioned, does not have a poor peasantry like India or so many other underdeveloped countries. However. low the standard of living is among these masses, they do not suffer from famine, from despair, The situation is quite variegated and to our knowledge no serious study has been made of it. In any case, the LSSP never developed a program for these masses, (The Communist party of Ceylon is in the same boat,)
After Independence
In Ceylon, as in India, British imperialism granted independence following the second world war, Power passed into the hands of the UNP [United National party], the party representing the thin layer of the Ceylonese bourgeoisie directly linked through their plantations, their export trade, with British imperialism, The first eleotions gave the LSSP the leading place among the opposition formations. From this followed not only parliamentary illusions but also the idea that, with the wearing out and the bankruptcy of the UNP its hour would come,
But during the fifties another formation developed, the Sri Lanka Freedom party [SLFP]. To the surprise of the leaders of the ISSP, this new party won an election victory in 1956 that brought it to power, At the time, the leaders of the LSSP characterized the SLFP. as a bourgeois party based on wider layers than the UNP,. but they thought that this party would also be rapidly worn out in power and that the LSSP would then move forward. . an
This perspective was demolished by the outcome of the eleotions of March 1960, The majority of the leading team of the LSSP lost their bearings and began to vacillate, At the same time Perera, with his reformist concepts, began to press forward more and more, At the time he proposed a coalition government with the SLFP, This was rejected, but the parliamentary group of the LSSP did cast a vote of confidence in the government. The Fourth International publicly disavowed this vote, (1) oo,
With the evolution of the Bandaranaike government towards the right, the LSSP resumed its opposition, without, however, undortaking any serious self-criticism of its previous stand. It raised the slogan for a genuine socialist. government, Then, together with the Ceylonese Communist party and the MEP [Mahajana Eksath Peramuna ~~ People's United Front], a petty-bourgeois formation, it constituted what was called the United Left. Front [ULF], This was a political combination with an insufficient. program, which did not bring in the trade~union formations involving the citizenless Indian workers, and.
3.
aatridme Intornationale, special number of the Sixth World
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this combination did not conduct itself as a candidate for power, in opposition to the SLFP government, although the broad Ceylonese masses gave the ULE a warm welcome precisely in anticipation. of this perspective,
Finally, about three months ago, Perera secretly opened. per=sonal negotiations with the Prime Minister. While the left wing of the LSSP, organized about a year ago, firmly opposed any suggestion of a coalition, ‘the majority of the leadership favored a coalition, not with the LSSP alone, but with all the formations of the ULF.
To justify this position, they argued that the SLFP was a petty-bourgeois Yormation, although it had already governed the country within the framework of capitalism for eight years; and they made a false analogy with the examples of Cuba and Algeria. But they did not want the LSSP: to carry out the operation alone. As in the case of Perera, what was involved here was a gross error characteristic of all reformists,. To reach the petty-bourgeois masses, the rural masses of Ceylon in this instance, they hoped -- instead of winning them through a fighting program -- to gain them through a combination with a bourgeois party that. does not represent these masses but exploits them, playing on their reactionary sentiments, especially against the minorities of the country, in order to maintain the capitalist regime, |
The Conference of the LSSP
Perera became all the more audacious in the LSSP as the vacillating, indecisive attitude of the majority of the leaders caused them to lose ground in a party which they had stopped educating for some time, The party conference, hastily called it is true, provided a striking illustration of this,
Three resolutions were offered. After a two-day debate, it was decided to present the Samarakkody-Tampoe motion first because it was opposed in principle to any coalition. It received 159 votes, about 25% of the party.
Then, in second place, the De Silva-Gunawardene motion was presented; that is, the mction of the men who had actually led the organization for more than twenty-five years. It was presented by Gunawardene as in "the nature of an amendment" to Pererats motion. It got 75 votes, some 10% of the party, 7
This was not all. Pererats resolution received 65%3 but among the 75 votes for the De Silva-Gunawardene motion, about two-thirds voted for the Perera resolution. Thus, the men who had played such an eminent role in the past, who had won so much prestige, found themselves, after a quarter of a century of leading the party, with around 25 votes, less than 4%.
During the debate, while the other two tendencies displayed
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confidence in their positions -- the Perera group in their reformism, the Samarakkody-Tampoe faction in the program of revolution <= the centrist tendency could only express their own uncertainties, their demoralization. Forgetting what they had written with rogard to the Permanent Revolution, they did not see that a bourgeoisie which failed to struggle for national independence would do everything possible to maintain its social domination, They no longer saw the SLFP as a bourgeois party.
The most tragic aspect of this crack up was that it occurred in the face of the most brilliant opportunity yet provided the leadership of the LSSP. The governmental crisis in Ceylon is one of the signs that the colonial revolution that has rocked the world all the way from China, across Africa to Cuba, is ripening in this island, The very necessity felt by the bourgeoisie to seek a scoali~ tion with the leaders of the labor movement is an indication of how close these same leaders stand to the possibility of establishing a workers and peasants government in Ceylon. The tragedy consists in their failure to see this and their readiness to give way to the demand that the opening for which they had prepared for a quartor of a century should be converted into the small change of posts in a bourgeois government. Ceylonese Trotskyists Continue the Struggle
With this conference, a team of revolutionary leaders came to an end, Perera won the vote for his reformism and the majority of the old leaders decided to follow in tow. The banner of the socialist revolution in Ceylon passed into the hands of the comrades of the left wing, who left the conference following the tally and at once proclaimed the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary Seotion),.
This organization, which constitutes the continuing body of the Ceylonese section of the Fourth International, begins in a difficult situation, inasmuch as illusions in the politics of Perera exist among the masses, The over-all conditions, however, are not unfavorable, First of all, the split was made in the full light of day over a decisive political issue and all of Ceylon was aware of it. The leadership of the organization contains figures known to the whole country: Edmund Samarakkody, one of the earliest leaders of the LSSP, as well as another member of parliament, Meryl Fernando; Bala Tampoe, one of the main leaders of the trade-union movement in Cey~ lon, and other well-known leaders such as Karalasinghe and 0. Jay~ aratne, The organization includes many trade-union cadres plus the biggest part of the young militants, including the students.
After solving its immediate organizational problems, the young party will facc important political tasks. The situation in Ceylon was marked not only by the split in the LSSP, but also by splits in two other formations of the United Left Front, The Ceylonese Communist party split into a rightist, pro-Khrushchevist organization which supports the coalition government and a pro-Chinese
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organization that is opposed to it. The MEP also split over the. issue of supporting or opposing the coalition government.
We greet the new formation which:ts ‘continuing the best revo-. lutionary traditions of the old LSSP. ‘The entire world Trotskyist movement is with it in its task of reconstructing a new revolutionary leadership capable of assuring the victory of socialism in Ceylon, (2)
July 7, 1964
(2)the crisis in the LSSP was taken by Healy, leader of the Socialist Labour League of Great Britain, as an occasion for an attack against the reunified Fourth International, which he has not ceased to campaign against since he refused to participate | in the Reunification Congress held in 1963,
First of all, we will take up a small lie. The June 20 Newsletter asserts that Healy “requested admission" to the conference, "hut when it was discussed at the conference presidium,