Neo liberalism is only an urban market phenomenon and has no relevance to national development.
When independence was granted to Ceylon, the alternative to the United National Party (UNP) at the 1947 parliamentary election was the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP).
In that first Parliamentary elections the Ceylon National Congress which merged with the Sinhala Maha Sabhava (SMS) to form the UNP led by D.S. Senanayake, could not have a clear majority.
In a Parliament of 101 MPs with 95 elected, UNP managed only 42 seats. They coalesced with the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) that had 07 seats, to have a majority government.
The leading opposition was the LSSP. Contesting as two opposing Trotskyite factions, the LSSP and the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (BLPI) won 10 and 05 seats respectively. Thereafter they re-united as the LSSP and Dr. N.M. Perera became the first Opposition Leader of independent Ceylon.
If not for another division in the LSSP and Philip Gunawardane forming his own LSSP-V (Viplavakari meaning revolutionary) and contesting with the CP, the LSSP would have been yet again the main Opposition at the 1952 elections as well. The LSSP was the only Trotskyite mass party in the world, with a very strong trade union base, influential and much respected Buddhist monks, middle class intellectuals and the few “Rationalists” also sympathising with their alternate political thinking.
Ideologically, it was the Left dominated by the LSSP that provided opposition to the UNP while the SLFP played a very Sinhala nationalist role sticking to a “middle path”.
Thus in very simple political terms, the Left, more the LSSP, was the known “anti UNP” force that stood for a “socialist” alternative.
Though without “socialism” even during the Rajapaksa rule, the LSSP and the CP used their historical “anti UNP” position to co-habit with Rajapaksa. After the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, the dissenting factions within the LSSP and the CP refused to leave the Rajapaksa government on the single argument that, “that would only strengthen the UNP”.
Over a week ago, the dissenting group in the LSSP calling itself the “majority group”, celebrated 81 years of “Samasamaja” politics. Ironically this faction is led by the UNP national list MP Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne.
Presently an Advisor to the UNP leader and PM Wickremesinghe. So it is with the dissenters from the CP. A leading CP dissenter was in the National list of the UNP at the last August 2015
parliamentary elections.
How would one explain this total collapse of the anti-UNP Left in Sri Lanka?
Most would attribute this to “coalition” politics of the old Left.
“Tailing the SLFP” to have it in simple language from early 1960’s. But then, there was a serious “anti-coalition” faction within the LSSP in mid 1970’s that eventually became the “Nava Samasamaja Party”(NSSP) when the Left got wiped off completely at the 1977 parliamentary elections.
Within a decade, that “anti-coalition” left ‘Samasamajism’ also disintegrated, unable to meet the intellectual challenge of providing an alternative to the UNP and the SLFP. The JVP which is about a decade older than to the NSSP was never able to project itself as a political alternative to UNP-SLFP politics now in a ‘unity’ government.
Coalition politics apart, this demise of the Left is not just a local Sri Lankan crash. Internationally, the “Marxists” in all their shades and diversity have failed to grasp the growth, slump, recovery, growth, meltdown and stability” of global capitalism. They have thus not been able to provide a viable alternative when global capitalism slumped in 1929, in 1976 and again in 2008. Not been able to provide an alternative to the world even with the two giant Communist Party led countries, Soviet Russia and China with other East European countries governed over 30% of the world population of around 06 billion (1989). Though revolutions dislodged despotic rulers from Cuba to Vietnam to Nicaragua, none survived to establish an alternative to neo liberalism.
From Soviet Russia to China including the Eastern bloc and Vietnam, the whole Socialist world caved in, leaving one large global neo liberal economy controlling the lives of the world Citizenry.
The odd one out is North Korea, under a militarily organised despotic regime. The issue therefore is the failure of the Left in defining socio economic development within neo liberalism.
The “free” market in Sri Lanka was ushered in at a time, the whole society was tired and exhausted within a heavily regulated State controlled economy. An economy that substituted imports, with local production for “self sufficiency”.
The regulated “Development” was aimed at servicing basic needs in controlled “quantities”.
From 1978 these State controls were removed to allow for free trade. This economy was a polar opposite to the previous “import substituted” regulated economy. This worked on the premise, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in export oriented production will generate economic growth with a “trickle down” effect.
The market was given its own freedom for investment. Flooded with “choices” for people to choose from, they felt they had unlimited “freedom” in this free market economy. The new found consumer “freedom” was what the Left could not explain in terms of “development and democracy”.
The “Left” anyway was very much trained in reading society and life in economic terms. “Cultural life” was not much valued in their political explanations. They therefore did not notice neo liberalism wiping out intellectual cultural life in moulding a narrow, linear “consumer”.
People were made to slog through all day to earn enough to buy their basket of daily goodies. Yet the fact that they decided their basket, gave “democracy and freedom” a new meaning within a consumer society. Democracy and freedom came to be substituted by “consumer choice”, a way of life the “left” could not deconstruct to reconstruct anew alternative.
In such social context, the Western intelligentsia, all institutes funded by Western powers including the UN agencies were trained and groomed to doctor effects of the free market economy.
A new liberal intelligentsia thereafter justified neo liberalism as the model for economic growth, equated to “socio economic development”. Economic growth came to be assessed in terms of GDP, per capita income, Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and the like.
Indices and data calculated for assessing economic performance, often contradict the very “growth” claimed by liberal economists and politicians.
When Census and Statistics Department says the required average monthly income of a family of four to meet basic needs (excluding a cultural life) is Rs.40,000 plus, the poverty line is drawn at Rs.4,000 per month per person. While the per capita income is calculated at 4,000 dollars (Rs.50,000 per month), the national minimum wage remains at a low of Rs.13,500 for the private sector.
The argument goes it is the “take home pay” that should be counted. The “take home pay” for female workers in export manufacture is not more than Rs.20,000 with all the overtime they are compelled to do and their other incentives all added.
Neo liberalism is only an urban market phenomenon and has no relevance to “national development”.
Neo liberal economies are inherently corrupt too irrespective of what the electoral system is. In India it is FPP while ours is a PR system. Over 35 years after their economy was liberalised, the Indian Lok Sabha does not represent the poor any more.
430 out of its 534 MPs are Crorepatis. As a rule, all governments have garbage loads of mega deals on their backs. Corruption itself is urban based leading to declared and undeclared wealth accumulation in mega cities. PM Narendra Modi’s development thus promised 50 smart cities.
PM Wickremesinghe promises a Western Province based Megapolis.
Inaugurating this Megapolis programme he confirmed this mega urban development would lift the rest of the country in development.
The actual crisis in this neo liberal economy is that State agencies and social structures don’t function the way they should, as the State is only left to facilitate investments and markets. Sans intellectual and cultural life, it turns societies into one without social values and morals.
In a single line, the neo liberal market denies democracy in its functional form in a society that loses the “collective” mindset where intellectual cultural life is replaced with “entertainment” in competitive urban consumerism.
As Noam Chomsky says,”This, to go back to our original discussion, is a reflection, substantially, of the Neo Liberal policies of the past generation. It has harmed much of the population, offered nothing to them, given power and prestige to extreme wealth and professional elites who are protected.” (DM interview – December 14)
This certainly needs an alternative that could attract the “marginalised and cast aside” majority.
The heavily fragmented Left and also the JVP have no intellectual resources even to ignite
such discourse.
They are also products of this 38-year-old neo liberal market that leaves them aside as grumbling Left liberals living within this status quo.
As Chomsky asked the DM:
“Well, why did an overwhelming majority of young people support Bernie Sanders? “Sanders is a “new phenomenon” way outside traditional “Left” politics and attracted young people.
“They don’t have wealth, military power, corporate backing, media backing, nor support from intellectuals; but sure, they are challenging the status quo.
“Finding an alternate programme therefore falls on the shoulders of the new generation who would want to challenge the status quo for a more democratic and decent life.”
