BY Raju Prabath Lankaloka
On November 13, 1989, Rohana Wijeweera, the inaugural leader of the Janata Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), who was arrested the previous night by the state armed forces, was brutally murdered. The day after that, Upatissa Gamanayake, the party’s Secretary General at that time, who was considered the deputy leader of JVP at that time, was also arrested and killed. Simultaneously, several others, who were in the leadership of the JVP at that time were also arrested and murdered. Although we have nothing to do with JVP politics, we condemn the brutal killing of suspects arrested by the state armed forces as a disgusting act.
We have seen JVP commemorating the 13th of November, the day Wijeweera was killed, as a day of remembrance of fallen heroes.
Responding to a question raised in Parliament a few days ago about whether an investigation had been conducted into Wijeweera’s death while in custody, the Minister of Public Security said that there was no documented information in that regard.
But when the JVP was a coalition party of Chandrika’s regime since 2001, or when they were holding cabinet portfolios under Chandrika since 2004, they have not raised their voice demanding to reveal the truth of the killings of its leaders including Wijeweera and bring the officials who acted illegally to justice. Since they had 42 seats in the parliament at that time, they had the ability to exert strong pressure on the then-government in that regard.
Because of this, it is clear that the JVP is commemorating the fallen leaders including Wijeweera just for propaganda purposes. At the same time, they have not done any kind of review on the armed struggle carried out by the JVP after 1987, and they have not mentioned the lessons learned from the failure of that struggle.
JVP was born in the mid-60s. It was a time when youth discontent was rising because the Sri Lankan capitalists did not have the plan to develop the country. At the same time, the traditional left, on which youth in the country had had faith, thinking that they could overthrow the capitalist system to create an alternative, had betrayed its policies by abandoning its independent program in 1964 and entering into a coalition with the SLFP. In this situation, the youth of the North and the South began to organize themselves separately against the evils of capitalism. JVP is an organization based in southern rural Sinhalese.
Politically, from the beginning, the class basis of the JVP was entirely petty bourgeois. In 1971, it had no working-class base at all. They labelled the union activists as “Porridge cup fighters”. JVP had its roots in rural, Sinhalese, peasant areas, which are far from the urban working class, such as Kegalle, Hambantota, Galle, Kurunegala and Anuradhapura.
There is no doubt that the petty bourgeoisie is also oppressed and exploited section. But because they do not have a direct relationship with the productive forces, they cannot maintain a consistent policy on any political issue.
In their early days, JVP just uttered the words of socialism and Marxism, though they had nothing to do with Marxism or socialism. The ‘five classes’ they conducted illustrate that very well. Even the JVP leaders who were involved in the 71 Uprising have said that they read about Marxism through the books given to them after their arrest by various people. The organizational method they followed was also not the Marxist organizational method. Only a few of the initial leaders had very limited experience working in the youth sections of the communist parties for a very short period of time. All they expressed was their opposition to the existing regime and their hatred towards the traditional left for abandoning their independent program.
The strategy of the JVP led by Wijeweera before 1989 was to capture power very quickly through an uprising, which is isolated from the masses, instead of a mass struggle centred on a working-class movement, and to build a socialist (according to them) society.
We oppose this strategy from a Marxist point of view. Trotsky wrote about this in his 1911 article titled “Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism”.
“a terrorist attempt, even a “successful” one throws the ruling class into confusion depending on the concrete political circumstances. In any case, the confusion can only be short-lived; the capitalist state does not base itself on government ministers and cannot be eliminated with them. The classes it serves will always find new people; the mechanism remains intact and continues to function.
“But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why do the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?
“In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who someday will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the “propaganda of the deed” can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more “effective” the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, and the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy.
“…the anarchist “propaganda of the deed” has shown every time that the state is much richer in the means of physical destruction and mechanical repression than are the terrorist groups.”
The events of 1971 and 1987-89 have shown how true Trotsky’s words were. Trotsky further wrote in the same article:
“The revolution can arise only out of the sharpening of the class struggle, and it can find a guarantee of victory only in the social functions of the proletariat. The mass political strike, the armed insurrection, the conquest of state power—all this is determined by the degree to which production has been developed, the alignment of class forces, the proletariat’s social weight, and finally, by the social composition of the army, since the armed forces are the factor that in time of revolution determines the fate of state power.”
Our opposition to the JVP politics, based on anarchism which was there from the beginning of JVP till 1989, flows from the above-mentioned Marxist basis.
However, it is clear that JVP politics changed by 180 degrees after 1989. It is clear that the severe state repression in 1989, the collapse of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-91, and the failure to make a proper Marxist analysis of them had a strong impact on that turn.
The JVP, which previously talked about building a socialist society by capturing power through an armed struggle, has now completely moved towards parliamentarism. None of their recent programs contained any mention of socialism or Marxism. None of these is programs towards socialism in any way. The only thing they stand for today is to take power through an election held constitutionally and continue the existing system without fraud and corruption. By now, they have embraced the capitalist system to the extent that the ambassadors of the imperialist countries can exchange pleasantries with them.
August Bebel, an early German Marxist, once said, “If your opponent praises you: Beware! But if gets stuck into you, you are usually in the right way”. But today, the JVP is overjoyed with the meetings they are having with capitalist leaders and their praises.
By now JVP has stopped even uttering the words of socialism and Marxism. JVP’s stance on the ethnic issue was also completely non-Marxist. After 2005, when the Mahinda regime took the communal war forward in an unprecedented manner, the JVP was the flagbearer. Since 2001, they also entered the same coalition political quagmire that the traditional left had fallen into.
The JVP had to go through various divisions in the recent past as a natural consequence of being stuck in the capitalist legislative framework and being brokers for the capitalist rulers.
As Trotsky pointed out, the petty bourgeoisie is incapable of independent and consistent political action. Its inconsistency reflects its intermediate social position. Because of this, they swing back and forth depending on the balance of social forces. That is how they, who worked for capturing power through an armed struggle before 89, have now been pushed towards forming a constitutional government acceptable to the capitalist system. But in the future, as the crisis of the capitalist system get to deepen and the repression gets intensified, the possibility that they will be pushed towards anarchic methods again cannot be ruled out.
At a time when all the leaders of the 89-era including the founding leader of JVP are being commemorated, the best tribute that can be paid to those fallen fighters is to learn from those events, not to allow the mistakes of the past to repeat, and at the same time not to fall into more traps like parliamentarianism, by taking steps to analyse those events from a Marxist point of view and to build a truly revolutionary party based on a Marxist basis, that can overthrow the capitalist system.
