The Left As Political Actor – Part 2
By Dayan
Jayatilleka -March 4, 2013
Dr Dayan Jayatilleka
In
memory of Stephane Hessel (1917-2013), author of ‘Time for
Outrage’
This
year and month mark the 130th death anniversary of Karl
Marx. 2013 also marks the 60th anniversary of the assault
on Moncada led by Fidel
Castro and of his address ‘History Will Absolve Me’. It is then an
appropriate year for any Left party to take a long hard look at the road it has
travelled and the path ahead.
The
past returns to haunt political movements just as they do individuals. In this
sense the past is part of the fabric of the present. This is why an accurate
evaluation of one’s past is as important for a political movement as it is for a
person. It seems that neither the JVP nor
the breakaway FSP have an entirely accurate diagnosis of their collective past,
without which their present and future standing is negatively affected.
Under
pressure perhaps from the FSP breakaway, the JVP has concluded that its support
for Gen Sarath
Fonseka at the Presidential election was an error. Though it was
arguably an error for Gen Fonseka to have contested the first post-war
Presidential election against a popular incumbent President, instead of focusing
on the correct target of entering parliament and making his presidential bid the
next time around, it is less obvious that, given the choices available, the JVP
erred in supporting him. The JVP’s error was perhaps in leaving the ranks of the
ruling coalition before the war had been won. Karu
Jayasuriya probably made the same mistake. This permitted the
monopolisation of the legitimacy of the historic military victory.
The
FSP’s stance appears to be that the JVP was in error to have entered coalitions
with bourgeois parties. Not only does this indicate that they should re-read
Lenin’s text ‘Two Tactics’, but that they have turned their back on the most
successful political period and achievement of the JVP, namely the experiment of
the Provisional Government with Chandrika
Kumaratunga and the subsequent 39 seats they won at the parliamentary
elections. Here again, the JVP’s error was a different and opposite one: to have
quit that Provisional Government prematurely. If the JVP and /or FSP are to
break out of a politico-ideological ghetto, they will have to retrace their path
to those successful episodes of radical democratic politics.
They
will also have to revisit their collective behaviour during the latter half of
the 1980s which remains a social memory (not least among UNPers at the
grassroots) and constitutes polemical ammunition for their political critics.
Especially important is their lethal reaction to perceived competition: Vijaya
Kumaratunga’s SLMP and the smaller far left groups. That sectarian
reaction and the inevitable counter-reaction benefited the state and damaged all
players on the Left, when the option of a united front (as in Central America)
or at least a political ceasefire was always available. The sole, sadly
ephemeral episode of a correct united front tactic by the JVP was the five-party
Left Bloc of 1980, and is an experiment that should become a model.
Perhaps
the JVP and FSP should learn from successful Left movements in Latin America
which have not renounced in any way, but have gradually put to rest, the
memories of their founder-leaders and the reputations of their violent pasts,
which in most cases were far less blemished than that of the JVP. In short, they
no longer evoke the ghosts and have learnt to let go and move forward, thereby
presenting their enemies with a smaller, moving target. The JVP and FSP should
perhaps also re-interrogate their past and rediscover other heroes and potential
leaders less tarnished than Wijeweera (such
as Sarath Wijesinha of Kegalle).
There
is in Sri Lanka today a huge opportunity for the Left. The current UNP is unable
to play its role as a dynamic opposition and alternative government, and its
Reformist dissidents seem unwilling to do so, while the SLFP too has many
disaffected members at all levels. This permits a smart, strong, ethical (i.e.
Gramscian) Left to make deep inroads into the mass bases of mainly the UNP and
secondarily the SLFP. Thus there is an open door (in the case of the UNP base)
and a half open window (with respect to the SLFP) for the Left to walk or climb
through. However, it will simply not do for the Left to expect the masses who
vote for these mainstream parties to turn sharply leftwards and come through
that opening towards it. It is the Left that will have to move through the
portal, repositioning and partially reinventing itself as a radical
democraticoption so as to win over these masses of citizens.
When
the Russian Marxists grasped that the liberal bourgeoisie was unable to play the
role of standing up to the hereditary family based autocracy as its French
counterpart so famously had, they resolved that the working class and its
parties had to do step in, giving leadership to the peasantry. Given the
victories and dramatic advances in recent years of the Left in Latin America and
in Greece, there is almost no limit to what the JVP and its dissident spin-off
the FSP can achieve in democratic politics, if – and it is a very big IF
indeed—they make the right moves, in a spirit that is recognised by the masses
as being sincere, deep-going and irreversible.
To
put it at its most starkly challenging, if the Left in any society is to achieve
its fullest potential, it must fulfil at least two criteria: (a) it must
represent something new, hopeful and credible and (b) be perceived by the people
to be the best elements among the citizenry, and thus an authentic vanguard.
This is how the Left can outweigh the enormous economic and material strengths
of the Right. When the people look for hope, they will look to the Left only if
that formation is more attractive and credible an alternative than the
ultranationalist or conservative Right.
The
Left must represent a new, fresh spirit; a spirit of hope and credible
possibility. It must represent such a spirit in order to replicate and multiply
that spirit among the citizenry. This must not be the spirit of fanaticism and
conflict—of which the country has experienced plenty–though it must be a spirit
of righteous ethical indignation against blatant injustice and lack of strategic
foresight of the ruling elite.
While
the Left must never reduce its appeal to issues of economics, economics must
play a prominent part in its public pedagogy. The citizenry must be educated as
to why things are as bad as they are, why they are suffering, why the suffering
is not inevitable by any means and how things could be much better. The Left in
Latin America and Greece surged to the forefront when the economic crisis hit.
In Sri Lanka the socioeconomic crisis is surely coming and thus also the need
for socioeconomic democracy.
The
crisis is as much external and ethnic as it will be economic. The Left must
inspire confidence that it can do what the post-independence and post-war ruling
elites have been unable to, namely to build unity in diversity, construct a
united democratic nation of our many communities. This is the only foundation of
a strong state able to resist separatist impulses and encroachment on national
sovereignty. However the JVP must not repeat its old mistake of confusing
paranoia for anti-imperialism or adulterating the latter with the former. Not
everything it rightly opposes (e.g. re-merger) needs to be an imperialist
conspiracy and the fact that some action or phenomenon may result in
benefitting external critics or foes does not mean that it has an
external cause. For its part, the FSP must learn that
‘anti-capitalist’, ‘anti-neoliberal’, ‘anti-Empire’ and ‘anti-globalisation’ are
far from identical, and that there are different models of capitalism and
projects of globalization.
In
the face of the crisis the Left must represent the talent of the educated and
the energies of the youth. But the question is: what kind of youth?
When the Left fails to give a self-critical accounting of its past and is also
seen to defend those who engage in socially repugnant practices such as
intra-campus violence and university ‘ragging’
(‘hazing’), it allows itself to be depicted as the Sinhalese were after July
’83, because the failure to differentiate oneself by standing up against
something and standing in the forefront of opposition to it, makes it possible
for powerful enemies to tar one with the brush of complicity.
Finally,
if the Left is to project itself as the formation of the educated Lankan youth
(in the island and the Diaspora); intelligent, honest, and dedicated, with hope
in the future, credible answers for the crisis and an attractive vision for the
country; it must ensure that their leaders who are the public face and ‘brand
ambassadors’ of the Movement are the mirror or embodiment of that
image. The Left must get not only the politics but also the optics right.
(Concluded)
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