(Continued from yesterday)
Part VI – Traitors to their class
By H. L. D. Mahindapala

In this series H.L.D.Mahindapala revisits the Troskyite movement to survey the role of the Marxists who began their political careers in the thirties. That was the time when the Marxists came marching home — for what ?

In which direction did they intend to take our society? And in which direction did they finally take it? What is the legacy they left behind?

And why is the history of the left movement so full of contradictions? If they were anti-capitalist and anti-feudal revolutionaries why did they join the SLFP and the UNP? In short, why did the Left go to the Right?

Working Underground by R .S. Siriwardena, Revolutionary Idealism and Parliamentary Politics, a Study of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka by Prof. Y. Ranjith Amarasinghe, Newton Guna-singhe, Selected Essays, edited by Sasanka Perera, The Bracegirdle Affair by Wesley S. Muthiah and Sydney Wanasinghe, and Britain, World War 2 and the Sama Samajists edited by Wesley S. Muthiah and Sydney Wanasinghe

In Uyangoda’s hysterical denigration of his opponents one thing is clear: his inability to comprehend the basic position of the Sinhala-Buddhists seeking to salvage the nation from the predatory grip of alienated ideologues. As a community the Sinhala-Buddhists do not "reject everything beyond the shores...(believing) in isolationist nationalism", as he claims. Nor have they ever done so in their history. It is their innate ability to extract the essence of all that is good in other cultures and blend it with their own that has enabled them to build a unique civilisation and a culture.

Totagamuve Sri Rahula, the scholar-poet-monk, was renowned as Sathbahasa parameswara — master of seven languages. Our novel was influenced by Western schools — from the detective of Piyadasa Sirisena to the short stories of Gunadasa Amerasekera. Even a lesser poet from the "Colombo School", Meemana Prematillke was inspired by Thomas Gray’s Elegy on a Country Churchyard when he wrote his Sohonbima. Our paintings (Sigiriya and Geroge Keyt), our archictecture (Abhayagiriya and the new Parliament ), our dance (Kandyan and Chitrasena), our films and drama (Lester Peiris and Sarathchandra), our songs (Portuge baila and Sunil Santha) et al are remarkable landmarks of our capacity to adapt and to change within the broad parameters of the inherited culture. Historically the Sinhala-Buddhists have proudly played host not only to all-comers who wanted to make this island their home shared in common with all others but also to diverse ideas, including Trotskyism. As a collective body the Sinhala-Buddhists have tasted, masticated and absorbed the essence of all that is vital for rejuvenating the old with the new. At the same time we have never failed to spit out the rubbish, including Marxism/Trotskyism.

The Dr. Denipitiyas, however, tend to believe that the bench-mark of an intellectual is to engage in high-sounding Western jargon which, of course, doesn’t mean a thing. Take the phrase "intellectual internationalism" used by Uyangoda as an encomium showered on Dr. Gunasinghe. He, like Dr. Gunasinghe, has gone over the top about "intellectual internationalism". What does it really mean? Perhaps, one interpretation could be a brotherhood of international ideologues. If so just forget it. Uyangoda can’t agree with his own colleagues at home. How can he agree with the international fraternity of his confreres?

In bleating about his new utopia in "intellectual internationalism" he implies that nothing of value prevails in the Sinhala-Buddhist villages which, of course is a typical reaction of the intellectual ‘dependistas’. But respected scholars, genuinely committed to humane values, have expounded in lucid and convincing theses their enlightening perspectives on sharing values and concepts common to all cultures. Gramsci, the popular guru of the left-wing intellectuals, was steeped in Italian culture and his success was partly in relating the best in his native culture to make Marxism more viable. So did Mao and Ho-chi Minh. They were nationalist first even while they were preaching Marxist internationalism.

The vice-president of the ICJ, C. G. Weeramantry, enshrined in one of his landmark judgements on environment the principles contained in the Mahavamsa — a judgement which has now become the authoritative guide to environmentalist the world over. But if you begin by condemning your village, its temples, its values, irrespective of what it has to offer, and leap into ‘intellectual internationalism" (meaning the West) as the only source of inspiration then you cut yourself away from the nourishing roots of values found in all traditional cultures and, in the process, condemn yourself as a mercenary and a partisan ideologue slavishly worshipping a domineering ideology. You will be then regarded not as a champion of human values but as a lackey of a political agenda designed to undermine shared values that had set standards and sustained humane societies in time and space.

Besides, Uyangoda blabs about his new "ism" as if it is an astounding revelation of an omniscient prophet. He may not be aware of it but Sri Lanka has been a part of "intellectual internationalism" long before he was even a twinkle in his great-great-great grand father’s eye. Intellectual internationalism had poured into Sri Lanka from India, Portugal, Holland, Britain, China, USSR, Yugoslavia, Cuba and now America and the West as a whole. Or is he saying that this is not enough and that Sri Lanka should be dug out from the Indian Ocean and transplanted somewhere in the middle of Europe or America?

Taken by itself, his phrase "intellectual internationalism" is meaningless in this wired world where you can cross borders and be connected to virtual communities within seconds. You can access, with the click of a mouse, the resources of libraries, media, academia, think tanks etc. Undoubtedly, swamped by globalisation, understanding the big picture is always useful to understand the smaller unit. But then how large is this big picture going to be? Dr. Gunasingjhe’s "macro-theory" is designed only to cover South Asia. Summarising his "macro-theory" Uyangoda says: "You will never understand Sri Lanka, until you understand South Asia as a totality" (.p.34).

In a superficial way it sounds plausible. But, extending its own logic, is it possible to understand South Asia without understanding its neighbouring regions ASEAN and EU, not to mention the rest of the inter-related world? Whatever "intellectual internationalism" means to these excited infants of ideologies, in reality it appears to be a euphemism for getting handouts from foreign agencies funding neo-colonial research that are designed to demolish traditional societies and make way for the new market forces to dominate every inch of the globe.

The tendency of "dependistas" like Uyangoda to construct "isms" seems to be a chronic malady common to factotums addicted to imported "isms". They can be recognised easily by the apparent symptom of "imitatism". Dr. Gunasinghe’s enthusiasm for Marxist theories — macro and micro — also falls into this category. He has shown some tendencies to impersonate Gramsci. Like Gramsci he has written newspaper articles, organised trade unions, held classes and tried to manufacture theories without, of course, the Gramsci’s ability to interpret Marxism with a creative power to infuse meaningful and relevant perspectives into the complex realities of Italian life. The futile theoretical journeys of our left-leaning intellectuals, following their foreign counterparts, have left them and the nation stranded in the middle of nowhere. In their frenzy to construct theories that could advance their political agenda they have denied the existence of darker forces of the north that had exacerbated the national crisis. Like all glorified theoreticians Dr. Gunasinghe was wont to ignore the worms crawling up his feet and look for roses in the elusive realms of "intellectual internationalism".

But the reality denies their fancy. Dr. Gunasinghe’s theories are blown sky high by the grim and realistic reports of the Jaffna University Teachers for Human Rights. The latest report ( No. 24 issued on September 7, 2000 ) is a damning condemnation of the sterile thinking that rules the minds of left-wing academics and NGO intellectuals. Predictably, Dr. Gunasinghe’s theories about the ethnic issue merely rehashes what the Tamil-dominated ICES has stated in various forms earlier. Like the ICES these Marxists have set their sights on four main targets: 1) Sinhala-Buddhism; 2) the nation-state 3) the constitution and (4) the de-regulated economy. Their aim is to redirect the nation away from its central Sinhala-Buddhist categories into a path that would facilitate the restructuring of Sri Lanka according to their political agenda.

Their hallucinations do not end there. They imagine that the "micro" field of Sri Lanka tends to cramp their style and, therefore, they must go in search of "macro’" horizons to suit their "intellectual internationalism". It is not possible to examine Dr. Gunasinghe’s "macro-theory" because Sasanaka Perera has not thought it fit to include this "short landmark paper", according to Uyangoda, in the ICES collection of essays. But Uyangoda gives a glimpse of it in quoting a key paragraph which indicates that Dr. Gunasinghe was setting out to identify "elements of structural commonalities in South Asian social formations" along the lines laid by Louis Dumont, the French Indologist. Dumont’s masterly study of the Indian caste system, Homo Hierarchicus, presents a counterpoint to Marxism. Dumont established that human societies by nature are hierarchical. In other words, the classless dreams of the Marxists will remain a pipe dream. The decision-makers in any institution — political party, bureaucracy, corporation, or even in a community group — will always be at the top. The shamans in tribes, the priests in ancient Egypt and India (they were the high caste intellectuals of their time) wielded power by claiming to be the chosen elites who had mastered the mysteries of the universe.

Milovan Djilas, in his book, The New Class, critically examined USSR — the only society that was supposed to be based on classless principles — and discovered it was ruled by the new bureaucratic class dominated by the party apparatchiks. Kurt Vonnegut in his brilliant sci-fi novel, Player Piano, prophesied that the technologically advanced and mechanised societies of the future will be divided into the ruling elite of skilled technocrats running the state machinery (literally and metaphorically) while the unskilled workers at the bottom would do the odd-jobs. Plato, in rejecting the corrupted and vulgar democracies of Athens, argued in the Republic that the state should be in the hands of the philosopher-kings — a selfless super elite whose disciplined moral character would classify them as intellectual priests. Dumont has undermined Marxism by placing his homo hierarchicus as an ubiquitous figure in all societies..

But the nature and the universality of the hierarchical system have not penetrated the thick skulls of our Marxist social scientists. Some of our intellectuals perform like the shamans. Instead of the shamans’ mumbo jumbo they have theories which when applied has the same effect as mumbo-jumbo. Both chant in a language to mystify and make them appear to be the nearest thing to divine knowledge. Consider this passage from Uyangoda chanted in praise of Dr. Gunasinghe: "In several essays which he published in the Lanka Guardian, he examined how ethnicity had an overdetermining impact on political structures. In a masterly deployment of the Althusserian concept of overdetermination of contradictions, he diagnosed the hegemonic grip which nationalist ideology has had over Sinhala society as the key to the understanding of post-independence Sri Lankan politics.’ (p.31).

Stripped of its Marxist jargon, it simply means that S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike who spearheaded the grassroot forces of "1956" hammered the theoretical Marxists out of sight (which is rather good). He also means that the forces released by Bandaranaike set the scene for the inter-ethnic confrontation (which is another way of blaming Sinhala-Buddhists only). Expressed in plain language, this doesn’t sound much of a "diagnosis " or a "masterly deployment of the Althusserian concept of overdetermination of contradictions", does it? The "dependistas" refuse to acknowledge that the sea changes of "1956" gave the suppressed Sinhala-Buddhists the dignity and the self-respect which they lost to colonial rulers five hundred years ago. They are disturbed that the waves of change had not obeyed the theories dictated by the Canutes in academia. Uyangoda’s overblown portrait of Dr. Gunasinghe as a theoretical genius lacks credibility not only because of his inflated language but also because his hero had gone down the same old theoretical rut with hardly any earth-quaking substance that would make Dr. Gunasinghe more than what he was — just another purveyor of Marxist nostrums..

From Uyangoda’s account it seems that Dr. Gunasinghe was attempting to recast Marxism by incorporating new ideas from diverse sources hoping to be acclaimed as a Sri Lankan Gramsci or Althusser. However, the picture that emerges from all his hymning is that Dr. Gunasinghe has been an adept at borrowing Althusserian and Gramscian concepts but not going anywhere with them or beyond them. The only exception is when Dr. Gunasinghe is supposed to have made "a significant contribution to contemporary Marxist theory on social change" after he discovered that at the time the imperialists imposed capitalism in the Third World countries they did not do away with "the production relations of earlier pre-capitalist modes" but "reactivated the archaic production relations".

Taking the case of Sri Lanka, this is apparent from the annual reports of British Government agents in the provinces. Though there were pockets of the capitalist mode of production in the plantations opened up by large scale investment by the British, the archaic method of production was actively encouraged and reactivated among the peasants who neither had the skill nor the resources to venture out from their traditional modes of production. There were no imperialist Maos who were willing to risk a great leap from the archaic mode to wholesale capitalism on a national scale. Both modes of production went hand in hand with capitalism gaining ground slowly but surely. This parallel means of production — a common feature in all transitional societies where the old mode died and the new gathered momentum — was noted quite early by Fr. S. G. Perera whose history of the British was the standard text for senior secondary schools. But because this aspect was revived in the context of a Marxist debate it becomes a great intellectual contribution to Uyangoda.
(Continued tomorrow)