Internationalist socialist solution ideal for Lanka - Wije Dias

WIJE DIAS, the General Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), the Sri Lankan Section of the International Committee of the Fourth International is contesting the forthcoming Presidential Election under the symbol Pair of Scissors.

Dias took into fulltime politics after giving up his academic career in the University of Colombo in the 1970s. He says that the SEP is taking the opportunity to present an alternative socialist programme to the working and oppressed masses both nationally and internationally.

Following is an excerpt of an interview he had with Daily News journalist Wasantha Ramanayake.

Q: Why did you decide to contest the Presidential Election?

A: It was not me that decided but the Socialist Equality Party. We wanted to introduce our perspective and the programme to the broadest possible number of working people, taking the opportunity of the Election.

Then it was not the working class of Sinhala and Tamils in this country alone that I am speaking to as the Presidential candidate, it is particulary the working people in the Indian Subcontinent and the South Asian Region as well as the masses worldwide. That is the purpose of our intervention in the election.

Q: How do you outline your programme ?

A: Of course, both the main party candidates have presented their manifestos and you find promises given to every section of the people including the bourgeois. For instance Mahinda Rajapakse had promised to give duty free permits to those who pay over and above Rs. 250,000 as tax annually.

However, he did not say how they are going to find the money needed to fulfil these promises. As we have already found both the UNP government and the PA government as well as the Alliance government with the JVP have cut down spending on Health, Education, Subsidies that were given to the different section of people to cushion their poverty stricken life.

Now all of a sudden like newborns they give all these promises. I think it itself is an indictment against their rule carried out for last 57 years since the so-called independence.

It is they who have created the problems for the youths not giving employment, for working people increasing the burden of the cost of living, poor farmers who are unable to sell their produce at a reasonable price.

Above all it is they who created the discrimination against the Tamil speaking minority in the country and raised that to the level of a civil war since 1983.

They both have proved that they are incapable of offering any solution to any of these problems and the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.

That is why SEP thinks that an alternative programme must be proposed to the working people and they must be mobilised on such a programme to find solutions to the burning issues they face - that is non-other than an internationalist socialist solution. That is what the SEP propose to the people during the election.

Q: How do you describe this socialist solution?

A: It is not just a socialist solution but an Internationalist Socialist solution. Solutions cannot be found for problems faced by the masses within the boundaries of this island.

That is why we say that the working class of Sinhala and Tamil must join the Working Classes of the Indian sub-continent, South Asia and internationally to overthrow the imperialist world order which is subjugating the masses whether they are in the developed or in the under developed countries.

To explain that I would like to bring to the attention how these regimes reacted\responded to the natural disasters faced by the people in the South Asia and in the US. As we know tsunami hit Sri Lanka and the South Asian countries in December last year.

Cyclone Katrina hit the Southern US and we saw the earthquake disaster in the Northern part of the South Asia Pakistan, Afghanistan and India.

We see a similarity in the way the regimes in the most developed countries like America and also in the most under developed countries like Sri Lanka, Maldives and so on to responded to theses disasters.

They never thought about the needs of the masses who became the victims of these disasters. The reaction of Bush is no different to the that of Musharaff or Manmohan Singh.

This exemplify the need to have a form of rule where masses themselves could undertake the responsibility of providing for the needs.

Therefore we propose the workers and peasants government for Sri Lanka and also the other countries in the South Asian region in the form of a Sri Lanka Eelam Socialist Republic.

Q: How can such a socialist programme provide a solution in view of the failure of the Socialism in the Soviet Union?

A: This is an issue that has created much confusion among the people all around the world. We are Trostkyst. We never accepted the regime that existed in the Soviet Union as a Socialist regime. We called it a Stalinist regime which was opposed to a Socialist International system.

Trotsky since 1923 fought against the theory of socialism in a single country and fought to mobilise the soviet working class to unify it with the working people in the developed capitalist countries for the achievement of the world socialist revolution.

Therefore what was brought down in 1991 in the soviet union was neither socialism nor did it prove the inadequacy of Marxism. It proved the inadequacy of the national socialist theory of Stalin.

Although, it negatively proved that the working people world wide should fight for the perspective of world socialist revolution and the historical need it represented by the International Committee of the Fourth International and its struggle to educate and mobilise the masses it carried through the World Socialist Website.

Q: Why do you argue that the capitalist system had failed to find solutions to issues such as the natural disasters etc.?

A: It is made clear by what is happening in the US itself, the wealthiest, technically most equipped country in the world to tackle the problems faced by the humanity.

Instead of looking after mankind fulfilling their needs they are using all their wealth and power to subjugate the world under a neo-colonial policies and that is what being expressed in the invasion of Afghanistan and also in the continuing aggression against the Iraqi people for more than two years and having named Syria, Iran and North Korea as "Evil" states they a planning to invade them.

Also the have already prepared their plans on a strategy to intervene in the South East-Asian region. Their new relationship with the Congress government supported by the Stalinists in india itself reveals that they have not given up the prospect of exploiting the national resources as well as the cheap labour in these countries.

I think Sri Lanka has come into a focus light in this imperialist scheme that is why they were eager to establish a stable government in Colombo.

So that they can utilize it for their strategic needs in the South Asian Region at the same time suppressing the working class and oppressed people's struggle in this country.

Q: How do you analyse the inability of capitalism to find solutions theses issues in terms of Marxism?

A: Capitalism is in the run for private profits of the investors in every economic project and it is not concerned with the rights of the consumers. It bases itself on the exploitation of the surplus labour from the work place and is interested only in maximising their profits.

The capitalists, the owners of the production forces, face the situation that the rates of profits continues to be declining with the developments in the technology in the production as such development in the technology demands the elimination of the labour force from the production process and to compensate the loss of profits they roam the world now intervening politically, militarily in the under developed countries to make use of the cheap labour.

What we propose is for the working people to take over the control of the production forces they themselves have built and use it to fulfil the fundamental needs of the working people and to do away with economic and social discrimination. That is what the socialist programme means and this is the socialist programme SEP proposes.

Q: You mentioned that there are certain fundamental contradictions in the Capitalist system. Would the socialist programme you suggest be able to overcome them ?

A: Contradictions are already there and they have come to the surface. Through out the last centaury it really exploded in two world wars. The first form 1914 to 1919 and the second from 1939 to 1945. But there was no automatic process of capitalist system being done away with.

The working Class has to be made aware and conscious about its own progressive role in the history and that it is being confused and derailed by the various reformist, revisionist tendencies begin with Burnstinism in the late 19th century.

Of course we have seen how the in Sri Lanka LSSP and the Communist party joined the bourgeois government in 1964 to confuse the working class and also to deprive the progressive social force of an independent political role.

Since then the crisis in the island aggravated and the working people had to make many sacrifices due to that great betrayal. The Revolutionary Communist League, the forerunner of the SEP was founded in 1968 to over come this difficulty of the working class.

And it continues its struggle for nearly four decades educating thoughtful sections of the working class intellectuals, youths and students.

I think that the Presidential Campaign of SEP itself is being received with the due respect by the people. They say that they have observed what the SEP had been doing for several years and that they are more than happy to support it in this election.

Q: Why do you regard what happened in 1964 as a great betrayal?

A: It is because it really sold out the political independence of the working class of this country overriding the Sinhala Tamil communal and Buddhist Hindu and Muslim barriers. They were able to join together and fight for their rights under a Trostkyst party during 1940s.

Here I mentioned about the Bolshevik Leninist Party (BLP) of India which fought to unite the Sinhala and Tamil workers with their class brethren in the Indian sub-continent and it is during that period many concessions were won through the struggle by the BLP.

But the leaders of that party after 1948 adopted themselves to the Parliamentary system worked out between the British Imperialist and local bourgeois and they abandoned the revolutionary socialist strategy which they based upon in the earlier period and they started to work out a no contest pact with bourgeois parties.

That is the great betrayal because the political independence of the working class was crushed under foot. It is a hard task then to revive the traditions of the BLP but that is the hard task undertaken by the SEP.

Q: What is the significance of that "betrayal" in 1964 ?

A: I think they lost almost every thing they fought and got under the Trotsky movement in 1940s; subsidies were taken away the free education was attacked; the health service was cut; subsidies to poor farmers are being restricted and above all racist war was waged since 1983.

The fermentation of Tamil communal politics with the help of LTTE is a direct result of the Betrayal in 1964 and in the same way Sinhala extremism exists in the South.

Q: What is the significance of being an international party?

A: As I mentioned before it is to unite the working people through out the world with the unification of socialist strategy developed among the broadest players of the world working class sans that the socialism can not be achieved.

For example as a part of our election campaign we hope to address the working people in India. I will be travelling to India to address at least two meetings, in Chennai and in Delhi.

And of course we know well that people outside this country do not have the right to vote. But the aim of SEP was not to gather any amount of votes but to introduce our programme to the working people as we could.

Representatives of the International Committee would be visiting to support our campaign there and they would also be visiting Sri Lanka in supporting my candidature.