Vargha Poralli
2nd December 2009, 06:20
(e) Self-determination and the Left
Rosa Luxemburg had argued against external self-determination, emphasising that State-formation belonged to the early, infant stage of national capitalist development and was neither relevant nor feasible in the context of capitalist imperialism which had become dominant by the first decade of the 20th century. Her political agenda was principally to prevent bourgeois forces from weakening of the world socialist revolution by segmenting the workers into an increasing number of capitalist States. Luxemburg’s formulation was a sanitised version of the earlier denial by Engels of the national rights of the so-called ‘non-historic peoples’, relatively small nations which were seen as obstructions to the growth of States into political units large enough to possess internal markets, create conditions for the growth of productive forces and catalyse capitalist class differentiation. The lunatic fringe of the European Left extended Luxemburg’s argument to oppose anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa. The Left paid lip service to the colossal human and material costs paid, often in blood, by the colonised nations and peoples of Asia and Africa. But it was claimed by the extreme Left that the spread of European colonial empires and emergence of imperialism nevertheless are objective processes, which are economically integrating the working classes on a global scale and leading to the political unity among workers from different countries; and thereby creating the conditions for constructing the political superstructure of the world socialist revolution. Therefore, so the Left lunatic fringe asserted, anti-colonial movements for the independence of the colonised nations and peoples sought to reverse the global integration of working class, undermined worker’s unity and benefited largely the national and/or comprador bourgeoisie of the colonial territories and were, historically speaking, reactionary.
In contrast, Lenin sought to dismantle European colonial empires and weaken capitalist imperialism by striking at its weakest link - the colonial possessions - by encouraging external self-determination among the nations and peoples of colonial territories. However, while he in principle agreed with the right to self-determination including secession and incorporated it in the Soviet Constitution, he was less than enthusiastic about conceding in practice the right of external self-determination to the nations within the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Stalin was more forthright: he condemned national movements in USSR as bourgeois counter-revolution and repressed them with characteristic brutality.
Since the time of Luxemburg and Lenin, numerous new States have emerged on the world stage. Indeed, member-States of the United Nations increased from 26 in 1945 to 185 in 1997, an increase of 159 States (611%)! The empirical data had disproved Luxemburg and Stalin.
But, in the context of internal de-colonisation, almost all left-wing parties and activists buried their heads in the sand: they dogmatically opposed internal de-colonisation leading to external self-determination but pragmatically accepted the new States. Their ideological positions regarding national self-determination are variants based on the formulations of Luxemburg and Lenin. Those theoreticians loyal to Luxemburg typically invoked Stalin’s static and ahistoric definition of a nation in order to dismiss the demand made by a given cultural group for external self-determination as being invalid on grounds that the group did not constitute a nation and therefore was not entitled to an independent State. Others, who are the majority, relied on Lenin’s arguments: they formally recognised the right to national self-determination including secession but offered conditions in which the exercise of the right of secession would, they unilaterally asserted, become unnecessary.
The ideological stance of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) in Sri Lanka is a case in point. According to its Politburo member Dr Sunil Ratnapriya, NSSP believes that ‘a unity can be preserved on the basis of the following principles.
Equality of all citizens (all racial, religious and communal discrimination should stop.) Full citizenship rights to all permanent residents. Autonomy for regions (every distinct set of people have the right to govern themselves). Right of self-determination (acceptance of the right of every nation over its destiny, unity should be entirely on a voluntary basis). On this basis we [NSSP] have put forward the following programme to resolve the N-E conflict.
Right of secession be included in the constitution in order to make it absolutely clear that unity is based on [the] voluntary decision of both parties. That will express very clearly the inalienable right of Sri Lankan Tamils to a homeland in this country. Also, it means that no one dominates and that there is unenforced, uncoaxed and ungrudging unity. Equality and end of discrimination in citizenship, jobs, education, land allocation, etc. and particularly in the national armed forces. Granting of citizenship to all Kandyan Tamils. Autonomy for Tamil speaking areas with powers over regional security or police functions, colonisation and education, etc. Home guards or defence militias for minorities in other areas. Right to use Tamil in dealing with the Central Government. Fair share of national income to develop Tamil areas.’ The NSSP’s policy on the Tamil Question aims to establish ‘a unity’. It may be assumed that the NSSP, being a member of the Fourth International, is keen to unify the working classes of the Tamil and Sinhalese nations rather than unite the bourgeoisie of the two nations. But it is obvious that if the Tamil-Sinhalese workers unity is to be realised within an undivided Sri Lankan socialist State in the future, then it is necessary in the present to ensure that the two bourgeois classes stand together, either ideally as partners or more realistically under the political hegemony of the Sinhalese bourgeoisie, to preserve the existing Sinhalese-controlled State.
Consequently, it is in the interest of the NSSP to de-legitimise the Tamil national liberation movement. This was attempted by proposing ‘equality of all citizens’, offering ‘autonomy for regions’ and recognising the ‘right to self-determination’ as the three principles. It must be emphasised none of the three principles accepted the right of the Tamil nation to its own, independent State. Moreover, by using the conveniently vague term ‘autonomy’, the NSSP assured its chauvinist Sinhalese constituency that the party will not concede a federal or confederal system, which are pathologically opposed by the Sinhalese but consistently demanded by the Tamils as alternatives to an independent Tamil State. At the same time, by ‘autonomy’ the NSSP disingenuously implied the prospect of at least a federal alternative in order to satisfy its minority Tamil members and husband Tamil electoral support.
The issue of an independent Tamil State is dealt with in the first of the five-point programme: reference was made to the ‘right of secession’ not because it is the inalienable and unconditional right of a nation but, rather, as a means to achieve ‘a unity’. The ‘right of secession’ is to be included in a future constitution not to permit the Tamil people to secede. On the contrary, the provision is calculated hopefully to make the demand for external self-determination redundant: hence the first point refers to ‘a homeland’ rather than an independent Tamil Eelam.
Evidently to buttress what the NSSP believes is its hold on the moral high-ground, the first point promised ‘unenforced, uncoaxed and ungrudging unity’ between the Tamil and Sinhalese nations without domination of the former by the latter. The NSSP then blithely offered ‘autonomy’ - not federalism - for the Tamils in the third point.
The schematic alternative to external self-determination by Tamils was of course an abstract formulation constructed by the NSSP entirely on paper. It was used by the NSSP to legitimise its opposition to the ideology and objectives of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the cutting-edge of the concrete Tamil national liberation movement, on grounds that it is offering a progressive alternative to the LTTE’s demand for external self-determination, that it is the political rejection of, and not a chauvinist reaction to, Tamil nationalism. Through a circuitous route, the NSSP arrived at the same conclusion as that held by the Sinhalese bourgeoisie: that the nebulous ‘unity’ must be preserved.
What if the Tamil nation as a whole, including the vast majority of its workers and peasants, support the struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam? The Sinhalese bourgeoisie conjured up ‘threats’ to national sovereignty. The NSSP arrogated to itself the right to decide that the Tamil working classes are victims of ‘false consciousness’ - Tamil nationalism - which allegedly prevented them from realising the objective interests they have in common with Sinhalese working classes. To overcome false consciousness, the NSSP invited the Tamil working classes to be united with the Sinhalese working classes as equal partners and struggle together against imperialism. What if the Tamil nation as a whole, in exercising its right to self-determination, prefers instead a separate and independent Tamil State? The response of NSSP members is to imperiously mouth vacuous slogans that the Tamil working classes have nothing to gain by creating a Tamil bourgeois State. In this way the NSSP concurred with the Sinhalese bourgeoisie: that if Tamils do not voluntarily agree to unity with Sinhalese, the LTTE-led Tamil national liberation movement must be defeated.
What if the Tamil working classes believe, in the context of national oppression and class exploitation within a bourgeois State, that they suffer double oppression as Tamils and as workers? What if they consider that it is more realistic to form a national alliance with the Tamil bourgeoisie to resolve the national contradiction in order to eliminate national oppression, rather than attempt to re-build the class alliance with the Sinhalese working classes which was eroded by Sinhalese nationalism? These conditions induced the Tamil working classes to ally with the Tamil bourgeoisie to form a cross-class national alliance which is the class basis of the Tamil national liberation movement. This is an instance of ‘external class struggle’, the political struggle between the oppressor Sinhalese bourgeoisie external to the Tamil nation on the one hand and the national alliance of classes within the Tamil nation on the other hand. The concept of ‘external class struggle’ is the product of enlightened Marxist-Leninist analysis of class contradictions underlying the present-day processes of internal de-colonisation; it posits the progressive, general democratic content of the demand for external self-determination and underlines the crucial role the Left must play in supporting internal de-colonisation and facilitating external self-determination of nations and peoples.
But the NSSP’s seems blissfully unaware of the intensifying external class struggle between the Tamil national alliance and the Sinhalese bourgeoisie. The party’s explicit response to the demand for external self-determination made by the Tamil national alliance is to project a utopian socialist society devoid of national and class oppressions in which the demand would not arise. The party’s implicit position is that unity must be preserved; if the Tamil working classes refuse to be united with the Sinhalese working classes, they must be compelled - if necessary by the use of military force - into a union with the latter irrespective of the costs in loss of lives and destruction of property. It is a position which is not dissimilar to the cynical formulation employed by the United States government to defend the carpet-bombing of northern Vietnam: ‘better dead than red’.
The NSSP’s bankrupt political response to the Tamil national liberation struggle amply demonstrates the ideological straight-jacket donned by the Left in general, by dogmatically positing the inflexible primacy of the development of the forces of production. The Left in general reacted with considerable ambivalence to the processes of State-formation through external de-colonisation during the second half of the 20th century. The scale of State-formation through internal de-colonisation anticipated by Mr Boutros Boutros Gali and most Political Geographers, given that such predictions of the future invariably understate the extent of change, is likely to further marginalise the Left well into the 21st century.
(f) The task ahead
Recent manoeuvres by some sections of the Left to outflank national liberation movements are more sophisticated. The Left theoreticians formally conceded the right to external self-determination but have insisted that the national liberation movement must articulate a credible post-liberation political agenda of social transformation, which would combat gender oppression and class exploitation in the social formation within the new State. The tactic is to demand that the liberation movement commits itself to an almost utopian agenda and then withhold support for the movement on grounds that shortcomings in its agenda indicate that the movement’s victory will not significantly advance the interests of women and workers. However, support cannot be qualified by the post-liberation agenda for the obvious reason that the social transformation after liberation will be defined by the dialectic of class and gender relations and conditioned by historically given cultural parameters.
It is not uncommon to come across feminist arguments rejecting national liberation as a ‘male dominated, female served’ political project, which allegedly aimed to replace male oppressors of the external oppressing nation with male oppressors from within the oppressed nation. In short, Tamil women, for example, are expected to conclude that they stand to gain nothing substantial by way of relief from gender oppression by supporting the LTTE-led Tamil liberation movement. However the Sri Lankan armed are not know to display a nuanced approach to the Tamil population informed by the above feminist arguments: when the armed forces stomp into a Tamil village they do not target only the males claiming that national liberation is ‘male dominated, female served’. Rather the Sinhalese soldiers are more likely to rape the Tamil women in front of their men and then kill the men. Thus Tamil women in general are convinced that they are as much victims of national oppression as are Tamil men and insist on shouldering an equal share of the burden of the Tamil liberation movement.
Source (http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=120&id=646)
I would like to discuss this entire article but unfortunately it could be very long. So I have highlighted some parts which I consider important in bold. I would like to have a critic from all marxist currents against the bolded parts.Anarchists are also welcomed but please avoid making cheap score against other currents. The crux of the debate is very much important for our movement.
************************************
This article's source is from Tamil Canadian which is an supporter of recently annihilated LTTE. Which is an petty bourgeoisie nationalists and middle class intellectual organisation which I consider dug its own graveyard along with self determination of Tamils by its barbaric practices and violence it carried out against the very people it fought and died for.
Criticism of LTTE is irrelevant for this thread. The artice has grain of truth in it specifically how an organisation like LTTE without a mass movement behind it managed to get popular support among the most oppressed of all Tamils in this case the working class and landless peasants.
The point of me posting this article is the overall point it had made in the context of struggle for Independent Eelam in Srilanka. Especially the actions of the NSSP a Trotskyist organisation whose founders fought in the Independce struggle for India in radical lines when Stalinist CPI was scabbing on behalf of Stalintern who was allied with the British Imperialism at that time.Its action definitely lead to many splits within it and severely weakened the party both among the Sinhalese and Tamils. The same can be said with "Marxist-Leninist" JVP which openly opposed self determination of Tamils in the name of "Working Class Unity" .
It is the failure of LSSP to take a solid stance against sinhalese chauvinism and in favour of full self determination of Tamils led to the creation of Tamil Nationalist movement - non violent at the beginning until the rise of Tamil Militant groups.
LSSPs stance is very much similar to what left communists stance in this board.
The actions of all currents especially in Indian Subcontinent is not different from what the Left communists propose only differnce is that unlike left communists they pay lip service to National self determination.
For Trotskyists and Stalinists - we cannot just wash our hands on the actions of NSSP and JVP by claiming them as Pabloite and Revisionist. They justified their actions in the name of unity of the working class.
What alternative we have for the working class of the oppressed nationalities and how are we going to provide them ?
Thanks in advance.Apologies for errors if any present.
Rosa Luxemburg had argued against external self-determination, emphasising that State-formation belonged to the early, infant stage of national capitalist development and was neither relevant nor feasible in the context of capitalist imperialism which had become dominant by the first decade of the 20th century. Her political agenda was principally to prevent bourgeois forces from weakening of the world socialist revolution by segmenting the workers into an increasing number of capitalist States. Luxemburg’s formulation was a sanitised version of the earlier denial by Engels of the national rights of the so-called ‘non-historic peoples’, relatively small nations which were seen as obstructions to the growth of States into political units large enough to possess internal markets, create conditions for the growth of productive forces and catalyse capitalist class differentiation. The lunatic fringe of the European Left extended Luxemburg’s argument to oppose anti-colonial movements in Asia and Africa. The Left paid lip service to the colossal human and material costs paid, often in blood, by the colonised nations and peoples of Asia and Africa. But it was claimed by the extreme Left that the spread of European colonial empires and emergence of imperialism nevertheless are objective processes, which are economically integrating the working classes on a global scale and leading to the political unity among workers from different countries; and thereby creating the conditions for constructing the political superstructure of the world socialist revolution. Therefore, so the Left lunatic fringe asserted, anti-colonial movements for the independence of the colonised nations and peoples sought to reverse the global integration of working class, undermined worker’s unity and benefited largely the national and/or comprador bourgeoisie of the colonial territories and were, historically speaking, reactionary.
In contrast, Lenin sought to dismantle European colonial empires and weaken capitalist imperialism by striking at its weakest link - the colonial possessions - by encouraging external self-determination among the nations and peoples of colonial territories. However, while he in principle agreed with the right to self-determination including secession and incorporated it in the Soviet Constitution, he was less than enthusiastic about conceding in practice the right of external self-determination to the nations within the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Stalin was more forthright: he condemned national movements in USSR as bourgeois counter-revolution and repressed them with characteristic brutality.
Since the time of Luxemburg and Lenin, numerous new States have emerged on the world stage. Indeed, member-States of the United Nations increased from 26 in 1945 to 185 in 1997, an increase of 159 States (611%)! The empirical data had disproved Luxemburg and Stalin.
But, in the context of internal de-colonisation, almost all left-wing parties and activists buried their heads in the sand: they dogmatically opposed internal de-colonisation leading to external self-determination but pragmatically accepted the new States. Their ideological positions regarding national self-determination are variants based on the formulations of Luxemburg and Lenin. Those theoreticians loyal to Luxemburg typically invoked Stalin’s static and ahistoric definition of a nation in order to dismiss the demand made by a given cultural group for external self-determination as being invalid on grounds that the group did not constitute a nation and therefore was not entitled to an independent State. Others, who are the majority, relied on Lenin’s arguments: they formally recognised the right to national self-determination including secession but offered conditions in which the exercise of the right of secession would, they unilaterally asserted, become unnecessary.
The ideological stance of the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP) in Sri Lanka is a case in point. According to its Politburo member Dr Sunil Ratnapriya, NSSP believes that ‘a unity can be preserved on the basis of the following principles.
Equality of all citizens (all racial, religious and communal discrimination should stop.) Full citizenship rights to all permanent residents. Autonomy for regions (every distinct set of people have the right to govern themselves). Right of self-determination (acceptance of the right of every nation over its destiny, unity should be entirely on a voluntary basis). On this basis we [NSSP] have put forward the following programme to resolve the N-E conflict.
Right of secession be included in the constitution in order to make it absolutely clear that unity is based on [the] voluntary decision of both parties. That will express very clearly the inalienable right of Sri Lankan Tamils to a homeland in this country. Also, it means that no one dominates and that there is unenforced, uncoaxed and ungrudging unity. Equality and end of discrimination in citizenship, jobs, education, land allocation, etc. and particularly in the national armed forces. Granting of citizenship to all Kandyan Tamils. Autonomy for Tamil speaking areas with powers over regional security or police functions, colonisation and education, etc. Home guards or defence militias for minorities in other areas. Right to use Tamil in dealing with the Central Government. Fair share of national income to develop Tamil areas.’ The NSSP’s policy on the Tamil Question aims to establish ‘a unity’. It may be assumed that the NSSP, being a member of the Fourth International, is keen to unify the working classes of the Tamil and Sinhalese nations rather than unite the bourgeoisie of the two nations. But it is obvious that if the Tamil-Sinhalese workers unity is to be realised within an undivided Sri Lankan socialist State in the future, then it is necessary in the present to ensure that the two bourgeois classes stand together, either ideally as partners or more realistically under the political hegemony of the Sinhalese bourgeoisie, to preserve the existing Sinhalese-controlled State.
Consequently, it is in the interest of the NSSP to de-legitimise the Tamil national liberation movement. This was attempted by proposing ‘equality of all citizens’, offering ‘autonomy for regions’ and recognising the ‘right to self-determination’ as the three principles. It must be emphasised none of the three principles accepted the right of the Tamil nation to its own, independent State. Moreover, by using the conveniently vague term ‘autonomy’, the NSSP assured its chauvinist Sinhalese constituency that the party will not concede a federal or confederal system, which are pathologically opposed by the Sinhalese but consistently demanded by the Tamils as alternatives to an independent Tamil State. At the same time, by ‘autonomy’ the NSSP disingenuously implied the prospect of at least a federal alternative in order to satisfy its minority Tamil members and husband Tamil electoral support.
The issue of an independent Tamil State is dealt with in the first of the five-point programme: reference was made to the ‘right of secession’ not because it is the inalienable and unconditional right of a nation but, rather, as a means to achieve ‘a unity’. The ‘right of secession’ is to be included in a future constitution not to permit the Tamil people to secede. On the contrary, the provision is calculated hopefully to make the demand for external self-determination redundant: hence the first point refers to ‘a homeland’ rather than an independent Tamil Eelam.
Evidently to buttress what the NSSP believes is its hold on the moral high-ground, the first point promised ‘unenforced, uncoaxed and ungrudging unity’ between the Tamil and Sinhalese nations without domination of the former by the latter. The NSSP then blithely offered ‘autonomy’ - not federalism - for the Tamils in the third point.
The schematic alternative to external self-determination by Tamils was of course an abstract formulation constructed by the NSSP entirely on paper. It was used by the NSSP to legitimise its opposition to the ideology and objectives of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the cutting-edge of the concrete Tamil national liberation movement, on grounds that it is offering a progressive alternative to the LTTE’s demand for external self-determination, that it is the political rejection of, and not a chauvinist reaction to, Tamil nationalism. Through a circuitous route, the NSSP arrived at the same conclusion as that held by the Sinhalese bourgeoisie: that the nebulous ‘unity’ must be preserved.
What if the Tamil nation as a whole, including the vast majority of its workers and peasants, support the struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam? The Sinhalese bourgeoisie conjured up ‘threats’ to national sovereignty. The NSSP arrogated to itself the right to decide that the Tamil working classes are victims of ‘false consciousness’ - Tamil nationalism - which allegedly prevented them from realising the objective interests they have in common with Sinhalese working classes. To overcome false consciousness, the NSSP invited the Tamil working classes to be united with the Sinhalese working classes as equal partners and struggle together against imperialism. What if the Tamil nation as a whole, in exercising its right to self-determination, prefers instead a separate and independent Tamil State? The response of NSSP members is to imperiously mouth vacuous slogans that the Tamil working classes have nothing to gain by creating a Tamil bourgeois State. In this way the NSSP concurred with the Sinhalese bourgeoisie: that if Tamils do not voluntarily agree to unity with Sinhalese, the LTTE-led Tamil national liberation movement must be defeated.
What if the Tamil working classes believe, in the context of national oppression and class exploitation within a bourgeois State, that they suffer double oppression as Tamils and as workers? What if they consider that it is more realistic to form a national alliance with the Tamil bourgeoisie to resolve the national contradiction in order to eliminate national oppression, rather than attempt to re-build the class alliance with the Sinhalese working classes which was eroded by Sinhalese nationalism? These conditions induced the Tamil working classes to ally with the Tamil bourgeoisie to form a cross-class national alliance which is the class basis of the Tamil national liberation movement. This is an instance of ‘external class struggle’, the political struggle between the oppressor Sinhalese bourgeoisie external to the Tamil nation on the one hand and the national alliance of classes within the Tamil nation on the other hand. The concept of ‘external class struggle’ is the product of enlightened Marxist-Leninist analysis of class contradictions underlying the present-day processes of internal de-colonisation; it posits the progressive, general democratic content of the demand for external self-determination and underlines the crucial role the Left must play in supporting internal de-colonisation and facilitating external self-determination of nations and peoples.
But the NSSP’s seems blissfully unaware of the intensifying external class struggle between the Tamil national alliance and the Sinhalese bourgeoisie. The party’s explicit response to the demand for external self-determination made by the Tamil national alliance is to project a utopian socialist society devoid of national and class oppressions in which the demand would not arise. The party’s implicit position is that unity must be preserved; if the Tamil working classes refuse to be united with the Sinhalese working classes, they must be compelled - if necessary by the use of military force - into a union with the latter irrespective of the costs in loss of lives and destruction of property. It is a position which is not dissimilar to the cynical formulation employed by the United States government to defend the carpet-bombing of northern Vietnam: ‘better dead than red’.
The NSSP’s bankrupt political response to the Tamil national liberation struggle amply demonstrates the ideological straight-jacket donned by the Left in general, by dogmatically positing the inflexible primacy of the development of the forces of production. The Left in general reacted with considerable ambivalence to the processes of State-formation through external de-colonisation during the second half of the 20th century. The scale of State-formation through internal de-colonisation anticipated by Mr Boutros Boutros Gali and most Political Geographers, given that such predictions of the future invariably understate the extent of change, is likely to further marginalise the Left well into the 21st century.
(f) The task ahead
Recent manoeuvres by some sections of the Left to outflank national liberation movements are more sophisticated. The Left theoreticians formally conceded the right to external self-determination but have insisted that the national liberation movement must articulate a credible post-liberation political agenda of social transformation, which would combat gender oppression and class exploitation in the social formation within the new State. The tactic is to demand that the liberation movement commits itself to an almost utopian agenda and then withhold support for the movement on grounds that shortcomings in its agenda indicate that the movement’s victory will not significantly advance the interests of women and workers. However, support cannot be qualified by the post-liberation agenda for the obvious reason that the social transformation after liberation will be defined by the dialectic of class and gender relations and conditioned by historically given cultural parameters.
It is not uncommon to come across feminist arguments rejecting national liberation as a ‘male dominated, female served’ political project, which allegedly aimed to replace male oppressors of the external oppressing nation with male oppressors from within the oppressed nation. In short, Tamil women, for example, are expected to conclude that they stand to gain nothing substantial by way of relief from gender oppression by supporting the LTTE-led Tamil liberation movement. However the Sri Lankan armed are not know to display a nuanced approach to the Tamil population informed by the above feminist arguments: when the armed forces stomp into a Tamil village they do not target only the males claiming that national liberation is ‘male dominated, female served’. Rather the Sinhalese soldiers are more likely to rape the Tamil women in front of their men and then kill the men. Thus Tamil women in general are convinced that they are as much victims of national oppression as are Tamil men and insist on shouldering an equal share of the burden of the Tamil liberation movement.
Source (http://www.tamilcanadian.com/page.php?cat=120&id=646)
I would like to discuss this entire article but unfortunately it could be very long. So I have highlighted some parts which I consider important in bold. I would like to have a critic from all marxist currents against the bolded parts.Anarchists are also welcomed but please avoid making cheap score against other currents. The crux of the debate is very much important for our movement.
************************************
This article's source is from Tamil Canadian which is an supporter of recently annihilated LTTE. Which is an petty bourgeoisie nationalists and middle class intellectual organisation which I consider dug its own graveyard along with self determination of Tamils by its barbaric practices and violence it carried out against the very people it fought and died for.
Criticism of LTTE is irrelevant for this thread. The artice has grain of truth in it specifically how an organisation like LTTE without a mass movement behind it managed to get popular support among the most oppressed of all Tamils in this case the working class and landless peasants.
The point of me posting this article is the overall point it had made in the context of struggle for Independent Eelam in Srilanka. Especially the actions of the NSSP a Trotskyist organisation whose founders fought in the Independce struggle for India in radical lines when Stalinist CPI was scabbing on behalf of Stalintern who was allied with the British Imperialism at that time.Its action definitely lead to many splits within it and severely weakened the party both among the Sinhalese and Tamils. The same can be said with "Marxist-Leninist" JVP which openly opposed self determination of Tamils in the name of "Working Class Unity" .
It is the failure of LSSP to take a solid stance against sinhalese chauvinism and in favour of full self determination of Tamils led to the creation of Tamil Nationalist movement - non violent at the beginning until the rise of Tamil Militant groups.
LSSPs stance is very much similar to what left communists stance in this board.
The actions of all currents especially in Indian Subcontinent is not different from what the Left communists propose only differnce is that unlike left communists they pay lip service to National self determination.
For Trotskyists and Stalinists - we cannot just wash our hands on the actions of NSSP and JVP by claiming them as Pabloite and Revisionist. They justified their actions in the name of unity of the working class.
What alternative we have for the working class of the oppressed nationalities and how are we going to provide them ?
Thanks in advance.Apologies for errors if any present.