Trotskyism in Sri Lanka

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The Trotskyist movement played an important role in Sri Lanka, with the LSSP playing a leading role. The LSSP did support the Bandaranaike government which probably was a mistake. Their support (not popular with all Sri Lanka Trotskyists) may be due more to the degeneration within the ISFI than the Trotskyist method.

Mrs. Bandaranaike (as she's usually called) was a socialist of sorts. She nationalized industry and took steps to ally Sri Lanka with the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s. She did support Sinhalese nationalism and suppressed a left wing rebellion by the JVP.

Was it right to ally with her? Did the Trotskyists in Sri Lanka play an overall positive or negative role? I don't know a lot about Sri Lanka. I'm posting this more to learn than to argue a point.

The Trotskyist movement did experience a period of degeneration and opportunism with people like Pablo and Ernest Mandel (great economist, shitty politician). Huge blunders were made. Does this negate the "Trot" approach overall though?

I'm hoping that people who are knowledgeable about Sri Lanka and/or the history of the international Trotskyist movement will join in.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Mrs. Bandaranaike (as she's usually called) was a socialist of sorts. She nationalized industry and took steps to ally Sri Lanka with the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s. She did support Sinhalese nationalism and suppressed a left wing rebellion by the JVP.

Was it right to ally with her?

She and her husband were Sinhalese chauvinists who were involved in the purging of Tamils from state positions and turned a blind eye to the Tamil minority being brutalized by the Sinhala majority in the riots that broke out in that country, so I'm going to say "no".

[Kléber]

The LSSP's support for Bandaranaike was about as Trotskyist as the Second International's support for WWI was Marxist. Orthodox Trotskyists in Sri Lanka and elsewhere consider that the "great betrayal" and the moment the LSSP officially ceased to uphold the political independence of the working class.

[redasheville]

There is an issue of Revolutionary History that covers the history of Trotskyism in Sri Lanka. Try to track down a copy.

[RedTrackWorker]

Was it right to ally with her? Did the Trotskyists in Sri Lanka play an overall positive or negative role? I don't know a lot about Sri Lanka. I'm posting this more to learn than to argue a point.

One could say they played an overall positive role...until they joined a bourgeois government. The popular front question gets at the essence of what sets authentic Trotskyism apart from Stalinism. See Trotsky's writings on the POUM. That is why the LRP dates the destruction of the Fourth International as a revolutionary tendency to 1952, when the Bolivian Trotskyists supported a popular front (thereby negating the working class's organizational and political independence) and despite a couple of people drawing attention to this, there was no significant response from anyone in the Fourth International to this betrayal. So there is no reason to be surprised they supported the same thing in Sri Lanka.

[graymouser]

There's a book on my shelf I've been meaning to read called Tomorrow is Ours: The Trotskyist Movement in India and Ceylon, 1935-48 by W.E. Ervin that deals extensively with the formation of Sri Lankan Trotskyism. Just posting for folks' information.

[RedTrackWorker]

Oh, I can post links now:
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey1_1.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/cey2_1.htm
http://www.bolshevik.org/history/smk/SMK00.htm
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm (relevant issue Vol.6 No.4, 1997 is not online)