About new tendencies and the Speaker's house

People cannot live in a time warp and they cannot be asked to pretend that this is the 1960s when it is in fact 2004.

The call by some members of the new ruling Alliance to surround the Speakers house etc., sounds therefore like a lot of Red rhetoric that begins and ends on May Day. When the current time is written about 20 years later by historians and chroniclers, there will no doubt be chapters devoted to the socio-political aspects of the ascendancy of new elements to power in Sri Lankan politics.

This is also a time in the affairs of the world, in which the working class itself has become hybridised. In the local argot reserved for these matters, you could call it a thuppahified working class–as evident in a working class milieu such as in China for example.

China's production spree has skewed all expectations of what it is like to survive in an ostensibly socialist state. The Chinese currency will soon be able to break away from the dollar hegemony of the international currency system.

They say that the Chinese economy will grow so rapidly that the entire world will eventually be dependent on the Chinese to the extent that the Chinese would be in a position to say "you pay us in yuan and not in dollars for our goods.'' This break from dollar hegemony will eventually mean that other Asian economies such as ours will not have to depend on vast dollar reserves, and we will therefore be shielded from the negative effects of dollar dependant world markets.

All this may sound like science fiction at the moment, but it signifies very powerfully that there is going to be a sea change in the way the world economy functions. This will eventually redefine the concepts of labour utilisation etc., around the world. It means that there will be greater mobility of labour, perhaps, which will change the way the working class thinks and behaves.

In these circumstances, there will necessarily be a great gap between the rhetoric and the realpolitik of the newer elements in power now in the Sri Lankan political landscape. Though the JVP makes stirring speeches about storming the Speakers house on May Day etc., their leadership is perhaps acutely aware that it suits the times to play the system from within while beginning to inveigh against the system from outside.

The mass support base of these new elements in power however may be in expectation of more radical measures. There is still a great deal of sloganeering going on, and an enormous sense of grievance that is harboured against the system by the labour and the working classes. But, there is also a greater tendency for the working classes to settle into comfortable grooves, circumstances permitting. The critical mass of the working class is not necessarily aware of the developments in China, or the fact that the functioning of the capitalist economy in such countries has virtually obliterated the need for fierce working class mobilisation. But there is some process of osmosis by which the working classes know that the dictatorship of the proletariat is passé as a concept.

This is not to say that slogans about storming the Speakers house etc., by the new power elite are hollow. But it is to say that such slogans are there to articulate a sentiment rather than to actually whip up the working classes into a frenzy in which they will in fact go and physically storm the Speakers house. This is the same as saying that red as a colour does not mean the same thing that it used to be four decades ago!!

On the evening of May 1, troops of loyal May Day marchers strolled into some of the roadside boutiques to refresh themselves with some plain tea or a bottle of Sprite maybe. They wore red, and some of them were engaged in animated conversation about the politics of the day. All that can be said is that their red shirts looked like adornments. Their speech was glib; they seemed to be only too well immersed in the intrigue that characterises the political culture of the era. But somehow the authenticity of their sloganeering seemed to be in question. In other words, they seemed to be in a hurry to get out of their red shirts, and get back to their wives.

I suppose in a manner of sneaking, this is the same kind of mindset that has overtaken the working classes in China for instance. In Malaysia, more than half the working classes are car owners. One can argue that Sri Lanka is neither a Malaysia, nor a China and that the working classes have a long way to go to reach the levels of satisfaction or complacency that obtains in these two countries.

But again the evidence that the rallying cries of the working classes have changed is too glaring to ignore. The urgency of the working class now is to obtain a share of the pie, rather than to overthrow the system–and this may have to do with the process of osmosis – the process of Thuppahifiction – that's brought in by a combination of factors such as advertising, and the decline of working class radicalism in the countries of its origin.

Plus, the fact is that the new element in the Sri Lankan political landscape also uses the rallying cry of nationalism for instance, more than it uses the rallying cry of working class unity to raise the political consciousness of its troops. When the JVP cries that the monks are working with the Tigers, somehow that comes across as the dominant concern of the day. But, it's not an issue that the working class will empathize with to the point of working up an anger to storm the Speakers residence.

It is as if they already know that politics of the day needs rhetoric and sloganeering. As long as their leaders do not actually storm the Speakers house but talk about doing so, they are happy and their leaders are happy too. It is like an unwritten pact.

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