NATIONALISM AND THE LEFT IN SRI
LANKA
--
Rohini Hensman
Introduction
It is very
clear from Marx’s writings that united action of the working class across
national borders is a necessary condition for the overthrow of capitalism,
and that nationalism therefore has no place in his politics. However, by the
early twentieth century, Marxists like Lenin and Luxemburg were grappling
with the dilemmas posed by colonialism, and what policies should be adopted
in relation to the colonies. The idea of ‘the right to self-determination’
became the most widely accepted outcome of this debate; nationalism thus became
acceptable and even respectable. In the process, the whole notion of internationalism
has been lost. The consequences can be seen in Sri Lanka, where one section
of the Left supported Sinhala nationalism, another supports Tamil nationalism,
and most sections oppose globalisation with the notion of national sovereignty.
Nationalism and imperialism:
separating the strands
Often we use one word to describe a complex historical
process involving diverse social forces that converge at a certain point in
time; at that point, it seems appropriate to use the word, yet as soon as
the convergence unravels, we are in trouble. Nationalism is such a word. Any
alliance between the classes constituting the ‘nation’ is bound to be fragile
and ephemeral. The fundamental premise of nationalism – that all those who
constitute the nation have a community of interest greater than the common
interest any segment of that nation may have with others outside it – is an
illusion which only those in power have an interest in fostering.
As Max Adler pointed out, ‘imperialism and its World
War’ grew organically out of the nationalism of the industrialised nations. [1] Each
state, in order to secure the interests of its bourgeoisie, strove to control
larger and larger areas of the globe, and at first the prosperity arising
from imperialist expansion gave workers in these countries a stake in it:
‘there arises on the ground of national politics a sudden community of interest
between capital and the proletariat, which finds expression in an identical
inclination of both classes to imperialism’.
[2]
But what about the nationalism of the colonies and oppressed
nations? It was Rosa Luxemburg who argued most passionately that ‘the famous
“right of self-determination of nations” is nothing but hollow, petty bourgeois
phraseology and humbug’. How could she reconcile this position with her own
declaration that ‘socialism opposes every form of oppression, including also
that of one nation by another’? [3] Here it is important to separate the
genuine aspiration for democracy of the masses who participate in independence
and national liberation movements from the desire for power that drives others.
The distinction here is between those who support values of equality and individual
rights and those who oppose them. Unless the presence of the latter in Third
World nationalism is recognised, it is not possible to understand the numerous
civil and international wars, including the so-called ethnic conflict in Sri
Lanka, that have claimed so many millions of victims.
Nationalism and patriotism depend on an ‘othering’ of
those who do not belong to the ‘nation’, whether inside it (Jews to the Nazis,
Tamils and Muslims to Sinhala nationalists, Sinhalese and Muslims to Tamil
nationalists, and so forth) or outside (the Iraqis to Bush, etc.), and this
is turn can be used as a justification for all kinds of atrocities, up to
and including genocide. Although Lenin and Luxemburg appeared to be arguing
opposite positions in the debate on national self-determination, in a deeper
sense they were in agreement. Lenin, coming from imperialist Russia, was attempting
to counteract the nationalist illusions of workers in imperialist countries;
Luxemburg, coming from oppressed Poland, was attempting to counteract the
nationalist currents in oppressed nations.
Lenin’s Imperialism, written in 1916, also conflates
two distinct strands – colonialism and international capital – that converged
temporarily. The subsequent history of the twentieth century shows that these
tendencies move in opposite directions. The postwar expansion of international
capital involved a different dynamic of global integration which would actually
drive the industrialisation of countries like India and Brazil, whereas imperialism
had been largely successful in staving off the growth of new manufacturing
industries in such countries. Contrary to the naïve view of globalisation
that sees it as a process manipulated and determined by imperialist states,
MNCs, and institutions like the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the global expansion
of capital has a logic and dynamic of its own that in the longer term defies
all attempts to control it. Much of the history of the latter half of the
twentieth century, including the disintegration of the Soviet Union, can be
seen as the unfolding of the process of decolonisation as a condition
for the further progress of economic globalisation.
Economic globalisation was accompanied by the first
shaky steps towards a notion of global human rights and democracy. The carnage
of the Holocaust and World War II made apparent the danger of defining ‘national
sovereignty’ as the right of the State to do as it pleases within its
own borders, including exterminating part of its population; instead, there
was a feeling that democracy or sovereignty of the people had to be
upheld by the international community against genocidal regimes, acting either
outside or inside their own borders. The idea of the United Nations as an
institution upholding these values was embodied in the Genocide Convention
(1948) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), followed by a
large number of similar international treaties, although the lack of machinery
for implementation and the structure of the UN itself made the realisation
of this idea a distant utopia. The International Criminal Court (ICC) which
came into force on 1 July 2002 is a significant recent step towards upholding
human rights internationally.
The important point here is that globalisation in the
sense of the development of a post-imperialist world economy and of global
regulation, especially of human rights, is historically progressive, and can
counteract forces of both fascism and imperialism. The contradictions between
imperialism and globalisation are revealed most strikingly by the Bush administration’s
ultra-nationalist rejection of globalisation. With the world’s biggest arsenal
of weapons of mass destruction, it is the only state which has ever used nuclear
weapons and is currently developing new ones with the intention of using them;
it has backed out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and refused to ratify
the Comprehensive (Nuclear) Test Ban Treaty. It rejected the Kyoto Protocol
on climate change and the Land Mine Treaty, plotted to get rid of Jose Bustani,
director-general of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
(set up to enforce the Chemical Weapons Convention), and successfully sabotaged
the Biological Weapons Convention. Most significantly, the US not only refused
to ratify the treaty setting up the ICC, but in November 2001 passed the American
Service-members Protection Act authorising the US to use force to ‘liberate’
criminals detained by the court and took the unprecedented step of unsigning
the treaty, signifying its intention of sabotaging the ICC actively. All this
indicates that we are here in a very real sense dealing with a ‘rogue’
state: one that is not, and does not wish to be, part of the international
community. The only hope of being able to survive lies in pushing
forward regulatory globalisation, in strengthening and democratising international
bodies dealing with human rights and international law.
Democracy and Socialism
Partly as a result of ‘communism’ becoming associated
with the Soviet Union and ‘democracy’ with the United States, both concepts
have been debased, and the politics associated with them are seen in Cold
War terms as being opposed to each other. Yet even a cursory reading of Marx’s
Civil War in France makes it clear that socialism and communism are
seen not as the antithesis of democracy but as the further development of
democracy into areas such as production and the executive arm of the state,
which under capitalism are hardly subject to democratic control.
If this is recognised, it should be clear that democracy
– including human rights, equality, freedom of information, expression, association
and peaceful assembly, and the right to participate in government, at the
very least through free and fair elections – must be an essential part of
the programme of any communist movement. Where there is a conflict between
any brand of nationalism and democracy, as there always will be, the Left
should take a firm and unambiguous stand in favour of democracy. This means,
for example, insisting that any proposed solution to the ethnic conflict includes
a guarantee of all the democratic rights listed above for people of all communities
in all parts of Sri Lanka. Once a reorientation towards a twenty-first century
politics of internationalism is achieved, it becomes clear that the field
of activity open to the Left is vast. Remaining stuck in the politics of nationalism,
on the contrary, will only ensure that the Left becomes increasingly reactionary
and irrelevant.
