By Raju Prabath Lankaloka
The year 2022, which is marked by a number of very important political events both nationally and internationally is approaching its end.
From the Sri Lankan point of view, we have seen the biggest people’s struggle ever taking place in Sri Lankan history unfold in 2022. That struggle has captured the attention of the entire world. The Rajapaksa regime, which was considered by many people to have a strong political foundation that would not be shaken for decades, collapsed like a house of cards falling apart.
Though some sections that were involved in that struggle are running here and there uttering capitalist and liberal nonsense as they became henchmen of various groups belong to the same capitalist camp, the struggle started not because of the wants and needs of those who are uttering nonsense today, but as the natural result of the situation, to where Rajapaksa regime has dragged the country in which people couldn’t live any more.
People enter into struggles just because they cannot bear the conditions. When people get into a struggle/fight, always they do not have a complete understanding of the desired solution.
That is why a revolutionary party is needed. The responsibility of a revolutionary party is to show the right path to the people who are entering the struggle; to explain the solution required; in other words, to provide proper leadership.
No matter how brilliantly people fought in the struggle that unfolded in Sri Lanka, in the absence of the above factor, the people could not move beyond ousting the Rajapakse regime.
On the other hand, it is natural that people get tired during a continuous struggle. People want to start their lives again.
Due to the fact that the people were tired during the months-long Sri Lankan struggle, and on the other hand there was no revolutionary party capable of leading the people, the capitalist system managed to temporarily raise its dirty ugly head again by installing a Ranil Rajapaksa junta.
But they have already shown clearly that this Ranil Rajapaksa junta cannot provide a solution to any of the problems facing the people of the country.
By now they have clearly shown that there is nothing they can do for the people other than imposing taxes that exert more pressure on the people, protecting the cynical Rajapaksa family, carrying out illegal repression on the people in that regard, and selling government-owned enterprises built with people’s tax money to foreign plundering companies cheaply, dancing to the tunes of imperialist powers and the financial institutions controlled by those imperialist powers.
This cynical regime has made two-thirds of the country’s people food insecure. Increased malnutrition among young children. In order to hide this information from the public, the release of statistics in that connection has been stopped. There is an acute shortage of drugs in hospitals. Due to the unexpected increase in the price of books and other educational equipment, the education of many poor children is about to be disrupted. Meanwhile, some economists have warned that there could be a series of economic crises in the near future due to the murderous taxes, implemented recently.
As far as the world situation is concerned, there is not much different from the Sri Lankan situation. In the year 2022, many countries came to the brink of bankruptcy and many other countries experienced serious mass uprisings. Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran as well as the Czech Republic, Belgium, France, Germany and China are among them.
After the economic collapse of 2020 and the very slight economic recovery shown in 2021, the world economy has shown again signs of going towards another crisis in 2022.
The writers for hire for the imperialist powers say that the cause of this economic downturn is the war in Ukraine. These gentlemen who do everything to save the capitalist system never admit that the capitalist system is the cause of economic crises or that economic crises are the natural result of the capitalist system. They always have a reason for it. According to them, the 2020 economic crisis was caused by the Corona epidemic. (These gentlemen ignore the fact that capitalist economic experts themselves had warned about an upcoming economic crisis since 2018). Today they are beating the dead horse of the Ukraine war.
But it is amazing that these gentlemen do not realize that the Ukraine war is a creation of the capitalist system. These gentlemen willingly hide the fact that the war in Ukraine was a result of America’s long-standing attempt to take over Europe’s gas and fuel market and the Western countries’ desire to limit the market of Russian Oligarchs by expanding NATO further.
Currently, the United States and the European Union have faced economic stagnation with inflation for the first time since the 1970s. On the other hand, China is currently in a serious economic downturn.
The global capitalist system has not shown any sign of recovery even in 2023. People around the world have faced the evils of capitalism, such as economic decline, inflation, unemployment, welfare cuts, wage cuts, poverty, malnutrition, climate change, and environmental pollution. As long as the capitalist system exists, it is inevitable that people all over the world will have to face these evils.
In order to save people around the world from these evils, it is essential to change the capitalist system in a revolutionary way. For that purpose, building an internationalist revolutionary party on a global scale is the main responsibility which we have to shoulder at this moment. Our determination for the coming new year should be to involve in building that internationalist revolutionary party.
