Letter: Sri Lanka (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sri Lanka

Dear Editors,

I would like to draw your attention to a mistake in the article on Sri Lanka in the August issue of the Socialist Standard. The article states that the Tamils were brought to the island, then known as Ceylon, from India during British rule to work as cheap labour on the tea plantations. In fact, this group of "Indian" Tamils account for only about 1.2 million of the total Tamil population on the island. They lived until recently mainly on the plantations in central Sri Lanka.

The remaining 1.4 million Tamils live largely in the North and East of the island. They trace their history in Sri Lanka all the way back to the fifth or sixth century BC. when it is believed the Sinhalese began to settle on the island. By the time the Portuguese colonialists arrived in the 16th century AD. two separate kingdoms — Tamil in the North and Sinhalese in the South were well established. During the British colonial period these two kingdoms were brought under a single administration for the first time. At the time of Independence the idea of a separate Tamil state was regarded as rather extreme by most Tamils. Nevertheless the Tamils were concerned about their future status in an independent Sri Lanka, as they were considerably outnumbered by the Sinhalese.

The case of the Indian Tamils is quite different. They have had no share in the ancient history of either the Ceylon Tamils or the Sinhalese on the island. When they arrived in Sri Lanka they were scarcely better off than slaves. They were resented by the Sinhalese as they were settled on estates in the heart of the Sinhalese area. As the plantation economy boomed they found themselves marginally better off than the Sinhalese peasants in the area. The estates often provided them with some medical care, education and housing. They were disliked also by the Ceylon Tamils as they were mostly low caste Hindus living in abject poverty and dependent on the estates.

However, by the time of Independence they just outnumbered the Ceylon Tamils. They held considerable electoral sway in the central area of Sri Lanka, as they outnumbered the Sinhalese in these areas. Their vote ensured that eight Indian Tamil MPs went to parliament in 1947. In 1948 the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised and deprived of Sri Lankan citizenship. The Indian Tamil MPs were replaced by Sinhalese MPs This action gained the approval of the Ceylon Tamil leaders as well as the Sinhalese.

Since then there have been several agreements with India to repatriate several hundred thousand Indian Tamils and readmit the rest to Sri Lankan citizenship. These measures have been slow, largely unsuccessful, and have only added to the sufferings of the Indian Tamils. Conditions on the estates have deteriorated and the Indian Tamils live under conditions of considerable hardship.

However, it was not until 1977 that the two separate Tamil groups started to join forces. In that year violent anti-Tamil activity was directed at the Indian Tamil estate workers for the first time. This drove many of them out of the central area of Sri Lanka to the North, where they sought refuge with the Ceylon Tamils whose leaders by now were agitating for a separate state. Here they continue to be harassed by the state forces seeking out terrorist suspects.

KM

London

Playing by the rules of war (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Millions of people are horrified by the Israeli war on Gaza. Protests have hit the streets in countries around the world, to the point where armed police battled students on university campuses across the US for occupying in protest against the war and America’s role in backing it.

Many protestors shout that the war is ‘illegal’ and that Israel is committing genocide, pinning hopes on international authority putting an end to malefaction. It should be noted that genocide is a crime of intent, and is not synonymous with mass homicide. That narrow legal definition, though, does trigger international and domestic legal requirements to act against it: hence why America and allied governments are determined to deny that it is genocide, and will continue to do so until the International Court of Justice makes a determinative ruling, which could be years away.

People should not put their faith in the split hairs of legality, but instead on sound analysis of the causes of conflict and action built on that analysis. The faith in the power of legality is misplaced against the tremendous value of the interests at stake in being able to secure and control the supply of oil. It is worth noting, as Tony Blair pointed out in his speech at the George Bush library in 2002, that it is not about monopolising oil, but ensuring that no one state can monopolise and thus threaten the supply of oil:

‘The western world is import dependent. We base our policy on diversity of supply. You in the US import from 50 different countries, no one of which supplies more than 15 per cent of total imports. The EU pursues roughly the same policy.’

Beyond that, it is important to note that international law is not set up to prevent war, but in fact to structure and enable wars to take place. It seeks to limit war and codify its conduct, but the powers that drafted those wars would simply not allow themselves to put aside the tool of war. As Michael Walzer, the theorist of just war writes, alongside Jo-Ann Mort: ‘It is a maxim of just war theory that the rules of war cannot make it impossible to fight a just war. There has to be a way to fight’. Walzer has also said in a recent interview ‘I think the IDF has been trying to adhere to the rules in an environment that probably requires some loosening of the rules.’

As we reported in our May issue part of this ‘loosening’ has been to deploy the Lavender AI targeting system to co-ordinate targeting of Hamas operatives and officials based on mass intelligence gathering. The military doctrine that civilian casualties are permissible in pursuit of a legitimate military objective has been broadly applied (more broadly than in the past). Israel undoubtedly has enough military lawyers to build a broad permissive case for its actions (or to construct one retrospectively where necessary).

It is abundantly clear that Israel is not acting out of absolute necessity: Hamas will never have the capacity to destroy Israel. If the intelligence failures that meant that Israel knew that Hamas was drilling for a 7 October-style operation were fixed Hamas could be securely locked back up. For a fraction of the cost spent on the war, Israel could have bought a bucket load of informants to finger high-level Hamas commanders for reprisal.

Everyone agrees with the concept of the right to self-defence to protect your own and your loved ones’ lives, but most would agree that going after the friends and family of someone who attacked you would be taking it too far; and every human society has mechanisms to stop violent disputes escalating in a spiral of tit for tat. And, of course, it is possible to engineer a situation where a claim of self-defence allows an actor to pursue the use of violence to achieve other ends.

As Arthur Ransome once wrote:

‘It has been said that when two armies face each other across a battle front and engage in mutual slaughter, they may be considered as a single army engaged in suicide. Now it seems to me that when countries, each one severally doing its best to arrest its private economic ruin, do their utmost to accelerate the economic ruin of each other, we are witnessing something very like the suicide of civilization itself.’

Israel is not unique in this. Indeed, their propagandists have been pointing out that there are mass refugee and humanitarian crises being created by savage wars in Sudan, Congo and Ukraine, but that Israel and its actions are being singled out. Possibly this is so, at least in part because of the focus of the western media (spurred on in part by the interest of their states and their capitalists in the Middle East region).

Indeed, in terms of Israel’s tactics, they seem to be following exactly the same military doctrines as were used by the Sri Lankan government when they crushed the Tamil Tigers in 2009:

‘The Sri Lanka Army (SLA) advanced its military campaign in the Vanni, using large-scale and widespread shelling, at times with heavy weapons, such as Multi-Barrel Rocket Launchers (MBRLs) and other large artillery, causing large numbers of civilian casualties. It shelled in three consecutive No Fire Zones, where it had encouraged the civilian population to concentrate, and after it had indicated that it would stop using heavy weapons.’

Likewise, the Tamil Tigers violated human rights by using human shields and forced labour. Sri Lanka was protected from human rights allegations at the UN by allied states.

War is not some inherent feature of humanity. Billions of us live lives without waging war upon one another. War emerges from a social and technological architecture that enables it, and if the marchers who rightly hate war want to put a stop to it, they need to look to action that will make war impossible, not illegal.

Pik Smeet

Farming under capitalism (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We begin a three-part series on farming as it is under capitalism and how it could be in a post-capitalist, socialist society.

As agriculture globally is already able to produce enough to comfortably feed the entire world then the exhortation to increase the productivity of (mainly small-scale) farmers, particularly in the Global South, through the adoption of modern commercialised methods of farming would, on the face of it, appear redundant. Why would we need to go down that road?

True, the individual farmer might benefit by increasing their output but it does not necessarily follow that farmers in general would. We should avoid committing the fallacy of composition. What is true of the part is not necessarily true of the whole. A different dynamic applies at the macro-level vis-à-vis the micro-level. A single farmer growing more potatoes might benefit from the increased revenue it brings in. However, an increase in output among potato farmers in general to the point where the market for potatoes is glutted only results in generalised economic distress.

In a competitive market economy one economic agent not infrequently tends to gain at the expense of another. Indeed, this principle is enshrined in the very heart of a market-based mindset itself. It is enthusiastically endorsed as an example of the ‘creative destruction’ that the market process thrives upon. Technological innovation and modernisation under capitalism, it is argued, depends upon this. It is only by cutting out the deadwood that the green shoots of economic growth can be encouraged to appear.

A rising tide does not necessarily lift all the boats; some will sink. In this metaphorical vein, we will now turn to consider the make and model of those that remain afloat and assess their comparative durability in the choppy waters of the high seas. In other words, the different farming regimes that make up our global system of agricultural production.

The type of farming some of us would probably be more familiar with is the modern industrialised capitalist agriculture that tends to be found in the more economically advanced parts of the world. This farming model is increasingly, and stereotypically, one dominated by often very large-sized farms, practising monoculture – growing a single cash crop or specialising in rearing one or other kind of livestock – and employing very few workers, the entire production process being highly capital intensive from start to finish. These different features tend to go together. For instance, you cannot effectively operate a large farm with just a mere handful of workers unless you have heavy machinery at your disposal. Similarly, in order to justify the purchase of such machinery you need to have a pretty sizeable farm and a substantial cash flow in the first place. The one thing sort of presupposes – or necessitates – the other.

In terms of output per agricultural worker, large-scale industrial farming is certainly highly productive but as a yardstick with which to measure ‘efficiency’, this can be quite misleading. A single worker operating a giant combine harvester (which might cost half a million US dollars or more) can harvest a field of wheat at a rate that would have taken probably scores of farm labourers a century or two ago to match. However, it is not simply the labour of this single operator that we have to take into account in making comparisons. We have also to take into account the labour involved in producing this highly sophisticated piece of machinery, in mining the ores that will later be fashioned into its component parts, in maintaining and servicing the harvester and ensuring that it is in a state of readiness come harvest time and so on. From that point of view, the great bulk of the workforce implicated in one or other way in what is called the ‘farming industry’ are, strictly speaking, ‘off-farm’ workers employed in factories.

In any case, output per worker is not the only criterion with which to judge ‘productivity’; output per hectare is another and this latter criterion is bound to count for more in a world that is more heavily populated (and where, consequently, land is less abundant). From this point of view large-scale commercial farms do not score as highly as might be imagined. In the Global South especially – though less so in the developed countries – these perform poorly by comparison with more traditional, labour intensive, small-scale farmers adopting what might be called a more organic approach.

In developed countries, too, there is some evidence to favour an organic approach over a conventional chemical-based approach to farming. The problem lies in transitioning from the latter to the former when a loss in yields can be expected in this transitional period. In today’s highly commercialised environment where the emphasis is on short term results, this may be too great a hurdle to surmount; for a struggling farmer it could be just too financially risky. How do you cope with the unavoidable temporary decline in yields, and therefore revenue, and still cover your financial costs?

We tend to associate conventional farming with big industrial farms. Their big size almost calls for a capital-intensive and, along with that, a heavily chemical-based approach to farming. This is precisely what makes it rather difficult for them to switch over to a more organic approach.

The problem for small farmers is that, despite being more productive per hectare and being able to fetch higher prices for their produce by cutting out the middlemen, they can barely survive on such a low overall income whereas the big farmers with so much more land at their disposal can manage to get by with a comparatively much lower return per hectare. In the capitalist market, it is those who survive who will drive out those who cannot. Hence the tendency for agricultural land to become more concentrated in fewer hands.

A recent example was the Sri Lankan government’s (over)hasty decision to ban the importation of agro-chemicals from April 2021. Ostensibly, this decision was made to save $300-$400 million in foreign exchange. But the farming community there had not been sufficiently prepared for the changeover and supplies of organic fertiliser were woefully inadequate. As a consequence the government had to backtrack on that decision later that same year. (‘Lessons from Sri Lanka’s agrochemical ban fiasco’, 25 November 2021, Grain.org – bit.ly/3JKTevI).

This is precisely the kind of problem that will cease to exist in a post-capitalist society. Individual farming units will no longer be faced with the need to ensure their own economic survival in a harsh and unforgiving commercial environment. They will no longer be competing with each other in the market to realise a profit through the sale of their produce. So there will be no penalty or handicap in transitioning to a more organically based form of farming if this was desired. That makes for a much more flexible approach to food production altogether.

Next month: farming in a post-capitalist society.

Robin Cox

Material World: Sri Lanka – the limits of workers’ forbearance (2022)

The Material World column from the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sri Lanka long had a stable economy but the Material World column in March drew attention to the economic chaos taking place there.

Since March the situation has spiralled even more out of control. Sri Lanka’s rupee has lost more than 80 percent of its value and is still falling. Its foreign exchange reserves for all practical purposes have been depleted. Without US dollars the country cannot afford to pay for imports. Petrol has run out for non-essential users and is rationed in favour of the emergency services. Without fuel for cars and public transport via buses and tuk-tuks not running people cannot go to work or operate their businesses. LPG gas for cooking is in short supply. Fishing boats can’t go to sea, because they don’t have diesel.

All attempts to find solutions have failed which has now culminated in political turmoil with the prime minister’s home being set alight by angry demonstrators and the president forced from office as protesters occupied the presidential palace.

The financial crisis is also a health crisis. Sri Lanka imports more than 80 percent of its medical supplies. Now medicines are in short supply, including essential, life-saving drugs. Only the most critical patients are being operated upon. Doctors who once could say that the country possessed very fine healthcare, now tell of people dying due to lack of resources. Sri Lanka’s hospitals now rely on what charity other nations can offer.

In May a $1.5 million donation came from Japan so that UNICEF could procure medicines for over 1.2 million people, among them 53,000 expectant mothers and nearly 122,000 children with immediate medical needs. Australia sent food plus essential medicines for women’s health, the equivalent of nearly $5 million.

In June the UN appealed to international donors for more than $47 million in ‘life-saving assistance’. To put it in perspective, the government at the time said $5 billion was required for the island’s economic survival primarily to pay for food, fuel and fertiliser.

Ordinary Sri Lankans continue to bear the brunt of the financial and food crises. Sri Lankans under normal conditions did not lack for food, but the UN World Food Programme reports nearly nine of 10 families are skipping and skimping on meals, with 3 million requiring emergency humanitarian aid. Inflation of food prices was 22 percent in December 2021, 30 percent in March, and 57 percent in June resulting in people unable to put enough food on the table for their families. Now inflation is expected to go higher to 70 percent in coming months. A kilo of rice now costs 500 Sri Lankan rupees when it previously cost less than 100 rupees. The price of essentials means they are beyond reach for many people. Once unthinkable, Sri Lanka may now be facing food insecurity, if not outright famine, in a few months’ time.

Fuel shortages mean electricity cuts, with transport and supply chains being disrupted. Factory closures and unreliable shipment of exports have led many global brands to turn to alternative suppliers, such as Bangladesh and India, leaving Sri Lankan workers without jobs and pay.

Discontent and unrest had been widespread for months across Sri Lanka but the magnitude of the protests that forced out the government, once more demonstrated the latent power of working people. What we witness in Sri Lanka arose to a degree from mismanagement and malfeasance yet it is not unique and similar situations will most likely occur in more and more countries. Global price rises have inflicted similar pain elsewhere.

Lebanon’s GDP halved, from $52 billion in 2019 to $21.8 billion in 2021. Foreign exchange reserves dropped from $30 billion in 2019 to $11 billion today. The Lebanese lira has lost much of its purchasing power with salaries no longer sufficient for employees to support their families. Workers are barely able to buy basic necessities. Lebanon’s poverty rate is now over 74 percent and nearly 2.2 million of the population are lacking food security. One third of the population in the country is unemployed and according to the International Labour Organization nearly all public sector employees are engaged in various levels of industrial action.

The UN warned that food scarcity and malnutrition in the country would intensify further in the coming months and its representative in Lebanon, Najat Rochdi, expressed concern that the grain and fuel shortages arising from the Ukraine conflict were already affecting the country.

Sri Lanka and Lebanon are not isolated examples of capitalism’s failures to maintain stable social safety nets. Global inflation is inflicting economic pain across all continents and we can expect similar civil strife to occur in many more countries, and more governments to topple.

Politicians and the capitalist class in other countries received a warning sign in Sri Lanka that there is always a limit to workers’ forbearance. Desperation can so easily turn into rage and revolt. If a country’s economy sinks, its working class will not willingly go down with it.

ALJO

The Passing Show: Success . . . . (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the May 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Success . . . .

State Capitalism marches on from triumph to triumph. British European Airways last year turned 1954’s loss of £400,000 into a profit of £862,000 (The Star, 28-2-56). And hard on the heels of this announcement comes the news that the British Overseas Airways Corporation almost doubled its net profit in the financial year 1955-56. It made a gross profit of about £1,750,000 on the year, and a net profit of about £500,000. This compared with last year’s net profit of £260,000 (The Observer, 1-4-56). These successes will no doubt make those staunch Labourites, who for years devoted themselves to bringing about the nationalization of the country's basis industries, feel very proud. Or will they?

. . . .  for the Capitalists

The Socialist Party has consistently pointed out for more than half a century that nationalization is no more than Capitalism run by the State or its nominees. It has nothing to do with Socialism. And the more experience the country has of the actual running of nationalization, the more it becomes obvious that what the Socialist Party has always said about it is true. Now even social anthropologists, quietly pursuing their studies far removed from the hurly-burly of political conflict, arrive at the same conclusion. Norman Dennis, Fernando Henriques and Clifford Slaughter, have written a book embodying the results of their researches into the life of a Yorkshire mining town. “They found that"—to quote a review in The Times (54-56)—“they found that, in the mines, the old fundamental conflict between management and men has continued, and that the system of piece-work payments gives occasions every day for conflict between worker and management.” Of course it does. It is merely one aspect of the class struggle. The review of the book (“Coal is our Life”) goes on:

  "The miner remains an employee, and whether or no he works is still dependent on the capacity of owners of capital to cater for him.”

The Socialist case could hardly be put more clearly than that. The worker is propertyless; therefore he is forced to sell his ability to work to the “owners of capital": and if the owners of capital cannot make a profit out of his work, they will not employ him, and so he is not allowed to work at all. Instead he goes on the dole, and his physical energies and mental faculties rot together. And this is the case whether he works in an industry run by private or by State capitalism.

And yet—probably on the very day you buy this paper—the left-wing political parties hold May-Day demonstrations to demand further doses of nationalization! Will they never learn?

Sales Manager

The barnstorming tour of Mr. Malenkov through Britain has been providing journalists with a lot of copy during the past week or two. Patting children on the head, switching on a wide grin for the photographers, scattering “peace-medals” like confetti at a wedding, he has been arousing the ire of some political commentators who fear he may make Russia too popular. This situation is not without its humour. For the reports of Mr. Malenkov's doings—not forgetting his occasional gaucheries, such as asking an Ayr workman what he thought of Burns—are highly reminiscent of election-time, when the candidates of the big parties go cap in hand to the electors to solicit their votes. And the aforementioned commentators, none of whom complain about the activities of Parliamentary candidates who support the British ruling class, are now hoarsely indignant that Mr. Malenkov may win backing for the Russian ruling class by using the same dubious tactics. But what is sauce for Sir Anthony Eden and Mr. Gaitskell is also sauce for Mr. Malenkov—as well as for Messrs. Bulganin and Khrushchev, when they follow in Malenkov's footsteps; and only those who have criticised the electioneering tactics of the British political leaders have any right to criticise the same tactics now being employed by the Russians.

I see it all now

Mr. Malenkov has come to Britain at a crisis in the fortunes of the world's Communist Parties. The present leaders of the Soviet Communist Party have severely attacked the Stalin legend, and have boldly said about their late master what nearly everyone else has been saying about him for the last 30 years. And the Communist Party of Great Britain has. naturally, followed suit. The poor old British Bolsheviks have had to perform the about turn so often that, in revolutions per minute, they must now be challenging the internal combustion engine. Mr. Pollitt is reported to have fobbed off questions with the remark that, if Stalin hadn’t made any mistakes, he wouldn’t have been human. The accuracy of this remark is unchallengeable; but what a pity Mr. Pollitt didn’t have the guts to say so ten years ago, instead of spending his time kissing the ground in front of the great Stalin myth.

It may be that, for some time at any rate, Russia will be ruled by a committee of men instead of by one man. Developing Russian Capitalism seems to require—like developing English and French Capitalism required—a totalitarian regime at a certain stage; and it appears that the Russian ruling class has now decided that the “leadership” cult has been overdone. But committee-rule would not make Russia any more democratic. The powers of a police state like Russia may be exercised, just as effectively by ten men as by one. It is easy enough, for Communists inside and outside Russia, to criticise a fallen idol; but Russians will not have freedom of speech until they are at liberty to challenge the false theories of social development to which Communists have committed themselves, and to discuss publicly whether the Russian system is Socialism, or whether— as is in fact the case—it is merely State Capitalism.

Seconds out of the ring

So the British Royal Family has declined invitations to attend the forthcoming Royal Wedding of the Year (on my right, Prince Rainier, title-holder of Monaco; on my left, Grace Kelly, star attraction from Philadelphia and Hollywood). Which is curious. One would have thought the few remaining royalties would try to consolidate the ranks. But there may be an explanation. For when the crowds cheered at the Philip-Elizabeth wedding, and subsequently at the Coronation, the commentators rushed forward to tell us why. It was (we were told) Loyalty, the great throbbing Loyalty of the British people to its monarch. But now the same British people is showing just as much interest in the wedding of Rainier and Kelly—the representatives respectively of the Monte Carlo gaming-tables and the Californian arc-lights. Can it be that life within Capitalism is so drab that the British people would enthuse over anything which offered a little glamour, gaiety and colour, and that this much-vaunted Loyalty doesn't come into it?

Exit Ceylon

While we’re on the subject of loyalty, a word about Ceylon. When the Queen undertook the round-the- Empire tour after the Coronation, nowhere was she more enthusiastically received than in Ceylon. Ah! said the experts—loyal Ceylon! But the results of Ceylon’s general election now show a landslide in favour of Mr. Bandaraniake's Party, which promised to make Ceylon a Republic outside the Commonwealth. In other words, the Ceylon ruling class, having freed itself from the control of the British ruling class after the war, is in no mood to retain the trappings of the British monarchy.

And once again the experts are proved wrong.

Chip that Buddha

When a ten-foot high Buddha was being moved by cane into a new temple in Bangkok recently it fell, and the plaster casing was chipped; beneath the casing the Buddha was seen to be made of gold (Sunday Express, 8-4-56). Now, it seems, the Buddhist temples of Siam are full of hurrying priests and laymen carrying hammer and chisel, purposefully bent on seeing whether their own Buddhas conceal the same treasure-trove. Mingled with the prayers of the worshippers comes the sound of the gold-hungry faithful attacking their hitherto inviolate idols. Meanwhile, the original monks are finding that they struck a gusher; offerings to the golden Buddha are pouring in like a pools-entrant’s dream, and already amount to nearly £20,000.

It is easy to sneer at these remarkable events; but surely there is here a message for us all. Beneath the outward show, and doctrinal differences, we can find here a text on which both Christians and Buddhists obviously agree. What text?

To him that hath shall be given,

How revolutionary can you get ?

It was suggested by a delegate at the Co-operative Party conference that no person should inherit more than £20,000 from any source (Sunday Express, 1-4-56). So instead of comparatively few big Capitalists, we should have a greater number of medium-sized Capitalists. What a suggestion with which to arouse the revolutionary fervour of the working class on the approach of May-Day!

Alwyn Edgar

Material World: Sri Lanka: capitalism unable to provide economic security (2022)

The Material World column from the March 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Across the world, workers are enduring the consequences of capitalism’s inability to deal with its many problems. Sri Lanka, the island state of 21 million people, is one more country to add to the long list where our fellow workers are facing deep insecurity in the coming months.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared Sri Lanka to be in an economic emergency but has done little to ease people’s plight. Workers have to bear the brunt of the economic crisis by themselves due to the lack of effective social protection. It is working people who make the economy. 2020 figures show the garment workers brought in US$5 billion and tea plantation workers US$1.4 billion. Yet, most lead precarious lives forced to shoulder the effects of budget cuts on education, health care and public transport.

Sri Lanka is entering a humanitarian crisis caused in part by the impact of Covid. The World Bank estimates 500,000 people have fallen below the poverty line since the beginning of the pandemic. Within the tourism sector, more than 200,000 people lost their livelihoods. Once bringing US$4 billion to the country, the tourism industry is struggling to stay afloat. By October last year, it brought in just US$82 million. From close to 2 million tourists in 2018, the island nation received just 160,000 in 2021.

High government spending and tax cuts eroding state revenues, vast debt repayments to China and low foreign exchange reserves are also important factors.

The government printing money to help pay off domestic loans and foreign bonds has created overall inflation of 12 percent in December and those escalating prices have left many basic necessities unaffordable. Food prices rose by a record 22.1 percent in December. Supermarkets have for months been rationing milk powder, sugar, lentils and other essentials as banks ran out of US dollars to pay for imports.

A top agricultural official warned of impending famine and requested the government to implement an orderly food rationing scheme to avoid such a scenario. He was fired within hours of making the appeal.

The food crisis was worsened by the government’s April 2021 ban on agrochemical imports with an intention of switching agriculture to being organic. The policy was reversed in November after crop yield falls and protests by farmers.

Sri Lanka has a huge foreign debt burden. It owes China more than $5bn and last year took an additional $1bn loan from Beijing to alleviate its financial crisis, which is being paid in instalments. Struggling to pay back Chinese loans, it has handed over the majority share of the Hambantota port to a Chinese state-owned company on a 99-year lease.

In 2022, it will be required to repay an estimated $7.3bn in domestic and foreign loans. However, as of November, available foreign currency reserves were just $1.6bn.

The former central bank deputy governor W A Wijewardena warned the country was at substantial risk of defaulting on its repayments, which would have catastrophic economic consequences. In one article (tinyurl.com/2dsf9rzv), he attributes a reason for the crisis to the acceptance of the now fashionable but fallacious economic idea called the Modern Monetary Theory (or MMT ) that argues that there was nothing wrong in governments running budget deficits to create employment, output, and prosperity. Assured by the advocates of MMT that this does not affect inflation or exchange rates, the government allowed various measures of the money stock to rise excessively, Wijewadena says:

‘Credit to Government from the Central Bank and commercial banks – a method of inflationary financing – increased by Rs. 3.7 trillion or by 159% during end-2019 to end-November 2021. Correspondingly, money supply increased by Rs. 3 trillion or nearly 39%.’

The outcome of the increase in the money stock was an undue increase in the demand for imports, prompting the government to impose import controls even on raw materials. It affected the production of goods and services. Sri Lankans are now going hungry.

The government hopes to settle their past oil debts with Iran by paying them in tea, sending them $5m worth of tea every month in order to save much-needed currency.

It has introduced temporary measures, such as credit lines to import foods, medicines and fuel from India, as well as currency swaps with India, China and Bangladesh. However, these loans have to be paid back at high-interest rates, and simply add to the debt burden.

Sri Lanka’s history has shown that capitalism has not provided economic security. In response to the high prices and excessive money-printing, workers are going on strike demanding higher wages to compensate for the spiralling inflation, as in the health service whose strike the government has declared illegal (tinyurl.com/55tw2ayh). Several powerful trade unions in the country, from postal workers to railway workers, from teachers to doctors, have started demanding higher pay and are threatening to launch massive strikes unless their grievances are met.

ALJO

Material World: Myth of Peaceful Buddhism (2014)

The Material World Column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many have a soft spot for Buddhism as a religion and it frequently escapes criticism. After all, it is a religion where the belief in gods is not a necessary pre-requisite. The popular conception is that all Buddhists are peaceful, simply by virtue of the fact that they call themselves Buddhists. Nothing could be further from the truth. States where Buddhism is the dominant tradition have engaged in many wars and other conflicts over the past centuries. And Buddhist monks have a long tradition of supporting kings and warlords in their conflicts. Particularly in south-east Asia, Buddhism has been the religion allegedly followed by many feudal rulers, in the form of an hierarchical organised religion. Buddhism holds a certain amount of political influence in Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Buddhists are just like people of other faiths: subject to desire, anger, and ignorance. Buddhism differs only in that it offers the promise of freedom from desire, anger and ignorance to those who seriously practise. Many so-called Buddhists do not engage in serious practice. The thing about these ‘peaceful religions’ is often a product of the Western imagination, the idea of these far-off people living these incredibly peaceful and wise lives.

Buddhism certainly has much within its precepts about pacifism but as with the Christian crusaders or Islamist militants violence has been justified in the name of a higher good. Buddhist rulers and monks have been no exception. Any religion sooner or later enters into a pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings for support, patronage and order and kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only they confer. When Buddhism has become an established religion and a theocracy you have as brutal a feudal despotism as any other, for instance, the monastic version of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Lamaism. Until recently the Dalai Lama was in effect head of state, not simply a religious leader. This often led to political rather than theological disputes with other leading religious Lamas.

Buddhist nation states have historically sought to use Buddhist doctrine to justify war. The links between Zen Buddhism and samurai warrior culture were partly responsible for the collusion of Zen and Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s. For several years Japanese jingoism seized Zen, and its teachings were twisted and corrupted to excuse killing. Zen institutions not only supported Japanese military aggression but raised money to manufacture war planes and weapons.

Tamils are Hindus and they constitute a majority in Northern Sri Lanka. The Sinhalese are Buddhist and have been perfectly willing to exercise ruthless violence against Tamils. In the Sri Lankan civil war hard-line monks were at the vanguard of Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, which viewed the Hindu Tamils and Sri Lanka’s smaller Muslim population as outsiders. They joined the government with their own party, the Jathika Hela Urumaya or National Heritage Party. The monks used their new power to argue vociferously against any self-determination for the Tamils in the north, opposing even the more limited measure of autonomy. In religious terms they justified the suppression of the Tamils on the grounds that a fracture in the nation state is a tear in the sacred fabric of a land which represents the well-spring of their belief. Roads have been renamed after Buddhist monks. While many Hindu temples and Christian churches were destroyed in the war, new Buddhist stupas and statues are being built.

In Rakhine State, Myanmar there has been civil strife between Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims whom the Burmese government views not as citizens but as illegal immigrants and therefore affords little protection,  and this has led to a refugee crisis as the Rohingya flee from pogroms inspired and led by Buddhist monks. Dr. Muang Zarni, a Burmese human rights activist and research fellow at the London School of Economics has described the 969 movement as a neo-Nazi Buddhist organisation. 969 stands for three things: the 9 stands for the special attributes of Buddha, the founder of the religion; the 6 stands for attributes of his teachings of dharma; and finally, the last 9 stands for special characteristics or attributes of the clergy (LINK.).

Buddhism can easily be used to support reactionary politics. The conflict between Buddhists and Muslims is often over land and nationalism. Buddhism is neither better nor worse than any other organised religions in its role as an agent of social control.

ALJO

Buddha's tooth (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Chinese are a people without what we would call a religion; in its place they have the philosophy of Confucianism. This regulates the behaviour between older and younger brother and other members of the family and subjugates them all to the head of the household. The system of responsibilities goes all the way through society to the head of the State, who is compared to the father of a family.

The Chinese Communist Party who now manage capitalism have substituted a somewhat similar authoritarian ideology of their own, with Mao Tse-tung at the top of the social pyramid in the place formerly occupied by the Emperor.

This lack of religious belief, however, does not help them from pandering to even the most stupid of superstitious practices when it suits their interests. Witness the recent episode of Buddha's tooth.

For the first time in 2,500 years the right and the left tooth of the Lord Buddha have been brought together; at Kandy, the ancient capital of Ceylon, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims saw the right tooth, in its 3 cwt. gilded casket studded with green and red gems, loaded on a specially built chariot for a four month's tour of the island's holy places. The relic itself has been provided by courtesy of Communist China. Its usual resting place is in a newly reconstructed 150 ft. high Pagoda in Peking's western hills whence it was brought to Colombo aboard an Ilyushin jet. Mrs. Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister, and members of her Cabinet took a prominent part in greeting it.

Ceylon has its own tooth — the left one — enshrined at Kandy’s Dalada Maligawa temple. It is about half the size of the Chinese relic but equally venerated in the Buddhist world.

The Chinese Government can very well understand the excitement and keenness of the Ceylonese ruling-class at the possession of this relic, for it is a help in the very important task of doping their workers’ minds. The Ceylonese ruling-class, no doubt. consider this acquisition very fortunate indeed. Buddha’s tooth helps to whip up religious fervour, and this is channelled into support of the Buddhist church, which, in Ceylon, is a pillar of the State.

What an auspicious atmosphere for the Chinese to start their negotiations to barter rice for rubber and what an edge on their Russian rivals too! How the sophisticated rulers of China, who so make use of a religious relic (useless to them for hoodwinking their agnostic workers) must be laughing up their sleeves at the Ceylonese workers who fall for such hocus pocus!

Frank Offord

The Face of Capitalism (1977)

Book Review from the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lonrho — Portrait of a Multinational by S. Cronjé, M. Ling and G. Cronjé. (Pelican)

The book attempts to document the growth and activities of the Lonrho Company over the last decade or so. Lonrho has more than 500 subsidiary and associate companies and the range of its overall activities is huge. The ownership of mines, cattle farms, railways, newspapers, pipelines, sugar refineries and commercial properties are some. This makes the writing of a coherent account a difficult task and added to this the authors appear to have derived a great deal of their information from the mass media. Their Notes section at the end of the book quotes articles from several hundred periodicals and newspapers as sources, and their Introduction states that they found it largely impossible to obtain information direct from the highly secretive Lonrho board. For these reasons the book never attains more than that level which interests newspapers, particularly the financial pages.

The result is a complicated record of years of wheeling and dealing which Lonrho and its associates have engaged in, both with other companies and with political leaders — notably in Africa. The increase in profits which Lonrho had shown, from £14.44m in 1969 to £46.44m in 1974 for example, is explained in terms of astute deals, successful takeovers, clever share manoeuvres and so on. There are vague references to the output of various subsidiaries increasing, or of others expanding significantly and becoming more profitable, but the credit for this is placed firmly on the Lonrho board’s foresight, and on occasion, their luck. The chief executive director, “Tiny” Rowland, is given particular prominence and much of the company’s success is attributed to his ability to make personal contacts with men in high places, who in turn gave Lonrho preferential treatment. They quote Roland's own statement:

  When I’m abroad, I am entertained and do business with Rulers, Presidents and Prime Ministers, who entertain me and look after me. (p. 242)

Virtually no attention is focussed on the fact that while Rowland and his board members are busy being entertained, they, and their hosts are supported in their privileged position by thousands of property-less workers. One idea that this is the case is given on the cover design where a cigar-smoking model of Rowland is seen astride a black man and a white man who have both been harnessed. Rowland is holding the reins. When the book was published recently he was annoyed at the inference.

The issue which was provoked by the more hypocritical shareholders over the low wages paid to workers in Lonhro’s South African mines is dealt with briefly. The official Lonrho line was deliberately evasive; though the parent company owned almost 97 per cent. of the offending mining companies, fixing of wage levels at the mines was a matter for the local puppet company, Lonrho South Africa Ltd. The book notes that “South Africa was not the only place where Lonrho paid low wages” and gives the example of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) which in 1974 was the subject of a War on Want pamphlet stating that severe cases of malnutrition were common among its workers. Lonrho’s personnel manager “admitted that conditions were a matter for ‘concern, but said that the company was making hardly any profit in Sri Lanka' ” (p. 86).

The authors repeat the suggestion that Lonrho has been engaged in “sanctions busting” through subsidiaries in Rhodesia — a suggestion leading to the resignation of Angus Ogilvy, and claim that the Rhodesian and South African interests have proved embarrassing to Lonrho when they have been courting “black” African governments — they give several instances — for franchises, concessions and contracts, because of an alleged ideological difference. Again the Company line was ingenious if nothing else; should they sell up these interests the! new owners might prove to be simply a gang of ruthless capitalist exploiters — unlike Lonrho themselves! In this connection the authors casually refer to African states “with a commitment to some form of socialism” (p. 248) who are going to pose what the book concludes is the issue, “whether capitalism is going to have an acceptable face in Africa at all”. The suggestion is that the emerging black leaders who wine and dine men like Mr. Rowland and his “respectable” cohorts have something else in mind, although they offer no evidence for this.

With the virtual absence of Socialist understanding among African workers, and the determined action by the governments of rival nation states to exploit greater masses of the African population in order to accumulate capital for the ruling minorities, it is a naive suggestion to make.

Alan D'Arcy

A tale of two cities (1987)

From the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The flight of the poor from the countryside into the cities shows every sign of continuing to the end of this century. But like so many previous waves of urban migrants, very few will find the streets paved with gold; often all that awaits them is hand-to-mouth existence in an overcrowded shanty or slum." The writer is not talking of industrialising England of the 19th century but - in this case - Sri Lanka. The street children of Colombo cannot even aspire to such meagre shelter, where a recent survey showed that some 2,000 children and one-parent families live literally on the streets; their number grows daily. Some of these are so poor that they are forced to put their children into institutions as the only way to get them clothed and fed. Unemployment is high and heroin addiction a major problem among the young unemployed.

Nearer home migration has been in the opposite direction but results are very similar. The purpose of building Kirkby, seven miles from Liverpool and set in open spaces, was to attract people who'd lived in poor housing conditions in the city and in that the planners succeeded. However, today unemployment runs at 50-60 per cent for adults and a frightening 90 per cent of young people are on the dole. "Lack of [money] is one of the cruellest causes of social deprivation, which leads to marital stress, sometimes family break-up and increased isolation."

The facts and quotations above are taken from the September 1987 issue of The World's Children, magazine of the Save The Children Fund. Against this desolation and deprivation suffered by children throughout the world dedicated, often voluntary, Fund workers attempt alleviation, education and schemes of self-help. When also reading that the number of refugees world-wide is 13½ million, half of whom are children, it is easy to realise that even by the most effective use of income from their appeals to the consciences of governments and the "better off", together with the most devoted hard work, the dent which can be made in the misery of these deprived millions will be minimal. Of course, every life saved or reclaimed to a less miserable existence even under capitalism is worthwhile. There is no question that those who work in the Save The Children Fund and other relief organisations are contributing more to the wellbeing of society than manufacturers of armaments or the administrators of capitalism. However no-one should be misled into thinking that they can solve the problems of the system which gives rise to this poverty, deprivation and misery.

Eva Goodman

Sri Lanka divided (1986)

From the August 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Until quite recently the island of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) was known in Britain, if at all, only for its tea and, perhaps, for its natural beauty. That was all until about two years ago when Sri Lanka began to claim the attention of the media because of a series of brutal killings and bombings by Tamil separatists and an equally barbaric response by government security forces.

Sri Lanka has a total population of 16 million people. The majority are Sinhalese (predominantly Buddhist), but there is a significant minority of Hindu Tamils who make up 12.7 per cent of the population living mostly in the north and east of the island. The Tamils were brought to Ceylon (as it was called before independence from British colonial rule) from Tamil Nadu, in the southern part of India, as immigrant labour to work the tea plantations.

In 1956 the first Prime Minister of the newly independent state, Bandaranaike, responded to pressure from the pro-Sinhalese Buddhist clergy, who had supported his political campaign, and made Sinhala the official language at the expense of Tamil. This move, symbolic of the exclusion of the Tamils from mainstream Sinhalese society, sowed the seeds of contemporary Tamil separatism. A year later, in an attempt to defuse Tamil anger, Bandaranaike signed a pact with Tamil leaders granting a number of concessions. This aroused opposition from the majority Sinhalese community who, provoked by Jayewardene (now President), protested that Bandaranaike was being too soft on the Tamils.

Even at that point it was beginning to be clear that the "Tamil problem" was an issue that could be exploited by political leaders for their own opportunistic ends. Now, because of the increasing levels of violence being used by the Tamil separatists, Jayewardene is having to offer greater concessions than those offered by Bandaranaike. And now it is the opposition led by Bandaranaike's widow that is stirring up nationalist Sinhalese opinion against him for not being tough enough towards the Tamils.

Jayewardene, leader of the right-wing United Party, came to power in 1977; he altered the constitution, elevating himself from Prime Minister to President and remained in office by calling a referendum not an election. So until 1989 when a general election is due, Jayewardene will not have to put his career on the line.

Within the government itself there are some, notably Finance Minister de Mel, who favour a more conciliatory approach to the Tamils. But again political opportunism is the motive rather than any genuine belief in the Tamil cause. The Sri Lankan economy is in a state of collapse; a quarter of the total budget is being spent on the war (about $1 million a day); tourism, an important industry for the island, has been badly affected by the violence. None of this is likely to do much to enhance the Finance Minister's career prospects. On the other hand the National Security minister. Athulathmudali, advocates a much harder line against Tamil violence. But then he would, since he derives most of his political support from the expanding security forces who, like de Mel, also favour the "military solution" to the Tamil problem.

Meanwhile, as politicians of both main political parties adopt the pose that they think will win them the most support at the polls, people from both groups are being brutally murdered and maimed. Over the last two years the Tamils have increased the level of violence which is often directed at Sinhalese workers and peasants. In retaliation there have been allegations of brutal reprisals against the Tamil community by the security forces. Most of the violence has taken place in the north and east of the island. The Jaffna peninsula in the north, where the Tamils constitute a majority of the population, is effectively controlled by Tamil guerillas and the army is engaged in an attempt to regain control of the area. In the eastern province there is an almost equal ethnic mix of Sinhalese and Tamil. Because it is the Tamils' aim to have a separate state in the northern and eastern provinces, they are trying to drive the Sinhalese out of the area through violence and threats. Meanwhile, they claim that the government has been forcibly resettling Sinhalese peasants in Tamil areas. Neither side wants to forfeit this area of Trincomalee since it contains a harbour, a vital strategic asset. The government could not, therefore, consider giving it up in any future autonomous Tamil province and the Tamils say that their state could not be viable without it.

If the leaders of the main political parties are trying to make political capital out of the ethnic divide, then so too are the Tamil separatist leaders. Part of the aim of the violence has been to persuade the international capitalist class that the war in Sri Lanka is getting worse so that they will cut back aid and investment. Jayewardene, in the meantime, is trying to persuade the same financial interests that there are good prospects for peace as a result of negotiations with Tamil leaders in Delhi and the offer of some devolution of power. However, he treads a thin line. If he appears to be conceding too much then he will be accused of selling out the Sinhalese community. If he doesn't concede enough, the violence will continue with the risk of further economic disruption.

That the Tamils have been treated as second class citizens and denied equal political and economic rights seems undeniable. But what is equally true is that unscrupulous politicians from all sides have used the potential for conflict that was always latent among the island's population for their own political ends. Competition between the two ethnic groups has been encouraged; cultural and linguistic difference has been exaggerated; and religion too has been used to fan the embers of hatred between the two communities. To advance the careers of a handful of members of the ruling class, workers and peasants have been set against each other, fighting over an island that does not belong to either the Tamil people or the Sinhalese, spilling each other's blood and killing each other's children in a conflict in which they have no interest.

Janie Percy-Smith

Greasy Pole: Kumar's Story (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are about 28 million cars imposing a thrombotic, pollutant tyranny on this country and until recently one of them was driven by Kumar. Not now though; not after he had come up before the magistrates for driving when he had drunk too much. In the dock, shy and nervous, he looked too gentle to have done anything at all likely to put other people at risk. But that is what the law, supported by some impressive evidence, insisted he had done. So they fined him and banned him from driving for a year and if he disobeys that he is very likely to end up in prison.

The court clerk, who is not shy or nervous, demanded that Kumar identify himself through an interpreter standing beside him. Kumar is a Tamil speaker from Sri Lanka,. which has a reputation as one of the most beautiful places in the world as well as one of the most terrifying. Kumar's family had suffered from the official policy of discrimination against Tamils and in the armed clashes between the government forces and the Tamil Tiger guerrillas. In fear that it would not be long before some, or even all, of them would be killed, they scraped up the money to get Kumar, his two brothers and a sister to England; their mother is dead and their father, who is in his eighties, was too frail to travel so they left him in the care of another, brave, sister.

That was four years ago and there has been no contact with them since then. Kumar has no idea where his father and sister are, or whether they are alive or dead. He knows they must keep on the move, never staying in one place for long, for fear of what the government forces will do to persuade them to reveal the whereabouts of the rest of the family. Kumar weeps when he talks about this and he is scared because the Home Office have refused his first application for refugee status; he knows what will be waiting for him if he is sent back to Sri Lanka.

That may well be why he drinks so much, except that there is a Road Traffic Act which lays it down that drinking to excess must not be mixed with driving. This particular law came into being in late 1967, giving the police powers to stop any driver suspected of having drunk too much to take the breathalyser test—blow into a tube attached to a bag. If the crystals in the tube changed colour the person was arrested and then had to give a sample of either blood or urine which was sent for analysis. A reading of at least 80 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of the sample ensured that, whatever else the court might do, there had to be a driving disqualification of at least 12 months. In May 1983 this process was speeded up by the introduction of the Lion Intoximeter, which gives an instant analysis of a breath sample.

From the beginning—a White Paper published in December 1965—we were assured that the breathalyser law was inspired solely by a desire to save human lives. There was compelling evidence from the BMA (The Drinking Driver, 1965) that an alcohol content of 100 microgrammes would make a driver six times more likely to have an accident; a content of 150 to make them 25 times more likely. But statistics are only part of the story; in a society of commodity production it is profit, not human safety, which is the overriding factor. In Great Britain in 1996 the estimated cost of all road accidents, in which there were just over 392,000 casualties, was £267 million. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents expected a new law to prevent 18,000 casualties and 360 deaths on the roads—which was estimated to save something like £10 million a year in the cost of hospital treatment, welfare and repairs. There have been many examples of capitalism's priorities, long before the recent scandal of Railtrack and the broken rails and the "safety" mechanisms which are so inadequate that they allow a train full of passengers to pass a signal at danger.

Whatever the doctors, or anyone else, said, the breathalyser stirred volcanic passions as an unreasonable attack on the car, which was rapidly being elevated into one of capitalism's great icons of delusion. The Minister of Transport responsible for the Act was Barbara Castle, a tough left-winger who robustly rode out the flood of abuse and ridicule which was aimed at her from almost every saloon bar and nineteenth hole in the country. Cherished cars were disfigured by alcoholist, sexist stickers denouncing the breathalyser: "Down With Barbara's Bags" was among the less inflammatory. Some time later, when her battle had been won, Castle was able to refer to the "almost hysterical and irrational opposition" to the measure. In any case she eventually went some way to placate the people who had so raucously denounced her when, as Minister of Labour and Productivity she did her feisty best, using her reputation as a left-winger, to persuade the unions to accept a reduction in their bargaining power.

There were some magistrates among those with reservations about a law which laid down a mandatory sentence of disqualification. Courts are resistant to prescribed penalties, which they regard as undermining the "common sense" which pride themselves on—but which is often not so apparent to defendants. Some magistrates exposed their opposition rather more explicitly, at times virtually apologising to the person in the dock for having to strip them of their cherished power to drive their car whenever they liked no matter what their ability to drive. One chairman went so far as to tell a defendant, as he informed him that he was about to be banned, that he sympathised with him because he often saw people getting legless in the bar at his golf club then driving home in their Bentley or Jaguar. He probably thought he was only being humane, comforting . . .

The contribution made by the car to the delusions which sustain capitalism, and the political implications of this, were made explicit when in the 1997 general election Tony Blair warned New Labour of their need to attract the votes of Mondeo Man. Cars can be an extension of the privacy which in some respects capitalism encourages—in our homes, our money, our neurotic responses to the system's pressures. Drivers assert this privacy when, on their way to work, they swish past a huddle of fellow workers waiting in the rain for a bus. They assert it when their response to having their car stolen is almost as if they had been raped. The car symbolises an illusionary affluence; the first thing workers dream of buying if they achieve the astronomically unlikely win of the Lottery is a car a lot more expensive than the Mondeo parked outside. Travelling in a car, we are told by the manufacturers and the motoring organisations, is sexy partly because it gives us freedom, when in reality it often means being imprisoned in the stress of a traffic jam on the way to work—to a day of wage slavery. Driving a car deceives workers that they are in control; they can move this lethally powerful machine, making it go faster or slower, steering it round corners, bringing it to a stop. Yet the basic reality of our lives—that we need to sell our labour power to an employer in order to live—means that we are not in control. When the recent announcement was made of the impending closure of the Corus steel mills and the thousands of sackings, one of the workers' expressed anxieties was that this meant they could no longer afford to have a car to control.

None of this concerned Kumar as the interpreter explained that he was now banned from driving and would have to pay a fine and some of the prosecution costs and asked him how he could do this out of his wage from the warehouse. He looked surprised and relieved—after all he had been through a lot in his short life and he had given up expecting the future to promise that things would get better. Nobody told him about the stoicism capitalism demands of us as the price of survival and the punishment that awaits anyone who can only try to blank out reality.

Ivan