e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 13-19 October 2024

‘Ha! A new Prez with 3 ministers into just 3 weeks…

& critics wanting to undo/reset what has been

done over three-quarters of a century! Grow up!’

The above is a sample retort from fans of the present ‘Government of 3’. Indeed, what the NPP can accomplish in the next few weeks prior to parliamentary elections is fraught. Nominally ‘independent’ governments may be ‘in’ power but turn out not to have any power (ie, to transform). To add to the mix, the earth is being frothed into a foaming fog (which may or may not crumple into a nostalgic nothingness). The US government has begun a media disinformation campaign led by the New York Times, and Bloomberg, Reuters & BBC, which claims free Korea (DPRK) will soon send soldiers to fight for Russia. NATO seeking recruits, scours the sewers.

     The extravagant farce to choose a genus of genocidal warmonger monopolizes the visual and sonar electronics of the global anglo-saxon minority who make the most infernal racket on the planet. Meanwhile, their fair-&-lovely ‘marketing’ agents in Colombo perform their assigned roles as retainers & sustainers of the colonial status quo. The former unelected President is offering quiet advice on behalf of the IMF and the media amply amplifies it. The news is headlined as usual with the anodynes offered by the US & other NATO embassies, their IMF & World Bank, the UN, and their economists, etc. No one dares mention the need for modern industry – and all have absolutely no question on the metrics how, after 500 years of European invasion, we owe them, or what we have accomplished since 1948 despite the prevention of industry.

    Yet, it is not the critics but those who have gone somewhat silent that intrigue ee. The usual cacophony of the import-export plantation mafia – those merchants’ shills parading as columnists transvested as economists, etc – has not been fully muted, they have merely gone sotto-sotto. The US-led NATO forces dominant in Sri Lanka perhaps feel they have a lock-hold on the throat of the economy, the country, and of any leadership, civilian or military, the country may evolve to challenge their hegemony.

     Does the awe – aww!!! – recall the extra-silent hush of the receding of the waves before the 2004 tsunami? which revealed not just waterless jumping silvery fish but the detritus of our fair&lovely multinationals whose discarded toothbrushes & lost slippers litter the continental shelf, even as they daub themselves in greenwash.

     A selective silencing it is. The US & England flew bombers over the Indian Ocean on Thursday to blast another country – this time, Yemen (against whom they may or may not have ‘legally’ declared war). They are proudly performing ‘decapitations’ (mere head-chopping being sized savage). These US nuclear-capable B2 bombers originate from aptly named Whiteman Base in Missouri, and may have been flung over Yemen via recently recaptured Diego Garcia or Australia. 

     India has also apparently acceded to the US & England taking over Diego Garcia for another 99 years at least. India’s oceanic moves are also linked to Sri Lanka’s ‘claim’ over the Afanasy Nikin Seamount, which is closer to our shoreline (& ‘rich’ in minerals supposedly ‘critical for clean energy’ – ‘tempting’ to regional & Western industrial capitalists). All this takes place midst repeated overtures & threats to an apparently uneducated civilian & military leadership, not all schooled in Colombo & English.

*

‘The third cynical question was how Thambuttegama Ranbanda’s Kolla

would manage international affairs without competency in English….

Finally, it’s no secret how Oxford-Cambridge-Sorbonne-Harvard-educated

ladies & gentlemen took the country towards bankruptcy… Really the question

is not as to how the Government would deal with IMF; it is why Sri Lanka

has had to pay homage to IMF on 17 occasions!’

– Chandra Maliyadde, see ee Focus

True, thaaat! And why has the IMF, having failed on 16 earlier occasions, chosen to re-engage with such recalcitrant unrepentant recidivists as Sri Lankans, who they insult as lazy & corrupt. The IMF’s sponsor, the USA, is demanding blood sacrifice to satisfy their lust until we choose what they deem to be the right leadership for us, before they loosen their purse strings. However, Maliyadde a former Secretary of Ministry of Plan Implementation, whose work ee has reproduced before, offers a different view:

‘It is not due to shortage of money or regulations or institutions.

We are excessively equipped with laws/acts/ordinances/regulations

& institutions. The missing link is ‘coordination’.’

*

Maliyadde’s most recent foray (‘Low-hanging Fruit for the President & His 3-Member Cabinet) calls for simple coordination among a constellation of agencies more pervasive than the stars. He reminds of Lenin’s observation that the state’s functions finally amount to what a post office accomplishes:

*

‘Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories,

railways, the postal service, telephones, etc, and on this basis

the great majority of the functions of the old ‘state power’ have

become so simplified & can be reduced to such exceedingly simple

operations of registration, filing, & checking that they can be easily

performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed

for ordinary ‘worker’s wages’, & that these functions can (& must) be

stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of ‘official grandeur’.’

– Lenin, State & Revolution, 1917

*

Indeed, the easy hijacking of the functions of post offices around the world by the multinational Amazon clearly offers proof of Lenin’s seeming wisecrack. Typical of a capitalist operation, Amazon, cannot live up to its hype:

*

‘We are going to be Earth’s best employer

& Earth’s safest place to work’

‘We don’t aspire to be around the average – we want

to be the best in the industries in which we operate.’

– Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

*

As a recent report observes of this logistics globule:

‘Any information Amazon provides does not come

out of any civic duty; Amazon provides only what

it is pushed to divulge by community pressure,

the law of the land, and fear of unions

‘exploiting’ worker injuries on the job.’

– Sam Gindin (see ee Workers, Amazon Fails to Deliver)

*

And it is ‘community pressure’ that has suddenly brought about a flustering & blustering among the air-conditioned suit&tie set. Maliyadde very lightly bruises the egos of much of what is promoted as modern economic commentary. He notes the preponderance of professional associations all crowding Colombo 7. Indeed, it will now be precious to listen to the OPA opine purple against corruption. And he wonders, with all of us, how such a ‘jewel’ as Sri Lanka has come to be calculated bankrupt?

    ee has also pointed to the well-coiffed offices of various agricultural departments, with not a goviya in sight, as in historic Gannoruva. Yet we do believe Maliyadde pulls his punches. There is no coordination – because the import-export mafia does not wish coordination. The IMF & World Bank vehemently opposes planning, and especially modern industrial planning.

*

‘About 65% of youth between the ages 20-24 are not

participating in any kind of education which means that

they are entering the labour force with low skills.’

– Institute for Policy Studies (see ee Economists)

*

     Rural unemployment remains key to underdeveloping Sri Lanka’s economy. And its revival. The merchants & moneylenders simply refuse to or are unable to employ Sri Lankans with dignity, stated SBD de Silva. This ee concludes Garvin Karunaratne’s look at the attempt to employ rural youth in the aftermath of the 1971 ‘insurgency’ (see ee Focus). Karunaratne recalls the limitations of the Ministry of Plan Implementation’s vision, and points to its failure to pursue a proper import-substitution policy. While noting the role of various ‘development’ models, Karunaratne does not explore how ‘development’ was meant to be an update – dreamed up by Unilever’s advertising mavens– on ‘colonialism’.

    This ee therefore also reproduces what Unilever et al have been really waging war against. We examine the USSR’s leading 20^th-century role in offering a very different model of ‘development’. Only large-scale machine production both in town & country can ensure the victory of the socialist forms of economy over the capitalist forms, with continuous growth of labor productivity, and improvement of the lives of the working people.

    This ee Focus also examines China’s close study of the USSR’s experiences of industrialization, and their early measures to avoid the ‘detours’ the USSR had to endure… to build ‘socialism with greater, faster, better and more economical results’ following  ‘a line suited to the conditions of [their] country’.

*

SBD de Silva zero-ed in on the sporadic employment of labor particularly in rice cultivation. Many rural workers are required at different times: During harvests etc, when there is a shortage of workers, the price of labor rises. At other times, fewer workers are required. Yet the price of labor remains high despite a surplus. This is again attributed to the uneven application of labor throughout the year. And the high cost of labour can only be resolved by the development of modern rural industry, whose production and the type of goods produced have to be tailored to sync with the rice-growing cycles: from field preparation to sowing to application of fertilizer to harvest and storage & distribution. The good produced must also cater to the rural home market: The other crucial requirement is the planning and maintenance of the irrigation system, which formed the basis of solidarity and justice in the ancient village of Sri Lanka. 

*

‘It is often said, national liberation is based on the right

of every people to freely control its own destiny & that

the objective of this liberation is national independence.

Although we do not disagree with this vague & subjective way

of expressing a complex reality, we prefer to be objective,

since for us the basis of national liberation, whatever the formulas

adopted on the level of international law, is the inalienable right

of every people to have its own history, & the objective of

national liberation is to regain this right usurped by imperialism,

that is to say, to free the process of development of the national

productive forces. For this reason, any national liberation movement

which does not take into consideration this basis & this objective may

certainly struggle against imperialism, but will surely not be

struggling for national liberation.’ – Amilcar Cabral (1966)

*

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Contents:

Obituary for the Oxford-Cambridge-Sorbonne-Harvard-Trained?