e-Con e-News

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

e-Con e-News 08-14 September 2024

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In 1721 England’s Parliament passed the Calico Act that banned

the import from Asia of calicoes for clothing or domestic purposes.

These calicoes threatened English manufacturers. In 1774 this Calico

Act was repealed. England’s invention of machines had now enabled

English manufacturers to compete with Eastern fabrics. However,

in 1774 the English also banned the export of cotton machinery.

This 335^th weekly ee blows our own conch for our 6^th anniversary on 21 September 2024. This solar congruence coincides with yet another expensive English farce bestowed upon us – expensive elections. However, this ee focuses on what the capitalist elections & joined-at-the-hip media refuse to divulge about our merchant & money-lender-strangled economy: the lack of modern machine production.

     This ee examines: how ‘nowhere is the international power imbalance more prominent than in the area of industrial policy’. And nowhere is the silencing of any conversation about industrialization more blatant than within our cultural cosmos, and among our sell-out intellectuals – mimic women & men, yes, but mimics of the worst kind, who do not know that the word ‘English‘ really means: ‘Industrial Revolution’. & ‘Industrial Counter-Revolution’!

     As this ee Focus records, England imposed ‘a strong set of policies intended to prevent the development of manufacturing in the colonies’. They encouraged ‘primary production in the colonies’, and a comprador import-export plantation class that now runs the country. They also outlawed certain manufacturing activities, sabotaging the construction of new steel mills. They also banned exports from the colonies that competed with English products. Worse, this production culture has been banished from our historical memory… And our latest colonial wannabe – the USA – has since 1948 at least, continued such Anglo-Saxon vandalism.

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It is not just a question of how we once (in times ancient) produced the finest steel. The more recent story of dismantling of the Ceylon Steel Corporation (CSC), one of 3 famous industrial projects along with Ceylon Tyre Corporation and Ceylon Sugar Corporation, adds to the real white mischief. The CSC, established in Sri Lanka with the support of the USSR, was one of the first victims of the so-called ‘Open Economy’. The CSC was sold to and dismantled by a foreign competitor. The setup of a front that claimed to continue its production has added to the farce. Steel is the rice of industry, and we remain hungry.

     As for the complicity by the media in this crime, we should also note the regular setting up and advertising of fake establishments claiming to inaugurate ‘industry’. Note this week’s headline ‘Western Automobile Launches State-of-the-Art Vehicle Assembly Plant in Kuliyapitiya’. This story replete with color photos of a yet-to-operate factory, taken we know not where (appear alongside repeated and embarrassing promises to allow the import of vehicles. No doubt, to please the Japanese, Indian and German envoys, who also moonlight as secondhand car salesman on commission).

     Would we be cynical if we wondered if this Kuliyapitiya kalla, may also surely go the way of other electoral fabulations like that mythical Volkswagen factory of yore, free Google, etc? And what about that incoming Zoom call with the US ‘espionage cutout’ Elon Musk, etc? Should we vote for that celebrity settler poseur instead? Anyway, such fake ‘new industry’ stories are standard media fare in Sri Lanka.

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• An Indian ‘financier’ in Dubai this week also claimed to set up a ‘farm to fashion’ garment industry in Benin (see ee Random Notes). Benin just happens to sell most of its cotton to Bangladesh’s ‘garment industry’. This week also saw Bangladesh being warned that ‘no letter of credit (LC) transactions will be processed if Bangladesh faces sanctions from the US, the UN, the EU and England.’ This, ‘according to a clause attached by an international clothing retailer while placing order with a local garment supplier.’ Such are the strictures under which ‘industry’ operates.

     We also note the moves by English multinational Unilever, who is demanding the right to mix tea with other chemicals & teas and call it ‘Ceylon Tea’. Unilever is setting up with the Pepsi Co, ‘the Pepsi Lipton Code for Ceylon Tea’. This ‘new international standard’, which aims to squeeze smallholders, ‘will supersede all other standards pertaining to sustainability’. Unilever has for over a ‘celebrated’ 150 years refused to mechanize production and upskill workers.

     Meanwhile, a ‘EU Deforestation Regulation’ also come into effect from December 31, 2024. ‘EU buyers will have to ensure that their products are free of deforestation and forest degradation as a result of which growers in countries like Sri Lanka will have to provide estate geo mapping and meet certain criteria. Sri Lankan growers would require increased spending in the range of US$8-10,000 to comply with this new regulation’ (see last ee). Such are the so-called ‘non-price’ economic tools wielded as ‘standards’ by multinationals, which no politician can afford to talk about: for MNCs like Unilever control the advertising agencies, and advertisers control the media, and politicians are made by the media. Amen!

     Benin also happens to be home to some of the most famous intricate iron sculpture in the world (they apparently also taught the English about toilets & urban sewage systems, which the English then immediately went on to destroy in Benin, while setting it up in London). A close reading of the news story, however, makes absolutely no mention whether Benin would be making any of the ‘garment’ machinery involved. And just like Sri Lanka, not allowed to make a needle or pin, let alone a sewing machine, after destroying local textile production.

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Yes. At the very heart of imperialism in Sri Lanka is the derailing of industrialization. So how is it that our well-bribed intellectuals (historians, economists, political & social scientists), who shovel out vast tomes on all our various deficiencies and shortcomings, have avoided this plain truth?

     Well, this is why they are bribed. And most times they think their accolades, doctorates and dollars are due to their individual brilliance. For example, we reproduce the ‘plural forum’ Yukthi’s ‘challenges’ to ‘Presidential Candidates with 10 Critical Questions on Economic Policies’. But, not one question do they ask these candidates about their plans for industrialization!

     However, not all scholars have been bought up by the house-trained neutered opposition. The Asia Progress Forum’s Natasha Gunawardena & Kavishika Illeperuma examines this silencing in The Political Economy of Sri Lanka’s Debt Crisis:

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‘Industrialization, once seen as the bedrock of liberal democracy, a

robust welfare state, & national sovereignty, has all but disappeared

from the national discourse in Sri Lanka, regardless of class or political

affiliation. In its place is a shallow, socially engineered focus on identity

politics, welfarism, & anti-corruption – a narrative that raises

many questions but offers few solutions.’

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Gunawardena & Illeperuma also point to what lies uneasy beneath the surface and within the teashop:

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‘While political regimes may come & go, the contradictions

that brought them to power & the controlling influence

of international finance capital are here to stay. At the current

juncture, Sri Lanka remains an experiment, much like a rat

or a guinea pig in the Washington laboratory. Subjected to

decades of subversion & conditioning vis-à-vis hybrid warfare

tactics, its intelligentsia is unimaginative & complicit in the

unfolding economic violence & destruction.’

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They zero in on our strange estranged species of anti-social scientists:

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‘Sri Lanka’s economists in particular, exhibit a strange

monolithic thought process that does not reflect that of a

pragmatic economist that ‘thinks with both hands’.

Their view on economy is through a corporate lens, not

a developmental one. Their reading of society is through

the lens of identity politics. The deficit in political leadership

makes some feel safe and secure

with the old guard, and others wanting a ‘system change’.’

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They also note the resort to populist analyses (by anarchists, nihilists & NGOcrats) that yield no profound way forward:

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‘The populace at large appears numb, lacking political & cultural literacy,

and vulnerable to populist tropes & narratives that externalize economic,

political & social problems. Their vulnerability is leveraged to spew hatred,

anger & despondency – a combination that can be effectively manipulated

to create a recurring state of instability both in the country & in the region,

making any prospects of recovery & growth a mere dream.’

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The real issues that challenge Sri Lanka are given no space in bourgeois elections, which offer less & less choice, more & more farce, and incessant destabilization – therefore always susceptible to crocodile cries of fraud.

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A once beautiful Ocean is still a long shameful colonial European lake, and remains Indian in name alone. Perhaps this is why the current Indian ruling regime believe they should remain junior partner in imperialism’s war on China, and at least make a grab for Sri Lanka’s offshore wealth (see ee Focus, The Political Economy of Indian Sub-Imperialism).

     Sri Lanka shall surely rise from this economic mire, refusing the role of a turquoise teardrop lost in a swirling white froth…

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Contents:

The Noisy Scholarly Silence on Deindustrialization at the Heart of Imperialism in Sri Lanka