Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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The uprising of 1953, or “Great Hartal” as it is known in left folklore, was hailed by Colvin R. de Silva, leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), as the neocolony’s first revolt against capitalist rule, and the first manifestation of the crucial but hitherto absent alliance between workers and peasants. In an agrarian society fractured by racism and casteism, religious and regional identity, where the working class was weak, the Ceylonese left exulted in the coming together of the exploited and the oppressed against a common enemy.
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The trigger for the uprising was a combination of austerity measures: the almost threefold increase in the price of rice from twenty-five cents to seventy cents a measure (following abolition of the rice subsidy); the increase in rail fares and postal rates; and the withdrawal of the free midday meal (a bun in many cases) for schoolchildren. All three were announced in the Budget Speech of 1953.
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The roots of Ceylon’s fiscal ills lay in the underdevelopment of its economy by colonialism. At the time of independence in 1948, three agricultural commodities — tea, rubber, and coconut — accounted for almost all foreign earnings. Britain, the former occupier, was the main market for exports.
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central bank deemed it “regrettable from the economic point of view that such a large share of the budget deficit is the result of increasing food subsidies.” The subsidies accounted for Rs. 133 million of the Rs. 153.6 million shortfall. Over 20 percent of government revenue was utilized to subsidize the world market price for rice (purchased mostly from the United States and partly from Burma) and distributed through the ration system to domestic consumers.
✏️ Here’s what I want to know. Assuming the numbers are correct, and the country is living beyond its means because of its food subsidies, what’s the alternative approach? I understand that the bank and capitalists are going to make the argument that this isn’t sustainable, and you have to go down the path of dependent capitalism. What I want to know is, what else could have been done? What are better and more socialist tactics in this situation? #followup 🔗 View Highlight
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The World Bank’s report on its first Mission to Ceylon in late 1951 took up this refrain: “Food subsidies impose an unending drain on the country’s financial resources.” Its recommendations to reverse the budget deficit included income tax increases, higher electricity rates and railway charges, and cuts to food subsidies.
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The [World Bank] Mission’s recommendations were intended to promote private capitalism within the broad economic and social structure which then existed — the same type of dependent capitalism previously cultivated by British colonialism.” The UNP government, the Central Bank of Ceylon, and indeed the Ceylonese merchant-capitalist class were of the same point of view.
✏️ With arguments in place that socialist habits such as food subsidies weren’t working, capitalists came together to control a country. 🔗 View Highlight
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The World Bank proposed the gradual elimination of food subsidies over the next few years, with “the necessary adjustments being made in wage rates, including government salaries, and in the tax burden of the export industries.” It suggested that the removal of the subsidy system “if carefully planned and spread over a period of two or three years, can be carried out without any major disturbances.”
✏️ World Bank’s proposal to ease a country into dependent capitalism 🔗 View Highlight
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Had the government heeded this counsel, conditions may not have been as favorable for the success of the hartal. Instead, the escalation in the price of rice was imposed overnight, while there were no wage increases in the public sector to expand purchasing power, and government financing was not expanded through higher corporate taxes. The soaring cost of rice, a staple food item, was particularly infuriating to people, as the UNP election campaign had promised that its price would be unchanged so long as it was in government.
✏️ What I’m getting from this is that, had they spoon-fed dependent capitalism upon the country, things would’ve worked out fine (for capitalism). People would’ve accepted how things shifted, because it happened gradually, until they were basically stuck. But, because the government took a drastic approach that was all pain and no support, it riled up the people. 🔗 View Highlight
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Unity among the divided left was achieved based on a two-point agreement proposed by the LSSP:
(a) to support the masses in just struggle against the capitalist UNP Government and (b) to assist the masses to achieve their objective of replacing the capitalist UNP Government with an Anti-Capitalist Government.
✏️ Highlighting this because it’s such a simple but provocative thing. Unity among a divided left to aid and support the masses in fighting capitalism. Also, there were so many unions. Do we have unions? I have no idea what that would even look like, plus I think I need a basic understanding of unions in general now. followup These are the kinds of things we don’t learn about in world history. 🔗 View Highlight
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It was the LSSP’s creativity that prepared the day of action as a hartal, rather than the more traditional working-class strike. This word, which originates in the Western Indian language of Gujarati and refers to a shutdown of commerce and community alike for political ends, was then not known in Ceylon. It was imported by the LSSP into the national languages of Sinhalese and Tamil, where it is now embedded, from its direct experience of the anti-colonial struggle in India.
✏️ Loving the use of language and words to influence political change and mass movements. 🔗 View Highlight
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It provided a framework for the worker-peasant alliance in action. It provided a channel of struggle for the rural masses whose entry into the arena could give to the movement as a whole a sweep and power which a strike could never have by itself even if it was quite general to the working class. It could also bring in the city poor who were so badly hit by the rice price raise and who normally were not drawn into political action. According to de Silva, the government leaders “had prepared to fight a strike, but were met with a hartal. They did not understand it and they did not know how to tackle it.”
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Sri Lanka’s integration into the world market deepened after 1977, and its import-substituting industries and state interventions in domestic production were dismantled by neoliberalism. It has become more vulnerable to external shocks and crises, rising commodity prices, and fluctuating consumer demand, and more hooked on debt to finance its spending plans.
✏️ Dependent capitalism and neoliberalism, doing its dirty work. 🔗 View Highlight