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| Proletarian issue 78 (June 2017) |
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| May Day in Sri Lanka |
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| CPGB-ML comrade addresses JVP rallies on International Workers Day. |
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At the invitation of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front of Sri Lanka, JVP), the CPGB-ML’s Comrade Sammi Ibrahem participated in May Day celebrations in Sri Lanka, along with other international delegates from Cuba and Greece. He gave a message of solidarity to demonstrations in both the capital, Colombo, and the northern city of Jaffna.
The CPGB-ML has good fraternal relations with the JVP. It is our firm belief that all workers who live in Britain are part of the British working class, regardless of how long they have been in the country or how long they intend to remain. Generally speaking, any communist worker living in Britain should aim to be active in the revolutionary movement here. In that spirit, members of the JVP living in Britain are supporters of the CPGB-ML and work together with us in pursuit of our programme. They set an example to many others.
We reproduce below Comrade Sammi’s greeting to the May Day rally in Colombo.
Speech by Sammi Ibrahem
I bring greetings from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist): Happy First of May!
Our party is extremely proud to have good relations with the JVP, the People’s Liberation Front, and we can see from the banners today that the struggle against imperialism and for socialism is being waged by the comrades of the People’s Liberation Front. Comrades, workers in Britain have a lot to learn from your example. Red salute to the JVP!
Comrades, the billionaires who control the world keep the masses in abject poverty. In the oppressed and economically backward countries the conditions for the working classes are especially hard. Value is created by human labour, but that which is produced through the blood and sweat of Sri Lankan workers is stolen by Sri Lankan capitalists and their friends, the imperialists, who channel billions back into their own pockets.
Workers can only improve their lot through class struggle. There is nothing so hypocritical as the bourgeois class, which asserts the equality of rich and poor; of the well-fed and the hungry. Capitalism drives the workers to sell their labour-power to the capitalist.; workers have no other choice but wage slavery under capitalist conditions. The workers in Sri Lanka struggle bravely for a dignified life and set a great example to the working class of Britain, but struggle must be for socialism, for a revolutionary change. Leninism teaches that we cannot do this without leadership by genuine socialists. The Sri Lankan workers are fortunate to have the JVP leading them in their struggle.
Any proletarian party that hopes to take state power and build socialism must understand how to adapt; how to change their method of struggle, whilst continuing to advance on the road to socialism. Sometimes it is necessary to fight with your fists, and the Sri Lankan workers have heroic chapters written into their history when they were led in fearless armed struggle.
As Marxists, we understand that state power means more than capturing parliamentary power. But when legal methods of struggle are open to revolutionaries, they must exploit them as best they can. The six members of the JVP inside the Sri Lankan parliament have won this opportunity to demonstrate to the masses the corruption of the ruling parties, and can make use of the platform of parliament to inspire the people to make socialism their goal.
Rather than claim that the JVP has ‘sold out’ because it stands in elections, we sincerely hope that the JVP can build on the success of the 2015 parliamentary elections whilst building up the struggle of the masses in the cause of socialism.
In Britain, our struggle for socialism has been greatly retarded by the influence of Trotskyites and revisionists, who work in the service of our ruling class. They are always quick to cry that revolutionaries have ‘sold out’. In Sri Lanka, you are also cursed by the presence of Trotskyites, who speak in revolutionary language to hide from the workers their counter-revolutionary aims.
Trotskyites are everywhere the same; counter-revolution is in their blood. We must combat all attempts by Trotskyites to split the ranks of the revolutionary workers in Sri Lanka, just as we must fight them at home in Britain. We must fight all attempts by enemies to split and damage the JVP, whose historic mission it is to help bring about the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Today, one hundred years after the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the example of the Bolsheviks is as valid as ever. The best weapon we have is the science of Marxism Leninism – the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. This is the best defence against Trotskyites and splitters and it is the blueprint for making socialist revolution.
Long live the First of May!
Long live Marxism Leninism!
Long live proletarian internationalism!
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