is Trotsky's still a force to reckon with in any country?

Question

if so in which country they are? and what is their party's name? do they believe in parliamentary party of democracy or barrel of gun?

Answer 1

Currently there are no countries that I can think of where Trotskyism is a force to be reckoned with. However, there was such a party in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) until comparatively recently: the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

"Ceylon which since 1972 has officially been called Sri Lanka, is one of the two countries in the world (Bolivia being the other) in which Trotskyism was for a certain period of time a significant factor in national politics. For more than forty years it had members in the national parliament, during most of this period it was the single most important political element in the labor movement, and on two occasions the Trotskyists had members in the national government.

Sri Lanka is not a country which Marxist theory would indicate as likely to be a major center of strength of a movement such as Trotskyism, advocating a proletarian revolution. An island of 25,332 square miles located to the south of the Indian subcontinent, it had a population in 1980 of approximately fifteen million people, only a relatively small minority of whom could be classified as proletarians. The economy of the country remained overwhelmingly agricultural, the majority of the gainfully employed people still being landholding or sharecropping peasants.

Until 1948 Ceylon was a British colony. However, for almost two decades before the date of independence the British had conducted an “experiment” in the island. In the so-called Donoughmore Constitution, enacted in 1931, Ceylon had been granted wide internal self-government with the British continuing to control only defense and foreign affairs, and reserving certain “extraordinary“ powers for emergency use. The British moved the island towards independence at approximately the same time they took that step with regard to India.

The British had been only the last of many alien conquerors of Ceylon. The “indigenous” people of the island, the Sinhalese, believe themselves to be descended from people from north India who arrived twenty-five hundred years ago. Today, they make up about 70 percent of the population. The second largest element, constituting something over 20 percent of the people, are the Tamils, descended from invaders and immigrants from Dravidian southern India. They are about equally divided between “Ceylon Tamils,” whose ancestors arrived many centuries ago, and “Indian Tamils,” who were brought into Ceylon during the last century to work on plantations and who in 1948 were deprived of Ceylonese citizenship.

The rest of the inhabitants are descended in whole or in part from subsequent conquerors of the island. The Portuguese occupied the coastal areas in 1505, were driven out by the Dutch in 1696, and the British finally took control in 1796. Numerous Sinhalese today have Portuguese names and they and others are Roman Catholics, also reflecting the Portuguese colonial past. The “Burghers,” Christian and with Dutch names, are a tiny but still quite influential part of the population. There are few Anglo-Ceylonese today, reflecting the fact that the British unlike their Portuguese and Dutch predecessors generally brought their European wives and families with them and took them back to Britain when they returned, and so did not establish Ceylonese families. They did leave the Ceylonese upper classes literate in English, the official language of colonial days and a major political issue after independence.

The successive conquests of Ceylon largely determined the religious composition of the population. Most of the Sinhalese are Buddhists and most Tamils are Hindus. These two religious groups are divided among themselves, however, and in addition to them there are Moslem and Christian minorities which cut across racial (“communal”) lines [1].

It was against this background of colonial history — a “developing” economy and communal, linguistic and religious diversity — that the Trotskyist movement of Ceylon grew and declined. These factors play major roles in determining the history of Trotskyism in the island.

However, the ideas and leadership of Ceylonese and International Trotskyism also contributed to the rise and decline of the movement. Because it did become a significant element in national politics it was almost inevitably faced with the problems of revolution versus reform. This found particular expression in controversies over the Trotskyists’ participation in parliament, and even more bitter disputes over the decision first taken in 1964 to form part of a government coalition in which they were junior partners.

The Lanka Sama Samaja Party
Antecedents of the LSSP
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), which for a quarter of a century was the Ceylonese affiliate of the Fourth International and was by the mid-1980s still the largest of those groups in Sri Lanka claiming to be Trotskyist, is the oldest surviving party in the island. It was not the first party to be established in Ceylon nor the first party oriented toward the organized labor movement.

During the 1920s, A. E. Goonesinghe took the lead in establishing the Ceylon Labor Union, the country’s pioneering union group. He had contacts with the British labor movement and participated in the Imperial Labor Conference in London in 1928 after which, with some aid from his British colleagues, he established the Ceylon Trade Union Congress, with twenty-two affiliated organizations. Goonesinghe was also the principal organizer of the Labor Party, probably the first political organization in Ceylon to call itself a “party”.

Goonesinghe was a Sinhalese and a rather militant one. As a consequence the union movement which also began to develop in the late 1920s among the largely Tamil plantation workers was alienated from his organizations and established its own separate groups [2].

The trade union and political movement of Goonesinghe was not the breeding ground of the Marxist-Leninist movement in Ceylon. On the contrary, once the young people who were to establish the LSSP had begun their work one of the first things they undertook to accomplish was to organize a trade union movement to rival that led by Goonesinghe and the Labor Party.

Trotskyism and Marxism-Leninism in general had their origins in Ceylon in a group of young men who returned home after studying abroad principally in Great Britain, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. George Lerski says of these people that “they learned their socialism mainly in the classrooms of the London School of Economics and Social Sciences, dominated in the interwar period by the fascinating personality of Harold J. Laski. But America also can claim to have influenced at least one of the founding fathers of Ceylonese Trotskyism, namely D. R. R. Gunawardena. ... He was introduced to so-called scientific socialism during his studies in the late twenties at the University of Wisconsin, where, together with his Indian counterpart, Jayaprakash Narayan, he ‘received his training in Marxism from Scott Nearing.’ ”[3].

The returning students found their country after 1929 suffering severely from the Great Depression. This intensified the growing disenchantment with British colonial control of the country which had found earlier expression in the Ceylon National Congress, established during World War I, and in the growth of the early trade union movement and the Labor Party.

Leslie Goonewardene has noted that “the group at the commencement numbered a bare half dozen. ... But it gradually expanded. It might be of interest today to recall that N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Philip Gunawardena and Robert Gunawardena were among the members of the original group.”[4]

The young radicals (all from the Sinhalese upper classes) undertook to become involved in the labor movement. They succeeded in 1932 in organizing a union at the Wellawatte Mills, with Dr. Colvin R. de Silva as president and Vernon Gunasekera as secretary. In the following year it won a long strike[5]. This success provoked the first conflict with the established labor movement of A. B. Goonesinghe, and Leslie Goonewardene has noted that “excepting the Wellawatte Mills, in this clash Mr. Goonesinghe was generally the victor. The young enthusiasts learned in the hard way that the working class does not lightly abandon its traditional leadership.”[6]

But it was not their labor activities which first won the young Marxists widespread support, but rather a symbolic anticolonialist campaign which they undertook in 1933. This was a protest organized against the sale of “veterans’ poppies” on Armistice Day, with the proceeds from the sales going to British veterans’ organizations. The protestors organized the rival sale of Suriya flowers, with the money from these sales going to help Ceylonese World War I veterans rather than those of Britain. This Suriya Mal Movement “was launched on the initiative of the leftist-controlled South Colombo Youth League.” George Lerski has noted that this group was “manipulated from behind the scenes by a nucleus of convinced Socialists (Dr. N. M. Perera, Dr. A. S. Wickremasinghe, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Vernon Gunasekera, and the two Gunawardena brothers, Philip and Robert. ... ”[7]

Another campaign of the young Marxists which gained wide attention and was to have long-run political results for them was provoked by a widespread malaria epidemic which broke out in the Kegalla and Kurunegala districts in West-Central Ceylon in October 1934. Even official reports said that the very high number of fatalities from this epidemic was due to the widespread malnutrition in the areas involved.

The young Marxists did not confine themselves to denouncing government policies In this situation. They decided to go out in the beleaguered region themselves and carry out relief activities. George Lerski has written that “Dr. A. S. Wickremasinghe, as the medical expert, took command in the countryside while the young barrister Dr. Colvin R. de Silva, the political scientist Dr. N. M. Perera, and the fiery revolutionist D. R. R. Gunawardena served as dispensary orderlies and distributors of necessities.” Lerski added that “from these activities they gained long-lasting popularity as dedicated social workers ... it was later to secure them parliamentary seats in the post-World War II elections, not so much on the basis of their party program as on their own personal appeal.”[8]

Finally, the returned radical students began to engage in overt political and electoral activity. In 1931 in the first election under the new Donoughmore Constitution and the first conducted under universal adult suffrage, one of them, Dr. A. S. Wickremasinghe, was elected to the new State Council. Although there were a handful of other opposition members of the Council Wickremasinghe was the only Marxist in the body, and he gained a reputation as a bitter critic of the government and became “the target of concentrated attack by members who represented the vested interests of the Ceylonese Establishment.”[9]

Establishment of the LSSP
The young Marxists decided to organize a political party in late 1936. George Lerski has suggested that the reason for their decision was the approach of elections for the Second State Council. He recounted that “On December 18, 1935, some twenty determined intellectuals, workers, and students formed the Ceylon Socialist (or Equality( party. Oriented toward the working masses, these ‘founding fathers’ of the LSSP (most of them being between twenty-five and thirty years old) did not want an English name for the organization: Sinhalese being the language of the overwhelming majority, it was the Sinhalese designation that was of utmost importance. Thus the very name, the Lanka Sama Samaia Party, was an innovation.”[10]

Leslie Goonewardene has noted that “as a matter of fact, when the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was formed there were no accepted words in Sinhalese to describe the words ‘Socialist’ or ‘Communist.’ That is how the word ‘Samasamajaya’ coined by Mr. Dally Hayawardena ... to describe the word ’Socialist’ came to be chosen. The new term had the added advantage of not being associated with the ideas of reformism that are attached to the English word ‘Socialist.’”[11]

The founding convention of the LSSP adopted a “Manifesto,” which Lerski has commented “resembles more the sober Fabian approach than the revolutionary philosophy of full-blooded Marxists.”[12] Among its general statements of principle was its proclamation that the party was committed to “the achievement of complete national independence, the nationalization of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the abolition of inequalities arising from differences of race, caste, creed or sex.”[1]

This document also listed some twenty-two “demands,” which Lerski has described as “humanitarian *** economic.” These included such labor issues as a minimum wage, unemployment insurance, an eight-hour day, the ending of compulsory registration of trade unions, “factory legislation to ensure decent working conditions,” and a social security system including “sick benefits, old-age benefits, maternity benefits.” It also included issues relevant to the peasantry, including free pasture lands, supply of seed paddy without interest, end of irrigation payments, and “abolition of Forest Laws relating to removal of brushwood and transport of timber.” Finally, there were such general demands as a more progressive income tax reestablishment of inheritance taxes, and an end to indirect taxes [14].

A few months after the establishment of the party Philip Gunawardena insisted in the State Council that “our party is not a Communist Party. ... It is a party which is much less militant and less demanding than the section of the Communist or Third International.” Lerski has said that “though most Samasamajists refused to be identified with the Stalinist Comintern, neither could they at that time be considered to be committed followers of Trotsky’s apocalyptic doctrine of the permanent revolution.”[15]

The founding convention of the LSSP elected the party’s new leaders. Colvin R. de Silva was chosen as its president, and Vernon Gunasekera, “another able lawyer well versed in Marxism-Leninism” was named the national secretary of the party. Both of these young men were well-to-do Sinhalese [16].

The LSSP in the State Council
One decision of the founding congress of the LSSP was that the new party should run four candidates in the forthcoming elections for the State Council, the national parliament. One was A. S. Wickremasinghe, the sitting member, elected as an independent in 1931. The others were Philip Gunawardena, described by George Lerski as “a popular tribune”; N. M. Perera, “the party’s shrewd political scientist”; and “the quiet but effective Marxist organizer, Leslie Goonewardene.”[17] Two of these nominees, Perera and Gunawardena, were elected [18].

The two Samasamajista members of the State Council served for four years until their removal in mid-1940 for their opposition to World War II. They were both among the most active and vocal members of the Island’s parliament, although their techniques were somewhat different. Philip Gunawardena tended to be the more explosive or even demagogic of the two, with N. M. Perera being “a more skillful dialectician.”[19]

During their first four years as parliamentarians, Gunawardena and Perera participated in a wide variety of debates. They served on the Executive Committee of Labor, Industry and Commerce of the Council, and there carried on agitation for unemployment insurance, old age pensions, an eight-hour day, and the end of “assisted immigration” from India. They also worked for a more equitable tax system, fighting particularly for the progressive inheritance tax, and also sought unsuccessfully to get enactment of an income tax and a reduction of indirect imposts.

The LSSP deputies, although both had been educated largely in British schools in Ceylon and in overseas universities, were particularly concerned with the development of indigenous schools which taught in the local languages. They helped to bring about expansion of the primary and secondary school systems and fought for the organization of a full-fledged university [20].

Leslie Goonewardene claimed that “a number of reforms and measures of social amelioration are directly attributable to the agitation” of the LSSP in this period. Among these were measures establishing a school lunch program, modifying the traditional “headman” system, and abolition of irrigation taxes[21].

Gunawardena and Perera were loyal to their Marxist beliefs in opposing communalism, whether on the part of the Sinhalese or the Tamils. They particularly denounced the efforts of the militant Sinhala Maha Sabha Movement, which sought a preferential position for the Sinhalese, and was headed by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, the minister of local affairs. George Lerski has commented that they “were definitely in the forefront of the opposition to chauvinistic bigotry, which was to divide the Ceylonese people so tragically two decades later. In particular they stood firmly against any discrimination toward the permanently domiciled plantation workers.”[22] Although opposing any further importation of Indian laborers for the plantations, they defended the rights of the Tamil workers who were already in the island. They particularly opposed attempts to disenfranchise the so-called “Indian Tamils,” those who had arrived in Ceylon during the twentieth century.

The Samasamajists reiterated on every appropriate occasion their party’s demand for the independence of Ceylon. At the same time they supported moves increasing Ceylonese control of the country’s affairs. They were particularly active in arguing the use of the indigenous languages-Sinhalese and Tamil-in the courts, local government and even in the State Council itself.

Gunawardena and Perera took an active part in discussions of a possible new constitution for the island. They opposed the adoption of a British type parliamentary regime, favoring some modification of the State Council system under which committees of the Council were closely involved in the conduct of the various cabinet ministries."

www.marxists.org/history

Answer 2

The term "Trotskyism" is sometimes also used critically by those from a Stalinist or social democratic background to denote any of various political currents claiming a tradition of Marxist opposition to both Stalinism and capitalism.

"Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." - James P. Cannon in History of American Trotskyism.

From what I read there are a few out there that follow this, but no one of any consequence. Trotsky was thrown out of the communist party and was finally assassinated by a Russian in Mexico.

Answer 3

who or what is a "trotsky"?

we have a "schlotzkys" they make great sandwiches, thiey are here in the u.s., as far as parties are concerned , they may cater but its probably best to call and verify that.

Answer 4

Trotsky is dead. Has been for a long time (1940).

Answer 5

no