We see this public split as a gift. It involves an SEP Central Committee (CC) member and Political Committee (PC) member and Chairman of the Party’s Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE) and Chairman of the Colombo Action Committee. The SEP has failed to maintain any image of unity or consensus and has bureaucratically attacked its own official leaders. This is the clearest sign they can present to the public of their own internal breakdown and their own illegal and extremely shameful policies. The Democratic Power Faction declares the ICFI Nanobureaucracy unfit for revolutionary leadership due to gross neglect and possible dereliction of duty. Their attacks on Democratic Power, the ICFI (1953) Supporters, and the SEP-Left of Sri Lanka prove that they operate in a counter-revolutionary way to promote slander, plagiarism, and every form of cheap journalism as a means of attacking the revolutionary movement and advanced workers. In order to save the party from these elements, we need to emphasize again that their fixed pattern of behavior has proven they are incorrigible Nanobureaucrats, capable of every petty crime or full-scale atrocity. Their claims to defend the historical record or the denial of their slander have been thoroughly debunked by a mountain of evidence. We can no longer return to another and another trial in an attempt to restore due process. Only the forcible removal of the bourgeois usurpers, their imprisonment, and the convening of an emergency international conference to restore the democratic process and the rule of law can overturn the deplorable state of relations between the revolutionary party and the working class. We must organize a workers’ defense committee to demand at public meetings their immediate arrest and the members’ cooperation with a full investigation and an international conference.

Despite the joy we feel in receiving such a generous gift to our political position, we still need to question the silence of the SEP-Left with regard to communications sent by the Democratic Power Faction and the ICFI (1953) Supporters. Their copious writing to the CC of the SEP and their bowing down to the IC reveals a gaping weakness on basic Marxist concepts. Since capitalism and the world party are global in reach, the same processes that shape one nation will shape to one extent or another all nations. The same process of the emergence of a political Nanobureaucracy in the CC of the SEP Sri Lanka and the consequent necessity of an SEP-Left faction will repeat itself everywhere due to the same economic, structural issues affecting the development of the revolutionary party and its relations with the working class in every nation. The ICFI has submitted to these bureaucratic forces on an international scale, and only the formation of an international Democratic Power Faction to combat this reaction can succeed in repairing the severely damaged relationship between the revolutionary party and the working-class masses.

The original article can be found here:

The fight for principles and leadership of the working class: How SEP-SL bureaucracy expelled revolutionaries

From a note written to the SEP-Left Faction in the comments section of their website, May 21, 2023: “Please contact us by leaving a comment at randomposter33.org ASAP to show that the SEP-Left and the Democratic Power Faction will not bow down to the same forces as the Nanobureaucracy of the SEP and ICFI.” (This comment has still not been approved by their moderator as of June 1, 2023.)

Statement written upon discovery of the CAC and SEP-Left:

“The Democratic Power Faction began this struggle in 2016. Please contact us by leaving a comment at randomposter33.org ASAP to show that the SEP-Left and the Democratic Power Faction will not bow down to the same forces as the Nanobureaucracy of the SEP and ICFI.”

Twitter Direct Message (DM) quote from ICFI (1953) Supporters: “I’ve messaged them, but they’ve kind of given me the cold shoulder.”

q: < Quotes from article

n: < Notes from randomposter33.org

q: The membership and all sympathisers of the party will recognize the undeniable fact that the SEP-Left faction’s fight for a revolutionary Party always centred on securing the long traditions of Bolshevism and defending the struggle for Trotskyist permanent revolution.

n: Party leadership kept the expulsion secret for a few months, claiming they believed the comrades would change their mind and return. This is a lie. They only failed to keep the expulsions secret from the membership.

q: …there was no communication of such ‘hopes’ from GS, who for half a year failed to abide by the provisions of the Constitution in respect of an expulsion of a party member.

q: “[The WSWS Sri Lanka Editor] claimed ‘…the CAC was not ‘approved’ by the Party prior to its establishment.’”

q: He was elected to the CC [Central Committee] in both congresses held in 2015 and 2018, and selected to the Political Committee (PC). In 2018, Comrade Dias himself recommended the presence of Sanjaya, being a lawyer, in the PC.

q:  it does not explain why it suppressed the fact, even from the membership of the party, that Sanjaya resigned from the membership of the Political Committee and from the Chairmanship of the Action Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Art and Expression (ACDAE), for reasons stipulated,  in late September 2021. No political assessment of this resignation was done, no official communication made and explanation provided to the membership,  nor discussion held either with Sanjaya or within the party membership in this regard.

q: The decision to resign from the membership of the PC was never caused by subjugation to middle class pressures to abandon my revolutionary responsibilities, but was taken as the last resort, when I was finally unable to bear the pressure I had to bear as a member of the PC itself. This pressure was due to the non-availability of democratic space to vent out my constructive, but critical and dissenting views, which would be debatable.

q:

Party’s third National Congress, which was called unconstitutionally, was postponed due to the objections raised by the left-faction in its letter to the party dated 10 February 2022, demanding discussion and resolution of political disputes before the Congress, and revocation of Comrade Nandana’s suspension, to enable him to participate in pre-congress discussions.

With the intervention of the International Committee the Congress was thus postponed, but its advice was disregarded: to discuss and resolve the internal disputes before the Congress.

q: On 15 May, intervening in the congress proceedings, Sanjaya stated as follows…

n: Not clear if Sanjaya had approval from the IC or from the CC to participate in the Third Congress.

q: The party bureaucracy did not want to commit to these critical demands of the objective development within and outside the party, but was hell-bent on suppressing the left-faction, first targeting Nandana and Sanjaya.

n: The lack of clarity in the above quote, which was meant to conclude a long passage from a speech to the Third Congress, is itself clarifying. First, by party bureaucracy, what is meant? Did the SEP-Left comrades propose resolutions to the Third Congress? Did the Congress vote on their resolutions? Second, “these critical demands of the objective development” lacks rational sense. Demands cannot be made of objective development but only of authority and those in positions of authority. If by objective development, we mean processes and results in the real world, we can only speak of observations and actions. We either observe objective developments so as to report on our findings or we propose and execute actions with specific methods and goals in mind. To make demands of objective development means to step away from materialism and the material world, to propose, against the basic tenets of Marxism, the dominance of the spirit and the mind over material reality.

q: In its fight for active intervention in the mass struggles, the left faction was guided by the lessons of the experiences of the Egypt revolution and the following counter-revolution.

q: “The issue of calling to prepare the working class for a general political strike had already been raised by comrade Nandana and others and this demand was rejected by leadership saying that neither the party, nor the working, class was ready for such a general strike. The masses had to be  prepared for a general strike during a period of time, and hence the demand of the left faction.

“Even the invitations by party sympathizers who were active in the mass struggles to intervene in the protest site at Galle Face Greens (GotaGoGama) were refused by the members of the leadership, saying the place was not safe for party cadre.”

q: “[Notice of the invitation and intention to accept] was communicated to the party leadership as soon as it was received, about two weeks before the event.”

q: “The party bureaucracy tried to block Sanjaya’s participation in the Public University lecture at the eleventh hour, and led the Locale to pass an urgent resolution against his imminent intervention, in the absence of himself, comrades Ananda Wakkumbura and Fareeda who were Locale members.”

q: “Sanjaya’s self-defensive letter dated 15 August 2022, consisting of 20 pages including all correspondence in this regard, clearly explains why the suspension was arbitrary.”

q: “The decision to go ahead with the intervention was a politically calculated, conscious one taken by the comrades of the left-faction. There was no option but taking the risk of being subjected to disciplinary actions by the party regime, for not abiding by its last-hour resolutions. That risk was taken, because the comrades correctly assessed and firmly believed   in the historical significance of that intervention.”

n: The exact text of the “last-hour resolutions,” the vote count, and other important details are missing.

q: Sanjaya quoting “the SWP resolution (from The Struggle for a Proletarian Party) referred to in the SEP statement”:

”The Socialist Workers Party is a revolutionary Marxian party, based on a definite program, whose aim is the organisation of the working class in the struggle for power and the transformation of the existing social order. All of its activities, its methods and its internal regime are subordinated to this aim and are designed to serve it.

“Only a self-acting and critical-minded membership is capable of forging and consolidating such a party and of solving its problems by collective thought, discussion and experience. From this follows the need of assuring the widest party democracy in the ranks of the organisation.”

q: “Once again, this decision of the CC and PC shows the continuation of the party leadership’s undemocratic and bureaucratic approach to avoid and suppress serious political questions and organizational matters of the Party, and to cover it up with fake assertions of democratic centralism.”

n: This assertion, coming from a CC member and PC member, a leader in the party, brings to light incontrovertible testimony that habitual criminality has overrun the legal Marxist party. Lenin argued in favor of a secret, illegal movement, but he never argued that the legal party and newspaper should fall into criminal behavior as well. They should write (like professionals) where freedom of speech is defended and circulate the paper by smuggling it past censors. Instead, they subject their own party to a censorship regime and use illegal methods, such as those employed against Sri Lanka’s SEP-Left Faction, to limit the circulation of the paper. Social Media communications by factions and discussion among them increases interest in the content of the newspaper, while open sabotage of the legitimate leadership of the party turns the working class away from both the party and the party press.

“The PC proceeding to suspend three leading comrades of the party [sic] taking refuge in its bureaucratic maneuvers… is a rotten indication of a danger that the party leadership and then the whole party is decelerating into a political degeneration within.”

The now open conflict between the Nanobureaucracy on one side and the membership with a section of the leadership on the other side, reflects the divisions within society as a whole. We, as Marxists, cannot agree with the Nanobureaucracy’s rejection of class analysis and dialectical thought or its bleak Bonapartist outlook. The above statement by Sanjaya comes dangerously close to the same rejection. The Nanobureaucracy applies the same threatening concept as Sanjaya’s but in reverse, in opposite form, with regard to the movements of millions of workers. It actively avoids these movements and steers the membership, the advanced Marxist workers and intellectuals, away, claiming these millions of workers are in fact upper-middle class careerists or empty heads, absolutely incapable of distinguishing between the interests of the organization’s petty-bourgeois executives and their own. At the same time, Nanobureaucracy practices the most shameless careerism, sacrificing the revolutionary potential of the working class by actively dividing potential revolutionary leaders from the working class, (as is most clearly seen by the conspiracy revolving around the “historic Galleface Greens lecture”) in exchange for corporate offices, large corporate slush funds, and other privileges afforded to them for the policing of the Fourth International.

As Democratic Power has written before: “The apolitical, organizational methods of the Nanobureaucracy are a sign to the military and police that the state can depend on the SEP’s executive board to persecute democracy, legal representation, and the freedom of speech. The reverse is not true. A revolutionary leadership cannot depend on state forces for the defense of their political appointments, and if they fail to appeal to the reason of the working class and its popular support through fair debate and a fair vote, no excuse will be needed to remove them from the party of the international working class and ban their form of politics, or crime disguised as politics. Their criminality will show itself when they plagiarize the positions and writing of the SEP-Left faction while eliminating the revolutionary content. In the absence of Nanobureaucracy, their absence being accomplished, the party can and will be saved by the international working class organized into the Democratic Power Faction internationally.”

Without interventions like the present one on a philosophical level and with scientific precision, the tendency of the party will be to allow bourgeois ideology to dominate Marxism in exchange for peace from the ruling class. The working class revolution always requires the entry of new forces into revolutionary politics to restore the party to its Marxist foundations. These new forces must first come to terms with the entire history of Marxist politics and the struggle between bourgeois ideology and a theoretically sound Marxist leadership. They then must proceed to establish a Marxist program and strategy for the party to reach the working class and raise their socialist consciousness through political participation in their struggles. This view contradicts Sanjaya’s bleak outlook, since we see in the IC Nanobureaucracy the source of the problem and its solution.

q: Tragically, your letter also fails to mention anything discussed with the other members of the International Committee, including Comrade David North, about the disciplinary measures taken against myself, comrades Nandana and Wakkumbura and what political clarifications made during such discussions, in relation to our previous suspensions or instant expulsions.

n: Sanjaya fails to mention anything about what he expects to learn from the “political clarifications” or discussions about “disciplinary measures” with the IC and David North. If he idealistically expects them to come to his defense, we see a serious lack of evidence to support his view. In fact, he would only find more evasions meant to set the mode by which the upper crust will remain vigilante against future uprisings such as Sanjaya’s. His submission to the idealism of the Nanobureaucracy, his dismissal of the need for evidence as proof of his view of material reality, means he will have trouble leading the workers’ party out of the North-Steiner utopian corner.

q: “Your letter suppresses the material fact that I sent a 20-page long letter (dated 15 August 2022) to you against my suspension, with all facts and correspondence. Not even a word uttered in your letter about this important letter, where I deny all your allegations, and you do not mention whether it was discussed in the PC or CC and with IC, and among the membership. However, I am aware that just one or two days after you sent me your 19 November letter, you had already shared your letter with the membership. Not even natural justice!”

q: “What is the purpose of requesting by your letter dated 25 July 2022 to respond to your letter of suspension? Does that mean the suspension and its confirmation were already decided, whatever be my reply and objections? Also, why do you fail to mention where and how I have justified my act and how you dispute my justification?”

q: “The party leadership had no reason to object to me being elected as Chairperson of the Action Committee, but raised guns when I shared, as I should, two Facebook posts of the action committee.”

q: “Two statements sent by CACPS to WSWS Sri Lanka Editor were not published in WSWS, and I am aware that the Sri Lankan editor has communicated to the Action Committee no valid reason for not publishing the statements. CACPS asked for any such reasons from the Editor, but no reply was received. Subsequently, the CACPS, in order to respond to the quarries of its members and to tell the truth to the working class, published two posts in its social media (fb) page that the statements have not been published, and expressed its willingness to work hand-in-hand with the WSWS in the future.”

q: “A sectarian leadership of a revolutionary party would be best characterized, in Trotsky’s words, by identifying it with ‘alienism to great historical movements, a hardened conservative mentality, smug narrowness, and a most primitive political cowardice‘.”

q: “Party discipline is the unity of action thus subjected to democratic free discussion and criticism. Otherwise, subjecting party membership to a so-called discipline of centralism is to strengthen bureaucracy. This is fatally inimical to the class struggle.”

q: “Lenin reiterated:

‘We have more than once already enunciated our theoretical views on the importance of discipline and on how this concept is to be understood in the party of the working class. We defined it as: unity of action, freedom of discussion and criticism. Only such Discipline is worthy of the democratic party of the advanced class.’ [Party Discipline and the Fight Against the Pro-Cadet Social-Democrats, 1906]

In ‘I stake my Life'(1933), Trotsky, referring to Stalinist party bureaucracy, aptly stated, ‘fear of criticism is fear of the masses. The bureaucracy is afraid of the people.’”

q: “The present leadership of our party is afraid of democratic criticism and therefore fears the masses, so the class struggle. It then wishes to be seperate from the mass movement. It even feared to call the working class for the preparation of a political general strike. That is why the leadership considers criticism is [sic] hostile to itself, and uses administrative measures to keep criticism and discussion within the party suppressed.”

n: Words of a Central Committee and Political Committee member! (2015-2022) We must reiterate our criticism that the ICFI’s role as an international body should be to moderate and organize a fair and full discussion between the two sides in this public split within the Central Committee. Instead, they will follow a path of subversion of democracy, Leninism, and Trotskyism for their own careerist ends. Only the organization of the Democratic Power Faction internationally to restore democratic rights to the membership and party discipline to the leadership can repair the broken relations between the revolutionary party and the working class.