Marx Engels Lenin Institute
patreon
RSB #8 Sri Lanka & The Comprador Bourgeoisie
🕑 Added 2022-08-23 21:50:21 +0000 UTCRecently a mass uprising of the Sri Lankan working class and middle class saw the government of (now resigned) President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resign and the President himself flee the country. What is actually going in Sri Lanka though? Is it a colour revolution? The effects of the Chinese debt trap? Machinations of the Indian bourgeoisie? In this bulletin I take a look at the weakness of Sri Lankan capitalism and why the causes of this collapse are more long term than most interpretations will lead you to believe.
Comments
William Mckay
Both good questions. What I'll do is discuss then in a Q&A I've got planned for two weeks time.
George
These bulletins are fun. Two questions raised for me by the last slew: 1/ Some accounts of the Sri Lanka crisis focus on environmental policies, e.g. the banning of fertilizer or ESG scores. Is there anything to that? 2/I'd be interested in historical, quantitative data on the rate(s) of profit, which is/are doing a lot of the explaining in these episodes. E.g. how much has/have the rate(s) of profit declined since the post-war boom? (I'm also not sure whether to talk about the rate in the singular or the plural).
