Free & Public: Third Alternative For Educational Reform

By Sumanasiri Liyanage –August 27, 2015

Sumanasiri Liyanage

The UNP-SLFP national government would go for more privatization in education and health sectors. This would adversely affect the lower strata of the society aggravating the problem inequality. How to face this challenge and protect free education and health is one of the issues that needs creative and novel answers.

One of my favorite books that is always on my table for easy and quick reference is Istvan Meszaros’s Beyond Capital: Towards a Theory of Transition, the book that was loved and oftentimes quoted by Hugo Chavez, the beloved leader of the Venezuelan people. After the fall of the Soviet system, the issue as to whether a socialist transformation is possible had been raised not only by liberal writers but also by some Marxists. Many Marxists in Sri Lanka have already retreated to comfortable path of democracy and good governance. We are very much aware of the fact that even a left party or formation comes to power in Sri Lanka soon, that government cannot build socialism in the immediate future. The best recent example for this is that of Syriza government in Greece.

Any left government would immediately face what Walter Benjamin aptly called the “critical state of the present” in which the “status quo threatens to be preserved” by the operation of multiple factors that are supportive of the status quo. Chavez knew this very well so that he developed a long term strategy of transition carefully avoiding two weak pillars of the Soviet system, namely, the dominance of state capital and the absence of democracy. Meszaros’s magnum opus develops a thesis that a democratic system can be built moving away from the dominance of capital irrespective of the fact whether this capital is owned by the state or private corporations or individuals. However, it is necessary to keep in mind that this system is not yet socialism, as Marx defined it as the system of “associated producers”. In such a system, as Meszaeos has convincingly argued, capital ceases to be capital.

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