On War, Capital and Taxation

A Life After an Event…

Iqbal Athas, the reputed military analyst, in his Situation Report published weekly in the Sunday Times, the newspaper of the commercial bourgeoisie, states that the dawn of 2009 will usher Sri Lanka into a new era, though what it portends exactly remains unclear for him, while the Sri Lankan Army is suffering from bad weather, a "mortar monsoon" bestowed upon them by the Tigers.

On the 18th December 2008, His Excellency the Prime Minister of Ceylon, Mr. Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, said, "We need money to develop the country as well as to protect the country from terrorism. As a government our revenue comes from taxes. No one who loves the country should block taxes and prevent the country from being protected".

He said: "We should not send the wrong signals to the soldiers in the battle field; we should show them that we are with them".

- Daily Mirror, 19 December 2008

The State does not use the tax money sapped from the workers to venture in war; but rather, it's the system of public credit, i.e., of national debts, which is brokered to cover the multitude of expenditures, Rupees one hundred and seventy seven billion for 2009 that renders themselves paramount in a process of systematic slaughter.

The bulk of the Ceylon's State liabilities are composed of Rupee loans1, the sources of which, are, the domestic lenders. This means that the loans are obtained through local sources. And most importantly... not every Sri Lankan soul is blessed with such money required to become a lender to such a vast machinery as the State.

As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand", public debt, "endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury. ...the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agitate, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy."2

Therefore it is clear that investment in war is an impossible measure for the masses to execute. It is the commercial and merchant class of Ceylon who with utmost enthusiasm and grace, invest in the State's war expenditure by providing it with domestic loans and thereby become rich by appropriation of the interest,

"As the national debt finds its support in the public revenue, which must cover the yearly payments for interest, the modern system of taxation was the necessary complement of the system of national loans. The loans enable the government to meet extraordinary expenses, without the tax-payers feeling it immediately, but they necessitate, as a consequence, increased taxes. On the other hand, the raising of taxation caused by the accumulation of debts contracted one after another compels the government always to have recourse to new loans for new extraordinary expenses. Modern fiscality, whose pivot is formed by taxes on the most necessary means of subsistence (thereby increasing their price), thus contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Over-taxation is not an incident, but rather a principle."3

It is this interest of the national debt that is being compensated by the State on behalf of the lenders by forcing its public to save, that is, by taxing the worker to the core. The 189% tax on oil that was readjusted by the Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva is a necessary condition to fill the coffers of the lenders. Therefore, the more the State is in debt the more the class of financial aristocrats that infest the surface of Ceylon, is so much blessed with riches in great quantities. Yet, on the 18th December 2008, His Excellency the Prime Minister of Ceylon, Mr. Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, 'the soldier outside the battlefield', said, "We need the money to develop the country as well as to protect the country from terrorism. As a government our revenue comes from taxes. No one who loves the country should block taxes and prevent the country from being protected".

During the eve of Christmas, it was reported through local media that the clashes in the Western and Southern borders of Killinochchi and North of Mullathivu, Muhamalai and Paranthan, had laid low nearly few thousand national heroes from both sides, as dead as doornails lying upon the lifeless skin of their motherland. And the Ceylonese public, trembling like a true liberal, hides itself as best he could beside the private roads, crescents, and avenues and keep on counting the dead that are so neatly lying on the ground like railway sleepers... Counting makes it easier. Systemizing the assaults makes them easier to deal with. More remote. .

But yet, the nation is not breathing its last sighs… No one is shrieking to hasten the death of war… the children of the Christ are demanding for war holidays during the season, a truce for the eve of Christmas and the New Year while the villages burn, burnt by the heroes of both sides in total accordance with Humanitarian Law.. war must and shall survive… that is the Serpent's venom which flows in the veins of the Ceylonese and guides them towards the gates of heaven. The air is growing darker still, yet the war is shining upon the creatures of decency... and indecency, the Province Western is blessed with all the riches that the liberation war has to offer. The bank coffers are deluging with the wealth, what the rightful investments in war has to offer. "Hence, as a necessary consequence, the modern doctrine that a nation becomes the richer the more deeply it is in" war and "debt."4

The State uses its constitutional right to plunder the whole 'National' population through taxation, that is by forcing the latter, to save and invest their wages, and transfer this 'legal black money', into the hands of a few 'National' usurers; "The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt."5

The State should posses a method of surplus value extraction, independent of its spheres of investments, because the investments made by the State using the borrowed money are incapable of surplus value generation to pay off the interest of the indebted nation. Thus, the investments made by the State are realized as unproductive in every aspect, and therefore, rendered incapable of covering the yearly payments of interest, which, the 'middlemen between the government and the nation', the State-creditors demand. The method of surplus extraction that functions independently of the government's speres of investment is coercing of the workers to save their salaries and wages; namely, this method is none other than Taxation.

A Brief Note on the Nature of Ceylon's Labour Force

The economically dominant strata who perpetuates its sway over the public is reproducing its limits by exploiting the workforce with a magnificent level of unproductiveness, because their ventures only demand tea pluckers who pluck the budding tea leaves with two little fingers since the one hundred and fifty years that came to pass following the birth of the plantations in the late 1870's in Ceylon; they only demand garment girls, housemaids to export into the middle east, waiters/waitresses for tourist hotels; education is what is least needed to execute the latter.

The sectors mentioned above which are the most dominant spheres of investment in Sri Lanka are cursed with economic stagnancy, devoid of any development in the production process by incurring modern machinery, and thereby never it reduces the lot of necessary labour and increase surplus labour, and thereby renders the increase of real as well as nominal wages of the workforce an impossible errand. Therefore it is impossible to develop the living conditions of the workforce that is engaged in these sectors.

The pious wish of the dominant economic class of Sri Lanka is the production of wealth without production itself... therefore rendering the process of acquiring continuous development of ideas, knowledge and techniques superfluous for the domestic workforce; unemployment is the necessary condition, the nurtured child of the existing merchant capitalist economy, it is the 'development of underdevelopment', 5 upon the surface of the Pearl in the Indian Ocean.

Once Again on the Imperialist Nature of the Elam War IV

The economic implications of the Fourth Elam War, bears genuine characteristics of an Imperialist war. The saturation of the spheres of investments in the South, forces the State creditors, to search for new and fresh markets… spheres where the market forces have not yet reached its zenith and therefore they appear to be young and supple with no giant monopolies obstructing the division of the market among themselves. And therefore, ousting competition and possesses the potential to provide our casino class a plenty of opportunities to spread underdevelopment throughout the regions of North and East.

The Southern home market is on the verge of saturation and therefore capital is no longer finding ample investment, as a result an impending solvency crisis in the banking sector of Ceylon is inevitable. It is this sudden demand for new markets from our unproductive investors: bankocrats, hotel owners, supermarket chains, car sales, insurance companies, casinos, and various other service providers who have recommended the adoption of Imperialism, waged upon the North and East as the policy and practice of the Ceylon's government. The policy of the State is the policy of its lenders. They prioritize Imperialism to use public resources of the nation to find profitable employment of the capital which they privately own, otherwise the entire hoard of money would render superfluous. They shall attempt to sell insurance packages to the bullet struck refugees and shall try to promote them to consume through their supermarket chains and construct tourist hotels which would absorb the North East youth as mere waiters and waitresses.


Monopoly


It was reported in the local media that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) sells gas to Laughs Gas for Rupees four hundred and sixty five a cylinder, which they resell for rupees thousand seven hundred keeping a profit margin of Rs. 1235. That is the rate of profit of Laughs Gas is nearly three hundred per cent! On the 31st December 2008, rupees two hundred and seventy six was reduced from the price of a Laughs Gas cylinder by the government as the provincial elections are scheduled to be held in January. This means, that the market that supplies the essential means of subsistence is heavily monopolized and monopoly has replaced free competition. Thus, the commanding position which they hold over the entire market sphere allows them to control and decide the prices of goods and services they supply. By keeping prices high, the monopolies accelerate their margin of profit, and cut down on production to face the falling demand of the ordinary consumers caused by the rise in prices, therefore acquiring profits through sheer unproductive means, severing the umbilical chord that joins productivity and profitability, a temporary tendency therefore arises for the general rate of profit of the economy to rise, which is the economic essence of Imperialism, or monopoly-capitalism. Whereas in the past, in the epoch of free competition, the competition caused a sharp drop in the prices.

References:

1. See the Monthly Bulletin, May 2008, Central Bank of Sri Lanka, for statistics
2. Marx. K, Capital Vol. I
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. De Silva. S. B. D, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment