The strategy and program of the SEP in the fight against the JVP government and capitalism

* The Fourth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) was held from September 11–13, 2026, in Colombo.
* The political and economic crisis erupted in 2022 and is intensifying.
* Working-class failure to take an independent political path allowed the ruling elite to maintain control through the Wickremesinghe regime and the JVP-led government.
* Trade unions called limited actions in 2025, which were then shut down, with JVP-affiliated unions openly opposing strikes.
* President Dissanayake stated: “Do not ask for more—the government has no funds. Go home instead of standing on the streets; standing on the streets brings you nothing.”
* The crisis was intensified by Cyclone Ditwah and the US-Israeli war against Iran.
* The government is moving to place the burden of the crisis on working people through IMF-dictated austerity measures.
* Approximately 22 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, and 55 percent struggle with food insecurity.
* Real wages in the public and private sectors collapsed by 24 percent and 14 percent since 2022.
* Over 400 state-owned enterprises are being restructured, threatening jobs.
* The IMF fiscal target requires maintaining a 2.3 percent surplus to service $5 billion in debt repayments from 2028.
* 27 percent of farmers are effectively without land.
* Plantation unions allied with successive governments and imposed austerity measures.
* Tamil bourgeois parties collaborate with the JVP/NPP government to secure elite interests.
* The SEP advocates for building action committees in workplaces and neighborhoods.

The narrative traces a trajectory from a political failure of the working class post-2022 to an intensification of state repression under the JVP/NPP government, framed explicitly through the lens of international class struggle theory, particularly Trotskyism's Theory of Permanent Revolution. A crucial pattern observed is the way external geopolitical shocks (war, climate disaster) are immediately translated into internal economic crises, which are then utilized by the ruling class to justify radical domestic policies like IMF austerity and the expansion of emergency powers. This demonstrates a systemic mechanism where class contradiction is managed not through genuine political change but through intensified state control and the deployment of reactive measures against popular mobilization.
A significant implication arises from the analysis of internal divisions, particularly regarding ethnic identity. The text meticulously exposes how bourgeois parties and aligned organizations—including plantation unions—actively promote reactionary ethno-religious politics to fragment the working class into communal blocs (e.g., "Malaiyaha Tamils") rather than uniting them against the ruling class's capitalist demands. This functions as a sophisticated tactic of division, ensuring that localized grievances are channeled along sectarian lines, thereby obstructing the formation of a unified revolutionary front necessary for achieving socialist objectives across the island.
The SEP’s proposed solution—building independent action committees and the Democratic and Socialist Congress—is not merely an organizational goal but a necessary theoretical corrective: dismantling the political and ideological influence of bureaucratic trade unions and bourgeois parties to forge genuine working-class leadership. The necessity of connecting local struggles with the global context (international anti-war movements, theories on imperialism) highlights the failure of nationalist or purely reformist trajectories; only a comprehensive, internationalist perspective can provide the analytical tools to expose capitalism's material roots, thus demanding an action that transcends the immediate political maneuvering of the ruling elite.
Bridge Questions: If class unity is the prerequisite for overcoming capitalist pressures, how can the theoretical framework effectively navigate and integrate diverse, potentially conflicting, localized identities within a unified anti-imperialist struggle? What specific, actionable strategies can be developed to ensure that independent action committees can genuinely transcend or successfully manage ethnic and communal divisions in practice? What empirical evidence is needed to demonstrate that political education alone is sufficient to reverse entrenched systemic power structures supported by state apparatuses?