Rule of all

A mass campaign is needed to convince the Sinhalese majority that devolution and democratisation are in its interest as much as they are in the interest of Sri Lanka's minorities.

The political right and left around the globe seem to concur in linking democracy to bourgeois rule; the two concepts have even been hyphenated in the adjective 'bourgeois-democratic'. Yet history gives us no reason to believe that there is a necessary connection between the two. It is true that when the bourgeoisie is fighting against feudal power to establish its rule, it seeks the support of the plebeian masses, and in the process allows them to fight for their own demands – hence the famous slogan of the French Revolution, 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity'. Yet once their rule is established, they are quite capable of turning on their erstwhile allies, repressing or even slaughtering them. This is not to say that capitalism is incompatible with democratic rights and freedoms, but to emphasise that the latter will prevail only if the working people fight to establish and defend them. Even in advanced capitalist countries, long-established rights can quickly be demolished. Social Democracy in Germany was followed by fascism; even today, democratic rights are under attack in the heartlands of capitalism.