Is it necessary for Marxists to debate with nationalists, for instance neo-Nazis and others, including followers of Nalin de Silva? In so far as their propositions challenge Marxist materialist theory, Marxists have to deal with them. But once it is covered within the basic dichotomy between idealism and materialism, Marxists do not need to proceed further in attacking such idealist popositions. However, we can deal with their subjective ideologies that deny objective truths even in the political and social life of a society. Quantum mechanics is about physical micro world and not about social life of a national and international society which is a macro-level social organization. One may also call it the relative frame of reality upon which Marxists work.
Sinhala nationalists deny objective truth and at the same time assert a whole history, knowledge of a Sinhalese race and a united Sinhala Country from the so called King Dutugemunu, whose existence in the past they assert as an objective truth. This is a serious contradiction of the so called Jathika Chinthana, and there are many. Simply, once they deny objective truth, they have no right even to utter a word, because then words have only relative meaning and therefore there is no word, no language, no communication, everything is private and depends on the Observer, the I; So no cultural heritage and no social organization is possible. Then they would argue that there is a relative truth agreeable for common purpose and social organization. But that yet again is relative to observer. The history of a nation underlies the histories of classes. For example the history of the Sinhalese is the history of the elites and not of the oppressed claases in feudal and monarchical systems. The history of different casts under so called Sinhala kings would have been different to the meta-narrative of Ruling elites. There would have been casts who did not want to identify themselves with so called Sinhalese of the elites. They would have asserted their culture was the true Sinhala culture. So what is Sinhala too is problematic and depends on evidence and relative to different clases in feudal systems, arguing in line with denial of objective truths. They also say the knowledge we have been educated with is western.
The Jathika Chinthana flows from idealist formulations of Nalin de Silva, whose so called Constructive Relativism(CR) is an anti-marxist metanarrative, asserting primacy of mind above matter, that no objective world can be perceived without mind. But it fails to assert that the mind can exist without matter, or to answer whether the mind which is also a creation of mind itself exists in a vacum, free from laws of time and space. There cannot be mind without relationship to external matter, even to create most primary concepts, images from which to create othet concepts and images without additional external information. Mind thus itself exists in relationship to matter. Mind is history, images, past, conditioning, thoughts, which all arise in association with matter (matter is not necessarily mass, but includes magnetic fields, all forms of physical energy etc and our sensory images). There is no mind without thoughts, consciousness which are all obtained through senses. Mind is impotent to create itself without matter, images. Mind simply cannot perceive the change,movement or change in itself being unrelated to external movement, changes in matter. The primacy of Mind and matter is not a question of egg before hen. It's through mind that objective material world is perceived, but the assertion of the existence of Mind independant of matter cannot deny the existence of Matter independent of Mind.
Constructive Relativism has one unique way of disassociating with the western philosophy's argument against idealism: to assert that the idea of mind in CR is not the same as that which is identified in western philosopy's idealism: that so called Sinhala Theravada Chinthana formulation of mind is different from the concept of mind in what is referred to as Weastern Greek Judaic Christian Chinthanaya as against Catholic Thinking. Marxists do not have to bother with such disasscosition, because it in no way affects its political programme.
The objective truth for Marxists is that there is a market, a capitalist system, there is imperialism, Sinhala nationalism, Tamil nationalism, an international working class, and so on. Marxists do not bother whether such truths are relative to the Observer. History is read by Marxists with dialectical method. Historical materialism is the method of interpreting the written history .
Why do the West impose their hegamony of knowledge? The purpose is political and economic. Imperialism is one such expression. Their economic hegamony is founded on global capitalism.
There is hardly any merit in having a debate with Jathika Chinthana. There is no purpose in debating with religious fanatics too. The simple question Marxists must put to the working class, the workers and youth who belong to different identities is, how to resolve the crisis of global inequality, poverty and social misery, which are objective realities, also perceived by mind through the senses. The programme to defeat identity politics needs to assert the fight against Capitalism.
Marxists examine the objective economic, political and historical foundations of a phenomenon, an incident, a development. Instead of analysing the histories of a nationality, Marxists analyse the history of nationalism being used as a bourgeoisie weapon of class division.
Nalin de Silva's theory on mind and knowlede being fundamentally idealist, Marxists should plainly deny any impact on Marxist programme for Socialism and against Capitalism. The basic line of division between Marxism and Constructive Relativism is the line dividing materialism and idealism.
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