e-Con e-News

blog: https://eesrilanka.wordpress.com

‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 18-24 January 2026

A leading ‘international school’ in Colombo had refused to pay a Sri Lankan ‘science’ teacher the same salary as the previous, white, ‘science’ teacher from England. The Sri Lankan is a PhD from the USA’s MIT, while the white teacher hardly had university qualifications. The Sri Lankan owner of the school insisted that it was parents of the students that wanted white teachers for their children; parents would not pay the high rates the school demanded if there were only Sri Lankan teachers. It appears that the parents, mainly import merchants & private professionals, want their children to study ‘Whiteness’ (perhaps creating a new academic discipline: WSL – Whiteness as a Second Lifestyle’). It should be noted that ‘International Schools’ are illegal under the Education Act but legalized under the Companies Act. This too is ‘reform’ – and no doubt a fine example for children to learn about how the rule of law and private-public partnership (PPP) models work. Students could even calculate how the RoI (Return on Investment) is greater!  Further note: They hired a white woman to replace the Sri Lankan, and yes, paid her more, including ‘benefits’ the Sri Lankan teacher had not received: health insurance, rent for accommodation, paid vacation plus air tickets to return home. Such is the nature of this ruling merchant class…

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‘At the University of Hanoi the janitor

was a Frenchman – & he was paid more

than a Vietnamese with a PhD from Paris’

­– SBD de Silva (PEU)

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There were (and are) ‘various devices whereby white supremacy [was /is] maintained in the colonies… The most economically depressed whites had a status higher than that of the highest natives’,records SBD de Silva, as ee Focus continues Chapter 6 of his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (PEU). Here de Silva describes the careful fine-tuning of the image of the white man, and the role the media had to play (& still plays).

     SBD also examines the forging of a new ‘nationality’ among settlers, essential to create a sense of permanent belonging to their stolen occupied territory. This also required a commitment to long-term investment in modern industrial skills. He also compares the different white attitudes towards Indian migrants in Uganda & Kenya based on their economic roles in those African societies. White settler communities tended to be ‘more race conscious than expatriates’. ‘The lowest-ranking settlers were the most virulent in their racism’ due to facing greater competition from the natives. ‘Political rather than economic forces’ were thus ‘allowed to determine the structure of production’, and white migration was officially subsidized.

     Meanwhile in non-settler colonies like Sri Lanka ‘where there was a ready basis of revenue’ (Cinnamon, etc), ‘the active sponsoring of European investors was not critically important’. ‘Official intervention was limited merely to facilitating labour migration’ (indeed, we do not need to ponder too deeply why Indian High Commissioner Santosh Jha was accorded Chief Guest status at the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon/EFC’s National Best Employer Awards 2025 – see ee Who’s Who).

     In Sri Lanka, de Silva asserts, importantly, ‘the creation of a proletariat, through the eviction of peasants from extensive areas or the undermining of the traditional economy, was not called for’. SBD has also elsewhere noted that the English bestowed on us the most impoverished peasantry in Asia, at Soulbury independence in 1948. He also points out that ‘taxation had revenue considerations’ generally through indirect taxes (often an export duty)’, whereas in the settler colonies, direct taxes were imposed ‘to divert labour to settler enterprises’. (Why the English – and their colonized successors – have been keen on preventing the formation of a proletariat in Sri Lanka is another tale to be told!).  

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• The English, to maintain Sri Lanka’s loyalty during their World War 2, had to enable a type of ‘free education’ in the country, while providing other social services, rice rations, etc. This ee Focus also examines the ongoing sabotage of Sri Lanka’s ‘free’ healthcare service. This month’s Cabinet proposal sets out to allow private importers to rent vital equipment (scanners, angiographs, etc) to government hospitals, which the government would still have to pay for. These private importers will also rent out dialysis units. Sri Lanka is compared & contrasted to the dramatic post-Thatcherite deterioration of England’s national health service midst the soaring of health costs. Responding to the cabinet claim that private financing is necessary because the government lacks needed funds, the author crucially highlights: in 2025, about ‘80% of the funds allocated to the Ministry of Health went unutilized and were returned to the Treasury’! These deadly actions need to be examined midst the IMF’s escalated whinging for the privatization of national institutions. (The failure to enable an industrialized economy that can ensure such social services could be sustained and are not to be bartered away for balancing budgets is another tale to be told).

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‘Billionaires & super-rich increasingly dominate media & AI.

Over half of the world’s largest media companies have billionaire

owners & 9 of the top 10 social media companies in the world are

run by just 6 billionaires. 8 of the top 10 AI companies – which

overlap with media companies – are billionaire-run, with just 3

commanding nearly 90% of the generative AI chatbot market.’

– Oxfam (see ee Economists, 1 in 4 Face Hunger as Billionaire

Wealth Grows Higher Than Any Time in History)

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‘To what extent is Gross Domestic Product

a sufficient indicator of social & economic

wellbeing? We know, from the moment the

notion was ‘invented’ that even its ‘founder’

Simon Kuznets warned of its limitations.

He warned the US Congress, ‘The welfare

of a nation can scarcely be inferred from

a measure of national income’.’

– Warwick Powell (ee Economists, Rising

Use Value in an Age of Slowing Growth)

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‘2 rapid assessments of Cyclone Ditwah’s economic impact in

Sri Lanka were carried out independently by the World Bank &

the International Labour Organization (ILO)… The apparent gap

between WB’s 4% of GDP estimate & ILO’s 16% of GDP

figure can be confusing if not carefully understood. These

numbers do not measure the same thing, & they do not contradict

each other… Put simply, WB measures the ‘bricks & mortar’

while ILO measures the ‘bread&butter’. This distinction is vital

for policymakers because recovery must address both the reconstruction

of infrastructure & the stabilisation of livelihoods.’ – Sirimal Abeyratne

(ee Economists, Growth that Lasts, not just rebuilds)

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‘IMF ‘tunnel vision’ obscures the reality of a 13% spike

in poverty, the 2^nd-highest increase recorded in any

country undergoing a debt crisis in the last decade. There’s

a growing disconnect between the narrative of macroeconomic

stability & the ground reality faced by Sri Lankans. The Central

Bank missed inflation targets for 6 consecutive quarters.’

– US Verité Research Chief (see ee Economists, SL

must focus on addressing real economy…)

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• This week, as every year, the World Economic Forum has met in Davos,Switzerland, expansively advertised as assembling ‘over 3,000 global leaders, including heads of state, government leaders, chief executive officers of leading multinational corporations, policymakers, & technology innovators’. At the same time, as usual, England’s well-fed beggars, the English ‘charity’ Oxfam, releases their annual report, a high-pitched caterwauling, spiced with superlative hyperbole about greedy superrich & billionaires, dictators & capitalist oligarchs, etc, and then asks for more donations.

     It therefore becomes most important for us to first get the names & words right. ee has come to regard all these labels – such as ‘working people’, ‘big business’, notions such as ‘neoliberalism’ (see Random Notes), and measures such as ‘GDP’, repeated hourly & annually by the real enemy, the capitalist ruling classes – as inadequate & diversionary. The economists that their media promote, whether it be Joseph Schumpeter or Max Weber, or their more modern avatars, the Hayeks et al, merely attempt to counter the living science that alone defeated capitalism in the 20^th century – Marxism-Leninism – which provides concrete words that enable concrete practices. Oxfam’s solution is to call for ‘a worldwide people’s movement for a more equal world by bringing together civil society organisations, trade unions, marginalised & other groups & networks’. The mountain labors and brings forth a mouse.

     The former Bank of England & Bank of Canada governor and present Canadian PM Mark Carney’s speech at Davos, is being hailed by the imperialist media machine as cocking a snook at the US President, yet Carney’s squeak also scoffs at Marx & Engel’s Communist Manifesto’s last call: Workers of All Countries, Unite! Carney’s Oxford thesis was on the advantages of competition! Since we live in the age of monopoly capitalism, he no doubt feels only workers must compete! Carney, the former 13-year Goldman Sachs employee, would rather prefer the rallying cry ‘Bankers of the World Unite’. Even so, the spectre of Communism haunts the superannuating banker. And why not! Carney, while heading the Bank of England, stole Venezuela’s gold reserves, preparing the path for the US kidnapping of Venezuela’s leaders. Carney cannot admit that Don Trump is no lone hyena but is a creature of the US ruling class. INGOs like Oxfam, too, can never bring themselves to recommend the hitherto record of ‘actually-existing’ defeats of capitalism and attempts to build a better world, midst constant besiegement.

     This ee Focus also looks at the US capitalist forces behind the present US President Don Trump’s rise to power. Our excerpt from Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution: Extravagance & Austerity in Public Finance (2024) signals how big business ‘masquerades’ as small business for tax purposes.

     Indeed, a superficial scan of the English media in Sri Lanka would note the media’s incessant, overweening and gnawing, yet highly dubious, solicitude for so-called MSMEs (micro, small & medium-scale enterprises). They claim MSMEs ‘contribute about 52% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and provide employment to nearly 4.5 million people’. Yet this media rarely provides an actual breakdown of exactly who these MSMEs actually are. Check out any sillara kaday and see what exactly is sold there. ee believes that many of these small ‘enterprises’ are fronts for the multinational corporations (MNCs, eg, Unilever, CIC, CTC, Exxon etc) set up for legally avoiding both labour and tax laws. As for Trump’s named backers, eg, the demonized Koch & Mercer families etc, they themselves are fronts for even larger cartels like Exxon, GE, etc – a matter that Cooper does not explore, even as she exposes the vacuity behind the claims that Trump represents the white working class.

     The function of these Anglo-American & EU-funded intellectuals, including so-called Marxists & Socialists, so-called Independents (tho it is never intimated but is always implied, they mean ‘independent’ of Marxism-Leninism) is to not just downplay the concrete contribution of actual socialist & communist parties, but to aid in their liquidation. While Cooper refers to  the‘commanding heights’of US capitalism, a coinage by Russian revolutionary leader VI Lenin, there’s no reference to Lenin’s classic pamphlet Imperialism, the Latest Stage of Capitalism. Written during the North Atlantic’s World War 1, as ‘a popular outline’: Lenin provides ‘the briefest possible definition[that] imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism’. As many commentators have pointed out, much of the latest capital pools & ‘family offices’ & private equity (PE) have gone ‘dark’, hiding their linkages to the monopolies.

     Cooper says Trump’s business coalition, is made up of ‘the private, unincorporated & family-based versus the corporate, publicly traded, & shareholder-owned’. While a 2025 oil investment market analysis (see ee Industry) concludes: ‘Capital is shifting from traditional institutional investors to more flexible & opportunistic players, driven by attractive valuations, tax incentives, and infrastructure opportunities.’

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• A reader’s comment this week (see ee Security, Big Serge blog) noted that Europe (including England) is already a US colony. The largest army in Europe & East Asia (outside of China & DPR Korea) at present is actually the US (occupation) armies. ‘The USA controls Europe’s internet architecture. Then there is the software dependency (Microsoft, Cloud Services, Enterprise Resource Planning/ERP software, etc), financial rails (SWIFT), & platforms. Europe relies on US-controlled infrastructure at every level: Domain Name Systems (DNS), Root Authorities, Content Delivery Network (CDNs), Cloudflare, Relay Servers, Security Services, Certificates, and De-Facto Standards. Even when servers are physically located in Europe, control remains in the USA – legally, contractually, and operationally. The US does not need sanctions or military force; it already holds the switches. It is increasingly difficult to identify what, in the actual functioning of European societies – administrations, companies, local governments, associations – is not under US control. Any geopolitical scenario that ignores this material reality is reasoning about a world that no longer exists…’

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• ee asked the US’ google search to give an exact number of search references to ‘postcolonial’. They answered: ‘Based on a search, there is no single, static ‘exact’ number, as search engine results fluctuate continuously. However, a search for the term ‘postcolonial’ (using quotes for an exact match) on google typically yields roughly 5 to 8 million results, while the broader term postcolonialism often generates over 10 million results. Google Scholar results for ‘postcolonial’ in titles, as of early 2026, often total over 300,000 scholarly articles & books.’ Then ee asked, ‘How many of these scholars would join the frontlines in Gaza, Venezuela or Greenland to make post-colonialty an off-paper reality?’ US google replied: ‘The number of these scholars transitioning from academic critique to ‘off-paper’ frontline action is historically & statistically low…’

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‘It is then in making hope practical,

rather than despair convincing,

that we must resume & change

& extend our campaigns.’

– Raymond Williams, 1980

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‘Business must continue to be profit-oriented, but at the same time

we must keep in close contact with men who are not essentially

profit-oriented – that troublesome but creative minority of

intellectuals who can help us to identify emerging social problems

before they reach crisis proportions.’ – David Rockefeller, 1969

 (quoted by William Worthy, Reporting the News

in the Heartland of Empire, 1970, see ee Media)

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VI Lenin passed away 102 years ago (January 21, 1924). Lenin wrote that it’s the responsibility of the working class in the imperialist countries to protect the right of colonized nations to self-determination, and to fight for their freedom. A Communist commentator has noted that Sri Lanka, as an English colony, first received England’s version of Marxism; later, Communist Party members got to know about the Soviet version of Marxism, and only then learned of Lenin’s contribution to Marxism. He says: ‘Lenin called China, Persia, Turkey & all other colonies as a 3^rd type of countries, where billions of people lived. This included countries like our Sri Lanka. There was no industrial revolution in these countries, and there was no way for an industrial capitalist class to arise. Without factories & an industrial capitalist class, how could a working class arise? … Workers had to come together & live together as a large community. Working class consciousness is a collective consciousness. Why do our university students gather together and make a lot of noise during their studies? They do so because they are bound together by a collective consciousness. But when they graduate and go home, they disperse. Their collective consciousness disappears. When new students join together in universities, they too take up the baton of student struggle.

For the group consciousness of a working class to arise, workers must gather together as a group. Workers leave home in the morning, work for 8 hours and return home in the evening (that is, rejoin the larger society) but do not develop such a collective worker consciousness. But as Lenin said, they can develop a trade union consciousness. They struggle for wages, promotions, and other rights. However, scattered, loosely organized labor movements also arise in such countries. Lenin says, the workers’ movements that arise in this way should be organized for the liberation of their nation (for the right of self-determination of their nation). For that (national liberation), the most revolutionary sections of the capitalist-democratic movements should be supported by the working ‘class’. The Left-Nationalist mergers in our country (eg, the merger of our Left party with the SLFP) happened based on this guidance of Lenin. Imperialist agents branded this merger as ‘hanging on to hem of sari’ only to weaken the national liberation force against them and for no other reason…’

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• Media literacy is vital in this age of so-called intelligence that is artificial, where algorithms are manipulated to control what data is permitted to cross our eyeballs. Readers have asked ee to offer better sources of news: How does ee forensically dissect the onslaught of & bisect the authentic from the fraudulent? Most public news items are fake. The more ‘honest’ information often has to be paid for. Many items parading as news are indeed written by bots, and extremely sloppy if not blatantly callous, not giving a damn about their readership. It is clear that many sites parading as media outlets have gotten rid of editors & subeditors. The universe is said to have issued out of the brow of Brahma, and then Zeus, but now a fake version issues out of the digital orifices of a wannabe marketing ‘executive’! Another ‘drone’, buzzing on & on… 

     Not wishing to be misled especially at vital moments is important, so as to be clear-eyed about what lies before us. Literacy is crucial, but this must include a numerate literacy, a literate numeracy, a human literacy, as well as a media literacy in this age of diverse bombardments. Any real literacy includes: questioning why you are seeing a particular news item or trope or meme (over & over again, especially), and who has taken the trouble & money to make it occupy your attention.

     We (Sinhalas?) should have acquired great expertise through our incessant sagas of historical betrayal. The English East India Company (EIC) clerk John D’Oyly’s 1801-15 techniques to sabotage the highland kingdom of Sinhalé should have been taught in the College of Journalism (still funded by foreigners). The techniques employed during the last decades, and particularly during the so-called Aragalaya should also be learned. Goebbels ‘big lie’ technique requires mixing small truths with big lies, to make them even bigger. The Nazi Goebbels learned from such imperialist older brothers in England (as England’s Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD) and its leading employee, Robert Conquest), and from such settler-USA luminaries as Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, the so-called founding father of propaganda (publicly called: Public Relations) and an employee of banker JP Morgan in the USA.

     We can point to seminal literature of almost 50 years ago, such as Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky’s Washington Connection & Third World Fascism, detailing the role that the New York Times & Washington Post has played in promoting wars, and the US teaching of techniques of torture throughout the world.

     A careful examination of ee’s many non-NATO sources would uncover a reliance on such sites as Radio Havana Cuba, CGTN, Black Agenda Report, Tricontinental, Moon of Alabama (MoA), Dancing with Bears, New Atlas, etc. But most important of all, we have to learn from the struggle to carve out our own point of view of our own history & future, with a plan & program to liberate the country & build a modern industrial society.

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Contents:

True Human Intelligence & Literacy in An Age of Faked AI Media in Sri Lanka