පෙරටුගාමී පක්ෂයේ ස්වයං විවේචනය
Amid the decay of every party, Ivan reviews the newly formed Frontline Socialist Party through its 445-page book on the JVP’s path from 1978 to 2012, billed as a self-criticism but really a critique of its parent party. Its young members are committed, he says, but their thinking still lives before the fall of the Berlin Wall, ending with Lenin on the dictatorship of the proletariat. The book romanticises JVP culture without asking why idealistic youth became executioners in 1988–89. He traces a thread through the JVP’s history: after Wijeweera’s disappointing 273,248 votes in 1982, the party never found a leader the public would accept, backing Rajapaksa in 2005 and Fonseka in 2010 for want of its own candidate — a dilemma rooted in race, caste and religion. The FSP must put knowledge before action.
ප්රගතිශීලිත්වය හා ප්රතිගාමිත්වය
A philosophical and historical reflection by the author on their controversial support for the state’s harsh military suppression of both the JVP insurrection and the LTTE. Drawing comparisons to the non-violent civil rights movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, the author argues that when armed rebellions become devastatingly brutal and jeopardize society, state counter-violence can sometimes be a progressive necessity rather than a reactionary evil.
දාර්ශනික මාක්ස් හා දේශපාලනික මාක්ස්
A reply to Sumanasiri, who holds that Marx the philosopher is not dead. Ivan grants that the world Marx hoped for is more beautiful than liberal democracy, but separates the philosopher from the politician. Drawing on Dmitri Volkogonov’s biographies of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, drawn from the opened Soviet archives, he argues that attempts to build Marx’s world produced tyranny, likens Pol Pot, Wijeweera and Prabhakaran to those figures, and concludes that capitalism cannot be replaced and must be reformed through liberal democracy, his preferred model being Gandhi’s India.
ප්රචණ්ඩ අරගලයේ දුෂ්ට චක්රය
Writing in the first person, Ivan defends a view that angered Tamil intellectuals at a seminar: that the LTTE’s demand for absolute power should be met but confined to Tamil areas. He argues that every violent movement ends by devouring its own dissenters, citing Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Bukharin, the JVP’s killing of former comrades and the LTTE’s murder of Amirthalingam and Neelan Tiruchelvam, and advises dissident Tamils to stand aside while Prabhakaran is judged by the Tamil people.