by Luxman Aravind
Did you see it? Of course you did. How could anyone miss it? The nation stood still, transfixed, as if beholding the second coming—not of revolution, but of revelry. And oh, there’s more to come, for this is the essence of our national zeitgeist: a paradox served on a silver platter. Minimalism in rhetoric, maximalism in indulgence. Joyful hypocrisy cloaked in solemn slogans. This, dear comrades, is the apex of our aspirations—a spectacle so absurd it transcends irony and ascends into the realm of philosophical inevitability.
The ABBA concert at the Mount Lavinia Hotel, where the top “comrades” and their enablers in this freshly minted government danced under chandeliers and sipped fine whisky, is not an event to lament but a moment to savour for its sheer philosophical richness. Here lies the ultimate dialectical contradiction: the revolutionaries, adorned in the trappings of the bourgeoisie they once loathed, exposing a truth more profound than any manifesto ever articulated. For decades, they rallied the downtrodden against the excesses of power and wealth, decrying champagne as the nectar of exploitation and ballrooms as stages of moral decay. And yet, as the notes of ABBA’s timeless tunes reverberated through the night, they revealed their deepest secret: revolution was not the destruction of the old order but their grand entrance into it.
One of the top comrades’ statements during the event, “Now we can enjoy forever,” is more than a declaration. It is a revelation. It unveils not only the suppressed desires of a lifetime but also the hollowness of decades spent vilifying the very pleasures they now eagerly embrace. In this single moment of candour, the comrade embodied a phenomenon that Lenin, in State and Revolution, so eloquently dissected: the rise of pseudo-socialists who use revolutionary rhetoric to conceal their complicity in perpetuating the systems they claim to oppose. Lenin’s warning about the perils of reformists who capitulate to the bourgeoisie echoes resoundingly here. These are not revolutionaries overthrowing the bourgeois system—they are its latest recruits.
The scene itself is a study in the surreal, the absurd, and the tragicomic. The most senior comrade in the clan, seated conspicuously between a feminist and her “special secretary,” was not the revolutionary vanguard he once proclaimed to be. He was a participant in what Gramsci might have called a passive revolution. The transformation here is subtle yet profound: the ideology that once sought to dismantle the elite is now a means to justify integration into it. Gramsci’s theory of transformismo—the absorption of dissenting voices into the dominant order—finds its perfect exemplars in these former firebrands, now nursing their guilty pleasures with the finesse of seasoned capitalists.
This is no mere betrayal of ideology but its natural evolution. The moral austerity preached for decades was never a virtue; it was a necessity imposed by exclusion. Nietzsche’s insights in The Genealogy of Morals offer an apt lens: “Man would rather will nothingness than not will.” For years, the JVP/NPP leadership willed deprivation, not because it was just but because it was the only will they possessed. Their ideology was forged in the fires of scarcity, a weapon against the joy they could not afford. Now, with access to abundance, the will to nothingness has been replaced by a will to indulgence.
The humour of the comrade’s broken English speech to an audience of elites should not overshadow its deeper implications. It was not merely a linguistic stumble but a symbolic act of submission. By choosing to address his newfound peers in a language he barely commanded, a top comrade revealed an aspirational desperation. Here was a man who, for years, railed against the colonial hangover of English, now using it as a ticket to acceptance among the elite. Machiavelli’s timeless observation in The Prince feels especially apt: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” The top comrade was neither feared nor loved, merely tolerated as a curiosity—a revolutionary leader turned awkward guest.
The deeper irony is not in their attendance at the concert but in their justification of it. When the Rajapaksas indulged in luxury, it was framed as an unforgivable betrayal of the people. Yet now, the same indulgence is rationalised as a deserved respite for “decades of sacrifice.” Freud’s theory of projection resonates here: their hatred of the elite was never about principle but envy. The revolution they sold to the masses was not about dismantling power structures but about trading places with those who occupied them.
We might do well to pause and consider the cultural symbolism of ABBA in this context. The Swedish pop group, emblematic of Western consumer culture, became the soundtrack of an evening where the revolutionaries of austerity sang a different tune. This is not mere irony; it is the inevitable culmination of a movement built on contradictions. Orwell, in Animal Farm, warned us of this: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.” The cycle is complete. The revolutionaries have become indistinguishable from those they once opposed.
Yet, focusing solely on the personal failings of a select few misses the larger picture. This is not just about individuals but about the nature of pseudo-socialist movements that emerge in times of crisis. Lenin, in critiquing the Mensheviks, cautioned against those who wield the language of revolution while maintaining the structures of oppression. The pseudo-socialist does not aim to redistribute power but to concentrate it differently, masking exploitation under the guise of equality.
The social consequences of this charade are profound. As the masses struggle with rising costs, inadequate public services, and diminishing hope, the spectacle of their supposed leaders revelling in luxury deepens disillusionment. The man who sees his electricity cut off because he cannot afford the bill is unlikely to find solace in the image of the most senior comrade toasting to revolution with Black Label in hand. And yet, this disillusionment is part of the process. It is the peeling away of illusions, the exposure of what was always true: revolutions led by those who crave power are destined to reproduce the same hierarchies they claim to dismantle.
On the streets, party members wearing T-shirts clean roads to mark President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s birthday, a performative gesture designed to project humility. But this act, juxtaposed with the ballroom revelry of the night before, lays bare the duality of pseudo-socialism. The public performance of austerity is a mask, worn to conceal the private indulgence of those at the top. It is a reminder of Marx’s admonition that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
And yet, should we begrudge them this moment of joy? Perhaps not. For in their indulgence, they have provided a service more valuable than any revolutionary promise: the gift of clarity. Their actions strip away the pretence of ideological purity, revealing the universal truth of human ambition and desire. As Baudrillard might argue, the spectacle is not a distortion of reality but its most honest expression. The ABBA concert, with its glittering chandeliers and guilty pleasures, is not a betrayal of the revolution. It is its ultimate realisation.
So let them dance, drink, and declare their joy. Let them embody the contradictions of their movement. For in doing so, they remind us of a lesson as old as politics itself: the true revolution is not in overthrowing systems but in understanding them. And as the notes of Dancing Queen fade into the night, we are left with a tableau of irony, hypocrisy, and the enduring power of human desire. The revolution, it seems, was never about tearing down the ballroom. It was about finding a way in. But we missed you, Ambassador Julie Chung (Chung Ji-yoon); if you were hidden.
