Nava Sama Samaja Party


The Nava Sama Samaja Pakshaya is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka. It was formed through the expulsion from the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of the Vama Samsamja tendency led by Dr Vickrambahu, Sumanasiri Liyanage and others. Siritunga Jayasuriya and Vasudeva Nanayakkara joined later. In 1976 when the LSSP was thrown out of the coalition large numbers joined the tendency and in December 1977 it declared itself as Nava Sama Samaja Party.
Initially the NSSP was affiliated with the Committee for a Workers' International but, in the opinion of the CWI, never fully agreed with the analysis that it had made of Stalinism, of developments in the former colonial and semi-colonial world and the national question. It departed with CWI in 1988, in a process described by some as expulsion, but by the CWI as a split. The remaining CWI members formed the United Socialist Party. Since 1991 the NSSP, led by Vikramabahu Karunaratne, has been the Sri Lankan section of the Fourth International.