As if Karachi has not endured enough bloodshed and mayhem, it has been struck yet again by a heinous massacre of the Ismailis in a bestial frenzy of sectarian violence. Gunmen on motorcycles boarded a bus and opened fire on commuters in Karachi on Wednesday, killing at least 45. The pink bus was pockmarked with bullet holes. Blood saturated the seats and dripped out of the doors onto the concrete. “As the gunmen climbed onto the bus loaded with 60 passengers, one of them shouted, ‘Kill them all! Then they started indiscriminately firing at everyone they saw,’” a wounded woman told a television channel by phone. The attackers managed to flee after the attack. The whole of society seems to be in traumatic shock. Another terrorist attack, another massacre, another eruption of bloody sectarian bloodshed and another volley of hypocritical condemnations from the rich and the mighty; the vicious cycle goes on. These acts of regular frequency are a harrowing feature and norm of this society trapped in a brutal decay of the system with its eroding state writ and structures, and tearing apart of the social fabric of the country. This just places more misery on the toiling people already suffering physical and psychological traumas inflicted by economic hardships, social suffocation, cultural rot and the callousness that has seeped into human relations by the venom of greed, lust and alienation inflicted by this capitalist system. Leon Trotsky described fascism and brute terrorist pogroms as the “distilled essence of capitalism”. The indifference towards bloodshed and human mutilation has grown in society, particularly in Karachi, due to the continuum of remorseless and insane terror that has engulfed society for almost four decades. This is a by-product of the social and cultural malaise this society is beset with.The militant group Jundullah claimed responsibility. Its spokesman, Ahmed Marwat, told Reuters, “These killed people were Ismailis and we consider them kaafir (non-Muslim). We had four attackers. In the coming days we will attack Ismailis, Shias and Christians.” This group has links with the Pakistani Taliban and, last November, pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS). Later, a Twitter account belonging to militants identifying themselves as Khorasan Province IS claimed responsibility. “Thanks to God, 45 apostates were killed and close to 30 others were wounded in an attack by the soldiers of Islamic State on a bus carrying people of the Shia Ismaili sect in Karachi,” they said. The media hullaballoo, duplicitous outcry of the political elite and the setting up of yet another joint investigation team (JIT) will rapidly fade or get pushed aside by another brutal act or vicious scandal cutting across mass attention. The media barons will instantaneously forgive and forget this atrocious act. There will be superficial and meaningless analysis as it vanishes from the social and political horizon, and the corrupt rulers, this state and its mandarins will rapidly fall back into the norm. The plague of religious terror and bloodletting, which is driving this country into barbarism, cannot be diagnosed, what to say of treatment, without analysing the terminally ailing economic, social and state system in which this society is fettered.In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the left and complete betrayal and abandonment of the oppressed masses by the PPP, there ensued a huge political vacuum. Large sections of the petit bourgeoisie and the primitive layers of society became easy prey to the guiles of the Islamists. What was more pronounced was the relative political apathy that developed due to lack of an alternative and genuine representation of the toiling classes. With the intensifying crisis of capitalism, the convulsions and discontent aggravated. All parties in the political spectrum, from the Islamists to the social democrats, subscribe to capitalism. With the massive tumour of black money choking Pakistan’s capitalism, it has become a festering wound in the body politic of the land.Prolonged economic and social crises have led to the rise of toxic, xenophobic ideologies. These tendencies are bloodily spiralling sectarian conflicts. The crisis unravels the conventional mores of certainty and stability, shattering the notions of identity and belonging. In the garb of religion, particularly the lumpenised youth have turned to violent terrorist acts and the pogroms of Islamist extremism. They are less driven by theology and more by the insecurity of a fractured identity and psychology. In this maelstrom, the supply of countless billions of dollars to Islamist fundamentalist networks with a penchant for violence empowers groups that previously lacked any local constituency. The reactionary mullahs exploit inflamed grievances with this massive input of resources to Islamist ideologues that pull angry, alienated, vulnerable individuals into their vortex of xenophobic extremism. The end point of that process is the creation of monsters. US imperialists and sections of the state here now have to face the music of their own making. It is here that we can see the role of psychological indoctrination fine-tuned through years of training under the patronage of western and Pakistani intelligence agencies. These agencies have always been intimately involved in the crafting of violent Islamist indoctrination tools. The Pakistani state has carried out numerous operations, there have been countless peace talks and resolutions by parliaments, and the parties are detested by the masses, yet this curse of terrorism goes on in its own periodical cycles. The PML-N had always had a ‘soft’ corner for the Islamists. On coming to power most politicians exploit religious sentiments and sectarian prejudices to drive a wedge in the class struggle and distort movements in order to strengthen their grip on power. However, their grip on power and on these Frankenstein monsters has gotten weaker over time. The forces they are trying to eliminate have already penetrated significant sections of the system, state and economy. Barbarism is pounding at the door and there is nothing this disease ridden capitalist system can do to avert the impending holocaust. Rosa Luxemburg first raised the idea that humanity faced a choice between the victory of socialism or the end of civilisation in a powerful pamphlet she wrote in prison in 1915. Luxemburg attributed the concept to one of the founders of Marxism: “Friedrich Engels once said: In a hundred years bourgeois society will stand at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism. Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the collapse of all civilisation as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration — a great cemetery, or the victory of socialism.” Rosa Luxemburg wrote these words on the eve of World War I. A century later, today, in countries like Pakistan, the choice cannot be more vivid and the task more urgent. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com