Daily Times

April of 1979 brought another day of doom in the chequered history of Pakistan. A brewing tempest unravelled, and an action-packed drama reached its expected conclusion. A populist leader, a demagogue, a brilliant albeit remarkably controversial former prime minister, was sent to the gallows in hideous circumstance by a Frankenstein’s monster. The impossible happened, but as A J P Taylor points out, “Impossible is what we get from history.” An ogre-like knight in shimmering arms stepped on to the political scene. Yet another insult was conferred on the people of Pakistan. The mode of deception was new, but the theme remained reassuringly the same. The panacea of Islam was aggressively pandered to assuage the people weary of dismal economics. To legitimise the army rule, religious militancy was promoted. The process of bludgeoning with this instrument had already been initiated through parliament by none other than the most populist leader the state had ever known. With active state collusion, the recrudescence of religious fascism developed into a hydra-headed monster.

The irony of history is that such disasters are always triggered by those who themselves boast about their secular, if not agnostic, credentials. Mussolini initially pretended to be a Marxist. Hitler, Ben-Gurion, Nasser and Bhutto — all claimed to be socialists. However, none of them ever believed in the tenets of socialism and all had the military’s might lurking behind them. The most common feature was the crisis of hegemony of a social group or the general crisis of state. According to Gramsci, “At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties.” This means that traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men who lead them, are no more accepted as the representatives of their class. This conflict reverberates from the terrain of the parties. Gramsci adds, “…the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic ‘men of destiny’.”

After the election of 1970, when Mujibur Rehman pulled off a landslide victory, it was the general consensus that the capitalists of Pakistan had managed to draw first blood from feudal veins. Rehman, like Bhutto, was the flag-bearer of socialism, but in reality, he was the representative of the emergent capitalist class of East Bengal. Bhutto was instead guarding the interests of the ruling feudal aristocracy backed by a humbled, debased and reluctant army — innately ‘Bonapartist’, lamenting over its loss of face in East Pakistan. To avoid any inner violence, the ruling elite was compelled to crown Bhutto a Brutus who apparently betrayed his own class. At the cost of a mythical two-nation theory and territory, the country was reclaimed for the feudal aristocracy. The status quo was reimposed. Bhutto laboured under the illusion that his electoral victory was not due to his socialist programme but to his personal charisma. Therefore, instead of carrying through his manifesto, he decided to rally the masses round his personality. Among the masses, a surging enthusiasm about socialism scared him. In order to shake the people’s confidence in this ideology, half-baked measures and certain catastrophic decisions were taken — all with malefic intentions. The premeditated ill-planned nationalisation, the taking over of small businesses and farcical land reforms further strangulated the emerging bourgeoisie. After dispensing with it, the working class was smothered. In the name of the Paris Commune, a massacre of workers was carried out who were merely demanding a wage increase of two rupees. History bears testimony that the defeat of the working class in its struggle against state oppression invariably paves the way for every type of fascism. Class struggle once disguised reveals itself only in the conflict of artificial forces — religion is one of them.

At that juncture in history, class wars for ultimate hegemony were being waged in every nook and cranny of the world, from Vietnam to Chile. Pakistan was no exception. At home, the subjective element was subdued, but the events outside Pakistan were not under the command of the ruling elite. To stem the tide of this external influence, a leaf from the Nazi handbook was borrowed. One section of the middle class was incited against the other. Class consciousness hardly fascinates this narcissistic stratum. In Nazi Germany, the recession of capitalism manifested in the victimisation of the Jews, while in Pakistan, the Ahmedis were selected for purgation. The magnitude of mortality and the process of execution may not be identical, but the objectives were the same. That is, diversion from the real problems and keeping the property relations unchanged — both were achieved. Instead of revolution, restoration prevailed. Overproduction of human beings and the ‘dead’ capital were taken care of.

Armies are not constitutionally barred from making politics since an army’s duty is precisely to defend the constitution. In other words, its job is to protect the legal form of the state together with its related institutions. Hence, so-called neutrality only means support for the reactionary side. In Pakistan, the army assumes this role directly and rarely shares power with the civilian leadership. Those were unique times that brought ‘Caesarism’ to the fore, since the crisis of authority forced the army to shed its character temporarily. According to Gramsci, “Caesarism can be said to express a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner; that is to say, they balance each other in such a way that a continuation of the conflict can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. To avoid the violent solutions, a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation.” Caesarism may have seemingly opposing forms: progressive and reactionary. The progressive forces triumph in the former though the victory is tempered by compromises and limitations, whereas reactionary Caesarism has directly inverse features. Caesar and Napoleon I are examples of progressive Caesarism; it had a quantitative/qualitative character, as the social system was completely changed. In contrast, Napoleon III and Bismarck are examples of the reactionary type, which due to their quantitative nature were limited; there was no ‘passage’ of one type of state to the other, but only ‘evolution’ of the same type along unbroken lines. Bhutto’s Caeserism was of the latter type. Relations of production remained unchanged and the feudal in collaboration with the army held sway. In the modern world, due to the development of a dominant social form, modern Caesarism is more a police rather than a military type. The difference between Bonapartism and Caesarism is subtle. The general historical conditions of both are the same, i.e. an equilibrium of the conflicting urban classes, but the former has an ideology while the latter is barren of it.

Bhutto hampered the transfer of power to the legitimate winner with the help of the army and the feudal aristocracy. The emerging democracy was held hostage to Bonapartism. Consequently, he inherited the designation of a chief martial law administrator when he came into power, a stigma that remained with him for two long years. Those who live by the sword die by the sword — indeed, this saying proved true. Once again, a new economic conflict emerged between sections of the urban petit bourgeoisie. The humiliated and disgraced army immediately found its role, since the phenomenon of balance of forces re-surfaced. The state crucified the statesman. The feudal class annihilated its own leader because either he had outlived his utility or they received a godsend messiah, a better defender of their class interests. For history an abhorrent, sleazy monster, a malignant malady inflicted the nation, but for Marxism, a perfect representative of a class took over.

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com