Daily Times

The mayhem and human slaughter that has been prevalent in Karachi for more than three decades intensifies periodically. Another wave of this dreadful violence has been unleashed in recent weeks. However, this gruesome spate of killings and devastation is not the cause but a symptom of the severely diseased social and economic system the harrowing crisis of which are now nudging society into the throes of barbarism. Those at the helm of the political pyramid of this system and the echelons of power seem to be clueless to put an end to this violence and forge a lasting peace. Or perhaps the political and the state structures are themselves embroiled in this mayhem and the conflicts that are exploding are the clash of different sections of finance capital representing their vested interests in the different belligerent factions of the political and state institutions.

As price hike, poverty, misery, destitution, deprivation and disease continues to pillage society, the ruling elite is indifferent and callous to the plight of the masses and indulge into even more haggling and farcical absurdities that mock the gruesome realities of life in Pakistan. But one thing they never forgo is their insatiable lust for plundering of the state and society. The nauseating political wrangling, trading affiliations, prostituting principles and the ideological betrayals and treachery, and the sinister politics of reconciliation have drenched the masses into an even greater morass of despair and indignation. The conflicts within the state are further aggravating the terror and trauma in society. The relationship of mutual deception and deceit between US imperialism and the military high command has entered a crucial phase of antagonism. The military chain of command set up by the British Raj has eroded and is in an appalling condition. The political and the state structures fabricated by the imperialists to impose the rule of capitalist exploitation and plunder is teetering at the brink. Society is stagnant yet it has become more volatile and turbulent than ever before. This situation cannot last for long.

The masses in their sufferings and desperate conditions of life may be politically dormant and have not yet embarked onto the path of a mass movement but they are yearning for a change. Life and even human existence have become intolerably cumbersome. The political alternatives though with many names and parties are in reality with a single economic programme, i.e. capitalism. Their differences are superfluous and their alliances and their conflicts are hypocritical and deceptive. Hence changing of loyalties and betrayal for material gains has become the hallmark of today’s politics. When ideology takes a backseat then crime, corruption and vigilantism comes to the fore and its cancerous outgrowths tear apart the social fabric of the country. Hence it is a stark reality that political parties that dominate Pakistan today are the instruments of coercion and vandalism of the drug mafias, land and property grabbers and those involved in heinous crimes. The Pakistani ruling classes have to indulge in crime and corruption, extortion and theft, evade taxes, steal electricity gas and other infrastructural facilities, viciously attack and exploit the workers and the peasants and regularly get their massive loans written off to maintain their economic and political status. Hence they need state power to cover up and sustain the Mafiosi capitalism and the plunder that is the basis of the existence of their class. This comprador bourgeoisie has to be subservient to the imperialists as they have failed to build a modern bourgeois state that they had envisaged at the time of partition. Therefore, their pretence of any national sovereignty is a farce designed to deceive the oppressed masses.

The theory of reconciliation that was devised in connivance with imperialism was to amicably divide the loot and plunder between the different warring sections of the ruling classes who had bought their way up in the structures of the so-called political parties. This pathetic reconciliation has aggravated the conflicts between these factions even more. Although most political parties in this capitalist super structure have been in state power in one way or the other, yet the dearth of economic resources and their lust for more has blown these coalitions apart. The Americans want the most corrupt at the top as they are more vulnerable and subservient. In the last period this political gimmickry has been exposed and the masses are in a state of political disillusionment. For three generations they had espoused and relished the PPP as their political tradition and representation. The intrusion of capitalists and landlords onto the hierarchy has dashed those hopes and aspirations. The masses will probably rally once again towards their political tradition in the next political upheaval but that upheaval will transform the PPP and the incumbent leadership, which anyway does not have any prolonged affiliation to the party, would also be sidelined. It also cannot be ruled out that the PPP might collapse as a tradition before the next mass upsurge. It will depend on the intensity of events and the course the objective situation takes. The right-wing is weak and has a narrow, if any, real social base. The religious fundamentalists have been fatally exposed. The MQM originated of a narrow ethnic base. Its rise was a serious setback for the class unity of the workers and the oppressed masses, especially in Karachi. Its long stints in power with all sorts of parties and regimes have severely eroded its base even amongst the ‘Mohajirs’. Its ‘endeavours’ to become a national force are already fizzling out.

Certain sections of the ruling classes are vying to build Imran Khan as a ‘new’ political alternate. But what alternative economic model does he present? None. His appeasement of the western democracy with a tinge of national chauvinism is too absurd a policy to pull out the masses from this horrifying condition that capitalism has plunged them into. The masses have experienced the fruits of the independence of the judiciary. Justice has become exorbitantly more expensive after its ‘independence’.

Political alternatives that transform societies and change the course of history are not projected by different sections of the state and the elites, nor does the bourgeois media ever present them as a political force. It is almost impossible for a revolutionary organisation to become a mass force in a reactionary milieu. It is the turning of the tide, the change in the objective situation when the masses shed their prejudices and chains and enter the arena that a revolutionary organisation in a dialectical interaction with the objective situation can become that instrument that is necessary for the class struggle to transform society.

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