Daily Times

On a national level, there are two classes in any given society: the bourgeois and the proletariat, or the peasantry in the rural agrarian economies. The bourgeois are generally privileged and educated people, while the peasantry is uncivilised and illiterate. But who do the socialists, who tend to look at social issues from structural angle, hold responsible for social inequities? Obviously, they hold the bourgeois responsible for structural injustices.

Similarly, on an international scale there are civilised and progressive developed states and impoverished and underdeveloped states. However, from a structural angle under a neo-colonial dispensation, who should we hold responsible for exploitation and injustice on a global scale?

It may sound paradoxical but the fact is that there are only two classes in the developed world; the ultra-rich and the middle class. Social inequality does exist but real poverty doesn’t exist in countries where the labour earns its wages in dollar, Euros and pounds. Millions of labourers from underdeveloped countries have immigrated to wealthy Western and Arab countries, where they make enough money to support themselves as well as their families back home. This shows that the working class in prosperous countries is fairly well-off.

European culture evolved in a bottom-up manner during the Renaissance period, especially after the invention of the Gutenberg printing press which made books and newspapers cheap and within the reach of the common man. However, when we look at the technological and economic development of nations in the 20th and 21st centuries, technological development occurred mostly in a top-down manner, particularly in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and in China after the Maoist revolution in 1949

In addition to this, most of the multinational corporations that derive profit from locations around the globe have their headquarters in Western financial districts. These corporations share a portion of their profits with Western governments in the form of taxes. This is why Western governments don’t suffer from a dearth of funds for development and social welfare activities. They can even spend hundreds of billions of dollars on needless wars to spur economic growth (this is also referred to as Military Keynesianism).

There is no doubt that the Western world, along with certain East Asian nations like Japan, South Korea and China are also significantly more technologically developed than regions like South Asia. Consequently India, Bangladesh and Pakistan have remained less developed. In my opinion this is because of India and Pakistan’s failure to create egalitarian societies, which is a leadership failure.

It’s a fact that the European culture evolved in a bottom-up manner during the Renaissance period, especially after the invention of the Gutenberg printing press which made books and newspapers cheap and within the reach of the common man. However, when we look at the technological and economic development of nations in the 20th and 21st centuries, technological development occurred mostly in a top-down manner, particularly in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and in China after the Maoist revolution in 1949.

Cultures take centuries to evolve and the basic driver is always the level of socioeconomic development of the masses, therefore our primary concern should be to improve governance and invest in infrastructure development and the technical education and vocational training of the South Asian labour force. In the long run, technologically advanced and economically prosperous nations are more likely to bring about a cultural change.

The basic trouble with the 21st century social reformers is that they have given up all hope of bringing about economic reforms; nobody talks about the nationalisation of the modes of production and labour reforms anymore. Laissez-faire capitalism and consequent social stratification is taken for granted; thus, if reforming the economic system is out of question, the next best thing for the elite classes is to espouse cultural reforms. It must be kept in mind; however, that reforming culture is many times more difficult than reforming economic systems, which the neoliberals have already given up on because it appeared daunting and impossible to achieve.

After the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when the Western societies were riddled with social disparity, the response of the Western intellectuals was to come up with theories of economics, such as socialism, Fabianism and Marxism; however, in the age of neo-colonialism and corporate imperialism, the condition and social status of labour in developed countries has improved; therefore, their focus has now shifted from economic reforms to cultural reforms.

The naive South Asian intelligentsia on the other hand, is fixated on bringing about cultural reforms without the essential prerequisites of technological progress, socioeconomic development and investment on technical education and vocational training of the workforce.

Finally, it’s a fact that we, as individuals, don’t like to revamp our deeply entrenched narratives even when such narratives have conclusively been proven to be erroneous, because our minds are incapable of radically transforming themselves especially after a certain age. Despite being a mystery of gigantic proportions, the human mind still has its limits.

The reality is always too complex to be accurately conceived by the mind. Our narrative is only a mental image of the reality that we have formulated to the best of our humble abilities. But since our minds are quite overloaded, therefore we generally tend to adopt linear narratives; and try to overlook the deviations and contradictory evidence as mere anomalies (selective perception and confirmation bias).

Moreover, our minds also adopt mental shortcuts or heuristics, to ease the cognitive load while making a decision. To instantiate this concept, Pakistan has numerous problems: like social injustice, corruption, patriarchy, bigotry and oppression of minorities to name a few. My individual narrative, however, has mostly been predicated on the social justice aspect; but I do appreciate the activists who are doing commendable work in other areas.

Cultures take centuries to evolve and the basic driver is always the level of socioeconomic development of the masses, therefore our primary concern should be to improve governanc, investment in infrastructure development and the technical education and vocational training of the South Asian labour force

My only gripe is that most social and political commentators these days restrict themselves exclusively to denouncing crime and criminals, without looking into the socio-political and socio-cultural root causes that have spawned the crime and criminals; such an approach seems facile and lacking in perspective.

As Arundhati Roy poignantly explains the idea in these words: “I don’t see myself as someone who looks at the world through a lens of ‘rights’ and ‘issues’. That is a very narrow, shallow way for a writer to look at the world. If you ask me what is at the core of what I write, it isn’t about ‘rights’, it’s about justice. Justice is a grand, beautiful, revolutionary idea. What should justice look like? If we disaggregate things into issues, then they just remain issues, problematic areas in an otherwise acceptable scenario.”

The writer is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism

Published in Daily Times, December 18^th 2017.