Daily Times

The neo-liberal modern states are overtly one-dimensional. They do not pretend to be pro-people even when they lure the people to vote for them; promising to solve their problems. Their ruling classes barely leave the opportunity of insulting the intellect and hurting the ego of the masses. A recent example of this phenomenon occurred in Pakistan when the builders of the self-proclaimed state of Madina offered the people a Manna, a bread of charity negating dignity, an un-koshered Manna.

After an elusive scheme of millions of house, jobs and health cards, it ended offering a lollypop of soup kitchens to the people. By refusing to recognise the fundamental human right of providing necessities for a dignified living enshrined in the constitution, the state has turned its back on its constitutional responsibility. The right has become a charity, responsibility a generosity and people, merely beggars. “To play a wrong note,” Beethoven said, “is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.”

“State of Medina,” Imran said, “was not built in a day,” but if ever such a state beyond Imran’s imagination and shy of historic authenticity existed, its social organisation did not have to wait long to distribute equally whatever little was available among the locals and migrants. Such an organisation did not require the help of brilliant minds borrowed from the IMF or the World Bank.

Did the primitive Muslims distribute health cards, prepare the soup kitchens and promise to build five marla houses for the ordinary followers while the leaders of the faith thrived in luxurious facilities, inaccessible to the ordinary followers? If not, the social organisation of that era was not ripe enough to form a state because a state controls two inherently antagonistic classes, confronting each other. The retrogression to the past has invariably led the people to the “royal road” of dystopia. One has to be mindful that any reference to the “state of Madina” automatically negates the distinction between a civilian population and a professional and autonomous army. The division of labour in those eras was ill-defined. During peace, everyone lived as a civilian and during battles or skirmishes, every adult fought as a soldier. Even after conquering Persia and Egypt, when classes began to cleave the Muslim society, the concept of cantonments and the privileged treatment for the fighters as a cast was non-existent. No soldier was running a billion-dollar worth Fuji foundation; a gigantic construction industry; the profitable business of ammunition dealing. None could dare to launch a coup against the leader with the backing of an institution.

While making history, Marx said, “the traditions of all dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. The cadavers and the eclipsed traditions are conjured up.” The ideal state of Madina, frequently mentioned by Imran and the religious parties, suffering from nostalgia of an imaginary unauthentic past reverberating in their unconscious with no concrete existence, alludes not only to the same eclipsed traditions, but also to a simmering desire for an alternative system; a substitute to neo-liberalism without altering the property relations. For Nietzsche, it is akin to loving a desire than the desired.

The Soviet system that uprooted the property structure was intrinsically antagonist to the propertied-class of Pakistan

The denial of laws of an exchange society while embracing it leads the leaders to abstract freedom, possible on the day of its burial alone. Hence, they end up deceiving the people asking them to wait for a miracle.

While facing the challenges of enlightenment, Pakistani ruling class, a mélange of feudal- comprador-bourgeoisie invariably found its refuge in religion. Created in the name of religion, it was destined to face the consequences of the reason or unreason of the logic of its creation. Immediately after the partition, the father of nation tried to masquerade the theocratic kernel by cloaking it in the garb of a nation-state but it was too late to change the taste of the ruling class fed on the religious opioids. In the foreign policy, the ruling class concentrated on securing the goodwill of the imperialist masters. In the urge to become a bulwark against socialism, the hierarchy looked to the US for military assistance. What existential threat Pakistani establishment had from a socialist power so close to its borders, especially when Jinnah was not in favour of piggybacking the religious baggage of the partition in the newly created state?

The Soviet system that uprooted the property structure was intrinsically antagonist to the propertied-class of Pakistan. Leaving Bengal aside, which at one stage wanted its freedom as greater Bengal, Pakistan was the creation of the landed aristocracy of Sindh and an unwilling landowning class of Punjab, since the Unionist- party was the unchallenged ruler of united Punjab. The other two Muslim majority provinces, the NWFP and Baluchistan wanted to stay independent. The forceful merger of those three provinces in the state of Pakistan spoke volumes about the authenticity of the two-nation doctrine. To stem the socialist rot and to cement the two-nation myth, the assembly adopted the controversial Objective- resolution.

The separation of Bengal brought the demise of the two-nation doctrine, but Bhutto, wanting to protect his class, used Islam as a shield. The unique opportunity for the religion to implement its economic system if it had any was under the totalitarian regime of a tin-pot dictator, finally blown to bits in the air. In eleven long dreadful years of totalitarianism, Zia could not establish a Muslim society a proverbial state of Medina because neither the form nor the content nor the precedence of such society ever existed. It was ‘the cult of the will of the government’ [because] ‘domination of religion’ Marx says, ‘is nothing but the religion of domination’.

Have those who wanted to create a religious state ever pondered that begging from IMF and World Bank— dependent on the hegemonic empire, responsible for the destruction of entire Middle East— leaves them no room to choose a state of their dreams? By changing, the name of the stick that bludgeons, people, will feel no better.

After the Second World War, scary of socialism, Europe experimented with the concept of the welfare state. Providing people with the necessities was not difficult for two reasons, the expanded reproduction of capital created a huge surplus, and the modest population was easy to feed and indoctrinate. Technology conquered nature and controlled human being. The human alienation compensated with commodity production and fetishism became objective alienation. The alienated subject swallowed by his alienation lost his individuality to become a perfect collaborator.

However, technology like any other means monopolised by a class became its antithesis. Large-scale unemployment, falling wages, availability of cheap commodities from pre-capitalists areas of the world led to the loss of rate of profit. The farewell to welfare began, and the nanny states have largely turned into neo-liberal states. The states, which glorify the class structure as divine, and not the product of society, understand neither divinity nor the fundamentals of a healthy society. A healthy, satisfied human being is more productive, and this violates neither the interest of divinity nor the laws of a capitalist society. However, it exposes the nature of a schizophrenic state, which adopts a special strategy to live in an unlivable situation; a situation of its creation. History is carrying all old forms to the grave; the religious form cannot be an exception.

The writer is an Australian-Pakistani based in Sydney. He has authored several books on Marxism (Gramscian and Frankfurt School) and History.