Daily Times

Does anyone remember Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli former nuclear technician, who opposed Israel’s nuclear weapon program, leaked it to the west, hence abducted by Mossad from Italy? The whistleblower, brought back to Israel, tried and sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment, most of them in a solitary confinement. Even now, confined to Israel he cannot travel abroad, the Supreme Court hand in glove with the state has declined all his appeals on the pretext of national security. No western country, not even Norway, where his wife is a professor at the school of Theology in Oslo, is willing to grant him a refuge. In cases akin to these, the Orwellian concern of western democracies to the much-hyped slogan of human rights exposes itself vividly.

A few days ago, the Swede police have found a dead body floating in a canal of Uppsala, a university town of Sweden; the man identified as Sajid Hassan was a young refugee who left Baluchistan for a haven but Nietzsche’s abyss was gazing at him. The magnetic gaze pulled him into its depth and made him free, the freedom that condemns the nonconformists to its cross. When it comes to human liberties, difference between Sweden and Norway shrinks even more.

Julian Assange, another whistleblower implicated in a rape case by the Swedish authorities, the veracity of which is denied by the ‘victims’ themselves is languishing in a British prison, where allegedly his liquidation is assured making an example of him. It is a grim reminder to the nonconformist to integrate and lose their identities or disintegrate by the state. It is ironic that having the same accusation, Biden is contesting the US presidential elections as a nominee of Democrat Party with no indictment.

State represents the two basic antagonist classes with different and irreconcilable interests. The pretension of maintaining a balance becomes evident when the oppressed demanding their rights are subjected to the brutal might of the state institutions, a situation that exposes the class nature of the state. ‘Man is the being’ Sartre says ‘to whom no being can be impartial, not even God’, same holds true for the state. A state cannot stay neutral; neutrality requires neither the coercive arms such as an army, police and judiciary at one’s disposal, nor the monopoly of violence to maintain the hegemony.

The sclerotic western economies are crumbling; the command economy of China and Cuba has opened a new vista of an alternative system to the people

Imperialism has always determined the fate of the nation-states and Rosa knew it. It is not a creation of groups of states, to fulfill certain designs or to punish some countries into submission; these motives cannot be denied though. ‘ It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisibly whole, that is recognised only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof’.

State under neo-liberalism, an imperialist terror has become Nietzsche’s ‘coldest of all cold enemies’, that lies coldly …’and whatever it has, it has stolen, where the slow suicide of all is called life.’ The brutal killing of Arif Wazir a political activist, has given further credence to Nietzsche assertions. Is killing someone a remedy, an answer to the imbroglios staring at the state? Is drawing a magic cap on one’s eyes and ears can liquidate the specter hunting a society?

No matter how ‘dangerous’ the political thoughts were maintaining a silence on the death of two activists by the media is intriguing. Either the imbecile tyranny of survival instinct has blinded the media or the repression transcending all limits has reached to a point when even the words have become loaded pistols, not to be spoken publically. Only cadavers do not mourn the death, a gaze on the society narrates the fact that life has already vanished. ‘Only a humanity to whom death has become as indifferent as its members, that has itself died, can inflict it administratively on innumerable people’ (Adorno).

Long before Covid19, the world was suffering from a more lethal virus of capitalism that colonized the weaker segments of society, accumulated the wealth regardless of means, despoiling, depopulating and devastating the areas left intentionally backward. People adapted to it suffered in disquiet, but one can live with pain but not with disgrace forever. With the death of a rat, plague-of primitive accumulation— never dies; it spreads from the underdeveloped areas to the developed ones. It has come to hurt the metropolitan areas, where the weaker stratum of society scorched by a blind sun of injustice is left to fend for itself.

Those who kill the innocents go scot-free; a sick system masquerades its sickness by concealing the evidence. Nearly 40% people are living below or close to the poverty line, while the political class is making bargains with the actual rulers; the military has enhanced its budget to Rs1.1 trillion, a whopping rise of 18 %. Dominant interests have long given up the farce of identifying their interest with that of people.

The debate separating religion from politics, a favorite topic of intellectuals has lost its validity; it never had any since religion is politics. For the western secular states, it is an instrument to divert the class struggle and to promote instrumental reason. The law of blasphemy is a commodity, sold in the market by the capital and used relentlessly against the nonconformists. From the non-Muslims to the rebels, anyone challenging the system finds himself exposed to the threat of the religious guillotine. All totalitarian states, striving to squeeze dissenting space use one or the other similar religious instruments, what else is politics?

The post Corona situation will be agonizing but interesting since it can trigger the locomotive of revolution, the workers in action. With massive economic crunch, even the imperialist state will struggle. The massive unemployment, the morbidity and mortality associated with the virus has already made few things remarkably clear to the workers of the world. Health, education and living wages are far more important than capitalists’ wars.

The demand for sharing the resources will become a major threat for the ruling class. The global exports have gone down, capital’s flow to the underdeveloped world will come with complex strings attached to it, the reduced consumption is bound to hurt, the falling oil prices and restriction of travel have already caused bane for several economies thriving previously. The tribes carrying flags and imperial petrol pumps in Arabian Sheikdoms will not be able to buy the ammunition to oblige the US.

The sclerotic western economies are crumbling; the command economy of China and Cuba has opened a new vista of an alternative system to the people. If Pakistani establishment is eying the Chinese model of one party rule, or a direct coercive army rule with or without a Ceaesar as premier, it will have to alter the economic realities. Can it afford a market economy with socialist structure, perhaps not; it would mean a redistribution of wealth through massive nationalization if not socialization of wealth.

For a state, to act like a guillotine or to appear as a potential assassin will not help. This will only enhance the alienation; the state is not an army but comprises 200 million unarmed, famished civilians. The gods may have many secrets but if human transcends the fear of death, the gods can do nothing against him.

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