Yet another facade of a movement has been unleashed by sections of the state, imperialist interests and factions of the ruling classes to undermine and cut across a genuine revolutionary upheaval of the toiling masses from below. Millions are being squandered on the ‘long march’ called by the rightwing demagogue Maulana Tahirul Qadri. The bourgeois media stashed with colossal amounts of cash is overwhelmed and an intense campaign has been launched that has panicked the already jittery incumbent rulers in Lahore and Islamabad. Society is rife with conspiracy theories and wild speculations about the meteoric rise of this televangelist.
One theory doing the rounds is rather intriguing. Because of his Canadian citizenship and links with imperialists, Dr Qadri is being connected with the Canadian gold mining giant Barrick Gold, the largest gold producing company in the world, whose stake of billions of dollars in the Reko Diq gold mine in Balochistan are in jeopardy due to the cancellation of a contract (signed in 1993 under a caretaker government) by the Supreme Court. Imperialist plunder is one of the main causes of the revolt in Balochistan and this strife has plunged the region into mayhem and conflagration.
Although there was a big crowd at the December 23 meeting of the Maulana, the numbers have been deliberately and grossly exaggerated by his disciples and the media. If anything the gathering was smaller as compared to the obscene amounts of money squandered. This was probably the most expensive political rally in the history of the country. The jumping of the MQM onto Dr Qadri’s bandwagon did not surprise anyone. It is their characteristic ploy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.
The comparisons of the transformation of Islamabad into a ‘Tahrir Square’ are also farfetched. The reality is that the prolonged sit-in at the Cairo square was not the decisive factor that deposed President Mubarak. It was when the workers of the Suez Canal went on strike and the trade route was threatened with closure that the despot was chucked out of power. There is another widespread misconception that long marches lead to revolutions. The workers of Karachi do not have to march to Islamabad for a revolutionary insurrection. They have to seize the factories and the economy to crumble the coercive state. With a revolutionary party, a general strike of the workers and peasants of Pakistan can achieve a socialist victory with relative ease and little bloodshed.
Mass mobilisations of millions or even tens of millions are not always of a revolutionary character. There can be huge rallies of the forces of counter-revolution, reaction and even fascism. After all fascist despots like Hitler, Mussolini, L K Advani and innumerable reactionaries did mobilise millions to their rallies and movements. The main difference between a revolutionary and a reactionary mobilisation is that in a revolution the masses enter the political arena consciously, courageously, confidently and voluntarily to transform the system and change their destiny. Reactionary mobilisations are based upon mythological demagogies and attract rather primitive sections of society. Mostly, these are a frantic expression of the social malaise, stagnation and despair that prevails in those moments of time.
If we try to analyse the present situation and the mood of the masses in Pakistan, it is rather dim. Social and economic suffering has been exacerbated by the terrorist bloodshed of Islamic fundamentalists, imperialist aggression and plunder. The capitalist exploitation and coercion has never been so grave. The army and the judiciary, the political elite and the mullahs, the drug barons and the media bosses are knotted in an evil nexus in this orgy of loot and plunder. The only thing that exudes from the elite is a callous indifference and contempt for the masses. The MQM has been in power for more than two decades and Dr Qadri is no stranger to the establishment and an imposed political setup. There is a striking resemblance to what Karl Marx described about the 19th century French elite. He wrote: “The party of Order proved…that it neither knew how to rule nor how to serve; neither how to live nor how to die; neither how to suffer the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither how to uphold the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard.”
However, one is perplexed by the Maulana’s contradictory and distractive programme. The crux of it is ‘change but no change’. He is an ardent supporter of capitalism — the real cause of this misery and deprivation. These charlatans evade the reality expressed in Lenin’s dictum: “Politics is but concentrated economics.” Dr Qadri accentuates politics but not economics, form and not content, effect and not the cause, mythology and not the reality. He talks about the abolition of feudalism but not a word about the overthrow of capitalism, when in reality there are only remnants of feudalism in Pakistan, and even in the remotest areas of the country there is a crushing domination of capitalist relations. Other rightwing politicians are also sloganeering revolution when it is these preposterously rich parasites that the revolution will target and expropriate.
It is a universal law that in periods of stagnation, all kinds of rabble-rousers and peculiar phenomena keep on appearing suddenly and then rapidly vanishing into oblivion before a revolution of the workers and the oppressed masses breaks out. But Dr Qadri and such reactionary characters are actually nurtured and created to confuse the masses and subvert revolutions. The petit bourgeoisie with its erratic, whimsical and impatient temperament, rushes to flock around such chicanery. But soon its delusions evaporate. Dr Qadri has no intention, policies, programme and strategy to change. But the crisis is worsening with the convulsive downward spiral of capitalism. Change has to come. It is a question of life and death for the teeming millions doomed by this cruel system into a living hell. They are yearning for an end to this pain and agony. Their time is not far off. The proletariat will transform from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself. And once that takes place it will realise its power and move as a class with its gigantic strength into the arena of history to change its course. Only then the system will be changed, but only by overthrowing it.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]