Daily Times

History, Marx says, repeats itself, first as a tragedy and then as a farce, but what if the history of a country is a tragic farce? If Indian history was the history of invasions, the history of Pakistan is the history of intervention in all spheres by the mighty powers that ironically consider themselves an embodiment of divine wisdom; an absolute spirit devoid of creative activity.

“Political power,” Mao says, “grows from the barrel of a gun,” but in countries plagued by peripheral capitalism, power holds a gun on the temple of the society to maintain its control over the means of production and sources of destruction. Being thoroughly expropriated by the foreign metropolitan capital and the native bourgeoisie, the power in the countries of the global south rests largely with these two camps. The institutions of IMF and World Bank control their economy and their anti-people dictate are implemented by the native ruling class comprising the unproductive comprador bourgeoisie, the feudal, and the praetorian guards. The independence of these countries is as fetish as the Orwellian democracy of the western hegemonic states is.

During the cold war, which was barely cold, countries of the global south—fascinated by the ideology of communism—began their struggle to overthrow the yoke of colonial slavery imposed by the ‘’civilised’’ world. The movements for freedom spread from Algeria to Vietnam and in that process, hundreds and thousands of lives were sacrificed to attain the glory of political and economic freedom. The parasitic west, habitual of thriving on the material resources and surplus value created by the wretched of the global south, clung to power with brute force, but in the end, people’s will prevailed, and the colonial powers had to concede their colonies to the black or brown native “savages.”

Every civilian government, no matter how servile it is, is bound to face the people.

Nevertheless, the hegemonic powers ensured the continuation of their legacy by removing the revolutionary leadership of its former colonies by direct or indirect intervention and by imposing their stooges, usually mercenaries upon the people. The only way to realise their capital was to continue to plunder the resources of the former colonies and if possible, to sell the manufactured goods back to them at exorbitant prices. In 2008, the then president of France Jacques Chirac admitted that “without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third (world) power.” In almost all those countries, the indirect control of the democratic hegemonic forces was maintained through the naked force of the native army.

India survived that fiasco by seeking shelter under the Soviet’s umbrella, which provided it with technology and helped enlarge its industrial base. Keen to become the frontline state of the US, Pakistan soon became rudderless. The assassination of its first premier opened its gates to the army rule that turned to the US to seek its legitimacy. The fall of Dhaka failed to stir the institution’s imaginations of its dismal failure on both political and battlefield. The populist premier was hanged, and when the Afghan revolutionary government invited the Soviets, the dooming economy of the US found a lifetime opportunity of pouring its military-industrial capital into a lumpen force called Mujahidin, the barbarians who destroyed the thriving civilization of Afghanistan in the name of Islam.

Losing Bengal, a virtual colony of the western wing, left little room for the native Punjabi and Urdu speaking elite to realise its capital, and hence the capital flew out of Pakistan. Later, the Afghan war fought for an imperialist power sealed Pakistan’s fate. It bred religious fundamentalism in the country, which brought external war within the borders of the country to incinerate the people and the economy. The pelf and the exploits of the war lined the pockets of individual members of the praetorian guards. Nothing was learnt from the history again. After Zia, a Pakistani version of Pinochet, none of the civilian premiers was given an opportunity to complete his/her tenure. Not that they were a threat to the property relations or had the slightest desire of altering the structure of a decade system or were causing any hindrance to the realisation of native military-industrial capital, they were an integral part of the decadence, their only fault was their civilian identity.

Every civilian government, no matter how servile it is, is bound to face the people and despite people’s collective Alzheimer’s, it has to offer something in return. With debt amounting to nearly 100 per cent of the GDP, nearly half of it going for debt servicing and a major chunk to the national security apparatus, there is hardly anything significant left to invest in social spending for the welfare of the people. This leads to an inevitable tussle between a civilian setup, and the power brokers heading the security apparatus for a bigger piece of the pie, no matter how subservient the former is to them.

The saga does not end here. The emerging civil bourgeoisie of Pakistan, led by the former premier Nawaz, pretending to be a Pakistani version of Erdogan has also entered the fray, demanding its share in the plunder. The guards running a multibillionaire business empire are reluctant to give the civilian bourgeoisie a space, which has forced even their handpicked puppet to hoist the flag of revolt and ultimately his own petard. Nevertheless, the contradiction remains unresolved, and every new civilian setup continues to inherit this contradiction and for there is no peaceful solution to it, hence each puppet ultimately succumbs to the identical fate.

Despite offering everything to the gods, Imran found himself in the same imbroglio. During the first year of his short stint, I wrote about the fate he was destined to meet. Despite being his poodlish and subservient behaviour, being a populist leader, he was always a suspect in the eyes of his masters. In politics, the Hegelian master-slave relations do not work, the objective historic conditions force the slave to revolt, and successful or otherwise the revolt enhances the level of consciousness of the slave. Imran has carefully chosen his enemies, instead of revolting against his masters directly, he has chosen to challenge the imperialist power but not the metropolitan capital for he too belongs to the capitalist class and has neither will nor the knowledge of international capital’s destructive dynamics that has unfolded as a tragedy for the people of Pakistan.

An advocate of a state of Medina, Imran wished Pakistan to thrive like China without reflecting upon the possibility of engaging with the command economy the key to China’s success that projected it to the pedestal of one of the biggest economic might of the world. Like any other capitalist, he not only hates socialism but considers Bhutto’s halfhearted socialist reforms, the basic ills inflicting Pakistan while staying naïve or ignoring deliberately the socialist character of the People’s Republic’s economy. Despite his narcissism, he is merely a product of the specific social relations of immediate political and military organisations that he did not create and was not empowered to change. He is a Hamlet at best and as one does not become a Hamlet voluntarily, so also one does not escape being a Hamlet just by refusing to become one.

The US intervention in Pakistani politics is no secret, but for now, Pakistan has outlived its utility for the hegemonic power and Imran is no Bhutto. There was hardly any reason for the US to remove Imran, who eagerly played the role of a chauffeur for one of the American’s favourite dictators. During the Ukraine crisis, some journalist asked Putin what he thought of Australia, ‘’I never thought of Australia’’ Putin responded. Ironically, the Pakistan of today matters as little to the US as Australia is to Putin. Once a developing country is now tragically viewed by the world as a neurotic being of the subcontinent.

The writer is an Australian-based academic and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com.