It is not ruled out that if the
democratic facade of imperialism creates a crisis that threatens to
unravel the economic system, the imperialist bosses would not hesitate
to revert back to military dictatorship.
It is not ruled out that if the
democratic facade of imperialism creates a crisis that threatens to
unravel the economic system, the imperialist bosses would not hesitate
to revert back to military dictatorship.
In the last few days there has been yet another spat between the
civilian government and the so-called military establishment. The
rumours of another military takeover have been gyrating ferociously in
society and the political arena. The circumstances for the military to
intervene are very much there if one recalls the experiences of previous
military coups in Pakistan. However, the military has not struck yet.
Backward and conservative layers of society are very much in favour of
such an act. Sections of the military’s officer caste are itching to
carry through the coup in a false notion that through such a despotic
regime, rampant corruption, crime and other ills that have engulfed
Pakistan can be eliminated. The exceptional vocabulary used by the
civilian government against the military’s top brass in this ongoing
conflict has goaded the top brass of the army that has ruled the roost
in this country. This has also heightened tensions within the armed
forces. The proclivity of the imperialists, although fleeting, for the
present regime has further aggravated the angst in the military. That is
what the Memogate scandal is all about.
All this has put enormous pressure on the military high command to
strike with a vengeance. However, the military bosses have been
reluctant for a putsch up till now. This is not flowing from their love
for ‘democracy’ or for newfound humanitarian causes but the main reason
is that the top generals have lost the confidence and moral conviction
to impose direct military rule. The first and foremost cause of this
deficit is the erosion of the military’s discipline and chain of command
by the massive influx of capital, mostly of the black variety.
Secondly, the conflagrating society and a disastrous economic situation
have produced circumstances where it is almost next to impossible to
rule this country stably and assert the state’s power deep into society.
Thirdly, the situation internationally has changed sharply in the last
period and military dictatorships are no longer in vogue. The
imperialists who dominated the so-called third world through such
despotic regimes have been forced to deploy the facade of democracy to
continue their plunder and exploitation. Not only is such marionette
democracy cheaper for the imperialists but military dictatorships can
provoke mass revolts due to their blatant repression that the youth and
working classes are no longer ready to tolerate. The past experiences of
the imperialists with their military stooges have not been
exhilarating. From Noriega in Panama to Ziaul Haq in Pakistan, their
despotic toadies became so megalomaniacal that they went berserk by
defying their masters and had to be physically eliminated.
On the other hand, the present day liberal and democratic sycophants
of imperialism are crying hoarse to save the ‘system’. These sections of
the Pakistani ruling classes are the beneficiaries of this democracy,
which is in reality of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The
masses have suffered because of the excruciating poverty, price hike,
unemployment, disease and misery. Thirty-eight thousand people in
Pakistan fall below the poverty line every day. But the most important
fact, which is undermined and concealed by the media, is the
socioeconomic policies carried out by the military dictatorships and the
so-called democratic regimes are fundamentally the same. In the present
government, not even the faces of the most important ministers under
dictatorships have changed. Whatever the political nature of the regime
might be, the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy is always there
and will always be as long as society is shackled in this ailing
capitalist system. It is not ruled out that if the democratic facade of
imperialism creates a crisis that threatens to unravel the economic
system, the imperialist bosses would not hesitate to revert back to
military dictatorship. In the last analysis, it is their interests of
plunder that shape their policies of regime selection. The history of
capitalism is witness to that. Ted Grant wrote in his epic work, The
Unbroken Thread, “In the history of society there have been many methods
of class rule. This is especially true of capitalist society, with many
peculiar and variegated forms: republic, monarchy, fascism, democracy,
dictatorship, Bonapartist, technocratic, centralised and federal, to
give some examples.”
The military has directly ruled the country for half of its chequered
history. The main reason was the failure of the ruling class to
complete the tasks of the bourgeois revolution. A class that got its
profits and surplus through plundering the state and monstrous
exploitation of society gave the most powerful state institution its
blessings to intervene to retrieve the crumbling capitalist system. In
the process of such long dictatorial rule, the military itself became
part of the plundering elite and it is not an accident that leaving
aside its huge share in the black economy that constitutes two-thirds of
the whole economic base of Pakistan, it is also the largest business
enterprise with assets of more than $ 27 billion in industry, farming
and services in the formal sector. This financial status of the military
is the main interest of its elite along with largesse of the country’s
resources to be spent on defence to keep its structures running and the
commissions from its defence contracts expanding. It is also a fact that
the military expenditures increase more in the so-called democratic
regimes than under direct military rule. This shows the pathetic
character of Pakistan’s civilian political elite.
At the moment, the economic crisis has become so severe that its
reverberations are exploding the contradictions within the ruling elite
and the state institutions. The right-wing has never been weaker. The
state institutions are in internal decay and hence these acts of
desperation from the judiciary and the army. Even if the imperialists
manage to engineer a patch-up, it would be fragile and short-lived. A
military coup, though not the most likely perspective, cannot be ruled
out. However, if it comes from the lower tiers it will be a gory affair
leading to a bloody civil war, pulverising an already devastated
society. A military dictatorship will be a terrible setback for the
masses. It will push mass consciousness backwards and create illusions
in bourgeois democracy yet again. The vicious cycle of different
variants of capitalist rule will continue to ensnare the masses. But in
the present harrowing socio-economic scenario, it can also provoke a
mass revolt that will not stop at the stage of bourgeois democracy. For a
genuine workers’ democracy the modes of production, the economy and
resources of the country have to be in the collective ownership of the
toilers. Only such a revolutionary change can end this cruel agonising
suffering and salvage society.
