The biggest crash in the history of
capitalism in 2008 has created a new “normality” across the planet. This
has led to vicious cuts and severe attacks upon the workers in most
countries. The welfare states in Europe and elsewhere are being
aggressively dismantled. After the failure of Keynesianism the
neo-liberal model of capitalism, known as trickle-down economics,
Thatcherism or Reaganomics, has been an even bigger disaster.
The biggest crash in the history of
capitalism in 2008 has created a new “normality” across the planet. This
has led to vicious cuts and severe attacks upon the workers in most
countries. The welfare states in Europe and elsewhere are being
aggressively dismantled. After the failure of Keynesianism the
neo-liberal model of capitalism, known as trickle-down economics,
Thatcherism or Reaganomics, has been an even bigger disaster.
Photo: Vicki Francis, UKaid, Department for International DevelopmentThere
have been the first stirrings of the working classes with massive
strikes in Greece, France, Spain and more recently Britain against the
drastic cuts being executed. But these are just the beginnings of a
ferocious class struggle that impends. There is no solution on a
capitalist basis on a world scale.
In Pakistan there has hardly been any respite for the working masses
throughout its tumultuous history. Today the situation is far worse than
it was at its inception. Pakistani capitalism has rotted to an extent
where the whole of society has been plunged into an abyss of intolerable
poverty and misery. Pakistan faces unprecedented levels of debt, trade
and fiscal deficits, terrorism, unemployment corruption, poverty, price
hikes and lack of basic amenities for the vast majority of its
population. The social and physical infrastructure has deteriorated. The
flood disaster has exposed its extreme fragility.
During the Musharraf period when the growth rates were supposed to be
an average of 6 to 7 percent ten thousand people were falling below the
poverty line every day. Now with growth around 1.8 percent the number
of people falling below the poverty line has more than tripled. Sixty
percent of children have stunted growth and 1100 die daily due to
malnutrition. Eighty percent of the population is forced into
non-scientific medication. Sale of children, human organs and collective
family suicides are spreading like an epidemic. Sixty six percent of
children can hardly receive primary education. About half a million
women die during child birth due to the lack of adequate health care.
Electricity, fuel, gas and water shortages along with the rapidly
increasing prices have made life of the impoverished masses even more
wretched. Inflation and the brisk depreciation of the rupee have made
life a horror without an end. The already debilitated agricultural
sector has been further devastated by the floods. This has already
exacerbated inflation. In reality Pakistan’s existence is now staked
upon the informal or the black economy which constitutes more than two
thirds of total GDP. It is ironic that had there been no buffer of
corruption and the black economy running the country’s economic cycle
the Pakistani economy would have collapsed by now.
With such an economic catastrophe there is no sign of any relief or
improvement on the horizon. The ruling classes seem to have given up any
idea of developing a modern industrialised and a prosperous Pakistan.
Their indifference and incompetence is palpable. There is a feeling of
doom and gloom amongst the intelligentsia and the experts of the state
have hardly a clue about how to get out of this quagmire. Their reliance
and subservience to imperialism and its financial institutions is
complete. Except for a few years during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government
in the early 1970’s, every finance minister of Pakistan has been an
employee of one or other imperialist financial institution. They have
slavishly carried out the dictates of their imperial masters and have
been adopting policies that have sustained ever increasing imperialist
exploitation and plunder.
In this democratic dispensation under the crushing domination of the
financial oligarchy the masses have no real choice that could serve
their interests and improve conditions of life for them. The differences
posed on the political spectrum are frivolous to say the least. They
are painted in the colours of ‘liberalism’, ‘conservatism’,
‘secularism’, ‘religious fundamentalism’, ‘nationalism’ and
‘communalism’ etc. But all these ‘political’ parties have the same
economic agenda – “neo-liberal” capitalism. The very essence of this
economic policy is an all-out attack on the masses and subjugation to
so-called supply side economics. With no fundamental differences on
economics, they harp on endlessly about non-issues that have no
relevance to the plight of the teeming millions who are being ruthlessly
exploited by capitalism. Now even they have stopped issuing statements
or making false promises about improving the lot of the masses and
prosperity. Almost all the mainstream political parties are in power in
the various federal and provincial bodies of the state. An orgy of
corruption, nepotism, hedonism and plunder goes on unabated. In such a
harrowing crisis one has to be extremely insensitive and callous to be
part of the state administration when there is so much pain and agony
that the oppressed masses are being forced to endure.
Lenin once said that, “politics is a concentrated expression of
economics”. The chaos and anarchy that prevails in the present day
politics of Pakistan is a reflection of the dire state of the economy.
The circus that is in full swing has become nauseating and vulgar
considering the desperate and horrendous conditions of society. The
alternative of a dictatorship is a remote possibility. Not only is it
that the cohesion and discipline of the army has withered but also US
imperialism has strategically switched its policy in Asia, Africa and
Latin America from military regimes to tame bourgeois democracies whose
formats it can manipulate. Hence this ‘conflict’ between ‘dictatorship’
and ‘democracy’ is more or less a façade and has lost its relevance.
The present crisis of our rulers was aptly described by Karl Marx in his epic work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He wrote:
“Alliance whose first proviso is separation; struggles whose first
law is indecision; wild inane agitation in the name of tranquillity;
most solemn preaching of tranquillity in the name of revolution;
passions without truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic
deeds; history without events; development whose sole driving force
seems to be the calendar, wearying with the constant repetition of the
same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to
work themselves up to a climax only to lose their edge and fall away
without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded
exertions, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court
comedies played by the saviours of the world”.
The oppressed masses in Pakistan shall not endure such tyranny for long.
