Economic terrorism
By Lal Khan

The masses are being chastised to perpetuate the rule of the system that has become historically obsolete and economically redundant.

As if there was not already excruciating misery for the working classes in Pakistan, the massive hike in electricity tariffs and prices of the petroleum products will wreak havoc on an already impoverished populace of this tragic country. This tyrannous attack lays bare the callous and brutal character of the ruling classes and the current Sharif setup. The victims of the natural disasters from the havoc of the floods to the catastrophic earth quake in Balochistan in which almost a thousand perished belonged to the oppressed classes. The scourge of fundamentalist terrorism also bleeds and devastates predominantly the poor and the deprived. The victims of the state repression and those convicted by the law are also those who cannot afford to buy justice and do not have a social status that provides connections with the bureaucracy unlike those from the moneyed classes who end up getting off scot free for some of the most heinous crimes due to their capacity to buy off state officials.

This unending list of the miseries and agonies for the ordinary folk does not end here. Their repression and exploitation is being intensified by every new regime with a remorseless avalanche of social and economic attacks. The recent exorbitant and vicious price hike is a continuation of brutal acts of economic terrorism practiced in this country for generations. This terrorism was already pulverising the lives of the sorrowful inhabitants of the land long before fundamentalist terror and the turmoil of mafia warfare came into the limelight. After 65 years of the so-called independence the condition of the people of Pakistan has continuously worsened. But in the last few decades the dim flame of hope for a better future amongst the masses has flickered and extinguished.

The social and economic conditions of the masses are harrowing, as 82 percent of the population has to resort to non-scientific medication. Almost 44 percent of the children being born have a stunted growth. Almost half a million mothers die every year due to obstetric complications and lack of health facilities. More than half the children, mostly girls, do not get to go to school. The oppression of the women and their social harassment and suffocation is at its worst. The oppressed communities are being subjected to state terrorism. The poor peasants are in chains and the odious bonded labour is in practice in blatant defiance of the laws and regulations. Unemployment is rising by more than a million annually. And as these statistics were not enough the latest UN report on care for the elderly places Pakistan last in the world.

The incumbent regime of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) came into power not as a ray of hope but due to the despair of the masses and the extreme disillusionment of the previous Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition regime. The PML-N, on the other hand, is the traditional party of the Pakistani ruling classes. Hence it is no surprise it is a regime of the rich for the rich and by the rich. The same is true for the bourgeois democracy as this is a useful tool to continue to inflict economic disasters upon the masses. None other than Allama Sir Mohammed Iqbal highlighted the fact that the Muslim league represented the interests of the reactionary elite. Probably in his last letter to Mohammad Ali Jinnah almost a year before his death, Iqbal astutely pointed out the real class character of the Muslim league. In this letter dated May 28,1937, he wrote, “The (Muslim) League will have to finally decide whether it will remain a body of representing the upper classes of Indian Muslims or the Muslim masses, who so far, with good reason, have taken no interest in it. Personally, I believe that a political organisation, which gives no promise of improving the lot of the ordinary Muslims, cannot attract our masses. Under the new constitution the higher posts go to the sons of the upper classes; the smaller ones go to the friends or relatives of the Ministers. Our political institutions have never thought of improving the lot of the Muslims generally.”

Ever sine the inception of Pakistan Iqbal’s analysis became truer and truer. Even the Military dictators adorned the Muslim League sherwani to attain a civilian garb to their despotic regimes. The present regime and its predecessors are inflicting these tyrannous measures not because they are sadistic (which is true) but are compelled by the necessities of the system that they represent and benefit from. The ruling classes have miserably failed to build a modern industrialised Pakistan. Rather, the uneven and combined patters of development have deteriorated the situation and this crisis is woven into the rotting social fabric of this country. They cannot survive financially and politically if they do not evade taxes, steal electricity and plunder the state. Their very existence has deep roots in the morass of corruption. The shutdown of the US government, the lingering slump in Europe and Japan and the crash of the growth rates of Brazil, India, China and the other so-called emerging economies exposes the organic and acute crisis of capitalism on a world scale. Pakistani capitalism never had any healthy growth in its history. It is a story of an obstinate deterioration and decay of society. A malaise has set in and the intensification of this crisis gives rise to chauvinism, bigotry, religious terror and fanaticism and other evils that are eroding human existence in this society.

The masses are being chastised to perpetuate the rule of the system that has become historically obsolete and economically redundant. But the buck is not going to stop here. The only prospect is of further aggravation of this crisis and that means more attacks and pillage of the oppressed classes as they will be burdened more and more with spiralling domestic and external debts, rapidly depreciating currency and colossal deficits. The question is that how long and to what extent the masses are going to tolerate and endure this rancorous coercion. Leaders soaked in parasitic capitalism subjugate the present political arena. The ex-lefts have capitulated decades ago. Does this mean that this society is destined to the fate of barbarism, the elements of which are dangerously obtrusive and palpable? The only resistance against such an Armageddon will have to come from the working classes, however atomised these may be at the present moment in time. Once proletariat enters the arena of history it will then also be able to carve out the party and the leadership necessary to transform society.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com
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