Neo-Liberalization of Egypt Continues

By Danish Khan

The ruling elites of the world have subjugated the average mind through their propaganda media which feeds manipulated and selected information. I personally feel that corporate news and generally the whole of corporate media has been used by the dominating sects of the society to keep folks under the magic spell of capitalistic illusions, and they have been successful in shaping the political and social consciousness of an average person according to their needs and interests. As when Arab Spring was hoping to take over the long lasting socio-economic season of autumn, immediately the thing that struck me was the 24/7 coverage of Arab Spring ,especially of Egypt by the corporate media in United States. Frankly speaking, I don’t depend or trust on the corporate news-channel for my daily dose of information, but I do tune up to them to find out the capitalists/corporations take on the current issues. So when the uprising in Egypt was telecast on the corporate news channel, I knew it from that day, something fishy is in the air, and now it has been all clear and transparent to us.

 

To get to the depth of any argument, one needs to scientifically analyze the argument from different perspectives, usually folks tend to derive their analysis from the surface based inferences, I know it is convenient and popular thing to do, but it can be very misleading. As portrayed in corporate media that the Arab-spring has liberated the suffocated masses, and their suffocation and oppression was due to few individuals, thus if they get rid of their faces, things would turn around all of the sudden. On contrary, the whole socio-economic system is oppressive, as long we have same socio-economic policies, nothing much is going to change. 

 

Recently I encountered a paper ”Egypt’s Orderly Economic Transition?” by Dr. Adam Hanieh who is a professor at “School of Oriental and African Studies London”, in this paper Hanieh has shed some very needed light on the Arab-spring and particularly on the real socio-economic situation of Egypt. Dr. Hanieh points out that there were some concrete socio-economic realities which have forced the bulk of Egyptian people in to streets to demonstrate their anger and frustration on the socio-economic policies of Mubarak’s regime. For example, the inflation has been more than 10%, and it has been more than 20% for the food products. According to the official estimates of national income threshold for poverty, 40% of Egyptians are living in poverty. As the animosity among the common Egyptians have been creeping up, to slow it down, the dictatorial regime of Mubarak came up with a plan of increasing the wages of public employees by 15%, and it cost government around 1.2 billion of US dollars. Similarly the government increased its expenditure on health and education to facilitate people in order to calm them down, and put to sleep again. Egypt has been a net importer of oil, and the oil subsidies by the government accounts for $16.6 billion annually. So overall the government was in severe crisis and under huge debt at the time of uprising. Furthermore, the political instability in the country damaged the tourism industry, and interestingly it was accounted for 5.3% of total GDP in 2010 by generating an income of $12 billion.  

 

So a new government after Mubarak has a huge task in hand if they really want to improve the ground economic reality of the common people of Egypt. But in the meantime, the International Financial Institutions (IFI’s) have regarded it as an opportunity to further prolong their financial agenda of neo-liberalization of the Middle East. As we all know about the IFI’s and western powers love and admiration for democracy, (although one would disagree with this delusionary abstraction on the fact that they have been supporting Mubarak for last few decades), but besides that, now as democracy is coming to Egypt, it will come on some conditions, any aid or forgiveness to Egypt is linked with its commitment to further privatize all the public owned enterprises through the medium of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP’s).  The President Barack Obama promised Egypt that United States will forgive $1 billion of Egypt’s loan payment to US, but that money has to be used under the dictation of US. Similarly the World Bank and IMF made an announcement to grant a loan of $6 billion, but Egypt has to do following, Egypt has to open up all his markets for foreign investment, reduce tariffs, and do large scale privatization of state owned enterprises.

 

The uprising of the Egyptian people was a pleasant change for the country, and for the region, and at grass-root level people were demanding very radical changes. They were protesting not only against a dictatorial rule of Mubarak, but also against the whole socio-economic system. But the ruling establishment of Egypt with the help of western powers has portrayed it as an up rise against one man known as Mubarak. On contrary, it was a movement against the putrefying system which was spearheaded by Mubarak. Western powers through IFI’s are imposing neo-liberal economic policies on the people of Egypt, and these policies will only benefit the IFI’s and the military and the business elites of the Egypt, but a life of a common Egyptian will not improve much. The neo-liberal policies of privatization and deregulations have nothing good in them for a common Egyptian, instead these policies are just another tools in the hands of International Financial Institutions to appropriate more wealth out of the working people of the Egypt.

 

Although, things are not going to change much for the average Egyptian under the economic policy of neo-liberalization, but we should expect a much higher social, political and economic consciousness among the people of Egypt in the coming days, as the real face of IFI’s and the ruling elite of Egypt will unveil, a hope and aspiration for the better alternative will eventually  lead the masses in to the streets of Cairo to get rid of these neo-liberal policies, and free themselves from the military and the capitalist control.

Religion and Commodity

By Danish Khan

Christianity and the commodity relations in a “capitalist mode of production” have very peculiar and similar attributes, both of them dominate in our contemporary society because they represent and defend the interests of the ruling elites in our contemporary society of the United States. As in Christianity “God” is a judge (parameter) of an individual piousness, morality, purity, and an individual has to develop him/herself in a mirror of a god. While in commodity relations under the “capitalist mode of production”, the amount of “profit” the commodity produces determines the value of a commodity, so a commodity has to develop itself in the context of the profit it is going to generate, so the “profit” acts as a God in the commodity relations, as “Jesus” in Christianity. The ideas of Christianity and the commodity relations are rooted in very surface based analysis, and so Marx has pointed out a connection between the Christianity and Commodities in the paradigm of evolutionary historical development of a mankind. Marx has picked up on Christianity because it was the dominant religion in Western Europe during his time, and even today, but his example of Christianity would fit on almost every modern religion. Marx wrote in Das Capital, Volume One, Chapter one, The Fetishism of the commodity and its secrets,

“For a society of commodity producers whose general social relation of production consists in the fact that they treat their products as commodities, hence as values, and in this objectified form bring their private labors in to relation with each other as homogeneous human labor, Christianity with its religious cult of the abstract human, especially in its bourgeois development, i.e., in Protestantism, Deism, etc, is the most fitting form of religion”

So here, Marx is trying to point out the similarity between the attributes of a commodity in a bourgeois society and the christianity. The punch line of Christianity is the salvation of a mankind, it asks it’s followers to purify themselves from all the sins, and devote their lives in a certain (christian) manner which it claims to be the only right way of living. First of all, what Christianity claims to be a “sin” is very relative and peculiar to the time in which Christianity has evolved, “The Ten Commandments” is a classical example of it. It reveals the narrow and limited framework of Christianity, and it is not consistent with the laws of social evolution. Human needs and attributes tend to change over the time with the changing “means of production”, thus anything which might be very moral or pious for an individual from medieval ages would not necessarily make sense, or moral, or beneficial in our contemporary epoch. Thus the whole argument of Christianity of being virtuous and pious is based and rooted in those peculiar conditions in which it has evolved, and it undermines and ignores all the social and human evolution that has happened over the years. Similarly in a capitalist mode of production, the commodities have to refine themselves, and they have to obtain special attributes which can fulfill the tastes and preferences of its consumers, thus as neo-classical economists argue that the value of a commodity is determined by the utility obtained from it. This kind of thinking tries to undermine and neglect the “relations of production” between the workers and the capitalists, and it ignores those social conditions which allow that commodity to be produced, and the historical context in which “means of production” have been obtained by a Bourgeois class. Instead all it cares about is the profit maximization from the market exchange of that commodity.

As Hans Ehbrar, a professor of Marxian economics, illustrates in his “Annotations to Karl Marx’s Capital, 2011″,

“Just as the value relation abstracts from the concrete usefulness of labor and from the individual circumstances of production, so Christianity also makes an abstraction: namely from some of the more “bodily” aspects of humans. Just as the labor process must rise above its local and traditional character to withstand the test of the market, so humans must strip off their bodily encumbrances to become pure souls. But this correspondence between religion and commodity relations only holds for modern religions in modern time. Religion is a very old phenomenon, and the question arises how the old religions related to the socio-economic conditions of their time.”

Every religion through out human history has represented and reflected the dominating “means of production” of its time in its values and morality system. The anthropological studies have revealed the absence of organized religion in the primitive egalitarian societies, and the detail analysis shows that the accumulation of wealth in those societies has followed by the emergence of a new social class who claimed the ownership of that wealth, and it allowed them to free themselves from intense physical labor (hunting, etc.). This whole process allowed that new social class to develop and improve their cognitive skills more than the rest of the population, who were so busy in the physical labor. Furthermore, to keep their unjust claim on that socially produced surplus (wealth), they tried to justify it, and those justifications got refined and refined over the time and it paved the path for the emergence of an organized religion. Thus, as the birth of religion took place in a class based society, so the class based character of religion in our contemporary epoch can only be comprehended in its historical context.

As religion contradicts the laws of nature by claiming some fantasy stories about the creation of universe and life, similarly commodity relations in capitalism undermines the social process (Labor theory of Value, etc) which determines the value and the attributes of the commodity. When a modern religion talks about the heaven and the eternal life, it addresses to his male audience that, if you become a purified devotee in this temporarily life, God will reward you with substantial amounts of female virgins in heaven. This might be very attractive incentive to some putrefied and pervert male, but being a female, it doesn’t seem appealing at all, instead it portrays female as just a commodity to satisfy the sexual needs of male. So in this regard consciously or un-consciously religion itself has commoditized females, and it treats them like a commodity.

So besides the class character, religion has a gender bias in it too, and it only argues from the perspective of men (patriarchy), and consciously or un-consciously it denounces the existence of women in the society independent of the men. Similarly in capitalism, the relations of commodity are only concerned about the profit which can be obtained from that commodity by lowering the cost of production, i.e. labor (lower wages etc), which is very attractive for the capitalist class, but from the stand view of the workers it is not attractive at all, instead it is very un-desired for them. So the capitalist commodity relations only try to address society from the perspective of the capitalist class, and it denounces the existence and the well-being of the working class. So in this context and paradigm, we can see an obvious relation and similarity between the modern religions of our time and the commodity relations in our contemporary “capitalist mode of production”.

Art in our Times

By Ammar Aziz

Art, in the “free world” we live in, has become the monopoly of the ruling classes which suits the basic nature of their exploitative system by doing both, generating profits and keeping the people in a state of confused contentment

An art exhibition was going on in a posh gallery of Lahore. Installation art was the medium and you could find strange ‘art objects’, hanging and placed, in all the dimensions of space. The gathering – filled with high class ‘intellectual socialites’ and art critics – was enough to represent a ‘positive image of Pakistan’. That positive yet so unrealistic image consisted of the postmodern works by many famous artists. While passing from one side of the gallery, I looked at an art piece. It was one and a half brick, placed on a tiny table with the artist’s name. I kept moving and found a blank canvas, hanging in the middle of a wall. A few art critics were trying to understand the “depth of white” from that blank canvas while others were satisfying their intellectual thirst by relating those bricks to the complications of “consciousness and unconsciousness”. At the end of the gallery, at one corner, a couple of multicolored electric wires were exhibited on the floor. I found that art piece the most interesting of all. I was still trying to figure out what that meant when all of a sudden a man – probably an electrician who was working there – came, grabbed the wires and went away!

Art in our times has lost everything – content – form – meaning and purpose.

It has become a possession of a minority that has not only commodified its very social nature but also has destroyed its aesthetic beauty. This approach, however, has been viewed as the ‘next big thing’ in the philosophical premises of art and being highly praised by the West. One wonders, what’s the reason of promoting a meaningless generation of art in the name of intellect or, more precisely, postmodernism? Why is there a rising trend of obscure and pretentious creations that create a wedge between the intellectuals and the masses? This chaos, known as art, shows the philosophical and ideological conflicts of the 2oth century and their tragic consequences after the end of the cold war. This emerging craze of strictly meaningless art has its roots back in the political interests of the Western Imperialism. The advocates of ‘free-market’ who talk about ‘artistic freedom’ negate the social relevance of art, by limiting it to merely subjective and usually nihilistic themes if not completely meaningless. What on earth is that artistic freedom that rejects the objective truth? The philosophy behind such art is as perplexing as the art itself. Chomsky while criticizing the postmodern theorists said, ““Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, even Foucault…write things that I also don’t understand but don’t hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me.”

The realism- phobia that started during the cold war era still exists in the capitalist West and its intellectual-allies throughout the world, including Pakistan. I remember how one of our ‘liberal’ art history teachers at NCA viciously declared social realism merely as a propaganda while romanticizing abstract expressionism as “the avant-garde” art form.

I feel it’s important here to discuss briefly the origin of this irrational fear of realism. In order to counter the ideologically strong, realistically significant and aesthetically appealing Socialist Realism of the Soviet Union, the CIA came up with a secret policy in the 1950s– known as ‘long leash’ – to promote that sheer nonsense known as abstract expressionism in order to prove the “intellectual freedom” of the US. Donald Jameson – a former CIA officer – conceded in an interview, “yes the agency saw Abstract Expressionism as an opportunity, and yes, it ran with it. It was recognised that Abstract Expressionism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was.”

The materialist analysis of history reveals that art has always been important to people, since its earliest beginnings from the dark caves of France to the present day. What’s the element that has kept those prehistoric cave paintings alive even after tens of thousands of years? Their ability of being understandable owing to their astonishing realism! This not only drives our attention to the fact that art’s initial beginnings were based on the representations of the actual world but also enforces the idea that art was meant for some social purposes. Do you think those prehistoric people would have gone that deeply, crawling into the inaccessible recesses of the dark caves to draw something for the sake of decoration? I highly doubt it. Such drawings were an important ritual among those hunter gatherer societies – a ritual they used to perform for the success of hunting animals for food! Thus, art started evolving as a social activity rather than an individual act.

With the division of labor and evolution of private property – that culminated in the division of mankind into classes, separating mental labor from manual labor and art from craft, the very basic character of art lost its social significance and became a commodity – a meaningless commodity whose nasty importance is based on its price like any other thing in a capitalist society. For example, Van Gogh, who died in extreme poverty, is amongst the most ‘valuable’ painters of the world whose paintings change hands at auctions for millions of dollars. If, somehow, his works go out of fashion tomorrw, these so-called art lovers would divest themselves just like the dealers get rid of the falling shares on the floor of the stock market. Thus, art, in the “free world” we live in, has become the monopoly of the ruling classes which suits the basic nature of their exploitative system in two ways: a) it generates profit b) it keeps people in a state of confused contentment. That minority always use and abuse the role of art and culture for their own gluttonous interests. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engles explain, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”.

Every sensible rational mind should understand that the cultural aspects of any society (superstructure) can not be fully understood when separated from the material economic conidtions of that society (base). Every society is shaped by the relations of production and exchange (economics) that form its base. History’s most liberating event – the October Revolution – when the working-class played the most important role in striving for a society free of exploitation, alienation and oppression – started an era of undying art that was the outcome of the very basic philosophy their revolution was based on: Dialectical Materialism which has an inseparable relation with realism. The opposing forces of proletarian revolution saw their art – that reflected their liberation and motivated them to struggle – as one of their biggest enemies. But the artists, all over the world, who emerged after the revolution, were able to base themselves on a very rich and progressive tradition of Social and Socialist realism. Progressive Writers Movement is the Pakistani chapter of that internationalist movement of art.

Consider a situation where entertainment no longer works as industries but only as activities necessary to human well-being. Art loses its exclusive and individual character under Socialism and becomes the ownership of all. It doesn’t only reflect the matter but plays its heroic role in changing that too. The masses, so long bound to submit in silence, find a new voice and witness a radical transition. An artist’s role is to fight for the economic emancipation of mankind to gain the lost soul of humanity. Art has played an important role since the birth of mankind and this role will not only conitnue but be greatly enhanced and gloroified when art would become a cause to beautify life. That would be “humanity’s leap from the realm of neceassity to the realm of freedom” in the words of Engles. Diego Rivera, the Mexican Communist Muralist painter, concluded the aims of revolutionary art at the end of his Manifesto, which is the need of our times:
“The independence of art for the Revolution”

Author is an independent film-maker, a political activist, and he also teaches film theory at NCA lahore.

American poverty at all-time high

The number of Americans living in poverty rose to a record 46.2 million last year, official data has shown.

This is the highest figure since the US Census Bureau started collecting the data in 1959.

In percentage terms, the poverty rate rose to 15.1%, up from 14.3% in 2009.

The US definition of poverty is an annual income of $22,314 (£14,129) or less for a family of four and $11,139 for a single person.

The number of Americans living below the poverty line has now risen for four years in a row, while the poverty rate is the biggest since 1993.

Poverty among black and Hispanic people was much higher than for the overall US population last year, the figures also showed.

The Census Bureau data said 25.8% of black people were living in poverty and 25.3% of Hispanic people.

Its latest report also showed that the average annual US household income fell 2.3% in 2010 to $49,445.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans without health insurance remained about 50 million.

The data comes as the US unemployment rate remains above 9%.

President Barack Obama last week launched a new $450bn job creation plan.

He wants to fund huge construction projects, schools and services, while giving tax cuts to workers and small businesses to boost recruitment.

However, his plans require backing from Congress, where Republicans – who control the House of Representatives – have voiced their opposition.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14903732

Explore your own existence

By Danish Khan

The importance of understanding and comprehending the historical development of a society cannot be emphasized more considering the ongoing onslaught of oppression and exploitation of the most of the population of the world. Poverty, hunger and on the top of it, the occupation of the sovereign countries by the imperial powers of the world have made all of us wondered, are we always going to live in this kind of messed up world? Especially when it comes to my generation, we didn’t see a cold-war era, all we have seen while growing up is the hegemony of the single economic system in the world, i.e. capitalism, and it has been proudly led by the United States. All we hear in the mainstream print and electronic media is the greatness of the capitalism and how globalization has benefited human race, and there is no alternative to capitalism because it is the only right and rational way to operate an economy.

Even when we go to the universities we see the same kind of trend, all the courses on economics are restrained in the framework of capitalism, and seems like we are more interested in understanding that how a firm can multiply its profit rate and we never think about challenging the whole idea of profit-making. We are only concerned about the GDP figures of the economy, rather than questioning, how those figures translate in to the lives of the average citizens. We are trying to learn how to sustain the growth of the economy, and we are completly ignoring its adverse environmental effects on the planet. The most critical and intellectual debate about economics in mainstream media and academics is limited to the Neo-classical versus Keynesian economics, and we assume that there is nothing beyond it. The term Marxian economics is usually an alien world in the mainstream academics in the US and globally, what is it in Marxian economics that makes it such a taboo to discuss and analyze it in mainstream university courses and in intellectual debates in media? Why we are so afraid to even discuss it? These are some basic questions which have to be answered to satisfy a curious intellect in an individual.

 

We are seeing an unhealthy and un-educated approach by the mainstream economists by completely denouncing anything but neo-classical economics. It represents a deeper conflict and contradiction in the society. The neo-classical arguments and assumptions are very much built on the sand, and they know that they would not stand a chance in front of any rational approach towards economics like Marxian approach. The arrogant and the vulgar vocabulary of neo-classical economists are very much evident of the fact that they regard their economic theories as “regular economics” and everything else is not even considered economics. In such intellectual environment if we are expecting students to come up with new ideas and trends in political economy, then that would be tantamount to utopian expectation.

 

We have to remember that all the great theories that have been produced in last few centuries in the spectrum of social sciences were mostly the critiques of the dominating ideas of that time in one way or another. For example John Locke in 17^th century came up with the “quantity theory of money”, which is still very fundamental to the financial transactions in the modern economics, and it originated as a result of Locke’s strong critique of the feudalism of that time, more commonly known as the “bastard feudalism”. Thus Locke was criticizing a dominant system of that time and was paving a path for a new form of economic structure in the form of mercantile capitalism.  While on the other hand, David Hume was the famous moral philosopher, he was very cynical about the mercantile capitalism, and he challenged the foundational ideas on which mercantilists were building the whole economic structure. In 1751, in his famous book “Inquiry into the principles of Morals” he argued that morality is not determined purely by self-interest, instead useful and moral actions can be done by an individual without any self-interest. This kind of thinking was very dissenting to the dominant ideas of that time, which were laid down by Thomas Hobbes in his “Leviathan” published in 1649, in which he concluded that everybody is fighting for his/her own self-interest, and it was the ground argument of the mercantilists. Thus the intellectual arguments between the scholars of that time allowed them to formulate new and better understandings of their contemporary societies.

 

Similarly an English economist and philosopher James Steuart who is pretty well-known in the circles of political economy, but probably an unknown name in the mainstream. But interestingly he wrote a book called “Inquiry in to political economy” in 1767, which allowed Adam Smith to formulate his thoughts to denounce Steuart’s ideas by writing an “Inquiry and the causes of wealth of nations” in 1776.  Nowadays almost everyone who have been involved in any kind of academics have heard of Adam Smith, as he is regarded as the most authentic source of classical political economy. But in reality the “Wealth of Nations” was written by Smith as a reply and a counter argument to Steuart’s “inquiry in to political economy”.  Then we get to David Ricardo who continues and advances the work of Smith. And after Ricardo we see Karl Marx who did acknowledge the work of all the political economists before him, but he changed the whole spectrum of the debate. He instead of celebrating capitalism, like Smith and Ricardo did before him; he critically analyzed capitalism, and came up with very strong critique of it, and he uses a class analysis to understand the whole process of production.

 

In 1867 the volume one of “Das Capital” was published, and it really changed the whole dimension of the political economy. It is important to understand that Marx developed its understanding of Capitalism by studying all the political economists before him, especially Smith and Ricardo, and also by closely observing the real life events of the capitalist Germany, France, Belgium and England. The ideas of Marx were based on sound philosophical grounds, it is a sophisticated and complicated ideology, but the general idea is pretty simple and easy to understand. Marx argued in Capital that the (workers) employees produce goods and services for their employers (capitalists), and in return they get paid in wages, but they always get paid less in value than what they have produced, and that unpaid labor is called “surplus value” by Marx, and that surplus value is known as profit for the capitalist. So this whole process of production is based on exploitation of the workers from the hands of the capitalists, because capitalists own the “means of production”, thus it allows them to appropriate surplus which has been produced by the labor of the workers. So it was a very radical explanation of the economic structure of that time and it holds true for today too. As one might argue that, Marx’s ideas are more than 150 years old, so they are irrelevant for us, but the fact is that the class structure of the production hasn’t changed much in last 150 years, we still have the capitalist mode of production, and thus Marx is as relevant today if not more.

 

Now if we try to answer the basic questions that we have raised in the start of the article, I hope they can be answered to a certain extent in the given framework. Marxian economics has been marginalized because it represents the aspirations of the marginalized classes (working class people). Thus in the capitalist mode of production, the whole purpose of getting an education is to better equip yourself to later sell yourself as a commodity to your potential employer. Thus by no means, they are going to teach you Marxian economics, (i.e. this whole system is based on your exploitation), instead they are going to teach you the ways that how to earn more profit for your employer so you can keep your job and stay alive. So in a capitalist mode of production, no matter what your intentions are good or bad, you have been used as a commodity by the capitalist class, whether you are a teacher, doctor, engineer, lawyer or in any other so-called respected professions, you have been forced to act as a commodity which can be bought and sold on the market place. Maybe you have a nice car and a house so you might not feel too bad about selling yourself as a commodity, and if that’s all what you wanted? Then just be happy because you are living your dream on the expense of your conscience, but if you find it unfair, offending and disrespectful to your humane values, then you have to come out of your nutshell, and explore an alternative way to run and operate the
economy and the society overall.

 

“The hope of a new dawn”

by Danish Khan

Here comes another 14^th august, a day celebrated by the state of Pakistan as its independence day, but for an average citizen of the country, it is just another day with ever-growing troubles and sorrows. During the last 64 years, lots of things have changed but the Independence Day
celebrations on official levels are still very much the same, the putrid display of militaristic insanity, which does not suit a state where poverty and hunger is spreading like a viral infection, fake and oblivious patriotic songs, which try to deny the existence of different nationalities in a federation of Pakistan, and try to patronize people with the Pakistani Nationalism by suffocating the rich and diverse culture and history of Balochis, Sindhis and the Pakhtuns. And to wrap up the celebrations prayers are offered at official level to please the theocracy of the country, and the ruling elite pardon for forgiveness from the omnipotent for all the crimes they have committed all year long against the people of Pakistan. But now days the lack of interest in the independence day celebrations among the common citizens is a mere reflection that  an average citizen is completely fed up of this onslaught of fake patriotism which has been continuously thrown upon him for last six decades to cover up the wrong deeds and doings of the ruling elites of this country.

“ yeh daag daag ujaala yeh shab-guzeda sahar,

woh intezaar tha jiska yeh woh sahar tu nahi”

On the eve of 14th august 1947, on the creation of the state of Pakistan, Faiz wrote one of the historical poem of its kind  titled as                    “Subah-e-Azaadi” (Dawn of Freedom), at that moment when everyone was celebrating the so called freedom, Faiz was not too much enthusiastic about it. In his poem he tried to raise a point that things would not change too much for an average citizen in this kind of Pakistan. Isn’t it turned out to be true after the long and bleak experiences of 64 years?

The existing state of Pakistan without any shadow of a doubt is a state which has been run by the military for last six decades. It is not surprised when people say that military is the most stable and strongest institution of the country, but I would rather say that military is such a hegemonic institution of the country which has not allowed any other institution to sustain and develop itself to challenge the hegemony of the military. Thus if this country has been a home of misery, poverty, hunger and darkness for last six decades, most of the credit goes to the military of the Pakistan. But wait a minute, what about the religious clergy (Mullahs), feudal landlords and the Bourgeois of the country?

Well military has been such a hegemonic force that, all these above mentioned forces of the society have been forced directly or indirectly to support and back the hegemony of the military. Furthermore, they all represent the reactionary and the privileged classes of the society, thus directly or indirectly their interests have been amalgamated with the interests of the military establishment. Thus the contemporary state of Pakistan is a state which defends and protects the interests of Military Generals, Religious clergy (Mullahs), feudal lords (jagirdaar) and the Bourgeois class.  So, if you do belong to the any of the above mentioned fragments of the society, you might have a reason to be joyous on this Independence Day, but if not, and odds are very much against you, then it is the time to realize and rationalize a change which can bring about necessary socio-economic changes to shackle this stranglehold of these monstrous forces.

All of these powerful forces have been very smart and clever, they have kept an average citizen in confusion by blaming each other for the economic and social troubles of the country, but in reality all of them are just different phases of the same rotating cycle. The military blames the political ruling elite as the reason for country’s dire situation, the Mullahs (religious clergy) blames music, dance, film, women in shirtsleeves as the reason behind all the troubles of the country including poverty, hunger and disparity among the people. While in very mellow and disguised words the Bourgeois class blames military (not as an institution, but just one general who turns out to be a dictator) and the feudal lords for the lack of democracy and prosperity in the country, and the feudal lords claim that it is only the media which is exaggerating things, otherwise
country is doing pretty good.

On contrary, an average citizen of Pakistan collectively blames and considers all these sects of the society responsbile for all the pain and misery of the people of Pakistan. The living conditions of the working class people of Pakistan tantamount to slavery. Even after the long 64 years, if a state is unable to provide the basic necessities of life, i.e. food, clean drinking water, electricity etc. then it would be crime to not ask those who have been in power to be accountable in the court of the people. But it is a tendency among the corporate mainstream media and in the Bourgeois culture to discourage such questions and debates which point out the real contradictions of the society. That is the primary reason, when anyone talks about the accountability of the military of Pakistan, the patriotism of that person is doubted upon. But we the youth of Pakistan opted to rebel against this norm and tradition, we are not going to stay silent, we are following the pathways of Sajad Zaheer, Hassan Nasir, Habib Jalib, Nazir Abbasi and Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and all those brave matrys who resisted against this system of oppression and exploitation.

Even in such miserable conditions, there is still a dawn of hope in the hearts of the people, for some reasons they have realized that things only get worsen to get better. After every dark night, there is a new dawn, which brings the hope of a better tomorrow for the people of Pakistan. The class consciousness among the people of Pakistan has been increasing steadily because of their harsh material experiences and realities, and due to the sound and consistent political activism by the revolutionaries of the country. Now the people have realized that being passive will not do them any better, instead of being reactionary they have to be proactive and revolutionary. The tales of French revolution, Russian revolution
and the Chinese revolution have been widely discussed among the intellects of the society, and now this debate is slowly but surely spreading among the youth and the working classes of the country. Now it is upon the people of Pakistan and on their class consciousness to learn from the histories of the great revolutions of the past, and try to relate and localize them according to their existing material conditions. It would be too early and speculative to say that when and which way the pendulum of revolution would swing, but the one thing is certain, the emancipation and the welfare of the majority of the population would be the center of the gravity of any coming change in Pakistan.

Lahore: Tribute paid to Comrade Mansoor Saeed

(June 13th, 2010/ Sunday- Report: Ammar Aziz)

In Lahore, a large number of activists and workers gathered to pay tribute to the revolutionary struggle and contributions of Comrade Manssor Saeed, a senior communist leader and intellectual, who has recently passed away on May 24, 2010. He took an active part in the politics of the Left and cultural activism all his life. He joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1964, before moving to Pakistan in 1970 to marry his cousin who was a member of Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP). He then joined the CPP, later in 1975, and remained an active member of the party as the In-charge of International Department, In-charge of Ideological Section, and Member of Central Committee and Central Secretariat till his death.

The reference was organized by the CPP and Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party (CMKP) at the Dorab Patel Auditorium, HRCP which was filled with hundreds of people, holding red flags. It was presided by Comrade Imdad Qazi, leader CPP and Comrade Taimur Rahman, Secretary General CMKP. Special guests inluded IA Rahman, Jamil Umar, Muneeza Hashmi and Sania Saeed, who is the daughter of Comrade Mansoor Saeed (late) and is known as a progressive actoress.

The event started with a group of children singing the Communist Internationale. According to Sania Saeed, “these children reminded me of my revolutionary childhood and I feel honored that my father, Comrade Mansoor Saeed, educated me ideologically.”

Comrade Imdad Qazi said that small emerging leftist groups are the element of hope in Pakistan. If they follow people like Mansoor Saeed, they would play a significant role in the Socialist struggle.

Comrade Taimur Rahman highlighted Mansoor Saeed’s literary and theatrical contributions. He said, that, we shall follow the revolutionary path of Comrade Mansoor Saeed through art and culture, who initiated the progressive theater in Pakistan with his Theater Group Dastak. He said, that our party will start some study circles based on Mansoor’s writings. Comrade Taimur Rahman also performed with his band Laal and sang songs dedicated to the cause of working-class.

Other speakers emphasized their personal and ideological affiliation with Comrade Mansoor Saeed and said that he will be remembered with great respect in the history of class-struggle in Pakistan.

At the end, Laal Theater performed and workers performed a play ‘Machine’. It was highly appreciated by the audiences. The event was closed by the performance of Comrade Naseer, member CMKP Hashtnagar, who sang Faiz’s poetry and progressive Pashto song.

Comrade Tamiur Rahman said, in spite of the tragic loss of our beloved comrade Mansoor Saeed, we have celebrated today’s gathering with hope of struggle leading towards the Socialist revolution.

Religion as a panacea for Baloch nationalism

By Malik Siraj Akbar

Striking Quetta’s Civil Hospital on April 16, 2010, a young Baloch suicide bomber, Haq Nawaz Baloch, killed at least eleven people, including two top police officials and a television journalist. This attack was dissimilar from ones previously carried out by Baloch nationalist guerrilla fighters against government installations and its security forces. Thus the largely secular Baloch society was introduced to an uncommonly new phenomenon of religious extremism and one for which it is almost totally unprepared to respond.

Unfortunately we cannot regard this suicide bombing as a unique occurrence. Just three days before two teenage sisters were acidified in the Dalbandin town of Chagai District in Balochistan by unidentified persons riding a motorbike. The girls were punished for the “crime” of not observing strict Islamic Hijab. Hailing from an extremely poor family, the girls were rushed to a Quetta hospital. Their faces are burnt but due to the lack of proper medical facilities their medical treatment is unsatisfactory.

An underground militant group calling itself as the Baloch Gharatmand (Honored) Group had, days before launching the first staggering attack, circulated a leaflet warning women in the area that they should leave their homes without being accompanied by a male family member. According to the interpretation of the shadowy group, being unaccompanied by a male family member is “un-Islamic” and should therefore be “punished” by those who ignored the warning.