The Rebel Road…

Mr. Munir A. Malik, ex-president Supreme Court Bar Council and advocate for the now-deposed Chief Justice of Pakistan and who was arrested on November 3rd after the promulgation of emergency and the ensuing PCO, was recently transferred from his prison cell in Attock Jail to a hospital room in Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) for emergency treatment for a malfunction of his kidneys, i.e. renal failure. Many questions regarding this news item are enshrouded in confusion but one stands our prominently — why would a person who has no history of such a malady need emergency treatment for the same after a prolonged incarceration? This is a question that is, at best, troubling. Reports from inside sources at PIMS have stated that Mr. Munir’s condition was ‘acute’ and ‘life threatening’ when he got there. The doctors attributed this to either criminal negligence on the part of the police officials or gross misconduct. However, the severity and nature of the malfunction leaves it open to interpretation. It has been seen in previous cases of physical torture that renal failure is one of the first conditions that develop as a result. It is for this reason that one is reluctant to throw the ‘physical torture’ theory out the window in spite of the fact that Mr. Munir stated that he was subjected to psychological and not physical torture. Mr. Munir also emphasised that the lawyer’s struggle had entered a new phase and that the lawyers should adopt new tactics in their struggle for democracy – especially given the promulgation of the newly amended Bar Council Ordinance (BCO), which empowers the state to take action against lawyers charged with misconduct.

Mr. Munir is one of four eminent advocates, all of whom were linked to the Chief Justice’s restoration struggle, who were incarcerated on November 3rd — the other three being Mr. Ali Ahmed Kurd, Justice (Retd.) Tariq Mahmood and Aitzaz Ahsan. There are persistent rumours that Mr. Kurd and Justice Mahmood have been subjected to barbaric physical torture. These rumours are lent credence by the fact that Justice (Retd.) Tariq Mahmood too has been shifted to Services Hospital from jail in ‘critical condition’ on the night of November 25th. Furthermore, no family members or media personnel have been allowed to visit him either in jail or hospital. Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan was seen in public on November 25th when he came to submit his nomination papers under police guard. He appeared visibly ‘pale and weakened’, according to eye witnesses, as he was escorted to and from the Sessions Court, Lahore, having been shifted to house arrest from Adiyala Jail.

While reports that Mr. Munir Malik’s detention orders have been withdrawn are an encouraging development, it is disturbing that extremely upright and respected professionals of this country are mysteriously ending up on hospital beds in critical condition – all this after a stay in jail. This, at the very least, goes against the government claims that the incarcerated professionals were being given every available amenity to ‘ease’ their ‘stay’. Admittedly, the country is in a state of emergency and all fundamental rights have been suspended. However, on no basis of historical precedent or common morality can a government take part in or allow torture of its citizens – especially up to the point that their internal organs either malfunction or stop working altogether, necessitating their being rushed to the nearest medical facility.

Look around you today and what do you see?

Confusion? Disorder? Apathy and distrust?

Is this the gist of the world? Is this the promised culmination of thousands of years of human progress? Have we been reduced to this? And perhaps the most important question of all: in this era of corporate prosperity why are we so empty?

In order to understand the world around us today we must accept that we, as human beings, have entered the era of capitalism. But even that doesn’t answer everything. What indeed is capitalism?

Let us begin at the beginning.

Capitalism, loosely defined, is the era in history where industrialisation and mass production of commodities make it possible for commodity production and disbursement to reach a new zenith. It is because of such disciplined production and disbursement of commodity that corporations come into existence, entities with only one agenda: the accumulation of maximised profit. This agenda is fulfilled by a highly organised and managed system of commodity production and sale. As we can see, corporations – the main driving force behind capitalist ventures – are stuck in a vicious circle; the vicious circle of having been formed due to mass commodity production and for the purpose of the same. If left alone, this system is self-perpetuating, at least as far as the realm of production alone is concerned. However, there are other factors which come into play as well.

These factors include the masses, the people who consume the commodities produced under a capitalistic production schema, and the working class, the people who sell their labour power at a fraction of its true cost. In doing so they fill up the coffers of the capitalists along with actually producing the commodity. It is interesting to note that under an advanced capitalist society, it is seen that the masses and the working class tend to superimpose, i.e. more and more of the masses turn into working class individuals who earn their pay by daily wage labour. This is the first absurdity of capitalism. As capitalism (and by extension the capitalist) strengthens its grip upon society, it cleaves it into only two segments: those who are the owners of the means of production (the factories, mills, farms, mines, etc.) and those who sell the only commodity they own (their labour power) on the ‘free’-market and, in turn, earn money to sustain themselves.

The labourer receives means of subsistence in exchange for his labour-power; the capitalist receives, in exchange for his means of subsistence, labour, the productive activity of the labourer, the creative force by which the worker not only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the accumulated labour a greater value than it previously possessed. The labourer gets from the capitalist a portion of the existing means of subsistence. For what purpose do these means of subsistence serve him? For immediate consumption. But as soon as I consume means of subsistence, they are irrevocably lost to me, unless I employ the time during which these means sustain my life in producing new means of subsistence, in creating by my labour new values in place of the values lost in consumption. But it is just this noble reproductive power that the labourer surrenders to the capitalist in exchange for means of subsistence received. Consequently, he has lost it for himself.

(Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital)

However, as mentioned above, the relationship between the Capitalist and the worker is one of pure and simple exploitation. The capitalist, in effect, does not even earn his profit (remember Profit is the sole motivation for the capitalist) from the buying and selling of the commodity as most Bourgeois Economists would have us believe. The Capitalists earn their profit even before the commodity hits the market for sale. In this way, we can see, the real wages fall while commodity prices continue to increase. This creates an ever-widening gulf between how much a person earns and how much he can afford – with the common man being the loser in every scenario.

An interesting facet of Capitalism is also that, much like the rule of the Jungle, only the most ruthless in their pursuit for profit survive. Given the fact that the only measure that one can employ to test the success of a capitalist is to hold him up to the cardinal rule of Capitalism, i.e. how good he Is at maximising profit, it leaves the field wide open as to how he goes about his business. History is testament that profit can easily be maximised by resorting to morally reprehensible or illegal activities such as polluting, coercing etc. It is not unheard of for Capitalists to maintain gangs of thugs to ‘smooth over’ business transactions. In this way even the capitalists maintain high competition between themselves and any capitalist that is not up to the mark – so to speak – fails and falls into the category of the working class eventually. It is for this reason that the Bourgeoisie, as a class, is defined by its continuing shrinkage and the working class by its ever increasing numbers.

“The working class is also recruited from the higher strata of society; a mass of small business men and of people living upon the interest of their capitals is precipitated into the ranks of the working class, and they will have nothing else to do than to stretch out their arms alongside of the arms of the workers. Thus the forest of outstretched arms, begging for work, grows ever thicker, while the arms themselves grow every leaner.

It is evident that the small manufacturer cannot survive in a struggle in which the first condition of success is production upon an ever greater scale. It is evident that the small manufacturers and thereby increasing the number of candidates for the proletariat – all this requires no further elucidation.”

(Karl Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital)

In this manner an ever decreasing number of people (the Bourgeoisie) gain coercive control over an ever increasing army of people (the working class) and property rights over an exceedingly high amount of planetary resources – resources that actually belong to every human being. Due to such increasing control and resolution of intra-competition, between the bourgeoisie class, monopoly formation takes place and the concept of the free market, itself, is thrown out the window. In a monopoly it is the producer, rather than free-market mechanisms, that dictate and ascertain commodity prices.

It was V. I. Lenin, revolutionary Russian philosopher and the primary intellectual engine behind the creation of the USSR in 1917, who first identified the destiny of capitalism i.e. monopoly formation. This stage of capitalism is also referred to as Imperialism in popular discourse. He identified five characteristics of Imperialism. They are,

The concentration of production and capital develops to such a high stage that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life.

The merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital”, of a financial oligarchy.

The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities

The formation of international capitalist monopolies, which share the world among themselves.

The completion of the territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers.

(V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: the highest stage of Capitalism).

Imperialism is a stage of development in which imperial powers (such as USA, Britain, Germany etc.) have exhausted the potential for the generation of maximised profits in their native markets and launch military ventures for the capture of the world’s hitherto virgin markets and resources. We can see examples of this in Iraq, Afghanistan in the context of the post-9/11 world order.

Human beings are reduced further and further into nothing more than servile automatons who are identified with their function in an increasingly corporatised world. Even concepts such as love, fairplay, justice, freedom and empathy loose meaning since the world is driven by two motives for the only two classes – the Bourgeoisie looking for newer markets and larger profits and the working class working hard for its next meal. It is in this concept that Karl Marx writes on the nature of love in a world which does not have these base and sub-human drives. He says:

“Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return — that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent — a misfortune.”

(Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844)

In a world where famine wreaks havoc on entire continents, where draught kills human beings by the hundreds – corporate food giants waste food rather than feeding those unfortunate souls in the name of corporate policy. In such a world if one really wishes to see the greatest then all one needs to do is glance in the nearest mirror.

Pakistan is a society in transition; it is a society defined by its keen acceptance of new production methods but maintains a strict adherence to more traditional values. It is unfortunate, however, that we cannot have our cake and eat it too. The adversarial relationship that these new modes of productions have with old values and traditions is seldom immediately evident. It is akin to changing the brick-pattern of the pavement while passers-by continue to walk on, one does not notice the changes until one consciously goes in search of them.

Pakistan, as a State, came into existence due to two fundamental class-movements. The first was the movement of the Bengali middle class and constituted the bulk of the intellectual and cadre base of the two-nation theory. The second movement was of the feudals in West Punjab who joined forces with the proponents of the two nation theory simply because they wanted to free themselves from the threat of Land Reforms that were rumoured to be on the Congress Party’s agenda. Value systems in Pakistan were a result of the balance between different class forces finding dominance from time to time. It is for this reason that the values inherent in Pakistani society, along the changing decades, can be classified very neatly into distinct blocs.

1947 to 1958

Pakistan was, predominantly, led by individuals from the salariat who had risen to high posts in the Muslim L eague by dint of services rendered during the independence movement. It is for this reason that the two dominant classes of Pakistan, i.e. classes which enjoyed an intimate contact with the functioning and the state apparatus, at the time, were either the upper middle class of the feudal class. It must be mentioned here that while the feudal class in Pakistan was an overwhelmingly powerful one – it was content at the time to merely be powerful yet silent partners with the upper middle class. All this with the implicit understanding between both – that the interests of the feudal class would not come into contention or controversy. It was a precarious relationship but, given the fact that Pakistan’s economy was overwhelmingly agrarian, a necessary one.

It is for this reason that these eleven years are identified, primarily, with the emergence of social norms and values attributed to the upper middle class. Professionalism was one of the stronger points of this decade and a quasi-democratic culture came into existence. Although these years are also remembered for incidences of gross incompetence by some leaders, they are also remembered for some radical good decisions as well.

An example of this is the decision to set up infrastructure within the country to facilitate eventual industrial growth, during this particular decade rather than that of Ayub Khan who is sometimes erroneously praised for setting up the industrial backbone of Pakistan.

1958 to 1971

These years are known for the military rule that Ayub Khan instituted within Pakistan by deposing the con government of Iskandar Mirza. While this had a profound and everlasting affect on Pakistani politics, the real affect (of which politics is only a reflection) was on the very make-up of Pakistani society and class dynamics.

The upper middle class of Pakistan was virtually thrown out of the political arena by Ayub Khan’s regime and was replaced by a new artificial class of crony capitalists. I call this class ‘artificial’ because unlike the bourgeoisie freedom movements in other countries, which led to the establishment of the bourgeoisie as a distinct and dominant class industrial units and agriculatural lands in Pakistan the bourgeoisie followed the Junker’s Path, i.e was literally constructed by the state itself by giving out to individuals and families selected from the feudal and mercantile class of Pakistan.

As can be expected, these years were known for the rise of political and social corruption within Pakistani society. One of the defining features of any dictatorial regime is the eventual emergence of nepotism, and Ayub Khan’s regime was no exception. Economic and financial corruption along with the rise of the 22 families was another blemish on an already dirty record.

General. Agha Yahya Khan inherited the state of Pakistan from General. Ayub Khan when the latter stepped down from office due to his plummeting popularity in Pakistan. Yahya Khan, also a military dictator, was further confounded in his efforts to rule the country due to the heap of political, economic and social incompetence that the 11 year old rule of Ayub Khan had left in its wake. In comparison, this regime was both short and floundering from the beginning. The military campaigns and the loss of East Pakistan only exacerbated the problems for Yahya Khan and he handed over office to Z. A. Bhutto in 1971.

Not much can be said about the condition of values and ethics under Yahya Khan since he, himself, became a victim of the ghosts of Ayub Khan’s corrupt policies. Society under Yahya Khan, however, came together and gelled to form a democratic backlash to 13 years of unconstitutional military rule. This era is known for an increase in social consciousness and emphasis on concepts of fairplay and justice. Social cohesion and mass-politics also defined this era.

1972-1977

Also known as the Bhutto years, this particular era was known for its radical and status-quo-shattering policies. The re-nationalisation of the industrial units that Ayub Khan had given away for peanuts was also one of such policies.

The class-divide in Pakistan changed once again as peasants and workers of Pakistan found more power in their hands than they had earlier. Feudal values started to disappear one by one but the rise of religious political parties was the inevitable consequence of the military years before Bhutto. It is for this reason that these years saw the bifurcation of Pakistani society into two well-defined camps. The first were the secular and progressive lobby represented by the PPP, NAP and various communist and leftist parties. The second was the religious and traditionalist camp, which was represented by religious parties and some other mainstream parties. Although Bhutto tried to placate the religious mullahs by disenfranchising minorities such as the Ahmedis, but it was felt that the chasm between Bhutto and the religious parties had grown too wide. It was for this reason that General. Zia was able to overthrow Bhutto with the consent of various powerful classes (bourgeoisie and feudals both of which had been affected by Bhutto’s reforms – bourgeoisie by industrial nationalisation and feudals by land reforms introducing a land holding ceiling and tenancy laws, various, religious parties and United States.

The best word to describe the nature of values held by Pakistani society under Bhutto is awaami. There is no disputing the fact — by friend or foe, that Bhutto was a man of the crowds. He knew how to talk the talk, so to speak. His (relaxed to say the least) adherence to socialist principles made him stand out in a society where, up until that point, socialist ideals were conspicuous only by their absence. It is this quagmire of pseudo-socialist, quasi-democratic and populist values that defines both this era and Bhutto himself.

1977 – 1988

The years under General Zia-ul-haq can be conveniently summed up in one sentence – they were years in which free or profound thought were a crime that was punished swiftly and severely. These years mark the steady rise of religious and militant forces in Pakistan,- all because Pakistan was taking part in a very different form of proxy war back then, the war against the communists.

These jihadis, trained by the best facilities Pakistan could provide, were the front line offensive against USSR in Afghanistan. However, the cost incurred to Pakistani society for taking part in this war has gone beyond simple figures, the echoes of our past resound in our ears even today. Militant fundamentalism, a phenomenon that the state and people of Pakistan have been battling ever since the (in)famous 9-11 incident is a direct consequence of having trained those so-called jihadis to begin with.

All in all, these years are known for a general retrogressive and downward traditionalist spiral in cultural norms and values. Religious indoctrination and militant fundamentalism were encouraged as state policy and all democratic norms and notions of freedom of thought or expression were flogged out of people.

1988 – 1999

These years were a veritable merry-go-round of the same old faces coming back into office over and over again in nothing short of leap-frog fashion. However, as corrupt as they were or as haughty as the individuals in the regime were, we are better able to assess those years for what they really were now that we have been granted the wisdom of further years and experience.

The class-clash in these years was a dynamic one. Power was given to and wrested back from the lower-classes over and over again as Benazir and Nawaz Sharif played their years long game of tug-of-war. However, these years are also known for the rampant corruption that came to exist in Pakistan as a result of the many manners in which both rulers made efforts to cling to power. Benazir had her Mr. 10 percent and Nawaz Sharif had illusions of everlasting glory as the first Caliph of Pakistan. Pakistani society became a complex mixture of discontent, distrust, disillusionment and despondency. These were the sentiments on the street up until General. Pervaiz Musharraf carried out his, now, historic coup of 1999.