Pakistan: The travesty of capitalist democracy

Lal Khan

The collusion between the lumpen gangs affiliated with these ‘democratic forces’ and the state apparatus has wreaked havoc for the ordinary people who have little or no access to wealth or authority

In the 67 years of Pakistan’s existence there has hardly been a period where the vast majority ever experienced genuine prosperity and mass contentment. The ruling elite, nurtured by the British imperialists, ensured that the struggle for national independence was restricted to the system grafted by imperialism onto the body politic of this South Asian subcontinent. In Pakistan, the ruling elites never had ideological unanimity on the political and social structures that would run this society. It was basically due to the debilitated nature of the capitalist economic model that created a capitalist class of a comprador character by its very nature.

With their failure to carry out an industrial revolution, they were forced into compromising with the remnants of the feudal elite on the one hand and play the role of imperialist toadies on the other. The society they have created is a mess in all fields of life. The Pakistani elite could not even create a proper capitalist or bourgeois class, let alone create a unified, modern nation state. The political haranguing amongst the various sections of the ruling classes was mostly imposed upon the social psychology by the state and the media to indulge the masses in backing one faction of the elite against the other.

This debate has traversed Pakistan’s chequered history except for the period of 1968 to 1969 when the masses entered the arena of history in a class struggle that strove to transform the system through a socialist revolution. In the last few decades, media and political debates have been confined to democracy versus dictatorship rather than ending the severe social and economic crisis from which the masses have been suffering. This debate transformed ‘democracy’ into a sacred cow and solution to all ills within society by hirelings that dominate and design our social and political intellect, and subjecting the masses to the unending mantra of liberals and conservatives, both of whom basically subscribe to the capitalist economic doctrine.

In an exploitative system there can never be a genuine democracy of economic and social relations. Dictatorships come in various forms and ideological streaks but their main role is to ensure the continuation of capitalist exploitation. As pressure builds from below and is on the verge of exploding and destroying the system and structures of the state, ‘capitalist democracy’ is used as a convenient tool by the ruling classes to perpetuate their loot and plunder — overnight they see the light and become proponents of ‘people’s democracy’. However, the masses continue to be plunged into the abyss of misery and poverty. The ruling class’s strategist experts embark on a road to bifurcate the economic conditions of the masses from the politics running this country. In the recent period even lip service and the artificial rhetoric of ‘the masses’ and ‘fighting against poverty’ have vanished from political jargon.

The present regime of right-wing capitalists is aping the economics of Turkey’s neo conservative Prime Minister Recep Erdogan alongside his autocratic methods and mindset. However, with escalating catastrophic violence and the crumbling economy, the masses are not only suffering economic brutalities but are being subjected to increasing repression by the police and other state institutions under this farcical democratic set up. This becomes more vicious at the lower tiers of society. The collusion between the lumpen gangs affiliated with these ‘democratic forces’ and the state apparatus has wreaked havoc for the ordinary people who have little or no access to wealth or authority. The treatment meted out to these toilers in and from the police stations and other security institutions is horrific to say the least. This political class of petit bourgeois hooligans in the urban and rural areas extort and humiliate ordinary people. This ‘majoritarianism’ of the incumbent regime has increased their despotism and they act like the emperors of the past. Nobody dares to question them and they are alienated from the realities of the lives of the masses. However, what is becoming clearer in Pakistan and on a world scale is that the economic crisis is eating into the political suprastructural and democratic facades set up to perpetuate capitalist rule. As Lenin once said, “Politics is but concentrated economics.” This is being proved by the situation at the present time. Even the staunchest crusader of capitalist democracy has to confess. In its latest issue, The Economist admits in a lengthy article, “Adjusting to hard times will be made more difficult by a growing cynicism towards politics...Money talks louder than ever in American politics. All this creates the impression that American democracy is for sale and that the rich have more power than the poor. The result is that America’s image — and by extension that of democracy itself — has taken a terrible battering...Political systems have been captured by interest groups.” This world crisis of capitalism is not going away anytime soon. Rather, it is going to further drag the human race into greater economic hardships and misery. There have been several mass upheavals in recent years expressing the economic distress and increasing torment of the daily lives of ordinary people across the planet. They were all guided to the safe havens of capitalist democracy by the crisis of leadership and bourgeois media. However, the struggles against ‘democratic regimes’ from Erdogan’s Turkey to Morsi’s Egypt were clearly for socio-economic reasons and not for political change as the media portrayed. Again we see the extreme hypocrisy and double standards of imperialism, as they were perfectly happy with the ‘movements’ against democratically elected governments in Venezuela and Ukraine, while their media conveniently ignored the uprisings against the Netanyahu regime in Israel and the mass revolt against the autocratic regime of Erdogan in Turkey.

However, the situation in Pakistan is not going to get any better under this democratic façade. Astute experts of the elite are full of doom and gloom. The question is: how long will the masses tolerate this increasing misery under capitalist democracy? The rise of obscurantism is a shallow and exaggerated notion put forward by the liberals to have their position supported. These fundamentalist forces of black reaction have very little mass support and their existence hinges on nurturing by sections of the state. John Adams, the US’s second president once said, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Even in advanced countries, the democratic set up prevailed till the capitalist economies improved living standards. Now, from Europe to Japan, capitalism is in a terminal crisis. This democracy is the rule of the rich by the rich for the rich. The working classes will attain democratic rights when they have their social and economic slavery abolished. This is incompatible with the very existence of capitalism.