The following three articles are from the Asian Marxist Review. In addition to the announcement of his death, for the benefit of readers we republish two articles by Lal Khan from November 18, 2018 and March 3, 2019 from the Asian Marxist Review. The first is on the future prospects for socialism; the second is on the question of the partition of India and the India-Pakistan rivalry.
Lal Khan, whose name needs no introduction in the revolutionary politics of not only Pakistan but world over, breathed his last today on 21st February at 7:00 PM in Lahore. He had been fighting cancer for the last one and a half year. He was 64.
He was one of the founders of The Struggle, a fortnightly Marxist magazine in Urdu language, chief editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defense Campaign (PTUDC). Lal Khan started his lifelong revolutionary struggle as a student leader at Nishtar Medical College Multan in late 1970s and soon got interested in the ideas of Marxism and revolutionary socialism. During despotic Zia-Ul-Haq regime he endured floggings and incarceration and later went into exile for many years when martial law courts sentenced him to death for not abandoning his political activities.
For more than four decades he fought under the banner of revolutionary socialism for the historical interests of working class. In the dark period unfolding with the collapse of Soviet Union he not only laid the foundations of a Marxist organization in South Asia but ruthlessly defended, through dozens of his writings, the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky against the imperialist propaganda onslaught of so called failure of Socialism as a social system. His confidence and belief in the communist future of mankind didn’t shake till his last breath.
The journey of his life may have come to an end but he will live long in the struggle for the emancipation of mankind from capitalist exploitation and tyranny in Pakistan, South Asia and whole world. His legacy would inspire many generations to come who have to keep the red flag flying high. We would like to pay tribute to him in the words of comrade Lenin:
What a torch of reason ceased to burn, What a heart has ceased to beat!
Farewell comrade Lal Khan… your memory would always be honored.
Is Capitalism Mankind’s Destiny?
The genesis of capitalism was based on the power of steam. Ever since, for almost three hundred years, capitalism evolved through different processes and changes that gave it a new impetus. But the basic mechanics of labour exploitation for extracting profits, competition between humans leading to vicious wars and bloodshed, subjugations of nations and oppression of women and weaker sections of society have been its fundamental features.
The methodology of oppression periodically changed through the ages. Through the evolution of machinery, industry and trade and technological ‘revolutions’ gave it new leases of life. From steam to electricity, telegraphs, railways, industrial conveyor lines, automation, computers, Internet and now the advent of Artificial Intelligence were such inventions. The advent of containers in the last few decades revolutionised trade and commerce. However, these technological wonders remained firmly within the control of ruling classes. These were exclusively aimed to enhance the rates of profits.
However, there were certain social reforms during economic booms mainly in the advanced capitalist countries. Yet there were social upheavals and revolutionary movements that challenged the states and the system recurrently throughout its history. The bourgeois industrial revolutions initially took place, albeit in different forms and shapes as capitalism was a national system in its inception and the nationalist characteristics of its character, occurrence and social impacts were clearly diverse in the different countries of Europe, USA, Japan, Canada, Australia and others. But that didn’t lead to society’s socioeconomic emancipation or equality, as was the promised motto of the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. Neither did it eliminate depravity and alienation of the working masses. These concessions to pacify them and human development through these advances were mainly designed to create a healthy and skilled proletariat to increase the productivity of labour for more profits. But above all, they needed a social stability at least domestically to enjoy their plundered wealth and obscene luxuries.
Nevertheless, these ‘revolutions’ also had profound effects on social life and structures of society and changed the social relations, cultural values, economic interactions, living conditions, human emotions and styles of cultural life under modern production. The primitive accumulation of capital nevertheless continued.
The main tasks of these revolutions were the creation of new nations and states, the overthrow of feudalism; the formation of a political suprastructure of parliamentary democracy where the representatives both conservative and reformists factions of the elite could vent the seething discontent of the masses in society. These national democratic revolutions were based on the industrial revolutions that created enough surpluses to built the social and physical infrastructures that gave foundations and an impetus to the relatively rapid growth of the economy and industry. Despite the shortcomings of these revolutions, in that period, capitalism had a relatively progressive role in history.
However with this rapid growth of production, the national markets soon became saturated, as the rates of the profits declined and could not be sustained. Capitalism’s basic incentive and essence as a historical socioeconomic system is the rate of profit.
As the limits within the nation-state were exhausted, capitalism began to expand its economic domination beyond its boundaries. This led to the formation of modern imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. These imperialist powers had belligerent economic and militaristic designs to capture more lands, enslave the inhabitants, extort resources and compete with rival powers in this imperialist’s crusades for greater plunder.
This rivalry led to wars between imperialist powers for their hegemony of markets and colonies. The balance of power among the imperial capitalist states continually changed after these wars.
However the capitalist industrial revolutions were accomplished on less than one-third of this planet, two-thirds of the countries were still in different nascent stages of development and the imperialists technological and military superiority and advanced weaponry was ferociously used to subdue their economic development and crush the valiant struggles against imperialism by the colonial masses. Lenin explained this process in ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’;
Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of “advanced” countries. The natural resources flow from a periphery of poor and underdeveloped countries to a core of wealthy and developed countries, enriching the latter at the expense of the former, because of how the poor countries are integrated to the global economy.
Although the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French and other imperialists occupied several parts of the so-called ‘third world’, but it was the British Imperialism that colonized most territories. By I901 Britain ruled a formal empire of 11.2 million square miles, with a population of almost 400 million spread across the world. After the Second World War, British Imperialism was debilitated, as had other imperialisms in history from Egypt and India to Rome and Napoleonic France.
The post-war imperialist power that arose was the United States. However, after seven decades the US imperialism is also in terminal decline. Its waning economic and technological hegemony on a world stage is being challenged by China and other powers. Its military failures, record debts and trade deficits have eroded its economic and military dominance. In this epoch of the world capitalist decay prospects for the rise of China or another large economy to the stature of a new world hegemon is absurd. The organic weakness of capitalism has made it an obsolete historical system.
US imperialism’s decline has given rise to mayhem and instability unforeseen in history. Eight individuals own more wealth than half the planet’s human race. Capitalism has long contravened its own economic, legal and financial parameters. It is no more a system of surplus through production. Derivatives, stock exchange speculations, hedge funds, casino economy and financial manipulations are being applied. To call capitalism the destiny of mankind is an insult to the intelligence and labour of the human race. Humanity’s emancipation and prosperity lies in transforming this rotten system into a planned socialist economy — collectively owned, democratically run, extinct of profit and competition. Mankind’s destiny lies in a victorious socialist revolution.
Merchants of Devastation
Ever since the bloody partition of the South Asian sub-continent in 1947, the endless history of hostility between India and Pakistan has been a curse for the oppressed masses. Periodically, either one of the two regimes turns this mutual hostility into episodes of acute confrontation — mainly in the interests of continuing domestic politics by other means. The latest incursion into mainland Pakistan and the bombing at Balakot by IAF fighter bombers after the Pulwama terrorist attack, and the subsequent shooting down of two Indian jet fighters by the Pakistan Air Force, have heightened the danger of a full-scale war between the subcontinent’s two nuclear-armed states. This military escalation has exacerbated a mad rush by the belligerent media on both sides of the Radcliff Line to bring about a scenario described by some as ‘MAD’ – the “Mutually Assured Destruction” syndrome. However, there is some method in this madness.
Sidharth Bhatia wrote on the role of the Indian media in The Wire,
When the history of these times is finally written, the media’s reprehensible role in creating a climate of hate will merit a special mention…the nightly screaming about the nation, patriotism and Pakistan and the constant hate mongering against ‘traitors’ was done with an eye on the numbers. In a difficult environment, where channels found it difficult to make money, every trick in the book was legitimate. The audiences were manipulated into wanting it and the channels gave it to them, ensuring viewer sickness – it made business sense.
In the Pakistani media, the modus operandi was perhaps a little different, but the intent was just the same.
According to Vipin Narang, professor of political science at MIT, “neither side seems to want a war. They have had their ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ moment and recognize how a couple of wrong turns could set off uncontrollable escalation.” In this gimmickry of war and peace negotiations, the Modi regime’s prime concern is the vulnerability of the BJP at the coming elections. In sheer desperation, it is trying to the arouse the hysteria of Hindutva chauvinism, exacerbating anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistani hatred to inflame mass bigotry and thus secure electoral victory. Despite the pressures from imperialism, international finance capital and the Indian bourgeoisie, Modi wants to keep a sub-threshold state of near-war to linger on. For instance, just moments after the announcement of the release of the captured Indian pilot, Modi responded with a sarcastic broadside against Pakistan, saying: “A pilot project has been completed; now we have to make it real.” While his supporters applauded, most observers found the comment arrogant and crude. Modi is acutely keen to keep militaristic jingoism simmering as a means of luring voters into the BJP camp. Perhaps Modi seems to harbor the misconception that he can continue toying with xenophobia without risking a full-fledged war.
The “moderate” reaction of the ruling circles in Pakistan has been somewhat more restrained. Imran Khan’s gestures of peace and his warnings of the danger of Armageddon have more to do with Pakistan’s crumbling economy and the instability that ravages the state. He is desperate to avoid letting the conflict go beyond the brink, something that could bring down his short-lived government and bring Pakistan’s mounting crisis to disaster.
For long years now, the spymasters of Pakistan and India have maintained the pretense that they don’t really sponsor terror groups carrying out subversive activities in each other’s vulnerable regions. In fact, the Indian deep state wants to destabilize Pakistan by interfering in Baluchistan and other vulnerable regions where the Pakistani state has been rocked by chronic dissent and at times episodes of armed struggle by local nationalist movements. Likewise, Pakistan’s deep state has the long-term aim of wrenching Muslim-majority Kashmir from India. In the past three decades, jihadist groups based in Pakistan have struck targets in India, but the Pakistani state has been conveniently ambivalent in punishing them. In this conflict between the subcontinental rivals as in many others around the world, war by proxy has become a new norm.
The irony is that both states pose to end the plight and bring prosperity for the Kashmiri masses; it’s the oppressed Kashmiris that suffer most on both sides of the LoC. In the Indian-occupied Kashmir, the viciously oppressed population has risen up against its oppression at the hands of India’s army, the largest deployment of military personnel against a civilian population in the world. The deprivation, religious discrimination and brutality of BJP rule have provoked a revolt that has rocked the might of the Indian state. One of the main causes of the revolt since 2016 has been the unemployment and deprivation under the Indian occupation. Yet across the LoC in Pakistan administered Kashmir, according to a government’s Bureau of Statistics report released on March 02, 2019, unemployment rate in 2017-18 was 10 per cent almost double to that of 5.8 per cent in rest of Pakistan, as per official statistics but the reality is far worse than this.
It’s a shocking fact that the Indian and Pakistani governments are the world’s top spenders on armaments and among its lowest spenders on health, education and social welfare. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), in 2018 India allocated four trillion rupees ($58bn) – 2.1 per cent of its gross domestic product – to finance its 1.4 million active troops. Similarly, last year Pakistan spent 1.26 trillion Pakistani rupees ($11bn) – about 3.6 per cent of its GDP – on its 653,800 troops. The two nuclear adversaries have ballistic missiles capable of delivering these weapons of mass destruction. Achin Viniak in his epic work After The Bomb estimates that the costs of the two countries’ nuclear programmes would, if spent on social development, have largely eradicated women’s deaths during obstetrics, infant mortality and child illiteracy.
To perpetuate their rule, the subcontinent’s elites have used the Kashmir time-bomb that was left behind by the British imperialists to keep the region unstable. And yet successive wars between India and Pakistan have miserably failed to resolve the conflict. All negotiations have failed. Individual armed attacks, sans movements, have only furnished the occupying army with an alibi to perpetuate its tyranny and oppression.
For the last seventy years, the world’s superpowers and their subservient institutions such as the United Nations have failed to grant the Kashmiri masses any respite. In a startling confession, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres publicly washed his hands of any responsibility to promote a dialogue between India and Pakistan that would pave the way for the resolution of the Kashmir conflict. On January 18 he said: “I’ve been offering my good offices in relation to the dialogue between the two countries that, until now, had no conditions of success.” It’s only mass uprisings by the Kashmiri people that have shaken the occupation forces. The militant movement that started in 2016 defied India’s 750,000 troops and even won support from Indian students, workers, academics and left political activists.
Most world powers have their economic and diplomatic interests aligned to a larger India, in terms of markets and potential for exploitation. Even Pakistan’s dearest friend China has partially supported the Indian narrative. On 27th February, without referring to the Indian Air Force’s cross-border strikes in Balakot on the previous day, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi said that it was “especially important to eradicate the breeding grounds of terrorism and extremism.”
Arundhati Roy wrote on the recent escalation of the conflict:
The country might be poised on the edge of a war with Pakistan or more likely against the people of Kashmir…the Modi government was making moves to push the country into a war-like situation to make the people forget the myriad oppressions the current regime had inflicted on them. The Modi government had promised to create two crore jobs every year. But unemployment was skyrocketing. One per cent of rich Indians had wealth equivalent to the combined wealth of 71% of the population.
By exacerbating the economic and social onslaught by India’s coercive capitalism upon the masses, the Modi regime has aggravated a greater mass resentment. The world’s so-called “largest democracy” has the largest concentration of poverty in the world. Wars and conflicts are systematically used to obscure the working people’s revulsion and their growing revolt against the system. In such frenzied periods of aggravated hostility, the bosses inflict further attacks on the living standards of the working class.
If the rulers of India have exploited the tension of this military confrontation to attack the ordinary people, so too their Pakistani counterparts have also not been lagging. Just during these two weeks of these sharpened hostilities, they have drastically increased the prices of petroleum products, gas and electricity. The inflation rate has shot up to a record 8.2 per cent. Once again the economic costs of this war hysteria will be laid upon the shoulders of the ordinary people of the two countries.
Despite his Hindutva chauvinist hysteria, Modi might still end up losing the election. But the threat of war and devastation for the almost two billion inhabitants of south Asia will linger on. Without this state of enmity and hatred, the rule of the elites would be precarious. There would be no justification for the massive military arsenals and expenditures of both sides. Hence the region’s elite and the top brass have a vital stake in maintaining this mutual hostility. At the same time, the imperialists and their military-industrial complexes extort huge profits from their arms sales to India and Pakistan. However, their heavy investments in these countries that extract billions from the sweat and blood of the region’s workers and resources are also put at risk by the threat of an actual all-out war. It’s one thing to start a war, but something totally different to contain once it unravels.
History is witness to the fact that from the wombs of wars often arise revolutions. The First World War was brought to an end by a chain of mutinies and uprisings culminating in the Russian revolution. The aftermath of the Second World War saw the revolutionary uprisings throughout Asia, Europe and beyond. The Chinese revolution of 1949 was perhaps the second greatest event in history. In the United India of that time, the revolution of 1946 spearheaded by the sailors of the Royal Indian Navy could easily have changed the course of world history. The Indo-Pak war of 1965 was followed by the eruption of the 1968-69 revolution in Pakistan, and even after her victory in the 1971 war Indira Gandhi was later overthrown by an upsurge of the Indian masses.
Serious experts of the ruling classes are worried at the prospect of such outcomes; hence they try to avoid wars. But the social and economic turbulence that arises from the crisis of their rotting capitalist system forces the ruling class to maintain warlike conditions to divert the class struggle and forestall the danger of revolution. This dilemma of the ruling classes is an inevitable outcome of their obsolete system. Hence, to expect any profound or lasting peace within the confines of the present system would be a delusion and its propagation a deception.
Lenin wrote on May 14, 1917;
All wars are inseparable from the political systems that engender them. The policy which a given state, a given class within that state, pursued for a long time before the war is inevitably continued by that same class during the war, the form of action alone being changed… Nothing but a workers’ revolution in several countries can defeat this war. The war is not a game, it is an appalling thing taking toll of millions of lives, and it is not to be ended easily.
The current hysteria can backfire sooner rather than later. The misery, deprivation, bloodshed and poverty perpetuated by this system after seventy years of so-called independence has left the masses in agony and rage. There is a seething revolt against this system below the surface. The ruling classes cannot crush the working classes under this millstone of bigoted frenzy, loathing and wars. Paradoxically these could boomerang into the eruption of a mass movement with the class war coming to the forefront throughout the subcontinent. In such conditions, the nationalistic and religious hatreds will be swept asunder once the masses arise in revolt on the basis of class unity. A victorious socialist revolution will not only change the socio-economic system and the character of the state; it will also transform geographical impositions and the course of history— uniting the oppressed of the whole region into a socialist federation of South Asia.
Paul D'Amato is the author of The Meaning of Marxism and was the editor of the International Socialist Review. He is the author of numerous articles on a wide array of topics.
