Pakistan: The Economic Catastrophe

The biggest crash in the history of capitalism in 2008 has created a new “normality” across the planet. This has led to vicious cuts and severe attacks upon the workers in most countries. The welfare states in Europe and elsewhere are being aggressively dismantled. After the failure of Keynesianism the neo-liberal model of capitalism, known as trickle-down economics, Thatcherism or Reaganomics has been an even bigger disaster.

There have been the first stirrings of the working classes with massive strikes in Greece, France, Spain and more recently Britain against the drastic cuts being executed. But these are just the beginnings of a ferocious class struggle that impends. There is no solution on a capitalist basis on a world scale.

In Pakistan there has hardly been any respite for the working masses throughout its tumultuous history. Today the situation is far worse than it was at its inception. Pakistani capitalism has rotted to an extent where the whole of society has been plunged into an abyss of intolerable poverty and misery. Pakistan faces unprecedented levels of debt, trade and fiscal deficits, terrorism, unemployment corruption, poverty, price hikes and lack of basic amenities for the vast majority of its population. The social and physical infrastructure has deteriorated. The flood disaster has exposed its extreme fragility.

During the Musharraf period when the growth rates were supposed to be an average of 6 to 7 percent ten thousand people were falling below the poverty line every day. Now with growth around 1.8 percent the number of people falling below the poverty line has more than tripled. Sixty percent of children have stunted growth and 1100 die daily due to malnutrition. Eighty percent of the population is forced into non-scientific medication. Sale of children, human organs and collective family suicides are spreading like an epidemic. Sixty six percent of children can hardly receive primary education. About half a million women die during child birth due to the lack of adequate health care. Electricity, fuel, gas and water shortages along with the rapidly increasing prices have made life of the impoverished masses even more wretched. Inflation and the brisk depreciation of the rupee have made life a horror without an end. The already debilitated agricultural sector has been further devastated by the floods. This has already exacerbated inflation. In reality Pakistan’s existence is now staked upon the informal or the black economy which constitutes more than two thirds of total GDP. It is ironic that had there been no buffer of corruption and the black economy running the country’s economic cycle the Pakistani economy would have collapsed by now.

With such an economic catastrophe there is no sign of any relief or improvement on the horizon. The ruling classes seem to have given up any idea of developing a modern industrialised and a prosperous Pakistan. Their indifference and incompetence is palpable. There is a feeling of doom and gloom amongst the intelligentsia and the experts of the state have hardly a clue about how to get out of this quagmire. Their reliance and subservience to imperialism and its financial institutions is complete. Except for a few years during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s government in the early 1970’s, every finance minister of Pakistan has been an employee of one or other imperialist financial institution. They have slavishly carried out the dictates of their imperial masters and have been adopting policies that have sustained ever increasing imperialist exploitation and plunder.

In this democratic dispensation under the crushing domination of the financial oligarchy the masses have no real choice that could serve their interests and improve conditions of life for them. The differences posed on the political spectrum are frivolous to say the least. They are painted in the colours of ‘liberalism’, ‘conservatism’, ‘secularism’, ‘religious fundamentalism’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘communalism’ etc. But all these ‘political’ parties have the same economic agenda – “neo-liberal” capitalism. The very essence of this economic policy is an all-out attack on the masses and subjugation to so-called supply side economics. With no fundamental differences on economics, they harp on endlessly about non-issues that have no relevance to the plight of the teeming millions who are being ruthlessly exploited by capitalism. Now even they have stopped issuing statements or making false promises about improving the lot of the masses and prosperity. Almost all the mainstream political parties are in power in the various federal and provincial bodies of the state. An orgy of corruption, nepotism, hedonism and plunder goes on unabated. In such a harrowing crisis one has to be extremely insensitive and callous to be part of the state administration when there is so much pain and agony that the oppressed masses are being forced to endure.

Lenin once said that, “politics is a concentrated expression of economics”. The chaos and anarchy that prevails in the present day politics of Pakistan is a reflection of the dire state of the economy. The circus that is in full swing has become nauseating and vulgar considering the desperate and horrendous conditions of society. The alternative of a dictatorship is a remote possibility. Not only is it that the cohesion and discipline of the army has withered but also US imperialism has strategically switched its policy in Asia, Africa and Latin America from military regimes to tame bourgeois democracies whose formats it can manipulate. Hence this ‘conflict’ between ‘dictatorship’ and ‘democracy’ is more or less a façade and has lost its relevance.

The present crisis of our rulers was aptly described by Karl Marx in his epic work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. He wrote:

“Alliance whose first proviso is separation; struggles whose first law is indecision; wild inane agitation in the name of tranquillity; most solemn preaching of tranquillity in the name of revolution; passions without truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic deeds; history without events; development whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar, wearying with the constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their edge and fall away without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court comedies played by the saviours of the world”.

The oppressed masses in Pakistan shall not endure such tyranny for long.