Convulsive and testing times - Editorial of the Asian Marxist Review, June 2006

These are convulsive and testing times. After more than three decades, history is once again on the move. Events have acquired a ferocious velocity. People are at the same time spectators and victims of this brutalizing capitalism. They are witnessing unprecedented wars and are subject to a severe exploitation of their labour. From Fundamentalism to Nationalism, all ideologies of the past are proving to be reactionary, redundant and obsolete in this heat of scintillating events.

Palestinian Nationalism is in tatters. The Israeli Zionist state has come out in its true colours. While massacring the Palestinians it is aggressively increasing the exploitation of the Israeli workers. Iraq is already costing US imperialism more than what it had to spend from 1964 to 1972 in its aggression against the Vietnamese peoples. The monstrosities of US imperialism in Iraq have outdone the atrocities in Vietnam. Yet defeat stares them squarely in the face. Even their puppets are criticizing them. They are forced to form alliances with their adversaries like Al Sadr in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, their rented warlords are failing than, once again. Karzai's writ, even within Kabul is shrinking. The regime, with all the imperialist might behind it, is teetering on the edge. The Americans ask Musharraf to control his army and to quell the resistance. The harder he tries the more deaths of Pakistani army personnel he incurs. The greater the casualties, the greater becomes the resentment against fighting America's war in the ranks of the army. More dangers for Musharraf lie ahead. Yet American pressure mounts on him ever more. The Americans are in mess; Musharraf is in a quagmire. Their endgame has begun.

The diplomatic farce being played out between the reactionary Iranian Mullahs and western imperialism seems to stretch on infinitely. No result, no solution, no compromise and no conflict either; another example of creating a hoax external enemy to crush domestic dissent. The rulers play this diplomatic game and the masses suffer.

The economies grow but the living standards of the masses fall. The Chinese economic growth rate goes, but instead of producing stability and prosperity we see more turmoil and convulsions. Again, the Chinese bureaucracy uses the card of the "foreign enemy". India faces strikes and upsurge; Bangladesh is in the throes of a mass movement that refuses to recede; Sri Lanka is witnessing a renewed war with a greater ferocity; Nepal, has just seen its revolution betrayed. The whole of the South Asian subcontinent is simmering with discontent, and revolt. The situation facing the ruling classes in Asia and around the world today, is beautifully summed up in the words of Karl Marx 150 years ago:

"...alliances 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 constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions and philistine terror at the danger of the world's coming to an end, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court comedies played by the world redeemers..." (Chapter Three, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Karl Marx, 1852)

The masses are yearning for change. The conditions are rotten ripe. Once again, perhaps for the last time, we see the burning need for a Marxist leadership and a revolutionary party. If in one country a successful overthrow of capitalism is carried out through a socialist revolution, the dams will break, the floodgates will open and a mass revolutionary upsurge will erupt, at a level and with a vigour yet unforeseen. Today's pain and agony is not our destiny. This generation of youth and proletariat is now entering one of the stormiest periods in human history. We have to recognize and understand it. Only then can we prepare for it. Once prepared, then no obstacle can stop us, no force can deter us. After all we are simply going to implement the verdict of history.

Lal Khan,

June 22, 2006, Lahore