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From Pathan Colony to a Workers' StateAuthor(s): Iqbal KhanSource: Pakistan Forum, Vol. 2, No. 11 (Aug., 1972), pp. 4-8Published by: Middle East Research and Information ProjectStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2568979Accessed: 15/02/2010 04:32

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Page 4 Pakistan Forum August 1972

IQBAL KHAN

FROM PATHAN COLONY TO A WORKERS' STATE

1. The June TragedyThe unprovoked police firing on Karachiworkers on June 7 and 8, in which according tounofficial reports some forty people werekilled, was not entirely unexpected. Duringthe past few months, particularly since theannouncement of the new government *s labourpolicy, Pakistan has witnessed what can betruly called an explosion in working classmilitancy. Strikes and gheraos have becomecommon, everyday occurrences at hundreds ofmills throughout Pakistan; in many industrialunits there has been an almost perpetualstate of war between management and workers,often involving bloody clashes; scores offactories have been shut down either for goodor for long periods; while many?and theseinclude some of the most important industrialunits in Pakistan?were taken over and run bythe workers. In Punjab, according to anofficial estimate, during the five monthsbetween January and May, 63 strikes and 55gheraos were registered; while in Sind duringthe same period 176 factories were gheraoed(150 in Karachi, 26 in Hyderabad). The situa?tion at the moment?at least up to the time ofrecent firing?is that the capitalist class(if 'class1 it can be called) is wholly on thedefensive. Newspapers often carry threatsfrom industrialists to close down their fact?

ories if the workers are not 'disciplined1,and desperate appeals are made to the Presi?dent to intervene on their behalf.This tremendous upsurge of the workingclass in Pakistan was by no means sparked offby the present government, but it has thrivenon the contradictions inherent in the People'sParty. Having come to power by flirting withthe working class, the government had to pre-tend initially that it was on its side. Infact the workers1 onslaught against theestablished industrialists and monopolistswas in the PPP's own class interest. Beingin reality the party of the 'progressive'section of the feudal class?i.e. that sectionwhich increasingly wished to turn into acapitalist class?the PPP liked to see thepower of the entrenohed industrialists broken.This desire was given teeth by the only toowell known fact that these industrialists had

vigorously helped the rightist parties in the1970 election and were generally hostile tothe PPP and its leader. There can be littledoubt that the workers* movement was initiallyencouraged by the Party high command out of adesire for revenge.

Unfortunately for the PPP, however, itgot power at a time when the conditions thathad given it birth and in which it had foughtthe election had undergone a fundamental changeas a result of the cessation of East Bengal.The country1s economy was near collapse.Foreign exchange reserves had dwindled to noth?ing. The section of society most immediatelyhit by the loss of East Pakistan was undoubted-ly the industrialist-capitalist section, whichdepended heavily on East Pakistan for its rawmaterial, for the foreign exchange it neededand for xnarketing its costly products.Thus Pakistan1s industry, and economy ingeneral, were in deep trouble when Mr. Bhuttotook power, At this moment to upset theeconomy further by letting workers frightenthe capitalist class in order to pave the way,not for a socialist reorganization of thesystem?that was never on the cards, whateverthe slogan?but for a more fliberalf economy,was tantamount to committing suicide. Evenso, strangely incapable of understanding thehistorical forces at work, the PPP governmenttried to pursue a revengeful policy, The 'take-overs1 of certain factories, actual or threat-ened imprisonment of certain industrialists,were part of that policy, which had now replac-ed the nationalization programme promised atthe time of the election.Soon, however, it became apparent that inorder to survive the government desperatelyneeded the cooperation of the capitalists. Atthe same time it was also becoming apparentthat the workers1 movement, used by the govern?ment as a weapon with which to intimidate theold guard of industrialists, was rapidly becom?ing an independent power over which the PPPhad ali but lost control. This too pushed thegovernment closer to the capitalist class. Asa result, the past few weeks have seen thelatter being wooed with concessions and honoura,with a simultaneous gradual escalation in therepression of workers. Hundreds of workershave been thrown into prison (more than 300 inand around Hyderabad alonel), police brutalityhas increased and is obviously encouraged bythe government. It is noteworthy that thegovernment has stubbornly refused to suependthe police officers responsible for the recentfiring pending an enquiry, as is usually done,and so vehemently demanded by the workers.The treatment given to the workerst leaders bythe Governor of Sind, when the former were in-vited for talks, tells its own tale (the meet?ing lasted only five minutest):

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The labour leaders were kept waitingat the Governor's House since 5 p.m.and were called in for negotiationsat 7 p.m.... Mr. Nabi Ahmed (a labourleader) said the Governor told themthat the Government was not preparedto accept the main demand of theworkers for suspension or transferof the concerned officials under anycircumstances.They were called in again after afew minutes and the Governor repeatedthe same before they could even taketheir seats, Mr. Ahmed said. TheGovernor told them that those werehis final words.Mr. Ahmed said, 'We assured theGovernor that we would reduce ourdemands in the national interest, butthe Governor wasn't prepared to acceptthem either.'

(Dawn, June 15)

2. Legalistic StruggleThe Karachi tragedy marks a watershed inthe class struggle in Pakistan. Up until nowthe struggle has been a legalistic struggle,whose aim was no more than to secure the bene-fits recognized as the workers' due by thelaw of the land (more recently, the new Labour

Policy). Whether it was a big and daringaction like the occupation and running of Koh-e-Noor Rayon Mills, or a small action like afew hoursf strike or a demonstration, whatthe workers have been demanding through thesemeans was that the owners implement the newLabour Policy faithfully. Of course a largenumber of strikes, etc. are made also inprotest against the high-handedness of theowners, arbitrary dismissals, terrorizationof workers through hired hooligans, oragainst attempts by owners to create dissen-sion among workers. But these too are clearlyno more than demands for justice and fair playwithin the established order.

It is obvious that a long distance separ-ates this stage of the struggle from the stagewhen the working class in Pakistan can leadthe masses into making a socialist revolution.The crucial point at which the working classstruggle enters the revolutionary phasearrives when the struggle has become franklyand directly political. It is true that evennow (as often in the past) the workers arenot content merely to demand the implementa?tion of labour laws but are challenging thelaws themselves. To this extent the classstruggle in Pakistan may appear to havealready gone beyond the initial legalisticphase. It must be noted, however, that

demands of this kind implicitly accept theauthority and legitimacy of the government inpower, and so long as this is accepted theworkersT movement cannot assume a politicaldimension. For it to become political suchdemands must be conceived and put forward assteps leading to the capture of state power bythe workers.It is true, again, that there has comeabout a growing realization that something morethan merely struggling for better wages andbetter conditions of work is required in orderto ensure better wages and better conditionsof work, but this realization has hardly gonebeyond verbal acknowledgement of the necessityto make a frevolutionf. In this connectionit is interesting to study a statement byUsman Baluch, who is one of the most militantleaders of Karachi workers, during a recentinterview. Note that the question of politicalstruggle came up only at the end of a longinterview as if it was merely a subsidiaryissue:In the end I (the interviewer) raisedthe question about the goal of theworkers1 movement. Would the movementachieve its ends by merely obtaininghigher wages and securing a portion ofthe profits?Usman Baluch: This is not true. Had thisbeen the goal, the workers wouldnft havebeen killed at Feroze Sultan or in f63?Nor would the industrial areas have beendeserted as they are today. The mazdoorswould have said, ?A11 right. Give us ourwages we wonft strike.f We pay wages toworkers of Feroze Sultan every day. Theprotest against the brutality of thebureaucracy indicates that therefs onlyone goal before the workers of thiscountry?that this repressive social sys?tem must be gotten rid of and a systemestablished in which there is no one toexploit anybody, where there is fair playand justice, and where people*s lives arenot thrown away like this.(Akhbar-i-Jahan, June 21)

The vagueness of this statement is as patentas it is symptomatic. The fact that workershave been killed at Feroze Sultan or elsewhere,or that industrial areas are deserted, etc.doesnft prove that the workers1 tgoal* is any?thing more than the securing of higher wagesor other benefits. Indeed, at the beginningof his interview Baluch had himself said thatit was the managementfs refusal to pay the2\% share of the profits that started thestrike. However, more significant is the factthat the workers1 action is seen by Baluch asmerely a iprotest*, and that too only against

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the bureaucracy. Thus even on a verbal levela direct attack on the government is avoided.And when eventually Baluch gets down to spell-ing out the ultimate 'goal' of the movement,all we get is a standard generalization abouta desirable state of existence (note thepassive voice in which it is expressed), with?out the slightest attempt to link it to aconcrete programme or strategy.

We shall see later that the politiciza-tion of the workers' struggle is not at alla matter of simply connecting it with a long-ing for an ideal; it is rather a matter ofsetting it certain practical tasks. For themoment, however, we must make an importantdistinction between direct political struggleby the workers and what the Karachi workershave called 'giving political colour' totheir movement. If a workers' movement can?not become political while it remains confinedto the struggle for 'benefits', nor cannotbecome political by simply letting itself beabsorbed into the power struggle of non-labouring classes, or by allowing itself tobe interpreted in terms in which the struggleof those classes is carried out?terms suchas patriotism, language, nationalism, religionetc, which become synonymous with 'politics'in a non-proletarian state.It is not that such issues are totallyunreal or unimportant?far from it. In cert?ain specific circumstances, indeed, any oneof them may assume a crucial political signi-ficance even for a workers' movement. This

happens when linguistic, nationalistic andother similar struggles express the struggleof a people against injustice, tyranny orexploitation by another people, and when theconsciousness of the working classes in boththe exploiting and the exploited nations isnot advanced enough to bind them togetheragainst their mutual enemies.But the fundamental difference betweenthe approach of the proletarian class andthat of the non-proletarian class is that,whereas the latter champion the struggle fornational, cultural, even democratic, andother similar causes to cover up and confusethe real politics of class struggle, theformer regard it as a preliminary stage inthe class struggle itself. The working classmovement must insist on the primacy of classstruggle and interpret all other issues interms of this struggle; not the other wayround.Usman Baluch and the workers of Karachi

were therefore entirely justified when theyindignantly rejected the suggestion that thepolice firing was in fact aimed against the

Pathan community and was motivated by regionaland racial hatred. They refused to see theevents of June 7 and 8 in any terms other thanthose of the working class struggle. Thematurity in their class consciousness reflect-ed in this is unmistakable.

3. Organize Soviets\But the crucial problem for the whole ofthe proletarian movement in Pakistan remains:how can this militant, though incipient, classconsciousness be raised to a higher level?What must be done to transform the presentlegalistic struggle into a conscious politicalmovement ?No one familiar with the history of classconflict can have any doubt about the correctanswer to this question: the workers1 strugglewill become a political struggle when theworking class has acquired the will to takeover the state and to establish a proletariandictatorship. It will become a politicalforce when it has ceased to look to others toestablish an order in which there is no ex?

ploitation and workers1 *rights* are respected,and has decided to seize ali the instrumentsof coercion and exploitation itself.This will-to-power is, however, not amatter of sentiment; it must be understood inconcrete, practical terms. It is not a psy-chological but an organizational concept. Itrefers to those institutions, methods of workand of struggle, and those ideas by means ofwhich the state can be seized from the handsof the propertied classes and eventuallytransformed according to the interests of theworking class.So the problem of turning the presentworkers' struggle into a political struggle isessentially a problem of organizing the wholeof the working class?i.e. the workers and thepeasants?into a potential state here and now,so that the workers are able to take over the

existing state whenever a crisis should renderthe latter impotent. This is not to say thatali the workers need to do is to set up somekind of a shadow government of the workers andwait for the time when conditions are ripe forit to step into power. The incipient workers1state visualized here is primarily not aninstrument of 'government1 but an instrumentof struggle?an instrument for creating thosesubjective and objective conditions in whichthe seizure of the state and its transforma-tion is possible.Thus, once the legalistic struggle hasreached its climax and has yielded ali it is

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capable of yielding, trade unions?the instru-ment by means of which the battle for betterconditions for workers is fought?must rapidlygive way to institutions of a higher type:namely, the Soviets. There is a clear signthat the recent tragedy in Karachi has broughtthe workers' movement to just such a point.The militancy of workers is overflowing thebounds of trade union struggle: the huge meet?ing at Shaheed Chowk on June 17 saw the workersspontaneously and unanimously defy all their(militant) leaders and drown their appeals andarguments to end their strike in the stubborncries of 'We Want RevengeI' Clearly tradeunions don't know how to cope with this kindof demand.

Only a frankly political institution likethe soviet could save the workers' desire forrevenge from spilling over into anarchy and sodestroying itself. It will translate thisdesire into practical political tasks, giveit content and meaning, and develop it into acoherent idea of a workers' state.

We must analyse the nature and functionof the soviets a little more closely.Organization: The basic units on whichthe soviets will rest will be factory councils,which will be composed of all the workers ina factory regardless of the kind of work theydo, or, where the number of workers is toolarge for direct participation to be practic-able, of their representatives. Factorycouncils will then elect an area council, onwhich will then arise the structure of city,provincial and ultimately national soviets.Principles: The fundamental principleson which the soviets and the councils willrest are: 1) all representatives will be

subject to recall by their electors at anytime; 2) no official of the soviets will bepaid a wage higher than the average wage ofthe workers; 3) all matters will be debatedfirst in factory councils, then in areacouncils and so on, so that the chain ofcommand will pass from bottom upwards ratherthan the other way round.

Tasks: Thus the first task of the sovietswill be to provide practical experience of agrass-roots democracy. The second task willbe ideological?to evolve a framework of work?ing class values and points of view. Thiswill undoubtedly impinge upon the immediateproblems of social and political life and willbe expressed in the form of radical alternat?ives to the current mode of life, and to thepolicies of the existing state.

Thirdly, through the soviets the workers

will be involved directly in the politicalstruggle for the hegemony of their class.What form will this struggle take? At thenational level the soviet will function as apolitical party. Its primary function will beto take advantage of every contradiction andweakness of its class enemies, of every avail-able institution by means of which a politicalstruggle can be waged, of every crisis big orsmall?indeed, its task will be to createcrises for the established regime?in order toadvance the interest of the working class, toweaken its enemies, and eventually to over-throw the existing murderous, inhuman order.

For this reason, finally, the sovietswill prepare the workers for armed struggle.

k. Cultural RevolutionAnother urgent task at the moment is tolaunch a workers* cultural revolution. Absol-

utely nothing has so far been done to educatethe workers, and this task cannot be delayedany longer. Workers* literacy classes mustbe started, workers* press must be establish?ed, organizations must be set up to carry outa vigorous programme of revolutionary art andentertainment?in short, a cultural revolutionmust be set in motion. For it can be saidwith certainty that, in the specific circum-stances that exist in Pakistan, it is only atan advanced stage of a cultural revolutionthat a socialist revolution will be possibleor desirable.What will be the aim of such a (cultural)revolution? To create a socialist, Marxist-

Leninist, culture among the working class.To establish Marxist-Leninist points of viewon ali matters of state and social life. Toconvince as broad a section of the populationas possible of the necessity of a socialistrevolution.The soviets will naturally be the mainarena of this revolution; the main school where

workers will be educated in socialist democracyand socialist ideology, through struggle, par-ticipation and reflection. However, before acultural revolution can begin, a great andconcentrated effort will have to be made toproduce a large number of *leaders* who arethoroughly educated in the principles ofMarxism-Leninism. This is the task above aliof the intellectuals. It is, however, onlyfair to say that so far the performance ofthose of our intellectuals who have activelyconcerned themselves with socialism has beensadly disappointing. Instead of stimulatingscientific and critical consciousness amongthe workers, they have preached cliches and

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dogmas; instead of evolving a strictly Marxist-Leninist approach to the problems of Pakistan,they have allowed themselves and their litera-ture to become vehicles of all kinds of paroch-ial and pseudo-revolutionary points of view;instead of fixing their attention on Pakistanand analysing, with the help of Marxist-Lenin?ist philosophical tools, the unique combina-tion of circumstances that is Pakistan, so thata realistic revolutionary strategy could becreated, they have looked to Russia and Chinaand accepted their analyses and their solu?tions (which these countries have put forwardin their own national and global interests)to our problems. In short, our so-calledprogressive and socialist intellectuals havedone nothing significant in laying thefoundations of a genuinely Marxist-Leninisttradition in Pakistan.I believe, however, that the radicals amongus have become acutely aware of this and thenext couple of years might see the beginningsof authentic Marxism-Leninism in Pakistan.The task will involve a number of things, butfundamentally it will mean going to thesources of Marxism-Leninism and learning itsprinciples from Marx and Lenin themselves.But why Marx and Lenin?

The question can and will be asked bothon the right, by the liberals, and on thefringes of the left by, above all, Maoists.It will have to be answered, for one of thetasks of the cultural revolution will be toconvince and gain the support of thesegroups, or at any rate of the more serious-minded among them. It must be pointed outthat this preference for Marx and Lenin asa guide and final authority rests not onfaith or any tendency towards hero-worship,and must not be recommended to others inthat spirit. The reason why the authorityof Marx and Lenin is to be accepted isbecause it is demonstrable that theirthought and practice represent scientificconsciousness (rationality, logic) in thefield of human affairs in its highest form,and that this scientific consciousness isat the same time informed with a mostthoroughgoing humanism?so thorough indeedthat some have been tempted to call it'anti-humanism' to dencte its distancefrom the sentimental, hypocritical moralitythat usually passes for humanism. The ex-plosive, revolutionary character of Marxismis essentially the product of this mixture:radical rationality combined with radicalhumanism. Similarly, it is also demonstrablethat the subsequent 'marxist' theories andsocialist state policies?Trotskyism,Stalinism, Maoism, etc.?however successfulthey may be in certain particular spheres,

are often guilty of abandoning consistentrationality or consistent humanism or both.Marxism-Leninism thus provides the per-spective in which anti-revolutionary tenden-cies, deviations and distortions are identifi-able and combatable. It will be an importantand urgent task of the intellectuals in ourcultural revolution to expose such ideas andprevent them from encroaching upon genuineMarxism-Leninism.Finally?and this is by no means the leastimportant part of the cultural revolution?agreat effort will have to be made to translateMarxist-Leninist ideology into Pakistanilanguages and more importantly, into the idiomfamiliar to the largely illiterate workers andpeasants. Marxism must go beyond the realmof concepts and become an attitude of mind?part of the people*s folklore which expressesand at the same time influences their attitudeto the world. Actually, one of Mao Tse-tung*sgreatest contributions to Marxism consists inhis having translated revolutionary ideasinto popular images, idiom and myths, and therecan be no doubt that something similar must bedone by creative writers and artists among usfor the masses in Pakistan.Ali these cultural tasks must begin urg?ent ly, and be linked to the movement for work?ers* and peasants* soviets, the institutionsthrough which the working class will be pre-pared to smash the power of the feudalist-capitalist state.Only thus will the innocent blood shedon June 7 and 8 be avenged.

Percentage Distribution of Mother Tongues,1961Language Pakistan SindhPunjabi 6M1 6.8Pushto 13*5 1?8Sindhi 11.6 56.5Urdu 7*0 20.8Baluchi 2.3 6.3Brauhi 0.9 2.0Gujrati 0.6 2.8Rajasthani 0.4 1.4Other 2.6 1*6Total 100.0 100.0

Persons Able to Sneak Urdu. l?6lPakistan 5,863,000 13*7%Sindh 2,470,000 29.00Persons Able to Speak Sindhi

Pakistan 5*584,000 13.0^Sindh 5,340,000 63.OH

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