KARACHI, June 2: The obscene exposure of our society to the McDonald’s, Coca Cola and Pepsi culture in the name of foreign investment and globalization is playing no role whatsoever to increase our productive capacity.

This was said by renowned sociologist Dr Hamza Alvi while addressing a seminar on “Marxism and Globalization” held at Sidco Centre to mark the birth anniversary of Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism.

Dr Alvi said that the IMF and the World Bank forced backward countries to dance to their tunes, and sometimes even the governments of their own countries found it difficult to bridle their ambitions. He said that a globalized struggle of working people against capitalist globalization had become an absolute necessity. Research scholar Dr Jaffar Ahmed, speaking on the occasion, said that Marx was a “revolutionary man of science” whose ideas had been grossly distorted in Pakistan and serious efforts to understand them had seldom been made.

“The fundamental aim of Marx and Marxism is the moral progress of humanity. Marx subjected capitalism to scathing but scientific criticism because capitalism deprives humanity of its ‘species being’ and turns it into a commodity. Marx’ brilliant analysis of the mechanism of capitalism still remains unrefuted”, said Dr Jaffar.

He said that globalization had appeared as a monster let loose and “to rid ourselves of it we have to arm ourselves intellectually before launching a material struggle.” Farooq Tariq, secretary general of the Labour Party Pakistan, in his speech, said that during the two-and-half-year rule of the present government, multinational companies were given unprecedented freedom to plunder the country’s national wealth which was evident from the fact that despite the deteriorating law and order situation they had increased their level of investment in the country.

“Huge investments were made by foreign petroleum companies as they had been given a free hand by the present government to arbitrarily increase the fuel prices after every fortnight”, he said.

The seminar organized by the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) was attended by a large number of people.