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May 12, 2002
REVIEW: Will it really work?
SARDAR SHAUKAT Ali, the author of the book under review, is a diehard communist, who suffered great hardship on account of his ideological beliefs. The book under review contains thirteen articles written by him on different aspects of communism. Eight are about Pakistan in which the author discusses and analyzes the economic problems of the country, the exploitation of the masses, particularly workers and peasants by capitalists and landlords, and corruption by the rulers and the bureaucrats, which pauperized the country and left it groaning under a mountain of debt.
The events which took place after Independence, particularly after the death of Quaid-i-Azam, and resulted in a catastrophic situation, can be summed up in a few sentences. The assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in 1951 also saw the demise of Jinnah’s vision. The nation lost its direction and the leaders groomed by the Quaid to serve Pakistan were sidelined. Thus, the field was left open to the greedy self-seeking politicians, their henchmen and bureaucrats. The country was reduced to dictatorship in periods when it was supposedly under parliamentary rule.
The author is of the opinion that the cure for these ills lay only in Marxism, inducted through a revolution. Such a revolution takes place in two phases. The first is the ‘democratic revolution’, which is followed by a ‘socialist or people’s revolution’. The first paves the way to the elimination of landlordism and zamindaris converting their landholdings into small units owned by those who were once the tenants, or even hired labourers working on the lands of the absentee landlords.
This revolution, according to the author, takes place under the patronage and guidance of capitalism. Governance shifts from the influential landlords to the capitalists and a new socio-economic order emerges based on the capitalistic doctrine. Nevertheless the scenario remains the same, the only difference being that now instead of landlords and zamindars exploiting the peasants, the capitalists and industrialists oppress the workers. Thus the stage is set for the ‘socialist’ or ‘people’s revolution’.
The socialist governance brings to an end the system of private enterprise and individual ownership of the production units, which come under the ownership of the state. The workers through trade unions manage the industrial units, and the efforts and output of each worker determine wages. The author cites as examples the industrial revolution in England in 1649, which brought Cromwell to power, the French revolution of 1779, and the Russian revolution in 1917, followed by the Chinese revolution.
However, the author glosses over the fact that all of these revolutions saw the total elimination of a class of society in which hundreds of thousands of men and women, old and young were mercilessly butchered. The author also fails to mention that Britain soon reverted back to a constitutional monarchy, and France to full democracy. The Soviet Union, which was regarded as the Mecca of Marxism, disintegrated before the end of the century. China is the only major country where communism has survived. But the communist system in vogue there is not what Karl Marx, Lenin or even Mao Zhedong had envisaged.
In Pakistan, Bhutto experimented with state ownership of some of the private enterprises and industrial units but nationalization proved to be a total failure. All the taken over industries became white elephants and had to be denationalized.
Although after the crumbling of the entire edifice of communism in the Soviet Union, and its drastic revamping in China, Marxism has remained more of a utopian concept than a productive and implementable system. Yet it cannot be denied that a society afflicted with nepotism, despotism, oppression and other ills, becomes the hotbed and breeding ground for extremist ideologies as a last resort for the oppressed, which may be called by any name.
The fact is that this crisis can be resolved not by the use of force but by eliminating the conditions, which lead to the oppression of industrial workers, tenants and the poor. This calls for checking the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few which makes the rich grow richer and the poor poorer. It is important that an equitable distribution of wealth between the haves and the have-nots is ensured by socio-economic reforms through good governance and sound economic management.
Pakistani inqilab ke masaael
By Sardar Shaukat Ali
Fiction House, 18 Mozang Road, Lahore.
Tel: 042-7249218, 7237430
328pp. Rs200
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