50 Years Ago: Pakistani Punch-Up (2022)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The violence which is an integral element of world capitalism has erupted yet again. In the Indian subcontinent the inevitable armed conflict between the two enemies has not been prevented by the United Nations, the international peace-keeping body.

Once again we see how capitalism cannot develop an effective means of preventing violence, whether on a local or international level. Only Utopians could expect the League of Nations, the United Nations, the Warsaw Pact or the Commonwealth to work wonders. Violence is a necessary part of capitalism.

To get down to cases: Just now we described the Indo-Pakistan armed conflict as “inevitable”. There are several reasons for this — some complex, some simple, some ancient and others more immediate.

Most people point to the partitioning of India at the time of Independence — nearly 25 years ago — as a significant point in history. The demand of the Muslims for their own state resulted in India losing five Muslim-majority areas to Pakistan. These areas were: North-West Frontier Province, Sind, Baluchistan and half of the Punjab in the west, and in the east the Eastern half of Bengal. The new state of Pakistan was thus a split personality: its capital, its business and military centres were developed in the West wing while the East wing, more populous and economically more promising, was treated as a colony.

During the sixties, under Ayub Khan’s corrupt dictatorship, Bengali demands for autonomy grew more emphatic, backed by civil and industrial unrest. Ayub’s successor, Yahya Khan, tried to placate these forces but finally, last March, resorted to military methods.

We may ask: why was he so determined to retain East Pakistan at such appalling cost? The reason is the usual sordid one of capitalist economics. East Pakistan had a profitable export trade, mainly in jute and tea, and the West wing needed foreign currency badly, both for maintenance of the Army and for development of new industries; and besides East Pakistan provided a captive market for West Pakistan’s growing industry.

That is what Pakistan stands to lose by this war.

(From the Socialist Standard, January 1972)

Editorial: Twenty twenty-two (2022)

Editorial from the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why do we in the Socialist Party frequently focus upon events outside Great Britain?

It is because we endeavour to express the interests of the worldwide working class. Anything that harms or helps our fellow workers anywhere is the concern of socialists everywhere.

Our New Year Resolution is to continue our work to get workers everywhere to reject capitalism, abandon the illusion that a broken system can be fixed, and aspire to work for genuine change by building a society rooted in relationships of reciprocity with one another while respecting the planet. This world and its laws are set up to protect property owners and commerce, not the people or the planet.

More and more people are becoming aware that the current capitalist system works against them with government austerity and a rightward drift of politics bringing many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny or dismiss. The growing oligarchy and the power of the plutocrats will hopefully stir and ignite working people to take action and to demand change. But such progress will only occur if we prepare to educate and organise for it.

What is needed is to tackle the economic system itself – based as it is on class ownership and production for profit and which is at the root of all our problems – and not just the thousands upon thousands of injustices that are symptoms of it. The workers’ movement must connect the dots to a real solution. Everyone has to be all-in for rebuilding society. There is much to do – but change is possible. More people have grown active and started to make links, and many of these are seeds of change that socialists can nurture and grow.

We in the Socialist Party have no illusions that this work will be easy. Those in power will do all that they can to misdirect the workers’ efforts. Our task is to maintain the focus on our end goal and not to be side-tracked by false or partial solutions but to connect all the single-issue movements into one unified, powerful force.

Otherwise, 2022 will give us more of the same that we experienced the year before and the year before that: wars, disease, hunger, economic crises, poverty, senseless tragedies, intolerance, hatred and apathy.

New bosses will prove to be much the same as the old ones. The rich will get richer, the poor will stay poor. Workers will hate other workers, driven by fear and prejudice.

The power to change things for the better rests with working people, not the politicians. There is a tremendous amount of wilful ignorance of political ideas because there are a great number of people who would rather fight about politics than think about it. Don’t contribute to that problem.