Pakistan May Day: One World, One Fight

PAKISTAN, May 1—“One world, one fight! Workers of the world unite!” Refusing to be silenced by trade union misleaders, members of Progressive Labor Party brought revolutionary communist ideas to marches and other May Day events across Pakistan.
Workers March For Demands
Various workers’ organizations held seminars, symposia and processions to celebrate International Workers’ Day throughout the country. PL’ers participating through their unions supported demands for a higher minimum wage, equal wage for women workers, and workplace safety.  At the same time, they sharpened the politics at these events by chanting slogans against exploitation, privatization, inequality, injustice, poverty, terrorism and capitalism.
Another major May Day demand was to abolish the contract labor system. The reform struggle, also backed by PL comrades, is for every worker be given an official appointment letter that guarantees regular employment for a fixed period. With these letters, workers cannot be fired at the bosses’ will.
The union misleaders who oppose PLP’s organizing and calls for revolution remain silent about capitalist oppression. Unlike fake revolutionary groups, PL’ers connect the struggles for immediate reforms to the fight for the only true solution for the international working class: communism. The Party’s May Day chants, taken up by many workers, reflected our revolutionary politics: “Long live communist revolution!” “No to capitalism, yes to communism!”  “Down with capitalist bosses!” “All power to the working class!”
PL’ers Fight For Internationalism
In conversations and struggles with coworkers, comrades elaborated on these chants. . They explained the history of communist struggle and attacked the revisionist (fake leftist) ideas that wrecked the old communist movement. To build a world without exploitation, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism, we must fight for an international communist revolution under the red banner of the international revolutionary communist party, PLP
As PLP organizes women workers to play active roles in the Party, on the job and in the trade unions, the Party also organizes against sexist wage inequalities. On May Day, comrades denounced the capitalist bosses who want workers to believe women workers are inferior, to justify lower wages for women and steal more profit. PLP fights to smash sexism by developing women leaders who will be at the forefront of communist revolution.
Local Struggles Build Anti-Imperialist Movement
Leading up to May Day, PLP’s work emphasized the necessity of unity within the working class and improved coordination among the trade unions. PL’ers have been organizing other trade union members to support workers of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) in their struggle against layoffs and privatization—an anti-worker attack by the Pakistani bosses and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an arm of U.S. imperialism. PL’ers and friends have argued that if the bosses’ plans for PIA go through, it would pave the way for privatization of other industries like steel mills, the Sui gas field in Balochistan province in southwest Pakistan, and elsewhere.
The struggle for solidarity with the PIA workers is a powerful anti-imperialist opportunity for PLP and the international working class. The privatization of PIA reflects the sharpening imperialist rivalry between U.S. and Chinese bosses. The U.S. is eager to keep Pakistan as an ally, given its geopolitical importance in South Asia. China is even more eager to draw Pakistan into its own imperialist orbit and consolidate a vital economic corridor for One Belt, One Road, the initiative to expand China’s influence and increase exports throughout Eurasia.
The capitalist rulers of China and the U.S. (through the IMF) are both bribing Pakistan’s bosses with economic incentives to restructure PIA (Express Tribune of Pakistan, 3/13/13). China’s most recent offer was $500 million in aid to PIA, as well as new planes, technical support and construction of a new international airport at Gwadar, a strategic deep-water port developed jointly by Pakistan and China  (Business Recorder, 3/30/15). Gwadar is located near the Iranian border and just outside the Strait of Hormuz, a potential chokepoint for oil shipping routes in and out of the Persian Gulf. Thirty percent of all maritime-traded petroleum—and 20 percent of the world’s oil, overall—passes through the strait (businessinsider.com, 4/1/15). In January, Pakistan’s bosses announced the privatization deals were being finalized (Business Recorder, 1/20).
What the bosses failed to factor in was workers’ resistance. Fightback against PIA’s privatization has been fierce, culminating in a strike on February 2. Workers battled riot police at the gates of Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport, leaving two workers dead and several injured. Flight disruptions and profit losses have set back plans by the Pakistani, U.S., and Chinese bosses (Nikkei Asian Review, 2/19). The struggle continues.
Our local struggles have an impact on workers all over the world. Workers in Pakistan are caught in the accelerating exploitation of inter-imperialist rivalry, an essential feature of the ruthless drive for maximum profit under capitalism. Since the surplus value that derives from workers’ labor is the lifeblood for groups of competing bosses, workers in Pakistan are well-placed to play a lead role in building an anti-imperialist movement. As PLP declared on May Day, only international communist revolution under our international communist party can free the working class from the daily miseries of capitalism. Join us!