PAKISTAN, September 14—Pakistan has become a laboratory for the capitalist bosses to see how much labor they can grind out of the working class while worsening their misery, but the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is growing in the fight to organize workers into our international party. All over Pakistan, workers are organizing small and big fights against the bosses, and coming into conflict with the influence of capitalist politicians and professional fake leftist misleaders, who try to sell out the struggles.
PLP is striving to give the working class true leadership and build a mass party that can end capitalism and build a state run by the working class: communism. To succeed in communist revolution, we have to smash the bosses’ state by freeing the working class from the illusions pushed by these misleaders. PLP in Pakistan has been exposing the misleaders’ role while leading the struggles against the bosses and their system- in industries all across the country!
Roll Call of Workers’ Fightback
Below are a few of the struggles PLP is in the thick of in Pakistan.
-Brick kiln workers, many of whom are women, are the most exploited in Pakistan. They are routinely tortured, harassed, and raped by the kiln owners. They are also among the worst paid. Kiln workers are striking and hunger striking for the implementation of a minimum wage for kiln workers: 1,036 Pakistani rupees per 1,000 bricks made, which is about $9.94 in U.S. dollars.
—Electricity workers have held nationwide rallies, protests and meetings to press the government to accept their demands. Workers raised slogans urging the Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) management to ensure safe working conditions to the field staff. There has been a rise in fatal accidents involving the line staff during the past year. Workers and PL’ers said it is capitalism which has no concerns about the lives of the working class, because capitalism needs more and more profit at the cost of ever more working class lives. PL’ers and supporters condemned the so-called leaders of their trade union, and declared only the fight for international communist revolution can improve the lives of the working class.
—Comrades and friends in the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) trade union are protesting against the bosses, shutting down work at different WASA stations and urging the government to implement their charter of demands. The demands include payment of three-month salaries to employees, one-month salaries to the sacked contractual and work-charged workers, reinstatement of laid-off workers, implementation of deceased’s sons quota, payment of provident fund, gratuity and other allowances.
—Hundreds of workers and PL’ers working for MOL (a Hungarian oil and gas company) organized a strike against the firm’s contract system. Workers gathered outside the main gate of the central processing facility where they staged a protest sit-in, restricting the movement of the company vehicles. They chanted slogans against the MOL administration, claiming they had been working in the company for the last eight years on contract at very low wages. The workers said they would not tolerate the cruelty under the contract system anymore, and demanded that they be brought under the direct payroll of the company with all perks and privileges which were being provided to the firm’s other employees. Meanwhile, on the alleged directives of the administration of the company, police raided the protest camp and arrested about 100 workers. The workers were later set free by the police when their fellow workers and comrades, waving red flags, marched and agitated for their release.
—Teachers and nurses are agitating against the bosses’ policy to exploit them vigorously without increasing their wages and securing their lives. Nurses and other health workers are organizing demonstrations in different parts of the country, but their union misleadership routinely compromise with the authorities to break the strikes. Teachers are still waiting for the fulfillment of the bosses’ promises about better service structure and resolving their promotion issues but nothing changed because of their puppet right-wing union leadership. Teachers began boycotting academic activities at government universities across Sindh, Pakistan’s largest and most industrialized province, as academic activities were suspended at eight major public sector universities in the province. The so-called leadership of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) is doing nothing for academic staff except to get a good position or posting for them. However, in this fight also, PLP is struggling to expose these misleaders.
‘Politicians and Pushers…’
When Pakistan’s capitalist politicians aren’t busy pushing illusions on the working class with nationalism, sexism and racism, they’re blaming each other for corruption and money laundering. They serve Pakistan’s capitalist class well by hiding the real issues for the working class - exploitation, low wages, long working hours without overtime, no safety at workplaces, poverty, and increasing  unemployment.
Unemployment is increasing on a daily basis for many workers. No social service structure exist even for impoverished government employees. The bosses harass and assault women workers with impunity, while workers are caught in the middle of various feuding mafias and terrorist groups. Not a single trade union or employee’s organization organizes actions against any of this. PL’ers are engaged with the working class to expose that the people claiming to be our “leaders” are in the pockets of Pakistan’s top bosses. Pakistan’s capitalists depend on keeping the working class here submissive and beaten down, while they fulfill their expanding regional imperialist ambitions.
Pakistan: Vital to Global Imperialist Chessboard
Pakistan’s capitalists were, for decades, reliable U.S. imperialist allies. Today they are central players in the Chinese capitalist class’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR), otherwise known as the “New Silk Road.” The OBOR project consists of $1.4 trillion in infrastructure projects like railroad and highway networks and deep-water ports, pushing four billion workers in 64 countries into a Chinese capitalist-dominated market ten times the size of the markets dominated by U.S. imperialism. In particular, the
China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has the potential to unblock vast swathes of South Asia, with [Pakistan’s deep-water port] Gwadar, operated by China Overseas Port Holdings, slated to become a key naval hub of the New Silk Roads (Sputnik News, 8/31/16).
Pakistan’s involvement with OBOR increased along with its status as a full member of the Russian and Chinese imperialist-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) (Voice of America, 7/7/15). The SCO is an international military alliance designed as a rival to the U.S. imperialist-led NATO. Much as NATO’s military power allied with the European Union allowed U.S. imperialism to project its economic power following World War II,
a lot of the (OBOR) action happens in member-states or observers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The New Silk Roads are about to be totally intertwined with…the SCO as a security-economic cooperation umbrella (Sputnik).
The rise of the Russian/Chinese imperialist OBOR/SCO bloc sharpens the rivalry with the fracturing U.S. imperialist-led NATO/ EU bloc. The U.S. capitalist class, declining but still heavily armed and ready to defend their global empire, will not concede many such vital “pieces” of their imperialist chessboard without all-out war. The threat of World War III looms in this intensifying imperialist rivalry.
PLP is involved in organizing different small and big struggles against the capitalist system to show the working class that they are more than just chess pieces in an imperialist game. The working class can forge its own world, and through international communist revolution we can get rid of these imperialist wars, exploitation, poverty, slavery, illiteracy, racism, nationalism and terrorism- once and for all. Our fight continues. We have a world to win!