Pakistan: Workers Fight Back, Bosses Tangled in Imperialist Rivalry

PAKISTAN—“PLP is an international revolutionary communist party that is fighting for international communist revolution” is a statement that attracts the attention of workers. They raise many questions to understand communism, the Party and revolution. Unfortunately, they have been misguided and dragged away from the path of revolutionary struggle by misleaders, kept away from unionism and working class politics by the bosses and deprived of meeting their needs by the ruling class. Despite of all these tactics of capitalist rulers, workers are curious about an international communist revolution.
Whenever PL’ers bring communist analysis of society to a meeting, strike or rally, workers, peasants, and students express interest in changing this capitalist system.
Fight contract labor
Bosses need to keep the working class alienated from real issues, i.e. exploitation, poverty and despicable working conditions to maintain their profit system. Here, the bosses have adopted a contract system that keeps workers under the threat of unemployment. We organize workers against this vicious contract system by exposing the intentions of bosses.
Bosses’ profits continue to soar since they don’t have to give workers any benefit, security or insurance. Instead, workers are harassed and tortured at their workplaces. The most exploited are women and child laborers, who risk being tortured, raped, and murdered at work.
Misleaders of workers
The union leaders are no help. They act as puppets and protect the interests of the bosses by dividing the workers into different religious sects, nationalities, and ethnicities. Almost every capitalist political party has a “labor wing,” which is used to segregate workers and cripple the class struggle for a communist society.
Phony left parties and organizations are also working for the capitalist class. They spread lies and confusion about communism among workers. We are determined to bring unity among workers by spreading communist ideas and recruit them to PLP.
PLP brings revolutionary line
PLP is striving to seize every opportunity to express its revolutionary line. We are involved in class struggle alongside workers, farmers and students. We are involved in organizing strikes, demonstrations, rallies, seminars and public meetings with health workers, teachers and other professional organizations. Our work gives us more courage and experience to strengthen our fight amid a hazardous social, economic and political situation.
Our communist line gives us an opportunity to explain the history of working class struggles, triumphs and defeats. It gives us strength to struggle in a society filled with mass attacks on workers.
While explaining our line, we always find that working class brothers and sisters are interested to learn how to organize ourselves against bosses and their capitalist political system. They try to understand how elections are a tool being used by the bosses to keep us divided. Pakistani bosses always kept the workers away from class struggle to avoid dissemination of class-consciousness. Every political party and trade union in Pakistan is strengthening the capitalist system one way or another.
We are fighting with full dedication and enthusiasm for international communist revolution. And we will win.

*****

Pakistan pivots towards China

South Asia is important to the U.S. because of its regional interconnectivity. China’s new imperialist vision for Asia to counter the U.S. is known as the “Asia-Pacific Dream.” While the U.S. power in the region is mainly exercised through military-related deals and pacts, China is increasing its power primarily through economic projects with regional countries—like the new Asian Infrastructure investment Bank, One Belt One Road, and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) that links the port of Gwadar to the province of Xinjiang, China. CPEC will serve as a gateway to Central Asian countries, showing Pakistan is building stronger ties with China. But where there is “soft” economic power, a hard military backing will follow.
Feeling threatened, in January, president Donald Trump used “harboring terrorism” as the reason for suspending its $1.5 billion aid to Pakistan. That same week, China announced it plans to build a navy base near the Gwadar port, its second military base after a recently-built base in Djibouti.  
Pakistan is also part of the $10 billion natural gas TAPI pipeline that stretches 1,800 km from Turkmenistan to India. TAPI will demand cooperation between the historical rivals: Pakistan and India. TAPI’s, a long-awaited inauguration ceremony in Afghanistan was held just last month. This reflects the U.S. bosses’ consistent objective to weaken Chinese and Iranian influence in the region. The Asian Development Bank, the prime sponsor of the long-stalled pipeline, is controlled by Japan, the U.S. and the European Union.
The Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) is a Pakistani think tank that studies the world’s geopolitical situations and promotes the country’s national interests. The following is from the report “Sino-U.S. Competition: Implications for South Asia and the Asia-Pacific” (Strategic Studies 2017, Vol. 37. no. 4):
The emergence of new conflicts amongst the US and its competitors, Russia and China, could turn South Asia into an arena for the pursuit of geo-strategic goals by major powers. Pakistan possesses an important geo-strategic location. It enjoys good relations with the P-5 [permanent UN members] nations and regional states including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and Qatar.
Pakistan’s special relationship with China gives it an advantage in the Asia-Pacific region...Pakistan should leverage the CPEC and its own geostrategic location...
Pakistan has an interest in the stability of Sino-US relationship for the success of the CPEC.
Pakistan is growing closer to China. As South Asia gets more entangled in the U.S.-China rivalry, it is in Pakistan’s nationalist interest to play ball with both the U.S. and China for now. No country—Pakistan or India—is thus far willing to put its own national economic growth in jeopardy by risking a global conflict between the U.S. and China.