Amid rising fascism, workers in Pakistan rally against sexism

PAKISTAN, March 8—The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) spread revolutionary communist politics while participating in the rallies on International Working Women’s Day this past month in Pakistan.
This was partly because of the increasing misleadership of liberal and nongovernmental organization-led groups in the mass movement, who are disconnected from the social, political and economic conditions of working-class women. This year there were fewer women workers compared to last year. The low participation was also because of threats given by fascist religious clerics. These liberal misleaders were not interested in talking about the racism, poverty, exploitation, illiteracy, domestic violence, and special type of religious oppression against working women.
PLP, however, participated in the marches and brought radical communist slogans and speeches, exposing both the liberals and fascists as agents of the same capitalist class. We related the issues women are facing in their everyday life with capitalist greed and exploitation, calling for working class unity to destroy this capitalist system which is designed to divide and rule. PL’ers and friends also struggled to change the liberal chants and slogans into revolutionary slogans to distinguish ourselves from the liberal groups.
Working class women and men both are being pitted against each other through sexism and exploited and deprived of basic human needs. But talking against cultural injustices and sexist practices once a year is pathetic! We have to struggle constantly for a political system which meets the needs of working class women and men because it is run by them — communism.
Build working class antisexist struggle
Masses of workers in Pakistan strive for a society based on equality and justice. Poor workers are always being used by the right-wing political parties in the name of some religious sect, ethnicity and nationalism to prevent the workers from unifying against their exploitation, poverty and illiteracy. But the reality is most workers desperately want to get rid of this and religious extremism and are open to communist ideas. So-called left parties are not capable of influencing masses of workers because of their false social analysis, poor political strategies and other internal weaknesses. These so-called left parties are misleading the working class through their incorrect ideology.
However, PLP is fighting to give communist leadership to the working class of Pakistan by taking part in many different small and big struggles. We organize for better conditions at our workplaces, better transit, health and education facilities, dignity and respect for women. But ultimately real victory can only be achieved by a constant struggle of working-class people under the red flag of the international communist Progressive Labor Party. Working class men and women both are exploited, and both must fight against the bosses to get rid of this barbaric system.
Communism vs. liberal, fascist misleaders
Women cannot achieve liberation from these conditions through feminism, which blames men for their oppression, but only through joining hands as revolutionary communists striving to establish a communist society. Capitalist culture, not men, create these sick customs which oppress women and support and reinforce their super-exploitation.
Feminism and liberal misleaders, as a whole, work hand-in-hand with this sexist capitalist culture to prevent women from uniting with men in the working class struggle against sexism. Struggling to free the working class from sexist ideas and building communist PLP-led fightback has the potential for impact on the entire international working class.
Sharpening sexism and imperialism
It's no coincidence that openly fascist, religious sexist attacks on women are rising at the same time that liberal feminist politics are becoming more visible. Both are poisons pushed by the bosses to intensify working class exploitation as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens between the U.S., Russia and China. China’s new $400 billion, 25-year trade deal (see editorial, page 2) with neighboring Iran has enormous significance for Pakistan through building the Chinese, imperialist-led “Pakistan-China-Iran Trilateral Cooperation.” (Institute for Strategic Studies Islamabad, 2019)
Bringing the fascist rulers of Iran and Pakistan into closer political, economic and military collaboration with China will pressure Afghanistan’s fascist Taliban rulers to cooperate as the U.S. withdraws, and pull the rest of Central Asia closer into China’s imperialist orbit. Whether they succeed or not, Pakistan’s working class is a key piece of Chinese imperialism’s Belt and Road Initiative as conditions sharpen for workers.
While the U.S. bosses are busy propping up the fascist Indian bosses to contain Chinese imperialism’s accelerating rise, neither imperialist power holds any hope for the workers of Pakistan or for the international working class. Neither do their fascist religious or liberal feminist politics.
The struggles we lead against sexism here to unite women and men workers, on the job and in the streets, are the key to winning communism, and the struggle continues. Happy International Working Women’s Day!