We need to recognize the “inhuman ends” of Western hegemonic practices, reflected in the elitist socio-economic institutions of Pakistan as well, and look beyond, not at, what the Global North says in matters relevant to us today.
“I have to go home urgently but my hectic work schedule doesn’t allow me to,” “I should get back to work as soon as possible otherwise I am going to get into trouble” and whatnot. Almost everyone can relate to these sentiments as we have become so comfortable with prioritizing professional work that we prefer to delay any task unrelated to the capitalist “mode of life”. True, committing to one’s profession dedicatedly is a virtue in the practical, working world of today but one also thinks someday “to what end am I spending so many years earning money?” Most of our energy is consumed in making money for surviving in this culture of neoliberalism propagated by West. We often forget that we have a crucial part to play both within and outside the roles assigned by the “extractive”, exploitative, and exclusivist socio-political structures of the capitalist economy.
Looking at the sorry state of affairs in Pakistan today – the floods crisis, political and economic instability, and inadequate social, economic, and educational planning for the greater part of the population- lends one a sense of puzzlement: where are we headed to as a community? Is supposing the example of “the (neoliberal) industrialized nations of North America and Europe” as “the indubitable models for the societies of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the so-called Third World” (Escobar 7) enough or even appropriate? The havoc wreaked by floods is nature’s reminder of the grave consequences of the ideologies of globalism and neoliberalism1 and unsound national administrative policies on common people, their livelihood, and the lands they inhabit. Despite having a “small carbon footprint”, as Finance Minister Miftah Ismail says, we are bearing the brunt of “development elsewhere in the world, in the developed countries”.
Evidence has it that the White bourgeoisie affected the phantasmagoria of capitalist enterprise, rapid industrialization, technological advancement, and prosperity through deindustrializing, looting, enslaving, and coercing the indigenous peoples of the former colonies to satisfy their ‘basest passions-the thirst for gold, the lust of power’ (Scanlan 12; Blackburn 6; Escobar 4; Rodney)2. The reckless imperial conquest of the developed countries to extract as much “capital”, natural and human from the colonies, as possible, has given rise to climate crises and helped the “civilized” nations in their noble ambition of subjugating, unmaking, and blaming the “Third World” countries for their poverty! The mere invisibility of how elitist ideologies of “globally ascendant” world powers manifest themselves in the lives of common people, constantly otherized by neoliberal, pseudo-democratic, bourgeoisie discourses of modernity, exacerbates their political and economic exploitation by the so-called spokespeople of democracy. It’s high time we recognize the mean, egotistical motives of West-oriented propagandist machinery and its advocates in our country.
To understand the root cause of our present socioeconomic precarity, one needs to take a critical viewpoint regarding the Eurocentric model of political economy and its lopsided role in the well-being and development of non-elites. The Western discourses of economic prosperity and sovereignty do not value the needs of the non-elite and therefore lessen their participation in matters of their concern. Power operates in the capitalist market system in a way that a narrow group of elites feathers their nests “at the expense of society” (Acemoglu and Robinson 3). Moreover, Robin Blackburn exposes Europe’s path to modernity and capitalism that the Trans-Atlantic slave trade’s “development was associated with several of those processes which have been held to define modernity: the growth of instrumental rationality, the rise of national sentiment and the nation-state, racialized perceptions of identity, the spread of market relations and wage labor, the development of administrative bureaucracies and modern tax systems … the birth of consumer societies, … ‘action at a distance and an individualist sensibility” (4, emphasis mine).
True, instrumental rationality is deemed important to increase the efficiency of a group of people. But, has not the use of instrumental rationality led many people to believe that adopting suitable means to achieve practical, “empirical ends and desires” at all costs is perfectly fine? Not only does this conception eclipse the rational authority of moral values but it also alienates the masses from the serpentine dynamics of “progress and development”. No wonder Franz Kafka peeks into the foreseeable future, writing almost a century ago, when he portrays the metamorphosis of an ordinary salesman, Gregor Samsa, into a “monstrous vermin”. While the protagonist has been recognized as the metaphor for a worker at odds with the monotony of the job (still fretting to catch the bus for work!), what needs further probing is the exploitative consequences of the capitalist mode of life on workers, their sense of ‘self’ and social life. Blackburn is right to pinpoint the plethora of evils rising from money-oriented politics of the modern social powers; the upsurge of nationalism, racialized perception of others, individualism, and the control of public resources by the bureaucratic order.
The British historian writes, “The link between modernity and slavery gives us good reason to be attentive to the dark side of progress. Modern social powers, as we now have many reasons to know, can conduce to highly destructive and inhuman ends. Given the (turbulent) history of the twentieth century, it might seem that this lesson needs no further elaboration” (5, emphasis mine). In light of these remarks, let’s see what Harry Truman, the former president of the United States, makes of a “development plan” around the middle of the twentieth century:
More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery. Their food is inadequate, they are victims of the disease. Their economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their poverty is a handicap and a threat both to them and to more prosperous areas. For the first time in history humanity possesses the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffering of these people. . . I believe that we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life. . . What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair dealing . . . Greater production is the key to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical knowledge. (Truman, emphasis mine)
A careful reader might read this statement with a lifted eyebrow. Arturo Escobar highlights the fact that such an “ethnocentric”, “arrogant” and irreducibly “naïve” statement “was uttered and that it made perfect sense” to the post-war world. Truman’s doctrine exemplifies “a growing will to transform drastically two-thirds of the world in the pursuit of the goal of material prosperity and economic progress. By the early 1950s, such a will had become hegemonic at the level of the circles of power” (4). To say the least, it is not, and never will be, a “democratic fair deal” to play down social development of the larger part of the population under the banner of material and commercial success. Therefore, we need to recognize the inhuman ends of Western hegemonic practices, reflected in the elitist policies of Pakistan as well, and look beyond, not at, what the Global North says in matters relevant to us today.
The political parties’ scramble for power in Pakistan for the last seventy-five years speaks volumes of their bogus interest in public affairs and development ‘as a whole’. The post-partition efforts of the national leaders to develop the state economy ironically replicate the Euro-American centric notion3 i.e. money and production of goods over social, cultural, and moral well-being of the “other”- the majority, the people. The “self-perpetuating and self-serving traditional ruling class”, in the words of Giuseppe Prezzolini, in Pakistan, only uses the rhetoric of democracy and the slogans of narrowing the income gap among the people of various socioeconomic strata to hide the fact that the workers will work primarily for the vested interests of the (overseas) corporations, private company/ organization owners, and oligarchs. For that reason, the loopholes in governance policies are concealed effectively by declaring that those who work hard will enjoy greater opportunities and vice versa.
The oligarch-cum-plutocrats “do not value votes and are not concerned with the significance of an individual citizen”, says Lt Gen (r) Tariq Khan. The working-class people only function like a cog in the machine, “impersonally” performing the duty imposed on them by capitalist structures, and imagine that those they elected will address their problems.
Pakistan’s economic instability has been the major focus of political analysts but the point that needs more attention is that our pseudo-democratic system of governance, outmoded law, inadequate educational planning, and other social institutions mirror and amplify colonial prejudice against the local people, their culture, and representative voices. Several notable academics and political analysts, Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson, Alyson Cole, and Estelle Ferrarese, contend that the state’s economic structure is neither divorced from politics nor its impact on our lives4. When economics is viewed as a discrete activity or realm, the reciprocal influence of the economy on our lives and our lives on the economy is put on the back burner; it appears as “isolated and autonomous, a function of instrumental rationality or the market” (Cole and Ferrarese 108). Commonly people mistake a laissez-faire economy for greater social, economic, and collective autonomy. The 2020 report on Pakistan’s Human Development Index (HDI) shows that this is not the case as the country stands at 154th position out of 189 countries. The education, health, culture, and criticality of our majority suffer at the hands of the (s)elected few. The monopolization and exploitation of our resources in the hands of a “wealthy/privileged few” have constantly deterred the have-nots from voicing and demanding their needs. The latter face poverty, unemployment, and ever-rising inflation owing to poor administrative policies of the bureaucratic elite.
The recent approval by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of a ‘huge loan programme’ might stabilize things for a brief period but this casts a bleak shadow over the future of the country i.e. indebting the citizens beyond their capacity to earn. According to recent World Bank reports, 45% of Pakistani children are underfed and 22% of the population already lives below the poverty line. More so, the recent floods are estimated to bankrupt 9 million more people. These figures uncover the futility of our social structures as far as the (un)fair distribution of wealth and facilities is concerned.
Democracy, in its real sense, is meant to deliver truth and power from below to above not the other way around. In our country, the politically powerless are exploited not just at the hands of free-market beneficiaries but also by a narrow group of ruling elites who turn a blind eye to the suffering of the poor. Not challenging the “coloniality” of our social institutions implicates the intelligentsia in the systemic mistreatment of the common people. As Stuart Hall says, “If culture happens to be what seizes your soul, you will have to recognize that you will always be working in an area of displacement”. Our discomfort should not be with the social traditions that are incongruous with modernity and progress but with those Eurocentric ideals of civilization and “capitalist economy … that puts growth before life and individual success before communal well-being” (Mignolo xi). We have to awaken ourselves to the cries of the helpless. That is the true spirit of Islamic teachings, also found in Allama Iqbal’s vision of Mard-e-Momin; the communal well-being over individualistic thought. Hence, redefining our roles as responsible members of a human-centric community in line with the rich culture(s) of our ancestors is necessitated.
Works Cited
- Acemoglu, Daron, and James A. Robinson. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. Profile Books, 2013.
- Blackburn, Robin. Making of New World Slavery – from the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800. Verso Books, 2010.
- Cole, Alyson, and Estelle Ferrarese. “How Capitalism Forms Our Lives.” Journal for Cultural Research, 22:2, 105–112, 2018, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2018.1461597
- Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press, 2012.
- Khan, Tariq. “No Surprises: Pakistan Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy.” The Friday Times, 14 July 2022.
- Mignolo, Walter D. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton University Press, 2012.
- Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso, 2018.
- Scanlan, Padraic X. Slave Empire How Slavery Built Modern Britain. Robinson, 2020.
- Tagore, Rabindranath. “From Greater India.” A Tagore Reader, ed. by Amiya Chandra Chakravarty, Beacon Press, 1966.
- Truman, Harry S. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman. U.S. Government Printing Office, [1949] 1964.
