Death Dominates Democracy Egypt

Deaths question democracy’s journey in the land of the Nile. Questions of democracy remain unresolved. Violence has now widened the gap between aspiration and actions for democracy further. And, fundamental aspects related to democracy have once again been reiterated by the bloody, brutal incidents in Cairo and across the country.

For weeks, since the army reasserted its role in politics in Egypt, questions of democracy were turning clouded. Questions revolved around army’s role and external actors’ support in democracy’s journey.

A political move – the army’s re-stepping in – was the yardstick of democracy or militaryocracy to a section while another concentrated on external move – US’ support or not. While one rejected the army’s move as if the army had not played any role in earlier incidents during the overthrow of Mubarak and during election understandings, as if befriending this army was not aspired and was not made during a stage of anti-Mubarak uprising. Another turned staunch anti-US as if US support was never sought in the journey for democracy. What would have happened had the army stood by the Morsi camp instead of deposing him? And, what would have happened had the US extended full-fledged support to the Morsi camp? How would have the question of democracy in Egypt been defined if, for the sake of argument, the army tomorrow reaches to Morsi camp and the US publicly extends its hands of friendship to the camp? How it would have been defined had a people upsurge without army support overthrown Morsi?

Defining democracy on a narrow scale – support of army and of the US or no support – shall not help resolving the question. Questions of democracy in Egypt are rooted in the society, among the classes in the society competing for allocation. While defining democracy ignoring the class question shall only bring reliance on external actors, and role of external actors shall appear as the sole yardstick, a confusing measurement, of democracy. Alliance with the US is not only a Mubarak-act. A recently published book based on historical documents shows it’s an old practice, since emergence of an organization that now claims democratic space.

Election is one of essential components of democracy. But it’s not the only component. What happens when election does not represent majority or it fails to ensure majority’s participation or electoral tactics demolishes possibilities of popular participation? Are not there instances of elections turning tools in the hands of autocrats in countries? How shall it be defined if a popular upsurge in some other country overthrows an autocrat who “won” an election engineered by the autocrat? Shall the expression of “popular” aspiration be brushed out?

The reassertion of army’s role in Egyptian politics is the problem of the state and the ruling elites. The institution – the army – has stepped in as all other institutions of the state have failed to resolve the problem at that moment, and the institution has tried/is trying to resolve the problem. Co-opting all factions of the ruling elites or failure to co-opt them depends on the capacity of the institution and the capacity ultimately comes from the ruling elites. It’s the institution’s capacity or incapacity to address all interests of all factions of the ruling elites, and all the factions house tycoons and magnets, and the interests are the same, and all the factions stand against the toiling masses. Don’t the Egyptian workers striking now for their rights reaffirm this? Has any of the elite-factions stood by workers’ interests – their right over the fruits of their labor, and their opinion on existing production relation, and letting them organized to change the relation in a democratic way? It’s not only the question of the workers; it’s also the question of all the masses of the people – the peasantry, the low-salaried employees, the petty traders, the teachers, the unemployed youth, and the women.

This interest – the interest of the masses – was not discussed and was not made the yardstick of democracy while defining democracy in the aftermath of reassertion of army’s role in the center stage of the Egyptian politics. (Un)fortunately most of the opinions centered on army’s intervention or US support.

A democracy stands with a farcical face, and obviously indignities also, when it depends on external actors, actors not dependent on people. With its sole external-dependence it completes a single job – demolish all prospects of democracy. The act confirms its internal weakness, its incapability. The way external actors from other continents meddled in Egyptian politics show infirmness of the social forces standing for democracy. With this infirmness, and level of dignity also, evaluating their role in ensuring democracy or denouncing them turns a farce.

Democracy in Egypt, as in many other countries, is not only an issue of election or not. The society, as many other societies, also faces fundamental questions that include widening space for democratic struggle by the people and accepting ideas and concepts that facilitate people’s democratic struggle, accepting ideas and concepts that assert people’s opinion over production and distribution, which are obviously progressive, which expose fetters on people’s interests. Today, the society is going through pains of contradictions between way of looking at reality, the society and economy, the questions of power and privilege – forward and backward, behavior and fundamental rights, practices and ownership, authority and subjugation. These questions were not raised by many opinions while welcoming or negating the recent army intervention in the Egyptian politics. Otherwise, at least, after the mass upsurge against Mubarak, women in Egypt would have faced less harassment and felt safe in public life. All the forces claiming for democracy would have ensured a dignified and safe space for women. It’s an important indicator of a society striving for democracy. Other questions of organizing people’s organizations, people’s supervision over commons, questions of tycoons and magnets are there also. Tycoons and magnets don’t befriend people, the wretched. Tycoons are in all camps; it’s not only a Mubarak camp phenomenon. Now, a Mubarak-friend-steel-tycoon is behind bar.

Recent turmoil in Egypt has shown one aspect of global power – its limits, its lack of preparedness. All the time global power can’t ensure all moves conducive to its interests. All its wishes are not easily ensured. All the time it can’t easily satisfy all factions looking at it for support. It’s turning difficult.

And, planting democracy is not an easy job although moves to cast off an autocrat are designed by some Sharp-mind, as is often told. Doesn’t today’s Egypt show this?

The deaths the recent Egyptian days have witnessed, the blood that has flowed through the Egyptian politicalscape, the acts of arson, the brutality and intolerance tarnish endeavor for democracy as these are the products of the political elites’ failure that makes common people fodder of elite-politics. The acts of setting churches on fire nowhere and never upholds struggle for democracy.

Violence moves with its shadow, a darker shadow of counter-violence. Political stroke of violence is made when other political stokes appear useless, a dangerous symptom. Democracy’s journey is complicated and tumultuous. But, the recent violence and deaths standing as obstacle shall make Egypt’s democracy journey more complicated, which will ultimately hinder people’s interest; people will find it difficult to widen their breathing space. And, this is one of the ways ruling elites transfer their burden of failure on lives of the Egyptian people. The pattern shall prevail until people’s own initiatives, organization and leadership for democracy develop.

The Way People Democratize

People democratize their spheres with own momentum, velocity and force manifested in its leadership, organization and politics. Trajectory of people’s democratization process that gets generated from contradictions in the realm of production relation ultimately frees itself from influence and control of dominant interests.

Dominant interest, because of its prevailing paramount position in economy and politics, influences, manipulates, distorts and deactivates people’s democratization process. The attempts persist temporarily, depending on reality; but the power equation changes as people turn matured in term of experience, theory, leadership, organization and ways of initiatives/struggles, and a seemingly frustrating, sometimes hopeless, situation gives way to a new dawn of hope.

An example, in brief, elaborates the way.

In retrospect

On March 9, 1944, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim League leader in the British colony of India, said: “At present you should just stand by Pakistan. It means that first of all you have to take possession of a territory. …When you have once taken possession of your homeland the question will then arise as to what form of government you are going to establish.” (Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, collected and edited by Jamil-Ud-Din Ahmad, lecturer, Muslim University, Aligarh, and member, All-India Muslim League council, 1947, Lahore) He was delivering speech at the Aligarh Muslim University Union. Jinnah was unwilling to enter into detail of type of government at that moment as that would have raised questions among a portion of his followers.

But Jinnah’s statement was an irrational one coated with emotion and apparent rationality. His audience, the Muslims of this subcontinent, accepted the statement. Their allegiance to and trust on him encouraged Jinnah to say arrogantly: “Fortunately, I came to the rescue of the Musalmans and prevented them from committing suicide.” (ibid.) Jinnah was addressing the All-India Railway Muslim Employees’ Association in Delhi on February 27, 1944. The Muslim League leader successfully hoodwinked analytical capacity of his audience that allowed him to make the boastful claim. It tells his level of influence at that time.

On August 14, 1947, the day Pakistan emerged as a dominion of the British Empire, the sentiment among the Muslim residents in Dhaka (at that time spelled as Dacca) was of jubilation. Jinnah was then unchallenged leader of the Muslims’ in both wings – East and West – of Pakistan.

But, within months, there was a voice of opposition. Courageous Baangaalee students steadfastly opposed Jinnah’s stand on language question. The voice of protest was unimaginable to many Jinnah-disciples. The defiant students, inexperienced in comparison to Jinnah, were standing against Pakistan establishment- leadership heavily loaded with Nazimuddin, Akram Khaa, and similar others in a bundle. Even, in 1948, a portion of Dhaka residents was opposed to the students standing for Baanglaa language.

In terms of political resistance, those were desolate days for Bangladesh, at that time it was East Bengal/E. Pak. The rebel Maulaanaa, Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, was passing hard days in Dhaka. Even, it took courage to visit him as there were always the blood-red eyes of Muslim League as the arch rightist party in the seat of governance knew the fire brand Maulaanaa, a leader with rebellious peasant background. Communists in East Bengal were compelled to close down the book store, a single one, they initiated in Dhaka. At day time, Baareen Datta, a communist leader in East Bengal, as he conveyed in his memoirs Sangraammookhar Deengoolee, had to float in boats in guise of a floating hawker in Haor, vast seasonal water body in the north-central part of Bangladesh, as it was difficult for him to have a safe shelter in Sunamganj. His sister Hena Das and their comrades had the same “fate” in varying forms as their memoirs/autobiographies describe. Hired hoodlums, as Tajuddin Ahmad, the first prime minister of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, narrated in his youth days-diary (now available in book form), assaulted students belonging to non-Muslim League camp. The hirelings used a government vehicle, the number of which Tajuddin noted in the diary. The lumpens went scot-free as Muslim League leaders were their political fathers. Ila Mitra, the Raanee Maa as the rebel East Bengal Shaotaals (mostly spelled as Shantal) used to address her with love and respect, had to face torture in untold term. The Shaotaals had their narration of facing barbarity and brutality unleashed by the Muslim League/Pakistan leadership. The fishers of Sunamganj, the sharecroppers of north-western part of East Bengal waging Tebhaagaa Andolon or Tebhaagaar Laraai, movement for a fair share of produce, the port and railways workers, the beeree (also spelled bidi), hand-made cigarette, workers and many others from the East Bengal working classes had to face police assault, detention, torture, jail and bullets. Killing of political prisoners in Khaapraa ward, a cell in Rajshahi jail, and death of hunger striking prisoners are only two of many such incidents.

But the days of the torturers were going to their dusk. Shamsul Haque, a young man from an ordinary peasant family, awarded an election-defeat to a Muslim League leader. That was unimaginable to the League leaders, aristocrat, in terms of East Bengal society, and powerful. In the election held in 1954, the Baangaalee people made a verdict: the mighty League was wiped out from the face of East Bengal. Only through conspiracy, riot, buy- in, horse trading, and other dirty machinations the rulers prevailed, up to the people’s upsurge in 1969, politically. Only a few months before the upsurge, in 1968, Ayub, the ruler at that time, jubilantly celebrated his decade of tyranny termed as “Decade of Development”.

Long before the 1969-upsurge, there were initiatives, in commoners’ ghettoes, to organize struggle for democracy. A booklet, part of those initiatives, said: “None has the power to push back time. History doesn’t cease moving forward. History is the witness: The flag of freedom shall fly high forever over this land of rivers, the land where swords of Harsavardhana and Man Singh broke down into pieces.” The Banglaa booklet was published in 1949.

How many persons imagined that the statement made in the booklet will turn true within only 22 years?

Jinnah’s Pakistan was rejected by the majority of its population. At least Muslim League leadership of all shades including Ayub, leading a faction of Muslim League, his E. Pakistani quisling Monaem, their bureaucrat advisors and industrialist supporters that included Adamjee, Bawani and co., Ayub’s vagabond-appearing local government wagon riders declined to listen to the murmurs the movement of the Baangaalee people made throughout the period. But their denial was not all powerful. Rather, the denial was standing on a hollow ground. People rose up in rebellion, and threw away the tyranny, and then, the glorious Bangladesh War of Liberation followed.

This dynamic – a population’s rejection of an ideology upheld by a group of elites, and the population tearing down the elites’ state to half – is difficult, sometimes impossible, to perceive by elite-brain.

Similar – people’s rejection of elite-ideology or -politics or -rule while ruling elites fail to gauge people’s discontent – difficulties/failures on the part of the elites were found in other lands also. It was found in Tehran during the last days of Shah. The failure was also present in Manila since assassinating Benigno Aquino.

Shah, his dreaded, elaborate intelligence network, his political allies, scores of journalists from important Shah-ally countries, Marcos, his politically active wife Imelda and their cronies failed to hear “mutter” below the surface under their heavy feet that encroached all spaces for dissent and democracy. Even Marcos and his cronies failed to “smell” changing position – tact in the name “democracy” – of their closest ally. King Farook in Egypt, King Idris in Libya, Samoza in Nicaragua and “Baby Doc”, Duvalier, in Haiti, Mubarak in Egypt, and their ruling machines and external master also failed to perceive the dynamic. Erdogan, the backward looking neo-Sultan in Turkey upholding repressive ideas, failed to perceive the Taksim protest threatening his dream for further dictatorial power.

It’s a dynamic people initiate to democratize their life – economy, society, politics and culture. Set backs and defeats that follow very often only reinvigorate people’s initiative to achieve victory, a long, arduous process.

Move to democratize

People keep on their move to claim democracy despite failures and set backs as democracy is the only space for organizing their life in a decent, dignified way. It’s the only space to get mobilized for resisting encroachers of the space required for organizing a peaceful, prosperous life.

Organizing political movement is their most important and effective way to claim democracy, people’s democracy. But it takes time, etc. to organize such a movement. Instead of spending time in frustration people initiate/can initiate other motions that facilitate their mobilization and forward movement.

A major part of these motions include producing literature. Pre-’69 Bangladesh-years experienced scores of literature mostly produced by students and political activists. Journalists with their political columns played a major role. That was a part of politicization of the masses of people in Bangladesh. In 1815, John Adams wrote to Jefferson: “What do we mean by Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies.” Other lands dreaming for democracy are not exceptions.

People’s initiatives/moves for democratizing their spheres are entirely and fundamentally different from “democratization” “initiatives” driven by external actors: other states and their organizations, funds, non-governmental organizations in appearance, banks, etc.

Aim of the external actors’ “initiatives” is to secure existing world order – the world market system – based on inequality while people’s initiatives aim to have a political system corresponding to economic interests of people – an equitable distribution, restoring people’s ownership on the commons, securing environment and ecology in the interest of people, a fair international trade regime, etc. As the two stand opposed to each other external actors’ “initiatives” aim to secure market, sources of raw materials and labor while the other one can secure its interest only by breaking the chain of market.

Market stands as one of the yardsticks for determining type of democracy: for the people or for the market, or in other words, people’s democracy or market’s democracy. Market and democracy cannot move together.

Jacques Attali, economist, philosopher and former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was special adviser to the president of France for 10 years. He finds “inherent conflict between the market economy and democracy” and says the “two concepts are contradictory” (“The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy”, Foreign Policy, Number 107, Summer 1997) He also finds “the marriage of democracy and the market economy suffers from three fundamental shortcomings”, and says “these two sets of principles [democracy and market economy] often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand”. (ibid.)

Attali writes:

“In a democratic society, the promotion of the individual is the ultimate goal, while in a market economy the individual is treated as a commodity — one that can be excluded or cast aside for want of the right education, skills, physical characteristics, or upbringing.

“The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights. Witness the swelling ranks of unemployed workers in much of the West who can vote but are otherwise increasingly disenfranchised and alienated.

“The market economy resists the localization of power, discourages coalitions between participants, and encourages selfishness, while democracy depends upon a clear identification of political responsibility, the coalition of citizens in political parties, and a general appreciation of our common fate. Democracies need political parties that are capable of molding platforms based on compromises between individual points of view, while market economies rely on competing individual centers.

“The market economy creates a world of nomads, whereas democracy can apply only to sedentary people.

“The market economy assumes that the aggregation of selfish behavior by all economic agents is best for the group, whereas democracy makes the assumption that the best outcome for any given group will result from the acceptance by a minority of the decision of a majority.” (ibid.)

As example he mentions:

“[O]ur companies and bureaucracies are organized on the basis of fixed plans and strict hierarchies. Can we imagine a real market relationship between divisions of the same company or between a boss and her assistant? Can we imagine an internal referendum on each decision made by a minister or cabinet secretary?” (ibid.)

Attali beefs up the argument:

“[F]ew Western nations including the United States would appreciate an international community where true democracy prevailed. (Imagine, for example, a United Nations where the most important decisions were made not by the Security Council's oligarchy of five nuclear powers but by the entire General Assembly on the principle of ‘one citizen, one vote’ or ‘one state, one vote’.) If international financial institutions had followed such a democratic system during the so-called Global Negotiations of the 1980s, there would likely have been a drastic shift in the global distribution of wealth that would have jeopardized the interests of the West in general, and of the United States in particular.” (ibid.)

By further dissection he adds:

“[A]pplying the principles of the market economy both within and among nations is problematic and undesirable. I know of no Western nation that seeks a free market in justice, law enforcement, national defense, education, or even telecommunications ... Few if any Westerners would want to live in a country where court rulings were for sale, citizenship and passports could be purchased at airline ticket counters, and air waves were auctioned off to the highest bidder without regard to content. And among nations, a free market for nuclear weapons, illegal narcotics, high technology, potable water, and pollution would promote the rapid growth of supranational political bodies and powerful nonstate entities capable of challenging national governments.” (ibid.)

People’s democracy, thus, stands opposite to market as principles and practices of market are opposed to principles and practices of democracy, rule of majority of society. So, people’s democratizing initiative opposes market. Otherwise, people cannot establish and consolidate their democracy, and market gets a freehand in dominating, distorting and encroaching democracy.

To tomorrow

Democracy ultimately stands on force, the force of majority. People in their struggle for democracy develop force of their own. The force initially, at a stage and as intermediate phase, gets manifested sometimes in Bangladesh (erstwhile E. Pak.) 1969-people’s upsurge, sometimes in Bangladesh 1990-urban upsurge, sometimes with yellow color in Manila, sometimes at Tahrir Square and sometimes at Taksim Square. In short, it’s the Tahrir-way, the Taksim-way or the Turkish summer-way, now at Taksim.

People’s democratizing initiative can begin as a demand to have bread or an effort to save a commons, a few trees on a small piece of land, and can act as a spark igniting people’s aspiration and yearning against authoritarian archaic ruler/ruling elites, and can shatter the ruler’s/ruling elites’ seeming invincibility, and can spread like wildfire. The outcome depends on other factors and conditions.

Despite similarities to many extents Tahrir is not Taksim, and Taksim can’t be copied elsewhere as conditions that generated Tahrir and Taksim are different. No imagination should be entertained to copy either of the two. However, the two, and similar others provide lessons, which are, broadly: educate, mobilize, avoid adventurism, find out areas for democratic initiatives by the masses of people.

At initial stage, people develop it through awareness, exchange of experiences. In the process, the democracy of minority social classes propagated as democracy-universal, a myth, gets exposed. Gradually, the development rises to the stage of effective organization. People, in their process to democratize, gradually exercise authority – people’s sovereignty – spanning spheres of culture, society, politics and economy.

In a journey towards a democratized tomorrow, initiating motions for democratizing spheres around include: (1) producing literature; (2) expanding publicity; (3) organizing exchange of experiences; (4) making demand for fair price shop; (5) organizing cooperatives; (6) planning and implementing environmental programs; (7) organizing programs for mitigating effects of climate crisis; (8) formulating demands to democratize credit giving societies/groups, re-/construction work groups, bodies managing educational institutions, storage facilities, health facilities, local government and projects; (9) claiming other commons.

Taksim revolt shows: Simple trees can mobilize people in a mass-based way shunning irresponsible comments hurting people’s sentiment, adventurous slogans and childish incoherent acts. In places and at times, it may be a river, a water body, a flood plain, an encroacher’s acts and connections.

These and similar other activities, people identify as they proceed, facilitate forward movement for democratizing spheres around people, enrich people’s experience, build up leadership, and space for further move. It’s a continuous process with more and more democratizing demands of people.

Post-Election Violence In Venezuela Was Hatched In Pre-Election Days

Mainstream media focused on the post-election violence in Venezuela. But perpetrators of this violence, the gang members of the right wing candidate Capriles, were not identified.

With the death of seven persons and injury of more than 61 the post-election right wing violence turned fatal. The right wing groups burned homes of United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leaders, community hospitals, and mercales, subsidized grocery stores, attacked Cuban doctors, state and community media stations, and threatened National Electoral Council (CNE) president Lucena and other officials. Maduro and senior government officials have warned that the opposition is attempting a coup d'etat. PSUV legislators have suggested they may pursue legal action against Capriles for promoting instability. (Dan Beeton, “Deadly opposition violence in Venezuela: The first major destabilization attempt since 2002-03”, Americas Blog, April 16, 2013)

Violence by the right wingers was planned in pre-election period. Citing Nicolas Maduro, vice-president Arreaza, defense minister Bellavia and internal affairs and justice minister Reverol, Ryan Mallett-Outtrim in “Venezuelan Government Foils Destabilisation Plans” (April 12, 2013) presented a few facts, which are mentioned below:

1. A plot to violently destabilize Venezuela during election and post-election period has been foiled by the Venezuelan security forces. The plot involved Salvadorian mercenaries’ plan to intervene and disrupt the country.

2. Two groups of Salvadoran mercenaries operating in Venezuela is funded by drug trafficking with links to far right terrorists including Luis Posada Carriles. Now stationed in Miami Luis Posada Carriles has been convicted in Panama of a number of terrorist attacks including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airline that claimed 73 lives.

3. A group of students were arrested after attempting to “storm” the Generalisimo Francisco de Miranda Airbase in Caracas. The group also tried to enter the National Guard headquarters near the capital.

4. Arrest of Colombian paramilitaries operating in Venezuela. The paramilitaries had in their possession Venezuelan military uniforms, explosives and other military materiel including high capacity assault rifle magazines. The paramilitaries “came to kill”.

5. An employee of the state run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) was shot outside a PDVSA office. Workers there were engaged in a pro-Maduro program. The employee later died.

Mining and oil minister Ramirez warned the oil sector is a potential target for destabilizing forces.

In “Venezuelan Government Releases ‘Evidence’ that Opposition is Planning to not Recognise Election Results” (April 10, 2013) Tamara Pearson presented the following information:

1. On April 10, 2013, PSUV leader Cabello presented evidence including phone recordings, documents, and emails proving that the opposition planned to not recognize the presidential election results. Cabello played an audio recording of a phone conversation in which Joao Nunes, Capriles’ bodyguard and driver said that Capriles won’t recognize results if he loses.

In the recorded conversation, which lasts just over a minute, Nunes talks with another person, “Michell”, who says “It’s looking to be full on, man”. Nunes responds, “Man, they’re going to rob it from them in the streets...” Michell then says, “Looking at it from here, here what they are saying is that he’s not going to recognize [the elections] if he loses... there’s going to be problems, full on problems”.

2. Cabello showed an email sent from Amando Briquet, of Capriles’ campaign team, to Guillermo Salas, member of the organization Esdata, which has reported on Venezuela’s electoral process since Chavez was elected in 1998.

In the email, dated April 6, 2013, Briquet wrote, “...we need everything set out in Washington for checking over by the [Capriles campaign]. It's necessary that all documentation is presented internationally if we decide to take the road of not recognizing the results."

Opposition umbrella group MUD’s secretary, Aveledo had requested documentation from Salas “in order to be able to support their decision not to recognize the results”.

3. Cabello mentioned an alleged meeting between the head of private, opposition supporting newspaper, El Nacional, Miguel Otero, with Capriles and Briquet. Cabello accused the three men of meeting in order to “discuss not recognizing the elections”.

4. Cabello said an organization called Patriotic Board (Junta Patrotica), which includes Guillermo Salas, signed a document which they sent on April 7 to Vicente Diaz. Diaz is a CNE director known to side more with the opposition. In the document the Patriotic Board allegedly expressed its decision to not recognize the CNE’s reports.

Cabello told press he’d made the information public in “order to guarantee peace; this is a ...warning so that they know we know what they are planning to do”.

5. Public prosecutor Ortega and head of strategic command of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces Barrientos informed that 17 persons were “caught red-handed” sabotaging electricity facilities in Sucre, Monagas, and Aragua states. Blackouts have been more common over the last two weeks across Venezuela.

6. In Merida, opposition supporters, after a rally where Capriles spoke, attacked the offices of the government youth, INJUVEM, of public radio YVKE Mundial, the state government building and its workers, and privately owned shops. Some of the perpetrators were drunk, and some wore balaclavas, making it likely they were part of the violent Movement 13 group based on Merida's University of Los Andes.

7. In a suburb of Caracas, Maduro supporters were attacked by the opposition group JAVU, which then went to the press and blamed “Castro-communists” for the violence.

8. A conversation, recorded by Venezuela’s intelligence organizations and released by government, revealed the use of “mercenaries” by the Venezuelan opposition to create chaos in the lead up to the elections. The “mercenaries” already in Venezuela and being coordinated by the Central American right wing with some sectors of the opposition had three objectives: to sabotage electrical grid, increase number of murders, and assassinate Maduro. Foreign minister Jaua claimed the “mercenaries” are led by a retired colonel of the Salvadoran armed forces, David Koch, and coordinated by Salvadoran right-wing politician Áubuisson.

Beeton, International Communications Director of the Washington DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research, in the article cited above said: “The campaign of violent protest, in conjunction with opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' refusal to recognize the election results, represents the first major extra-legal destabilization attempt by Venezuela's opposition since the failed coup in 2002 and oil strike in 2003. It is also significant in that the US is backing Capriles' position, thereby helping to provoke conflict in Venezuela -- even though most Latin American nations and many other governments around the world have congratulated Maduro on his victory and called for the results to be respected.”

External interference provoking internal conflict in Venezuela is not new. However, the opposition is still weak.

“Some in the opposition”, as Beeton said, “have hinted that Capriles' cries of ‘fraud’ are not credible. Opposition-aligned CNE rector Vicente Diaz has said that he has no doubt in that the results given by the CNE are correct. Diaz made comments to this effect on opposition station Globovision on April 15, 2013; the TV hosts then quickly concluded the interview. Opposition blogger Francisco Toro has criticized the opposition strategy of crying fraud.... Three opposition legislators, Ricardo Sanchez, Carlos Vargas, and Andres Avelino, publicly broke with Capriles last month, decrying what they described as a plan to stoke instability by refusing to accept the election results, and use students as ‘cannon fodder’ in a violent protest campaign. The incident was ignored by major foreign media outlets.”

Results the snap election helps continue the transformation process initiated by Hugo Chávez. It’s the society’s journey with democracy. Maduro, the candidate of the Bolivarian revolution, stands for implementing the Socialist Plan of the Nation 2013-2019. The plan was formulated by Chávez.

In an election rally in Caracas, Maduro told “imperialism and the decadent and parasitic bourgeoisie” thought that “the revolution was over” following death of Chávez. But, he said, there will be Chávez in this free and independent nation. Maduro said: “I’ll be the president of the poor, the humble, of those in need, of the children.” Maduro roared: If they try to stage a coup, we’ll make an even deeper revolution.

Determination expressed in Maduro’s pronouncements – reflection of a deep rooted line of conflict drawn long ago – is not taken easily by the opponents of the Venezuelan people. The determination creates problem in the “mind” of the rich. There is “democracy” program initiated by the rich and their institutions. The program is designed to safeguard property and privileges of the rich. But the poor deny going under the umbrella of the program.

Now, in Venezuela, none can deny working people’s interests. At least, lip service to the working souls has to be provided. Even, the person always harboring a dream in the deep of heart to safeguard interests of the rich is compelled to say something favoring the poor, the working people.

So, as Chris Carlson informed in “Both Candidates Promise to Raise Venezuela’s Minimum Wage”, Capriles had to promise a one-time 40 percent general raise in wages, “not just of the minimum wage,” in response to government’s three-stage wage increase. He promised to sign the wage increase into law on his first day in power.

How many times the rich uttered such promise – “a general raise of 40 percent in all the wages” and “signing the wage increase into law on the first day of power” – in Venezuela or in other countries? It’s very difficult to find out. It’s working people-power, it’s the space created by the working people through their awareness and mobilization under the leadership of Chávez that has done it.

This reality, the gradual awakening of the masses of people, “allures” imperialism and its mercenaries to intervene – a bloody path – in Venezuela.

Capriles, in an election rally, said, there will be a new Venezuela.

A new Venezuela is there, where Chávez is not present physically, but Chávez is present with his spirit and dreams, with his call to war against enemies of the poor. Chávez initiated a journey with dignity, a journey for creating space for participatory democratic practice by the people. It’s a journey of the people for getting aware and mobilized. The election is a reaffirmation to continue the journey, to keep on the work of widening and consolidating the space created under the leadership of Chávez.

Tomb Of Indifference To Worker's Life

It’s death, death only. It’s death of about 200 garments workers and others as a building collapsed in Savar, a Dhaka suburb. It’s exposure of nourishing indifference to life; it’s revelation of nurturing greed at the cost of life. So death dominates the Bangladesh April-days of 2013.

Media report: Workers were compelled to enter the building to resume production in the 4-5 garments factories that the multi-storied building housed although the building was identified unsafe and risky a day ago. The unfortunate workers were unwilling to enter the building. But supervisors forced them with sticks. The building’s upward raising was unauthorized. Now, it’s “difficult” to find the party responsible for the incident.

After going through media reports one can’t escape the feeling of witnessing hapless animals being pushed to a slaughter house, a feeling of being controlled simply for profit. And, one can’t escape an image of a cruel, corrupt system.

Media reports unveil a lot: reluctance to consider human life, zeal for uninterrupted production, patronization of a system molded for profit, flaunt power that tramples law, corrupt connection that disregards human life. And, the scene says a reality of greed driven dominance. And, the scene says helplessness of a broader society in front of a juggernaut.

Following the incident common people, the silent majority shall mourn; the dead unfortunates’ relatives shall weep silently; sane souls shall search psychology of property owning classes.

Then, a silence shall shroud sad memories. And, moments shall continue ticking until another similar incident resurrects publicly. This is the prevailing pattern. It’s a pattern of unnatural death of the weak, of the workers.

One can look at history as one move from these issues. Pertinently one can search the number of collapse of buildings constructed by the British raj and the Mughals. One can compare technology and technical knowledge between the three: the Mughals, the colonialists, the Savar and similar cases. Even, one can compare the enforcement of relevant law, styles and levels of monitoring/supervision of these three. One can ask: Were they, the colonial masters and the Mughal emperors, less greedy than today’s masters of capital? Were they more efficient in areas of construction, supervision, enforcement and governance than the propertied classes of today? What’s and where does lie the root of better construction, supervision, enforcement of law? Is it simply reluctance, indifference, inefficiency and corruption that played role in the collapse of the building? Even, are not there roots of indifference, inefficiency and corruption if these are the causes behind the collapse incident? Do these show a segment’s “mental” capability or incapability?

Answers to these questions will help identify the problem and rectify measures being followed. Even connections and actors can be identified. A graver picture can emerge.

A sociologist or a political scientist shall put a number of questions, and, those are related to people: How long shall the commoners silently tolerate these collapses and deaths? Is their no limit to tolerance? What waits if mass tolerance is not unlimited? Is there any possibility of political expression if the limit of tolerance is crossed?

Working hands and brains that produce for owners of capital shall not remain inactive and silent forever. Not only political and economic misdoings, deaths can also devour a system’s acceptability. It does not happen instantly. It happens slowly and silently. But it happens. This pushes mature systems to practice rules of necessary measures: accountability, enforcement of pronounced measures. This pushes mature systems even to impose fine on a head constable or on a member of a royal family for violation of traffic rule. Only immature systems dream of hiding skeletons in cupboards.

The commoners shall question: Is this the way of payment for producing surplus value? Have deaths of workers turned the norm? And, the commoners shall not accept the payment, shall not accept the norm.

The commoners shall compare the number of unnatural deaths of commoners and capital owners over the years and shall try to find out the causes active with the incidents as in their humble life they also yearn for natural death.

Propaganda tries to manipulate people-mind. But ultimately it’s reality that teaches, that helps summarize experiences gathered over a long period. This makes propagandists ultimately fail.

Even charity ultimately does not work. It slows down expression of discontent for a temporary period. But it has limit. Otherwise emperors could have escaped rebellions by resorting to charities. And, death is more powerful than charity.

Working people, how much wretched they may be, don’t long for unnatural death. Don’t they deserve a natural death? This question shall haunt all working people as they experience repeated unnatural deaths of their class members. They shall question the amount of profit capital requires to survive? And, they shall search answers to the questions as they find their deaths are repeatedly neither natural nor dignified.

It’s difficult to ignore working people power. It’s so difficult that anti-worker forces are compelled to propagate pro-worker claims.

The Savar worker-deaths shall live as capital’s tomb of indifference to worker-life and shall remind workers of all generations the cruel character of capital. It shall remind workers the state of workers’ life in a society. It’s not a happy situation for capital as capital can’t escape wrath of labor.

The Frontier That Drones Can Never Cross

Waging war without any declaration is now facilitated by drones. But there are limits that drones can never cross as machines can never handle sociopolitical contradictions. Initiating counter-moves against political maneuvers are beyond capacity of machines.

Drones, to a section of politicians unerringly safe and deadly, are being used as a foreign policy tool. A section of politicians tout these as an arm of ideological crusade. The reality, implementing foreign policy or waging an ideological Armageddon, is relative. It’s relative to the laws of nature and to the laws of social contradictions. This relativity imposes limits on the fly paths drones follow.

Impulses and compulsions of geostrategy and geotactics are proliferating the aerial robotic technology at bewildering speed. Armed drones flying from bases in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Seychelles and Yemen, and dominating skies of many countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen is now regular news. Some more countries including Libya are also in the list of sky dominance. With escalation of conflicts and intensification of competition among contending capitals more countries will be included in the drone strike list.

Drone is claimed as a precise and effective weapon. Its “ability to compute and then act at digital speed,” as Brookings Institution analyst Peter Singer writes in Wired for War, his book on robot warfare, provides it a “robotic advantage”. But, it’s only tactical advantage. Wars are not won only by tactical moves. Waging war with a drone strike force in noncombatant countries and killing citizens with supposedly precision weaponry is a tactical edge, and sometimes, a tactical weakness; and this doesn’t provide strategic advantage.

Today, military drones are operated by Israel, Italy, the UK and the US. Many states possess unarmed flying robots. China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and Sweden are developing weapons-carrying models. (David Axe, “Deadlier drones are coming”, Global Post, Sept. 23, 2012)

An average UAV costs a mere 10 percent of an F-16 fighter jet. With these flying machines, writes Jason Berry, author of Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, there is no risk to the pilot in case the machine is intercepted. (“Inside America's drone war, a moral black box”, Global Post, Sept. 26, 2012) John O. Brennan, former Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Assistant to the US President, claimed: Drones “can be a wise choice” as drones “dramatically reduce the danger to US personnel, even eliminating the danger altogether.” (“The Efficacy and Ethics of US Counterterrorism Strategy”, remarks at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, Apr. 30, 2012)

“Billions upon billions of dollars”, Medea Benjamin, antiwar activist, writes in Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, “have been spent from America to Asia on machinery, software and workers whose only purpose is building a better flying death robot.” The Pentagon allocated $95 billion for drone purchases last year. Israel is the number two exporter of drones, and selling lots of those to Russia. (Jason Berry, op. cit.) Citing estimate of the Teal Group, an aerospace research firm, David informed that worldwide military UAV spending could almost double over the next decade from $6.6 billion in 2012 to $11.4 billion in 2022, in constant dollars. Referring to a US Air Force planning document from 2011 he also informed the current force of around 250 armed drones would be more than doubled in the next decade.

Equipped with higher level of technology future drones will be faster, smarter, bloodier, more “intelligent” and autonomous, more powerful and heavily armed, and their operators, human indeed, will be, as is being claimed, less involved. These will possess the capacity of “reasoning”, the capacity to draw conclusions on the basis of data. This improved capacity will allow future drones to “plan and execute attacks with less human participation”, and “[g]reater robot autonomy could herald a major expansion of the drone war.” (David Axe, op. cit.)

David cited a 30-year drone development plan of the US Air Force: “Advances in AI (artificial intelligence) will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input.” The Air Force, according to David, “is already working to loosen those policy constraints, clearing a path for smarter, more dangerous drones.”

The robotic drones, military analysts and experts on the future of warfare apprehend, could raise “the specter of a whole new kind of conflict which would essentially remove the human element – and human decision-making – from the theater of war.” (ibid.)

Now, none contends to the claim that drone attacks aren't flawless. The Stanford Report says: “This narrative”, drones are effective and precise, “is false.” Operators’ repeated mistakes in targeting their enemies, the mistake for which civilians paid with blood, are also much recognized facts. “Today roughly a quarter of all the people killed in […] drone strikes are innocent bystanders.” (David Axe, op. cit.) From June 2004 through mid-September 2012, reports the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent journalist organization, drone strikes killed 2,562-3,325 persons including 176 children in Pakistan. (Covert War on Terror) Other countries count respective casualty figures.

Drones with sensitive sensors, computers, bombs and missiles have generated two sets of questions: technical and sociopolitical. Questions related to technology locomote around efficiency, reliability, etc. while sociopolitical questions, as there is political force, revolve around ethics, human rights, fundamental freedoms, legitimacy, sovereignty of country and people, morality/moral standards of war, theories of war, etc.

Technical throttle

David refers to experts’ opinions that tell technical limits of drones. The technical limits, however, turn deadly. Cummings, an MIT professor, says: “In the future we’re going to see a lot more reasoning put on all these vehicles.” Ryan Calo, a Stanford University researcher, foresees: “There’s no plan for humans to be totally out of the loop.” Patrick Lin, another Stanford researcher opines: “Military robots are potentially indiscriminate.” Robots “aren’t going to replace the need for a thinking human being to make decisions that are influenced by experience in a wide range of situational considerations that you just can’t program into a machine,” Carl Johnson, a Northrop vice president, told Global Post in 2011. “Even though it’s possible for a [UAV] to find a target, identify it and give those coordinates electronically to a weapon, it won't do that unless it’s told to,” Johnson said. “The technology is there, but there is still a need for a human in the loop.” “Humans contribute the things humans are good at, and robots contribute what robots are good at,” is the way MIT’s Seth Teller describes the dynamic to Global Post. Highly autonomous robots could pose big problems, and not just legally, Calo and Lin warn. While remote, there is a chance that a highly sophisticated drone could go rogue in combat. “Autonomous robots are likely to be learning robots, too,” Lin says. “We can’t always predict what they will learn and what conclusions they might draw on how to behave.” “We’re reasonably confident that a human can act ethically, to distinguish right from wrong, but we have no basis yet for this confidence about robots,” Lin cautions.

There will be a machine-“reasoning”, programmed with “genetic algorithms”, a capacity build up by human operator/programmer, that’s inserting a huge volume of command based on only a fraction of human reasoning. The machine can turn mad if the flying machine is fed with disinformation, confusing data and data unknown to the machine, if its “reasoning” is distorted with misperception, wrongly summed experience, disturbed sight. The airborne killer can turn deviant, even can degenerate into suicidal.

It can’t be expected that armed airborne robot of the future can handle all possible problems encountered during a combat mission. The problems include changes in terrain, weather and camouflage, and appearance of counter-technology to combat the drone. With the development of technology drones’ efficacy to detect targets will increasingly turn limited. Doesn’t the history of arms development, the development of bayonet, rifle, artillery, tanks, and all their later cousins in the breed, development of tactics and strategies over centuries confirm this?

A machine, even if it uses software algorithms, because of its basic nature, can never handle sociopolitical reality, can never take into consideration “surprises” and incidents that demand to be flexible and compromising in decision making, and possible and probable impacts and implications that may follow a tactical or strategic hit. This reality brings down drones’ decision making capacity to zero. Decision to hit a target is basically part of political including diplomatic and legal, and even economic, decision, and it’s a process at socio-economic-political level.

By authorizing a machine to take decision, obviously partially, to kill, to trigger weapons release process, human being takes the sole responsibility of the killing. A machine can be authorized to make combat decisions, mechanically, but the burden of implication of the decision is borne by political and military leadership with legal, ethical, social and political consequences.

Efficiency of not only drones, but also of no machine can never be translated into tool or mechanism for handling social contradictions that breed forces considered antagonistic to drone owners.

Trammel of sociopolitics

The flying kill-machine encounters an array of moral, ethical, legal, sociopolitical issues that it can’t ignore, can’t face, can’t handle.

In mid-July, 2012, The New York Times in a story, “The Moral Case for Drones”, argued that the airborne weapon system “offer marked moral advantages over almost any tool of warfare”.

John Brennan in his April 2012-speech defended use of drones as legal under domestic and international law, ethical according to the standards of war, wise as it limits risk to US personnel and foreign civilians, and subject to a complex and thorough review process. He identified the advantages of drones as helping the US to satisfy the “principle of humanity”.

Other arguments favoring drone include (1) drone provides scope for “more humane type of war”, (2) “a last resort after exhausting all feasible alternatives”, (3) “reasonable necessity”, (4) “resorting to justifiable force”. To a section of ideologues, use of drone “is a struggle to defeat an ideology.”

These arguments accompanied the concept of “just war” that Barak Obama outlined in his 2009 Nobel Prize speech.

However, these arguments are being debated and questioned. Legal experts challenge the legality of drone strike across sovereign borders and targeted killings although international law till now doesn’t set limit to drones’ area of operation. “Proportional response and the right to human life are cornerstones of just war theory and central to the debate over drones [...]” (Jason Berry, op. cit.) Inviolable sovereignty of people and people’s inviolable right to peace are fundamental issues that drone operations can never resolve.

According to Daniel R. Brunstetter, professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, the “2010 National Security Strategy – the document that outlines the foreign policy threats facing the US and the way the administration plans to deal with them – echoes [a] cautious war philosophy. The language of pre-emptive war that predominated Bush’s national Security Strategy of 2002 and 2006 was removed, and a more cautious language that echoed the notion of last resort was employed: ‘While the use of force is sometimes necessary, we will exhaust other options before war whenever we can, and carefully weigh the costs and risks of inaction.’ The document goes on to emphasize the importance of using force in ways that ‘reflects our values and strengthens our legitimacy’ and stresses the need for ‘broad international support.’” The document, as Brunstetter quoted, asserts: “The United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to the standards that govern the use of force.” “This leads us”, Brunstetter observed, “to the dilemmas posed by drones.” (“Can We Wage a Just Drone War?”, The Atlantic, July 19, 2012)

On the opposite

The reality that comes out of the drone operations is opposite to the claims and expectations. Serious concerns about the counter-productive result of drone strikes are being raised. The Stanford Report found “evidence of the civilian harm and counter-productive impacts of US targeted killings and drone strikes in Pakistan.”

“Drones”, the New York Times reported, “have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants.” (Jo Becker and Scott Shane, Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will, May 29, 2012) A Pew Research Center study found 74 percent of Pakistanis consider the US an enemy.” (“Pakistani Public Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S.: …”, 2012)

The Stanford Report provides a broader reality. It said:

(1) “[N]egative impacts US policies [...] on the civilians living under drones.” (2) Presence of drones “terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves. These fears have affected behavior. The US practice of striking one area multiple times […] makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school.” (3) Drone strikes “have undermined cultural and religious practices”, and “families who lost loved ones or their homes in drone strikes now struggle to support themselves.”

Daniel Brunstetter tells the hard fact: “[I]t takes only one civilian death to fuel negative perceptions of the US in some parts of the world and all but guarantee a steady flow of terrorist recruits. (op. cit.)

Efforts to hide the victims from the rest of the world, to operate with low-key posture tell a basic weakness: The operation is not acceptable to the wider world, is not acceptable even within acceptable norms interests of status quo propagate and practice, is devoid of legitimacy.

The air assault completely concentrates into inner: its, friend’s and foe’s strengths and weaknesses, interprets or misinterprets or circumvents laws and legal bindings, diplomatic tangles and international relations, etc. but fails to consider the objective social condition.

The flying machine exposes utter weaknesses of its owners whatever is the raison d’etre for waging a secret war, the secret killing of individuals, whether it’s an anticipatory war doctrine of the Bush era or a doctrine of anticipatory drone strike, whether it’s a pre-emptive war or a preventive war.

The weakness is exposed when drone strikes turn as the threshold of last resort and claim that it leads to peace. The absence of accountability, transparency, debate, and the legal basis for killing missions complete the exposure.

The situation turns complicated and grave if an ally doesn’t turn accomplice to the flying machine mission, if an ally appears unreliable, if it’s not possible to segregate an “ideological” foe from civilians, if an assault makes civilian population hostile as these mean failure in deeper zones of politics, diplomacy, inter-state relation. The failure has roots also. Machine can never overcome this failure or limit.

If

What can today’s drones or tomorrow’s super-drones do if a populace turns aware, gets organized, rises in peaceful defiance, disobedience and non-cooperation, doesn’t resort to arms, doesn’t step into provocations, doesn’t walk into a tactical trap? Can drones or some other machine sense/survey/map the inner dynamics of the defiant people, their alliance, leadership or management of the rising? It’s a disability machines bear as they are “born” out of human labor, as machines’ “labor” and human labor are not the same and the two don’t produce same result. Otherwise the history of machines’ development and the history of humanity’s journey that we find would have been different and highly efficient machines would have trespassed humanity. History presents opposite evidence, which is not loved by mechanical minds.

There is another important “if”. Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars, is blunter. “Drones are an unreliable and conspicuous way of killing individuals,” he told Global Post. “What seems inevitable today is going to cause you trouble tomorrow. Ask yourself if [emphasis added] the United States would accept the right of another country to decide who among Americans they would kill. There are probably people in Arizona allied with drug cartels. Would we allow Mexican forces to use drones against them? Hell, no.”

This “if” pointed by Thomas Powers actually has no answer or has an answer, considered anomalous and despised by all rationale being.

To capital, war is justified as long as it appears necessary for its expansion and appropriation. Capital, having its own morality and ethics as feudal lords and slave owners had their, provides itself justification and rational to murder innocents, invade countries and demolish life of peace-loving people. Capital always finds use of force not only necessary, but also morally justified.

But capital’s morality and logic for justification is its limit, the limit that its machines, killing machine or ruling machine, can never cross as sociopolitical dynamics can never be dominated and manipulated by mechanical force. Capital thus manufactures its killing machines in its temple of absurdity with a hope of hollowness.

Bangladesh Workers' Struggle Toward Liberation

Politics of people and politics of elites are opposed to each other as conflicting interests form their respective bases although elites, within dominating political structure, very often sway people. Aspirations of the two camps stand on respective interests, essentially class interests, which are also opposite. And, spirit emanates from aspiration.

People's interest and aspiration are simple: a better life; and for elites, interest and aspiration are narrow that can't get materialized without encroaching people's interest. Swaying commoners in favor of elites' interests are age-old trick. Weakness – ideological, political, organizational – within commoners' camp makes it happen.

Time negotiates zigzag – compromise – path to manifest and articulate people's interests, aspiration, spirit. For manifesting and articulating people's interests and aspiration, longer and shorter periods, obviously historic that sometimes appears gloomy, of struggle, victory and setback emerge and decline. Through struggles in places of production and between classes carried on everyday – struggle for survival – people learn, refine and articulate their aspiration. Their spirit keeps them alive, vibrant, struggling, and struggle educates them, widens their view, matures their perception.

Elite minds, a few or many, but not all, sections, but not all the sections, fail to read the writing on the horizon of time, a socioeconomic process, as commoners' aspiration and spirit develop and gain momentum gradually. Sometimes it develops silently. Interests and failure to adjust these interests keep these minds blind, an immature demo.

Affairs within Pakistan , the state that came out in mid-August of 1947, testify the immaturity of its ruling elites. Its obstinate immaturity either failed to see the gathering storm or felt confident with its heavy-looking thin power base relying on which it imagined: the socioeconomic process could be thwarted. The effective meaning of the imagination, a farce also, turned out: failure in perceiving the socioeconomic process.

Reading socioeconomic process is not an easy task as the process at times is obscure, and at times is bold; at times it moves at snail's pace, and at times it hits with lightning speed; at times its complex character appears simple. It's so difficult that persons with pro-people sentiment sometimes take anti-people position. Aspiration and spirit of commoners, the great masses of people, a bunch of “stupid” to elites, take shape, and these prevail, push many interests and push a lot, and these make many sell outs at times difficult and at times impossible. These also suffer setbacks. But the setbacks are for a period, for “now”, an intermediate stage in their forward movement.

Stream of incidents in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh , during the period 1947-1971 presents evidence of the pattern mentioned in the paragraphs above. Struggle of industrial workers in 1947-71 Bangladesh provides an example that helps identify the spirit of the industrial workers joining the Bangladesh War of Liberation.

Score

Industrial workers in East Pakistan were facing problems and hardship. The workers were trying to bring their problems to the notice of authorities/owners. But those were brushed off by the ruling elites/machine.

Reality the workers were facing is evident from the following incidents:

1. On October 15, 1947, cement industry workers in Chhaatak [also spelled Chatak] went on strike to realize their demands that included withdrawal of retrenchment order issued on a number of workers, increase in minimum wage, dearness allowance, introduction of monthly wage system instead of a daily-basis system, provident fund for all, paid weekly holiday, annual leave, provision for medical treatment and regular food ration, brick-built house for all, end to retrenchment. About four years later, on April 22, 1951, the same demands were raised at a conference of these workers. (Badruddin Umar, The Emergence of Bangladesh, Class struggle in East Pakistan, 1947-1958 , pp. 68-9)

2. Resolutions for increase in salary, introduction of grain shops and removal of corrupt officials were adopted at the 1 st annual conference of the Post and Telegraph Union held on March 6, 1949 in Dhaka . (ibid., p. 64)

3. On March 20, 1949, Azizul Islam, a trade union leader, said at the 1 st annual conference of the East Pakistan Railway Employees League held in Dhaka : Every citizen has a share in the wealth of a state; and level of luxury should be lessened. Ishaq, another TU leader, said: They are branded as communists whenever demands for food, shelter, etc. are raised. The disparity in the living standards between the 90 percent and 10 percent people in the country must be removed as early as possible. (ibid., p. 60)

4. On April 6, 1949, Abdul Hye, a TU leader, said in his address welcoming a minister: We hear assurances many times that the Pakistan administration would be run on the basis of the great Islamic ideals of equality, brotherhood and freedom. But the government of Pakistan , by ignoring these promises, is trying to crush the labor organizations by all possible means. (ibid., p. 62)

5. At the 2 nd annual conference of the East Pakistan Trade Union Federation, held in May 1-2, 1949, Amar Banarjee, a TU leader, made demand to nationalize essential industries and abolition of zamindari system. (ibid., p. 53)

6. Thousands of dock workers, bled white by war, famine and communal riots, sent an open letter to the labor minister and labor commissioner in August 1950. The letter detailed their miserable condition: No regular wage, no job security, no rights, no medical treatment facility and no compensation for injury although there were cases of injury, even of death in almost every night, no payment of wages for two full days work on August 12 and 13, 1949 although assurances were made to make payment of wages, nine-hour working day, etc. With a hope the letter, at the very beginning, mentioned that all the workers were Muslims. But the letter was ignored. (ibid., p. 72)

7. Nurul Huda, a TU leader, in his address at the 3 rd annual conference of the All Pakistan Postman and Lower Grade Staff Union held in Sylhet on September 12, 1950 said: It was the duty of the government to provide proper livelihood to the poor postal workers. Reactionary elements denounce all as communists and traitors whoever tries to inform people about the plight of the workers. (ibid., p. 64)

8. Workers of Adamjee Jute Mills decided to hold a meeting on December 25, 1952. The day was selected considering that December 25 was a public holiday as the birthday of Jinnah, considered father of Pakistan . On earlier occasions, the mills authorities kept the mills running whenever the workers decided to hold a meeting on Sundays. The workers thought that it would not be possible to resort to the tact as that was the birthday of Jinnah. But the mills were not kept shut. However, not a single worker joined the mills on the day. There was strike. (ibid., p. 238)

The date of the first case mentioned here is mid-October of 1947, two months after the new state was bundled by the departing British raj . Shall any mind turn indifferent to the problems/grievances the workers mentioned or do the complaints/demands sound illogical? But the state, Pakistan , was not making positive response. Its response was negative: Denial, suppression.

The trend – denial and suppression of workers' demands – prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. Demands raised by the industrial workers throughout the period provide evidence. Sometimes the situation worsened as a whole or in an entire industry.

Denial

Grievances the industrial workers expressed or demands they made were mainly economic. Motive behind these demands was simple and humane: getting free from suffering, hunger, exploitation; a better life with health care facilities and housing; a fair share of the fruits of their labor; a space to articulate and share tales of suffering – a space for practicing democratic rights. These are bare minimum conditions for keeping human body of workers production-able, an essential requirement for capital also. But the immature capital and the state it operated denied this requirement.

Denial of these demands and suppression of workers made them aware of their rights of organization, assembly, expression. It was lessons from life: class struggle and struggle for production. “In spite of ... restrictions, working class militancy erupted in a number of long drawn out strikes. Between 1965 and 1968, 1.03 million man-days were lost in strikes. Of these, 587,000 man-days were lost in 1967 alone.” (Rehman Sobhan and Muzaffer Ahmad, Public Enterprise in an Intermediate Regime, p. 79)

Industrial workers gradually joined political movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh . Concepts of a society free from exploitation were gaining ground among the industrial workers. Decades of ideological-political work by progressive political forces contributed to this development among the industrial workers. Industrial workers gradually began raising political demands, and the demands were turning sharper, taking radical character. “In the three main movements against Ayub [a dictator with a non-martial law cloak] in 1962, 1964 and 1966, and in the election campaign of 1964, some elements of the working class were involved... [I]ndustrial workers faced the brunt of the repression in the streets when the government moved to use force against the movement.... It was not altogether surprising when the industrial workers for the first time came to the forefront of the political movement against the Ayub regime [...] in early 1969.... Their accumulated grievances against repressive labor laws and declining real wages began to find expression in a spate of strikes demanding higher wages and improvement of working conditions.” (ibid., pp. 80-1)

The 1965 Indo-Pak war, Tashkent Declaration on ceasing Indo-Pak military hostility, 6-point program for autonomy of East Pakistan and following political developments on the national stage influenced psyche of the masses including the industrial workers. The Mass Upsurge of 1969 and the tidal bore in 1970 made a change in the political spectrum and perception of commoners – industrial workers, peasantry and others closer to them. The '70-tidal bore took away hundreds of thousands of lives in the southern East Pakistan, and the people of East Pakistan, the Baangaalees, found the Pakistan rulers indifferent to the Baangaalee people. Even, not a single political leader came to see devastation wrought by the '70-sea surge and sympathize with the helpless Baangaalee people. Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, the rebel Maulana, said in a mammoth Dhaka public meeting: Leaders from the western wing including Mia Mohammad Daulatana, Abdul Qayyum Khan, Nawabzada Nasrullah, and others have not come to see our suffering. A Dhaka Baanglaa daily headlined Maulana's utterance: Oraa keu aasenee , none of the political leaders from the western wing came to see our plight. The rift was visible.

And, the sense of deprivation, experience of suppression, aspiration for a better life in a democratic environment, spirit for struggle were articulated as cracks in the Pakistan state started surfacing. The industrial workers were imbued with a dream for a happier life as far left student activists turned labor organizers increased their political-organizational activities among the workers. One of the slogans popularized by left student activists was Tomaar aamaar mantra, samaajtantra , our mantra is socialism. It was dream for a society free from exploitation. Related publications also present similar facts.

“Working class consciousness and militancy inevitably grew with the size of the modern industrial labor force.... [I]nstead of merely abstaining from work, the workers occupied ... [enterprises] and confined the owners/managers within the premises until their demands were conceded. Gherao [the industrial action of occupying an enterprise] engulfed virtually every industrial centre and even spread to commercial enterprises and offices....Between 1968 and 1971 the number of unions in [ East Pakistan ] increased from 411 to 1174. At the same time man-days lost from strikes increased from 154,840 in 1968 to 366,901 in 1970.” (ibid., pp. 78, 81-3)

Verdict that the people of East Pakistan gave in the 1970 election was unequivocal: Get free from hunger, deprivation, repression; have a democratic life. Living condition of the industrial workers and political environment taking shape through conflicting interests were shaping the mass psyche. The industrial workers were no exception.

Sacrifice

“As early as of 1 st March [1971] the working class leaders and other student leaders gave the call for an independent Bangladesh [at] a mass rally of workers and students.” (ibid., p. 91) The spirit turned well-articulated: A life liberated from the clutches of hunger, exploitation, deprivation in an independent democratic country.

Masses of people started taking active role in political life. Faceless “idiots” appeared bright in processions, on the streets, in agitations. So, Bangladesh found many commoners turned courageous fighters. One of those many was, as Ittefaq , a leading Dhaka Baanglaa daily, reported, “Ayub Ali, 35, an employee in a cloth store and bears the burden of the helpless family of his dead father-in-law in addition to his mother, wife and daughter. He joined the procession defying curfew on the night, at 11p.m., of March 2, 1971. A bullet hit Ali's leg. That leg has been amputated. Now, he is a limbless man, and his future is a dark, uncertain. Yet, a light of happiness plays over his face, it's, probably, a happiness of sacrifice.” (March 16, 1971) The prevailing political environment and mass-mood was sharp with contradictions. On March 21, 1971, on the page of Holiday , the famous Dhaka English weekly, Enayetullah Khan, a leading editor in the country, portrayed: “[T]he city of Dhaka is ringing with the cry for national liberation....The slogans which rent the air with resounding echoes from all quarters demand absolute liberation.... [R]ural Bengal is preparing itself for a militant and protracted struggle under the leadership of the left radicals committed to a people's democratic order.” (“Regardless of constitutional footwork people's struggle continues”)

The war began. It was the masses of people, millions in number, joining the War of Liberation. Bangladesh was glowing with glory. And, the Pakistan ruling elite-“mind” full with incapacity to perceive the sociopolitical process, dumbness and stupidity to the brim, tried to stand against the tide of time. It was idiocy. But, history stood against the shrewd-looking idiotic Pakistan ruling elites only waiting to be denied by time and a war for liberation. It was a time with bravery of and sacrifices by the masses of people.

“As the [liberation] war intensified it was the students and workers, now joined in increasing number by the sons of peasants, who came in their thousands for training in the camps. It was they who suffered the privations of the training camps and then with rudimentary training and weapons went out to risk their lives against the Pak[istan] army.” (Sobhan and Ahmad, op. cit., p. 94) The spirit is not covered with confusion.

Many Baangaalees like Kootoob appeared on the stage of liberation. Kootoob, a boatman from a village in the southern district of Barisal, used to ferry the freedom fighters, informs Nirmal Sen, the revered journalist. One day his boat was attacked by the occupying Pakistan army while freedom fighters were on way to a guerrilla operation riding his boat. He lost his right arm as a bullet of the army shattered it. That arm was amputated. Now, Kootoob can't row boat, his path to livelihood. His family members are five with three daughters at the age of marriage. “I don't know the number of Kootoobs in the country.” (“ Mookteejooddha o akjan Kootoobuddin ”, “The war of liberation and Kootoobuddin”, Dainik Bangla , Dec. 15, 1991) A spirit for liberation led millions of Kootoobs, millions of peace-loving toiling masses, seemingly silent souls, to the war for liberation, a glorious act in lifetime, an act shaped through years of struggle.

The spirit is univocal: a dignified life, a happy life, a peaceful life. Through sufferings, struggles and lessons learned the working people contributed to manifesting the spirit that a nation upheld.

New Age , Dhaka , published the article in its Bangladesh Independence Day special issue on March 26, 2013.

Going back to Davos as questions haunt

THE snow-capped Swiss village Davos is now free of 2,655 leaders, billionaires, tech-knights, financesters, economists. Weeks ago, their presence made Davos thriving as they joined the 43rd meeting of the World Economic Forum 2013 there. In terms of money- and political-power, the deciding-personalities participating in the summit are equivalent to emperors.
In Davos, the WEF 2013 witnessed meetings and ‘interactive sessions’. Many of these, as a press report said, were not ‘fully on-the-record (or even open to humble reporters)’. Discussions on the global financial and energy contexts, de-risking Africa, this century’s NGO model, the Moore’s Law, computing power doubles every two years or so, ‘the employment effects of technology’, jobs being turned obsolete by technology, ultra-superlight material, etc stuffed the summit. Bankers’ session and an initiative to fight malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS were also there. Axel Weber, chairman of the Swiss bank UBS, Tidjane Thiam, CEO of the insurance group Prudential, Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Paul Elliott Singer, founder and CEO of the hedge fund Elliott Management, and Andrey Kostin, president of the VTB Bank, one of Russia’s leading financial groups, contemplated strategic shifts and transformations changing the financial world. Davos discussed almost all important issues the world now faces, from economy to energy to environment. Finance was at the centre of all discussions that went on for hours. Observations, warnings, predictions were also made.
Gloomy crisisphere covering the last few WEF summits was absent in the 2013 summit. But there are questions that are haunting the system — world capitalism — the summit participants represent.

Depressing facts
DEPRESSING news accompanied the summit as Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, predicted a ‘hesitant recovery’. Recession was clinging to the eurozone and Japan. No one could confidently say whether euro crisis was over or not. The consultancy firm PWC’s survey found: As far as business confidence is concerned there is a global double-dip recession.
David Cameron announced Britain’s in-out referendum on European Union membership in 2017. Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, made a response: ‘If Britain wants out of the EU we will roll out the red carpet for you.’ Fabius continued: There could be no ‘Europe a la carte’ in which a country picked which rules applied to it. ‘Imagine we are a football club. You join the football club — but once you are in, you cannot say “Let’s play rugby”,’ he added. The French tone says something.
But the French are in trouble. In a radio interview the French labour minister Michel Sapin’s revelation, earthly, not divine, came: France ‘is a totally bankrupt state.’ The disclosure shook many. Banque de France said: There is a flight of capital. Business confidence in the French manufacturing industry, according to ISEE data, unexpectedly fell in January.
Portugal ‘is in the throes of the worst recession since 1975,’ said Diário Económico, the country’s economic and financial newspaper. In its third straight year of recession, the country drifted to privatising public schools, slash education budget, cut around 50,000 sector jobs. An IMF document virtually suggested ‘the end of a free and inclusive public school system.’ With a jobless rate of 16.3 per cent, more than 2 per cent of its population has emigrated in the past two years to Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Germany, Angola, the oil-rich former Portuguese colony, and Mozambique; 240,000 persons since 2011. Most of them are young, highly educated. It’s a reverse, as they headed to the former colonies, variety of brain drain capitalism has not contemplated. With this trend what type of power does capitalism show? It now fails to retain brilliant minds in a developed economy.
With Spain’s worsening recession and shrinking GDP the fifth austerity package in a year was approved. The aim is to reduce the second largest, or a bulging, budget deficit in the eurozone.
The NRC Handelsblad, an evening daily from the Netherlands, said: The country ‘has fallen into its third recession’ since the debt crisis roared in 2008.
Further depressing news followed within weeks the Davos meet concluded.
A sceptic IMF apprehended: In 2013, a ‘mild recession’ would visit the eurozone. Warning came from the European Commission: In 2013, the eurozone recession will persist, the eurozone economy would shrink 0.3 per cent; Spain, France, Portugal are failing to cut their deficits to agreed targets. La Vanguardia, one of Spain’s leading dailies, wrote: ‘Worsening recession in the eurozone’. ‘The eurozone has become a recession zone,’ said La Tribune, one of leading business and financial dailies from France.
For the first time since 1978, an Aa1, downgraded credit rating, replaced the UK’s top rating of AAA.
Népszava from Budapest shocked its readers: Recession in Hungary is the fourth worst in Europe. Greece, Portugal and Cyprus exceed the country as the economy shrank 1.7 per cent in 2012. The daily said: ‘End of a fairy tale: economy goes into freefall.’ Népszava referred to a claim made in 2012 by the country’s economy minister György Matolcsy: ‘The Hungarian fairy tale or the Hungarian example will be successful within a year.’
‘Czech state sinks into longest recession in history,’ said Hospodářské noviny, the country’s leading daily.
It appears that depressing facts were joining hands to dominate the Davos participants’ jocund imagination. And, it appears that it’s not only a eurozone case; its wings have been unfolded over the countries identified as transition economies, the societies that formally sold their souls to the shylocks of world capitalism.

Global risks
Experts cautioned the summit.
Climate change, predicted New York University economist Nouriel Roubini, will cause tremendous economic upheaval. Tim Palmer, Oxford University physicist, apprehended a warmer Earth leading to ‘catastrophic consequences for humanity’. ‘Water is the new oil,’ said Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Many countries will start running out of water in the coming years, added Nasr. All the predictions and warnings, in ultimate analysis, move down to the root: capitalism, its ever expansionary character, its ‘psychology’ of profit at any cost.
Global Risk 2013, the famous Insight Report of the WEF, assessed, identified top risks, impact, centres of gravity, etc. The report presented Global Risk Landscape and Global Risk Map. Based on an annual survey of more than 1,000 experts from industry, government, academia and civil society the Global Risks 2013 presented a landscape of 50 global risks.
Severe income disparity, the respondents observed, was rated the most likely to manifest over the next 10 years. Major systemic financial failure was the risk rated as having the highest impact. Two other global risks appearing in the top five of both impact and likelihood were chronic fiscal imbalances and water supply crisis.
Continued stress on the global economic system and increasing stress on the Earth’s environmental system, the Global Risk Report assumed, could trigger the ‘perfect global storm’ with potentially insurmountable consequences. A sudden and massive collapse on one front, it said, is certain to doom the other’s chance of developing an effective, long-term solution. It mentioned likelihood of future financial crises and natural catastrophes. On the issue of climate change it felt: It is possible that we have already passed a point of no return.
Respondents in the survey, and the report itself also, revealed the undeniable fact told many times: Income disparity, systemic financial failure, future financial crisis, perfect global storm, etc. These are ‘products’ of capitalism, and capitalism can’t live and expand without creating disparity. Gradual ascendance of monopoly finance capital is bringing in financial failures. Even, it is bringing in failure of sovereignty of independent countries. In capitalism, capital is the only sovereign, only its sovereignty is guarded, country’s/state’s sovereignty is utilized to secure sovereignty of capital(s). Country’s/state’s sovereignty is shamelessly compromised in the interest of capital(s). Capitalism’s history bears the facts.
Greece is one of the recent examples, which is also an example of crude intervention by finance-force. Probably political scientists are redefining the terms ‘intervention’, ‘coup’, ‘regime change’. The present financial crisis has expanded area of this modus operandi of capitalism from poor, former colonies, neo-colonies, to developed capitalist countries. However, this bears risks, especially in socio-political area.

Lagarde’s choice
‘DO NOT relax,’ advised Christine Lagarde, the IMF boss. The advice came in Davos. She warned the eurozone was still in ‘a very fragile situation’. At the end of the summit, she said a ‘fragile and timid’ recovery depended on officials in the powerhouse economies of Europe, the US and Japan making ‘the right decisions’. Lagarde suggested European officials’ overseeing reforms so that failed banks don’t add to government debt through bailouts. These were a few of her choices.
So, there is, as the IMF boss suggested, need for (1) bureaucrats’ authority over bank capital, (2) nourishing and chiding of, control over and imposition of tougher, centralized supervision of bank capital as banks sometimes create hurdle on the path of government, which is tasked to smoothen the path of capital/bank. Doesn’t it mean that bank capital should not be allowed to freewheel? Doesn’t it mean that bank capital is not always wise? And, the statement, not by any opponent of capitalism, may sound strange although that’s the fact: mere employees/governance system, officials, engaged to serve capital is asked to oversee employer, capital. It’s a show of capital’s self- degenerative and self-destructive power.
Lagarde’s statement suggests that neither market nor capitalists, but bureaucrats, who are at the payroll of either capital or capital’s ruling machine — state — have the capacity, skill, power and authority to make ‘right decisions’. It, if factual, carries meaning and implication touching areas of capital’s limitation, breakneck competition between its parts, political ramification, etc. Moreover, shall this suggested mechanism ever work? It’ll not work as, in capitalism, despite separation of economic and political institutions economic interests ultimately dictate political mechanism including bureaucracy; in the present case, the Brussels bureaucracy and international bank bureaucracy.
Citing the need of ‘openness, inclusiveness and accountability’ (accountability in the financial sector — cleaning up elements such as shadow banking) Lagarde urged policymakers to do more to tackle inequality. But she, probably, preferred to forget that capitalist system is neither open nor inclusive nor accountable. The Great Financial Crisis has once again exposed the fact. Financial sector itself prefers shadow as shadow provides it an ideal setting to operate. It gets exposed during crisis. Investigations/inquiries on the GFC have uncovered this fact. Policymakers can’t tackle inequality as the system to which the policymakers are bonded lives on inequality while the system breeds inequality.
She cited unemployment as a vital issue for many countries. But she denied admitting that capitalism fails to eradicate the disease of unemployment as it needs unemployment, as it needs a reserve army of labour.
Policymakers should do more to help women enter the economy, she said. It’s known to her that during financial crisis and stagnation women are exploited more ruthlessly. Sometimes, it goes beyond human tolerance.
Lagarde, like a visionary, hoped the world can climb away from its recent ills to a better future, if leaders can embrace the values and principles of openness and collaboration at a new moment in history.
She knows it well that the system to which the leaders are tied can’t ‘embrace the values and principles of openness and collaboration’ as the system is rife with competition, the system worships the values and principles of competition, and competition compels the system to be a close, secret system governed by a few. Examples are in abundance, from any small company to any multinational corporation producing consumer goods or weapons to any energy demon to any financial gambler to any bank capital to any media giant to any defence contractor, etc, from any merger deal to any energy contract to any armaments sale to any land or food speculation venture to a section of lobbyists’ activities, from economic to financial to political deals, from ideological propaganda campaign to disinformation blitz to aggression/interference plan having roots in economic interests/plunder.
Identifying her biggest challenge in 2013, Lagarde said: It’s ‘keeping the momentum’. She will not be able to keep momentum unless the economy generates momentum, unless the economy gets out of stagnation, and in this time, getting out of stagnation is a difficult puzzle.

Hopes
YET, there are hopes and expectations nourished by a quarter. It’s told: ‘It’s time for a better capitalism’; ‘But what can — and hopefully will — emerge from the rubble is a capitalism that creates jobs, creates value, provides security and promotes fairness; the civil and civilised capitalism that was always promised’ (Deborah Orr, ‘It’s time for a better capitalism, one that creates jobs and provides security’, Guardian, December 29, 2012).
It’s also told: ‘[T]he market is making a pro-social and humane decision.’ The reason cited for such ‘pro-social and humane decision’ is: ‘It is choosing to sacrifice profits in order to save itself.... [C]ompanies slashing their profits in order to keep ticking over... [T]he recession is teaching businesses that people really are more important than profit (or at least that if people don’t have jobs then they don’t have customers). The rich are realising that they can’t keep getting richer if the poor keep getting poorer’ (ibid).
At least a bit, in an evasive way, of facts, is getting uncovered from the expressed hope: sacrifice to save self, slash to keep on, help poor to get rich. Behind this ‘benevolence’ are the following facts: (1) much profit endangers profiteer and stops ‘ticking over’; (2) profit turns more important than people; (3) the rich try to get richer by making people poorer.
Another fact is hidden behind the said ‘pro-social and humane’ attitude: Sacrificing for self-survival is not sacrifice, it’s self-serving; slashing profit to keep ticking over is preparing ground to make more profit including the slashed part; help people survive so that they turn consumers is to ensure profit making; and help the poor so that they don’t turn poorer is to ensure getting richer and securing the system that makes rich richer and the poor poorer; and it’s virtos post nummos, virtue after money. It’s a crude trick with a sophisticated face and a tax thief’s soul. Have not a number of tax thieveries by the rich already been exposed in a number of developed capitalist countries a few of which always advise a number of countries on ways to cut down corruption and increase their tax base? As of 2010, the top 1 per cent of the wealthiest people in the world had hidden away between $21 trillion to $32 trillion in secret tax exempt bank accounts (‘Tax Havens: Super-rich hiding at least $21 trillion”, BBC News, July 22, 2012).
It’s dreamed: ‘It is time now for capitalism to start doing all the things it claimed to do. Like providing jobs. Like offering a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. Like standing against protectionist monopolies. Like increasing prosperity and raising standards of living for all. Like providing the foundations of long-term stability instead of the conditions for short-lived booms’ (ibid).
CAPITALISM can’t do ‘all the things it claimed to do’ other than claiming larger, ever increasing profit as it doesn’t have the capacity to move along the other path as that move will nullify it. To capitalism, a fair pay is that amount of money, which is needed to keep labour’s capital reproduction capacity, not more than that as handing over more than that amount of money means slashing down profit, which is soul of capital. And, who can survive without soul? Capital can’t stand against protectionist monopoly. History of the rise of protectionist monopoly, an ‘output’ of concentration and centralisation of capital, shows its irreversible journey. Capital can’t increase prosperity and living standard for all as that cuts down its share, and capital’s sole motive is to ever increase its share. [Short-lived prosperity of a broader part of commoners in a country or a group of countries should not be wrongfully cited as that prosperity is in exchange of pauperising people and plundering nature in other lands, and that is cruder and crueller part of story. Moreover, a task of defining a character errs if it’s based on a single case, i.e. capitalism can’t be analysed on the basis of a single industrial unit or a single ‘benevolent’ capitalist.]
However, it’s now admitted: ‘[F]ree-marketeers maintained a Machiavellian attitude ....As has too often been the case under neo-liberalism, the large companies that cry “free market” are the very ones who use their domineering muscle to ensure that markets are loaded in favour of their own profiteering interests’‘Tax Havens: Super-rich hiding at least $21 trillion”, BBC News, July 22, 2012).
It’s told: ‘Capitalism, in the late 20th century, became a monster. Its idols were people who took over other companies, destroying jobs, value, security and fairness as they made profits for themselves and their shareholders. The results are now hideously apparent’ (ibid).
Now, the fact comes up as ultimately it’s never possible to ignore fact.

Haunting questions
CHRISTINE Lagarde discussed ‘Resilient Dynamism’, the theme of Davos 2013. Mainstream, worshippers of capitalism, still banks on the system, its resilience and dynamism.
But the system’s resilience and dynamism are declining. Incidents that the system produces, experiences, and remedies that the system innovates are the evidences. Its each new crisis is wider and deeper, more threatening and carries more devastating power than the earlier ones. The first crisis having national proportion was in 1825-1826. The next one was in 1836-1837. These two and the following crises are in no way comparable to the latest one — the Great Financial Crisis — across continents: economies went/nearly-went bankrupt, too-big-to-fail financial giants melted down/tumbled, the total amount of bail out money, level on international/intercontinental initiatives, width and forcefulness in brutal imposition of austerity programmes, and the political crisis that followed in countries.
Now, the conditions for stagnation are more powerful and dangerous and have turned wider than the ones Engles mentioned in his famous book on the English working class: ‘The anarchic conditions of modern production and distribution of products, conditions of production which are governed by profit instead of by the satisfaction of needs, conditions under which every one works on his own independent line in the endeavour to enrich himself — such conditions cannot fail to result in frequent stagnation.’
Stagnation rooted deeper is now starker.
Global risks identified by the WEF reports over the last few years dwell closely. The ‘Evolving Risk Landscape’, as the 2013 report identified, shows ‘Global Risks in Terms of Impact’ over a seven-year period: 2007-2013. In the years 2007-2010 the first GRTI was asset price collapse. In 2011, it was fiscal crises. It evolved into major systemic financial failure in 2012 and 2013. In all these seven years, retrenchment from globalisation, chronic fiscal imbalances, extreme volatility in energy and agriculture prices were also in the list of top 5 GRTIs, other than those already mentioned. These were paired by interstate and civil wars/geopolitical conflict. The evolving picture turns grim as there are environmental issues also: water supply and food shortage crises, climatological catastrophes, pandemics, chronic disease. These are closely related, and one influences the rest. [In the Age of Crisis an almost similar pattern has been identified.] Of these, respondents in the Global Risks Perception Survey rated major systemic financial failure ‘as the economic risk of greatest systemic importance for the next 10 years.’ Should not an inquiry be made into the cause of systemic financial failure?
A grave setting emerges if only geopolitical issue as discussed in the WEF report is focused. In the geopolitical category, among others, critical fragile states, failure of diplomatic conflict resolution, global governance failure, militarisation of space, entrenched corruption and crime, terrorism, are included. (Considering the question of length of this article, environmental/climate and health issues identified in the report are skipped here.)
A graver scene comes forth if these (briefly mentioned in the above two paragraphs) are connected with competition, which ultimately takes political and military conflicts, i.e. war, intervention, instigated civil war, engineered civil strife as these turn the ultimate tool to resolve conflicts coming out of competition. The scene carries dangers that the competing interests ultimately can’t resolve. The danger ultimately hurts people.
So, despite ‘Resilient Dynamism’, perceived or dreamed by the mainstream, of the system the system is being haunted by unattended questions, its unresolved contradictions, within the system.
‘Death of starvation’, said Marx in his Inaugural Addresses of the Working Men’s International Association in October 1864, ‘rose almost to the rank of an institution, during this “intoxicating” epoch of economical progress, in the metropolis of the British Empire. That epoch is marked in the annals of the world by the quickened return, the widening compass, and the deadlier effects of the social pest called a commercial and industrial crisis.’
Now, about 150 years later, the reality has worsened. ‘The intoxicating ... economic progress’ is being enjoyed by a super rich class in more countries, not only in a single empire, commercial and industrial crisis is turning into financial, fiscal, political crises that pushes bankers to openly overthrow elected government (regime change in Greece, etc. countries), crisis pushes states to the brink of bankruptcy, poverty overwhelms societies once considered rich and free from starvation.
Consider the case of Greece. Only a few years ago, this country organised the Olympic Games, and now, it is reeling under poverty and starvation with suffering people, ailing hospitals and schools.
In Spain, the economy constructed a magnificent real estate boom with towns and mega-projects, and now these are lying vacant or only being dwelt by ghosts, and people going down the ladder of poverty are being evicted from their homes.
In the UK, a report exposed the way patients suffered although, only a few months ago, the economy proudly showcased its National Health Service in an Olympic Games session. ‘There were patients so desperate for water that they were drinking from dirty flower vases,’ prime minister David Cameron told parliament in a statement on the report. The report by lawyer Robert Francis, said: ‘This is a story of appalling and unnecessary suffering of hundreds of people.’ ‘They were failed by a system which ignored the warning signs and put corporate self-interest and cost control ahead of patients and their safety,’ Francis said in a televised statement as his report was published. ‘Elderly and vulnerable patients were left unwashed, unfed and without fluids. They were deprived of dignity and respect. Some patients had to relieve themselves in their beds when they were offered no help to get to the bathroom,’ he said. Some patients were left in excrement-stained sheets and some who could not eat or drink without help did not receive it. Medicines were prescribed but not given. This happened between January 2005 and March 2009 in an advanced capitalist country.
The poor, the homeless, the student debtors, the hungry children in the US are being discussed. About eight years ago, the Human Development Report 2005 by the UNDP, found: ‘A baby boy from a family in the top 5% of the US income distribution will enjoy a life span 25% longer than a boy born in the bottom 5%’ (p 58). The report added: ‘The infant mortality rate in the United States compares with that in Malaysia — a country with a quarter the income. Infant death rates are higher for African American children in Washington, DC, than for children in Kerala, India’ (p 59).
Now, the reality of a rich land with cruel poverty comes to light with more ‘stories’, statistics and Jonathan Kozol’s book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. The book talks about children and families trapped in poverty in the country.
The following ‘stories’ are only two of many:
ABC News reported on November 29, 2012: Three years after the death of Jermaine Edwards, his mother, 61-year-old Ella was still on the hook for his student loans. Jermaine went to college to study music production, and Ella agreed to co-sign his student loans to help him attend school. Jermaine died of natural causes in 2009 at age 24, leaving his mother responsible for the loans. ‘That’s when American Education Services and National Collegiate Trust turned my son’s dream into a nightmare for me and the two year old son he left behind,’ Ella wrote in the petition to forgive the loans. Her son had three student loans when he died, two federal and one private. The two government loans were forgiven, but the private loan company was refusing to forgive the loan.
On December 24, 2012, an AP report from Columbia, Missouri said: ‘University of Missouri junior Simone McGautha works three campus jobs and has accumulated $11,000 in student loans as she seeks to become the first in her family with a college degree. So when McGautha learned about a new campus food pantry for needy students, the 19-year-old was happy to have the help. “I use every bit of money I have for basic needs,” the Kansas City native said. “I don’t have family putting money in my bank account...” The student-run Tiger Pantry is among a growing number of programmes at university campuses. ... The pantry.... has given free food to nearly 150 people and their families, and an additional 100 people have expressed an interest. Food recipients include nearly three dozen graduate students and a similar number of university employees, as well as a handful of professors. Student organisers modelled the programme on a similar effort at the University of Arkansas known as the Full Circle Food Pantry. ... Tiger Pantry receives some money from student fees but primarily relies on donated food. Students can drop off donations in large bins around campus, and the local food pantry provided 2,500 pounds of food to help the Tiger Pantry get started. The University of Mississippi and Auburn University are also starting campus food pantries, joining schools such as Central Florida, Georgia, Iowa State, Oregon State and West Virginia. The University of California Los Angeles deploys “economic crisis response” teams that assist students struggling to pay bills and rent or who live on the streets.’
In addition to these, a decay in governance has gripped many states, once many minds considered, highly developed democracy: Curtailment of labour and democratic rights including practices of increasing surveillance and suppression, harassment of/repression on immigrants as the governing systems face increasing crisis in subduing its subjects.
At the same time, starvation is being experienced by not only by prisoners of wage in underdeveloped countries. It is also part of life in a number of developed countries. It is being experienced by (1) a vast population, victims of capital induced civil war, intervention, etc., (2) victims of profit hungry agriculture, trade, natural resource exploitation, speculation with food, (3) victims of environmental degradation and climate crisis. This is a regular phenomenon around the world. Reports of UN and non-governmental organisations concerned with the issues and press reports regularly cover these developments.
Samir Amin succinctly depicts the global scene in his essay ‘Seize the Crisis’: ‘[T]he capitalism of oligopolies; the political power of oligarchies; barbarous globalization; financialization; US hegemony; the militarization of the way globalization operates in the service of oligopolies; the decline of democracy; the plundering of the planet’s resources; and the abandoning of development for the South.’
Another contradiction lives there in the global capitalist system: ‘[A] globalizing economy within a nation-state based political system.’ (William I Robinson, ‘Global Capitalism Theory and the Emergence of Transnational Elites’, working paper no. 2010/02, UNU-WIDER, January 2010).
Trouble turns more complicated as the system faces questions of legitimacy. ‘[T]he crisis that exploded in 2008 with the collapse of the global financial system has exacerbated crises of legitimacy in many countries ... and seriously undermined the ability of transnational elites to reproduce their authority’ (ibid).
The reality carries questions that grow from within the system and persistently haunt the system. But the Davos 2013 summit failed to answer these as finding answer to the questions demands a journey to the root of the problems and an inquiry into the root demolishes premise of the system. This destiny, demolition of the system’s premise, prohibits the system to make an inquiry despite being haunted by unruly questions.