A country where there are so many ideologies, so many sects, so many interpretations of interpretations of everything written from Hadith to our constitution to the Objective resolution and so many schools of thoughts that it looks like a pond of fish, where everybody seems to have his own religion, and has his own brand of democracy, his own solutions to all the problems and where every body claims to be amrat dhara. , how can there be any unity among the masses, and how can there be any kind of movement at all? I wonder was it really a NATION that Quide Azam thought of leading, or was it a just a mad crowd

It is important for a country like Pakistan with fudal system still intact and flourishing to have a grass root political movement from labours and peasants. Only this would ensure their rights and an end to this repressive system.

Great read!

This is a historically informed article. Nevertheless, I would urge the writer to not think of the rise of Stalinism or the fall of the Soviet Union as meaning the complete untenability of a different social order than the capitalist one. What happened in Russia after 1923 leading to the rise of Stalin developed out of contingent circumstances and forces not only within the Soviet Union but also in Europe (especially Germany where the revolution did occur but was countered after 1918). What happened to the supposed "socialism" of the Soviet Union is today too often in a completely arbitrary and misinformed manner cited as the futility of any possible meaningful change in the world towards a system which is non adversarial and hierarchical. One of the greatest philosopher alive today, Istvan Meszaros has shown in his works (especially Beyond Capital) that the descent into authoritarianism in many so called "communist" countries was because that capital and the state were never eliminated and that in most cases like the Soviet Union and China instead of the restitution of the political and economic power to society and the masses, what occurred was simply a substitution of one elite for another. That way bureaucratic tendencies were generated and the goal remained the never-ending process of the accumulation of capital ( The Gulags are especially a frightening example of the worst kind of rule capital can possibly take in a "socialist" society ). Thus, such hybridized modes of capital accumulation through state power remained essentially alienating structures which finally collapsed into Neoliberalism as can be seen today. The revolution was not successful because the socialists strayed too far away from the all eternal capitalist system and then learned their lesson but because the radical movements did not go far enough in their radical restructuring of the capital-system. After lenin's death and the sidelining of Trotsky in the Soviet Union what began was thoroughly a counter revolution from above by Stalin that was masqueraded as socialist in nature. Mao followed a similar model while many in the third world unknowingly interpreted Marxism through the lens of Stalin and Mao leading to the replication of leftist governments that were nothing but the old tyranny disguised in a cloak of revolutionary language that sounded well to the poor masses. The same I suspect also occurred in and continues to occur in many Pakistani communist circles. However, the crucial point to understand today is this that history is essentially open ended and that capitalism itself is a finite system with origins not in our genetic structure but in the history of the West European social structures beginning from the 13th century in places such as Venice and Genoa. Today the capital system is overshooting its limits ecologically which has led to a massive climate crisis that in turn is creating a basic lack of necessities every year. More so, the developed economies are largely stagnant with slow growth while being in terms of fuel consumption and subsequently agriculture unsustainable. Lack of productive real investments has also led to a series of financial crises since the mid 1970s that 2008 was only the last and biggest one of. This now in turn has led to a sovereign debt crisis. These and many other particular crises are signs of the immanent death of capitalism that essentially cannot resolve its contradictions but can only displace at a higher level for a certain amount of time. As the world's population is increasingly starving while a few elite enrich themselves the very workings of the system will lead to its end, at least in its current form. However, that does not guarantee any supposed utopia but only the fight for a world which is ecologically sustainable and thoroughly democratic in politico-economic terms. If the fight for such a system is successful then there will be MUCH more incentive to work because a few will not be reaping profits while keeping most down in the dumps in the majority of the world where food, clean water, medicine and education are nothing but dreams (not to mention that Neoliberalism through its program of cuts and austerity is depriving the first world populations of some of these necessities as well while their wages have ben stagnant since the 1970s). Humans will only in fact then be able to develop themselves fully through a democratic plan and self-regulated plan of production and distribution decided through local community councils to the most international level. It is also crucial here to note that competition, though natural, is socially mediated. Market competition of the capitalist kind leads to the economic ruin and subjugation of the many for the benefit of the few who then have a monopoly in their sphere of the economy. Competition in a system where production is democratically planned will allow people to compete not for the sake of private quantitative enrichment but to fulfill their actual qualitative interests in line with the interests of humanity through various socially organized institution that would allow for competition in different fields (engineering, art, medicine, literature, etc.) by offering various awards to the best minds, inventors and thinkers of society. This would be a much more rational system of competition since it would be democratically decided that what would be legitimate material incentives given to winners and through what criteria would the decisions be made socially for the best of achievers. Here competition would not only allow a few to ever have the ability to be able to achieve societal honor and immense wealth but be planned in a way as to allowing for satisfactory recompensation of labor for all who produce as according to the democratic economic plan of the associated producers decided in advance. Capitalism inherently stifles competition by blocking the growth of the creative abilities and talents of the overwhelming majority of the humankind by economically, politically, and culturally oppressing the great majority of the population. Most are forced to constantly labor for the meaningless and endless accumulation of capital that a tiny minority benefits of off. Although, Bourgeois sophists regularly clamor on about the sanctity of competition, that it is innate in humans, they in a self-serving manner regularly look over this above mentioned fact. All radicals should keep an open-mind about history and therefore see it as essentially open-ended, another world is most certainly possible. It is not predestined that Capitalism should create a hell on Earth for us through its complete destruction of the environment through desertification, excess water use, carbon emissions that create droughts like the the one currently in East Africa (by lowering yields due to extreme heat) and floods like the one in Pakistan last year by channeling more energy into storm systems due to the hotter temperatures

Article is very informative but does not cover larger aspect of labour movement. it has covered the political scenerio in which movement flourished but skipped the period of struggle before and after annoucement of Govt's labour policies.

Labour policy should be based on welfare measures,pak is devloping and agriculture country focus should be on un organised labour in rural area.