Perverse third way
CAPITALISM and socialism are the great global ideologies of our age. The word before ‘ism’ reflects the core logic running a system. So, under capitalism, the interests of private capital do so and subjugate all societal concerns. Private capital, profits, wage labour, etc — wrongly seen as capitalism’s core — have actually existed forever. But as American sociologist Karl Polyani reminds us, capitalism emerged in the 17th century when capital’s interests became dominant societally. Since then, it has given us efficiency and productivity, but also huge inequity, ecological damage and conflict.
Under socialism (a response to capital’s ugly hold), common social interests rightly serve as the dominant concern. Communist states, though, wrongly equating capitalism’s core with private capital, wage labour, etc, eradicate them, with poor results. Scandinavian states, seeing the sway of capitalist interests as the real problem, make social concerns paramount, but allow private capital to operate under them, with better results.
However, a few states (Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Sudan, Egypt, etc.) follow a perverse third way where military interests subjugate both capital and social interests in six key spheres. Their specific patterns vary much across such states. First, armies control ties with key states. Some, like Egypt, become clients of big states to ensure their own survival, while others, such as Sudan and Myanmar, have tense ties with the West. Some, like Pakistan, oscillate between the two extremes. But normal ties away from the two extremes are usually absent. Neither extreme delivers good outcomes. Clientage results in a dependent, rent-seeking economy with little innovation and productivity. Tensions with the West results in isolation and the blockage of investment and technology flows.
Second, the economy suffers from other ills too. Security concerns often impede dynamic economic sectors, such as IT and social media. Some armies, as in Pakistan and Myanmar, control large parts of the economy and curtail the growth of the private sector there. Military businesses often thrive on state support that gives them monopoly or preferential access, thus distorting market processes. Resultantly, most such states have stagnant economies.
There is no sign of a transition to a better system.
Third, security concerns dominate, and many states, like Pakistan, Myanmar and Sudan, have conflicts with their neighbours. This consumes huge state resources, diverting the states from development aims and isolating them regionally. Some, for example, Sudan and Pakistan, also employed non-state actors to pursue their security goals, which boomeranged as terrorism in Pakistan and state collapse in Sudan.
Fourth, politics is autocratic in such states. Militaries often rule directly or via thinly veiled hybrid regimes and undermine fairly elected set-ups. State institutions and entities, such as parliament, the judiciary and bureaucracy, are deliberately weakened and forced to toe the security establishment’s line. In ethnically diverse states, the lack of democracy leads to ethnic tensions and rebellions and even state break-up, as in Sudan and Pakistan.
Fifth, some states also manipulate social narratives to fan extremism in the service of security aims. This unleashes huge social problems, such as poor status of women and religious minorities, regressive attitudes towards science, vaccines and population control, and knee-jerk xenophobia.
Sixth, while raw military powers underpin such a system, the state is run via a powerful intelligence apparatus for societal surveillance and control. Human rights abuses by spy agencies still abound.
Almost all such states do poorly. But Sudan is currently worst off, as ferocious battles between its army and a non-state ex-ally, involving tanks and planes, rage in the capital and countryside, something not seen even during decades of war against South Sudan and the Darfur rebels. Myanmar stands isolated and war-ravaged too. But beyond violence, the state that has been damaged most, going by the wide nature of damage inflicted, may be Pakistan. It may be the only one in the category to have suffered all the ills listed above and more.
Even worse, there is no sign of a transition to a better system, and the establishment’s control appears to be have been increasing rapidly since 2017. But given its diversity and huge challenges in every realm, Pakistan direly needs to change course quickly to avoid Sudan’s fate. However, it must avoid a transition to neoliberal capitalism, where corporate hegemony replaces the military but follows similar policies. Only a model where common social interests dominate can save us from doom.
The writer is a political economist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2024