Pakistan socialists hold first congress
* Australia / Pakistan nificant votes. The Progressive Labour Party (PLP, a broad left party) won 54,000 votes in the NSW upper house elections and some Green MPs were elected on its preferences.
Left pact
Significantly, the left parties and the
THE Labour Party of Pakistan (LPP) held its first congress in
Greens had agreed for the first time not to
Lahore, April 15th-18th, taking advantage of the relative full in the stand against each other and thus split the repressive conditions under the military regime of General Perver left vote. The PLP also had a formal elec-
Musharral. As a matter of fact, the congress was held in the premtoral alliance with the Greens, which meant that each party would campaign for ises of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a progressive the others candidates. The PLP was founddemocratic organisation which had kindly let its modern meeting ed at a conference in Newcastle in
November 1996.
It is the only federally-registered leftwing party in the country and has a membership of around 1,000 and branches in most states. It has a heterogeneous membership, with some members from the old
CPA, others from the left of the ALP, and others from a number of Trotskyist currents. (Some members have dual membership with other left wing parties.)
The stated aim of the party is to build a broad organisation in which Social
Democrats as well as Marxists can operate hall to the LPP for a token rent SALAH JABER
HE organisation of the congress was quite impressive: from the dossiers and badges that were distributed to the participants, to the manner in which the proceedings were conducted, to the food. The theatre where the congress took place was packed with some 200 persons (including some children brought by their parents). The elected or designated fought back remarkably. The party leadership tried to make up for the low proportion of women by seating a woman comrade among the three members of the presiding committee. But it was clear that much remained to be done on this level, and - although the LPP leadership and some of the party members are undoubtedly committed to improve their record on this issue - this will require very radical and the immediate aim is to challenge the of roughly we teasing morgers hid electoral supremacy of the ALP. The party programme is explicitly socialist, although the exact nature of what this means is a compromise between the left and right wings of the party. So, just over three years since the party was founded, how successful has it been?
Unfortunately it is too soon to say! Electorally the party has performed well whenever it has stood candidates, and has almost always retained its deposit and has sometimes had its expenses publicly funded. Yet the party has been riven by at times acrimonious factional disputes almost since its inception, and these might yet still tear the organisation apart.
Early this year, a number of party members came together to organise the Socialist Democracy Caucus, which aims to broaden party democracy and to reaffirm the left wing policies which the right wishes to dilute — the test of the caucus's strength will come at this years national conference, in June in Sydney. Only then can we tell whether a promising political venture will end up going in the same direction as the Socialist Labour Party in Britain. * *The author is joint editor of the Progressive Labour Party's Victorian newspaper and is a long-time supporter of the Fourth International. 32 International Viewpoint #321 May 2000
(with varying degrees of involvement) spread across the whole territory of Pakistan, with most of them based in the two most populous provinces of Punjab and Sindh. The majority of the delegates were middle-aged male workers or trade-unionists.
On the one hand, this bore witness to the very important roots that the LPP holds in the Pakistani trade-union movement, particularly among railway workers. Many delegates were senior trade-union officers. On the other hand, it pointed to some weakness in the recruitment of youth, although a few young delegates were quite energetic. And above all, to a major weakness in respect to the participation of women. This is hardly a surprise in a country like Pakistan where the downtrodden condition of women common to the whole of the South Asian subcontinent is compounded by the prevalence of Islam in both its traditional and militant fundamentalist forms. The proportion of women among the delegates was quite low, and only one of them took part - only once - in the general political discussions during the four congress days. This brave woman comrade was interrupted repeatedly and and energetic measures.
The present outlook of the party congress is a truthful indication of the nature of the process that led to its creation. The LPP is a very recent organisation indeed five years ago, its first nucleus included less than ten militants! These comrades were involved with the Trotskyist Committee for a Workers International (CWI) dominated by the British Militant tendency (now the Socialist Party). Some of them had formerly practised "entryism" (the party-building tactic that used to be the brand mark of the Militant tendency) in Benazir Bhutto's bourgeois populist Pakistan People's Party.
They came out of this experience opting for a broad regroupment of radical working-class militants, at the very time when the Militant current in Britain was splitting around the issue of the alternative to entryism in this post-Stalinist era of world history. The small nucleus of LPP founders, led by comrade Farooq Tariq, managed very successfully to regroup a wide array of revolutionary militants, many of them coming from pro-Moscow or pro-Beijing traditions. Those comrades had been disillusioned by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites, and the
ing masses led by the working-class, liber- common to the two currents — a statepolitical evolution of China, but remained committed nevertheless to radical class-struggle politics. Such seasoned cadres were able to attract a number of newer militants among the very large layers that are radicalized every day by the appalling conditions under which the overwhelming majority of the Pakistani population live. The bulk of this social resentment is usually channelled and turned in a reactionary direction by the very many fundamentalist groups active in Pakistan. This is all the more true in that the radical left has been particularly weak and inefficient in this country for some decades.
### Vacuum on left
The challenge for the LPP is to successfully fill this vacuum on the left. The heterogeneous character of the LPP membership, stemming from the very nature of its formation as a regroupment, was reflected in the debates during the congress. The party leadership did nothing to hide any differences or prevent any discussion from taking place: in that respect, the LPP congress was a lively proof of the deeply democratic character of the party, including the absence of any sort of leader cult in its ranks. The significant number of seasoned cadres among the delegates all behaved as equals, committed to building a "common home" for Pakistani socialist fighters. Thus two debates on the second day of the congress were particularly heated: the debate on revolutionary strategy (the theory of permanent revolution) and the debate on the national question in Pakistan. On the first issue, there are still some tensions in the party between a few militants originating from the Trotskyist CWI and others coming from pro-Moscow or pro-Beijing origins and labelled by the first as "Stalinists". The use of such a label is all the more regrettable in that it should be obvious that no real "Stalinist" would ever adhere to a party like the LPP.
Unquestionably, the political character of the party, as reflected in its weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd ("Workers Struggle"), is very clearly revolutionary Marxist. The LPP holds the view that there can be no thorough implementation of the national and democratic tasks in Pakistan, or for that matter any dependent country, under a bourgeois leadership, however progressive it might be. The only road to such an implementation is a revolution of the toilating the country from the dictatorship of world capitalism and its national relays. As Farooq Tariq explained in his intervention on this topic, the key issue is that the LPP unanimously adheres to this strategic conception: whether one calls it "permanent revolution" or not is quite a secondary issue of a historical character. Only sectarians can put a dispute on labels, or on history (the pre-1917 Lenin versus Trotsky type of debate) above the real thing: what strategic view does the party hold for the struggle in Pakistan? The answer to this crucial question was very clearly given on the above line, without being challenged by any comrade.
The discussion on the national question in Pakistan was also heated, in particular on the status of the Muhajir community in Sindh. The fact is that the national question in general is one of the most complex and thorny questions in Marxist theory and politics. The British Militant tendency had a particularly bad record on this issue, whereas the Stalinist tradition on the same issue is certainly no better. There was thus an attempt to deal with this question during the congress with ossified categories and rigid schemas (like the famously inadequate 1913 definition by Stalin) which certainly are no help for a country with such a complex national and ethnic fabric as Pakistan. It is to be hoped that the party will be able to overcome any potential divisions on such an issue which might easily become explosive. The only possible way in which this can be done is to stick to the same flexible and deeply democratic approach that Lenin developed on the national question in the Russian empire, where this issue was still more complex than in Pakistan.
### Consensus
Aside from these contentious issues, the debates were relatively serene and built on consensus, a consensus reflected in the main programmatic document submitted to the congress. The discussion on Islamic fundamentalism on the first day showed the deep hatred that progressive Pakistani militants understandably hold for a current which plays an utterly reactionary role in local politics. There was however some exaggeration in the assimilation of Islamic fundamentalism to Fascism, which was corrected during the discussion into the statement that there are some features
Pakistan * ment which leaves open the assessment of the width of differences between them in each concrete case. Ultimately, tactics with regard to Islamic fundamentalist groups should be built on the concrete analysis of every concrete situation, without any illusions as to the socially reactionary character of this tradition as a whole.
organisational discussion on the fourth and last day of the congress was also consensual: the party is considering setting up a two-tier organisation. This is a sound idea in a country with such a high level of illiteracy, if one is to preserve a democratic functioning of the network of party cadres (the leading tier). The party journal is presently the only left-wing weekly in Pakistan, and is frequently used and referred to in the national press and in the universities. Its circulation of up to 3,000 still needs to be improved (a motion was adopted banning commercial advertisement from the weekly, in light of the incongruous publishing of a "sexist" ad for a "beauty" product.) The congress was also attended by several militants from other organisations and countries. A particularly warm reception was given to the representatives of the Afghan Labour Revolutionary Organisation.
The third congress day was devoted to a discussion on the issue of international revolutionary currents: the LPP is firmly dedicated to the principle of a revolutionary international organisation, and it is with that in mind that the party leadership had invited the representatives of international currents to present their views. The floor was given on this issue to the Fourth International; to two tendencies originating from a breakaway faction from the FI in 1979, usually referred to as "Morenist": the International Workers League (LIT) and the International Workers Union (UIT, a split from the LIT); to the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) of Australia, which disaffiliated from the FI in 1985; and to German militants who had recently broken away from the CWI. Speaking in the name of the FI, this reporter assured the LPP comrades that the Fourth International, which shares the same open conception of party building upon which the LPP has been founded, will remain committed to an active solidarity with the Pakistani comrades - whatever option they eventually take with regard to their international affiliation when the party is in a position to decide on this matter. * International Viewpoint #321 May 2000 33
The MILF leadership has publicly denied any relationship with the group.
The Abu Sayaff's aim is the establishment of an Islamic State in Mindanao and the
Army launch all-out elimination if necessary of all Christians and their vestiges in Mindanao.
This group started as a motley gang of individuals sharing extremist
Islamic war in Mindanao ideals in early 1993. They gained notoriety through a terror campaign of kidnappings, assassinations and bombings targeting primarily Christian religious missionaries and