‘Socialism last hope against capitalist exploitation, evil of globalisation’

Socialism is the last hope for those suffering under the yoke of capitalist exploitation and the evil of globalisation. Such was the tenor of the speeches made at the ‘Centennial Year of Russian Revolution: 1917-2017’ seminar held on Tuesday.

Organised jointly by the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (Szabist) and the Tareekh Foundation Trust at the Szabist campus, the meeting termed Red October a harbinger of egalitarianism and decolonisation of the subject nations of the Third World.

Szabist Social Sciences Dean Dr Riaz Shaikh said the Bolshevik Coup had proved that it was the state that was the most capable of providing for the masses. He said that since 1999, a few years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world had been witnessing the rise of pernicious phenomena such as extremism and bigotry, adding that it was due to the vacuum created after the receding of a doctrine as noble as socialism.

Dr Eric Rahim’s paper was read out to the seminar because he could not turn up. The former professor of economics at the University of Glasgow who held many UN assignments said the most praiseworthy and important aspect of the revolution was that it ushered in a system whereby the state looked after every citizen from cradle to grave, providing all the essentials and needs of life. The Soviet state achieved uniformity of income, and its decline came about due to the phenomenal technological advances made by the capitalist West.

Addressing the meeting via video link, Dr Prabhat Patnaik of the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi said the revolution was responsible for rescuing the world from fascism. Besides, it was instrumental in the process of decolonisation and helping the subjugated nations free themselves of the bonds of slavery, enabling the Third World countries gain control over their natural resources and their distribution, he added. “Cuba could never have survived without the Soviet Union. The revolution ushered in a new economic order that hinged around the welfare state and brought a new awakening to the workers of the Third World.”

He said neo-liberalism had subjected Third World workers to severe distress, adding that today a heavy responsibility rested on the shoulders of the Left, as it had to fight for the democratic rights of the people, especially under the challenging global conditions: the right to education, health care, employment and others. “Unfortunately, the Left has not realised that delinking from globalisation is imperative to the welfare of the masses.”

Social activist Muqtada Mansoor traced the history of Sindh’s struggle from the Bombay presidency all the way up to 1935, when Sindh was finally separated from Bombay with the passage of the Government of India Act. He then talked about the formation of the Hari committees comprising peasants, pointing out that the inspiration came from the Bolshevik revolution. Jamshed Bukhari, he said, tried to consolidate the communist party.

Mentioning the case of the communist universities, Huma Ghaffar of the Aga Khan School of Nursing said the alumni of those institutions spread the socialist message when they got back to their home countries. She said the communist universities inculcated in their pupils a firm commitment to anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism, which was responsible for so many Third World countries throwing off the yoke of subjugation. Leon Trotsky hailed the communist universities as the cradle of egalitarianism, she added.

Naazir Mahmood, who witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, said: “True, the USSR had made phenomenal progress in fields like literacy and meeting the basic needs of the masses. They had achieved 100 per cent literacy in a matter of 15 years, but there arose the phenomenon of ‘centralised suppression’. The rural areas began to experience a shortage of essential items.”

He said Gorbachev’s Glasnost allowed officials to criticise the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adding that the USSR collapsed because Gorbachev went ahead full throttle with his changes without drafting an alternative system for the future. “Besides, the USSR was a conglomeration of widely differing cultures which hastened separation of constituent units.”

Historian Dr Mubarak Ali, whose paper was read out by Dr Imran Azim of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, said Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi sought coincidence of the socialist principle with religion. “Exhorting the workers and the peasants, Sindhi said: ‘The future is yours.’ Sindhi thought of communism as a social system akin to the teachings of religion.”

National Party Punjab President Ayub Malik recounted how in its economic ties with the Third World, the USSR had helped them in development projects on the easiest of terms, unlike the capitalist West which squeezed the last drop of blood from the recipient countries in the name of aid. By 1964, he said, the USSR had provided aid to the Third World to the tune of $2 million, a huge amount in those days.

Malik said that between 1965 and 1975, the trade of the USSR was mostly with Third World countries, adding that in 1965, Soviet trade with the Third world was 11.8 per cent of its budget, which increased to 31.5 per cent in 1970. “The main beneficiaries were India, Syria and Iran. Besides, the Soviet Union imported items from the recipient countries which were far less in terms of price than what it gave them.”

Szabist Chancellor Dr Azra Fazal stressed on having a new narrative that focused on the welfare of the masses and egalitarianism, while Dr Suchetana Chattopadhyay of the Jadavpur University in India said in her paper, which was also read out, that the Bolsheviks opposed colonialism in Asia and it was their efforts that helped overthrow the yoke of colonialism in those countries.