Unilever in Pakistan is continuously taking anti-worker measures and ignoring the law in order to increase its exploitation of the workers increase its rate of profit as much as possible. Court orders and decisions are being crushed under the boots while national and international labour laws are being violated openly. The workers who produced the net profit of 46.6% this year for the multinational are now being squeezed more and more.

For the last 65 years, the attempt of Pakistan’s ruling class to impose numerous anniversary celebrations aimed at instilling nationhood has failed to resonate with society below. The media-hyped cricket hysteria, the patriotism orchestrated by the state and the distorted history in the school syllabus, whose objective is to foment national pride amongst the deprived and destitute masses has abysmally failed. Their suffering and agony does not leave much room for them to celebrate.

Along with the other miseries of the system and society, the curse of the oppression of women not only continues unabated but has worsened with the aggravation of the socio-economic crisis. It is rather ironic that around International Women’s Day, the incidents of violence against women, honour killings and other brutalities like acid-throwing and rape have intensified.

In Pakistan today millions of people feel the pain of hunger and suffer from diseases for which they receive no treatment. Under capitalism medicine, like everything else, is used for exploitation, not for treatment. In a Socialist Pakistan no man or woman will die of preventable disease. No child will go to bed hungry. There will be medicine for everybody.

“The relationship between the ruling classes and the state is never a straightforward one. It depends on the financial potency of the elite and their capacity to advance the means of production and develop society.”

The Taliban are not a homogenous whole and the Islamic parties have no fundamental ideological differences with imperialism. The conflicts erupt when competing groups of these zealots are sponsored by imperialism.

Yet another excruciating wound inflicted. Insult heaped upon the injuries of the brutalised masses. It is the further exacerbation of the misery of the impoverished souls of this tragic land. The people already suffering from the ethos of this bestial capitalism in terminal decay are groaning with the pain of these policies of ‘reforms’.

“Ever since the national liberation movement in Balochistan abandoned socialism from its programme, it became an easy prey for the imperialist vultures. They can now play with the sentiments of national exploitation and oppression of the people only to utilise them for their own imperialist designs.”

It is becoming more and more evident that the bosses of the world cannot control the vicious downward spiral that is unravelling. The bourgeoisie is worried!

The innumerable Muslim Leagues that traverse the spectrum of Pakistan’s dominating political establishment in a number of ways reflect the disarray and the pathetic conditions of the ruling classes and society they try to scathe and exploit. Like Pakistan, their putrescence lies in their origins.

The All Pakistan Progressive Youth Alliance, Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign (PTUDC) and BNT (Unemployed Youth Movement) organized countrywide protests against the target killing of political activists and state terrorism in Balochistan.

The workers of federal hospital are protesting against the new service structure (CHPS) which is a form of privatization. The hospitals include Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences PIMS, Poly Clinic Hospital and National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine.

It is not ruled out that if the democratic facade of imperialism creates a crisis that threatens to unravel the economic system, the imperialist bosses would not hesitate to revert back to military dictatorship.

One of the most extraordinary features of human psychology is adaptation. The tolerance of the masses is being tested to the extreme. Every passing day the grim social scenario becomes even gloomier. The masses are seething with anger and revolt against the sharply rising prices, unemployment, poverty, energy shortages and misery. Apart from the rhetoric from right-wing populism, they are presented with no real choice to put an end to this agonising situation. The vacillating petit bourgeoisie in its characteristic haste and impatience goes for this populism but will revert back in the same manner. The mass movement is yet to explode. And the working classes will

On 17^th January, the Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign organized a historic Labour convention and a protest rally in Islamabad. More than 300 trade union activists, students, political workers, women and youth from Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Attock, Taxila-Wah, Abbottabad and surrounding areas participated in the convention.