Liberal democracy not our piece of cake

Countries like Pakistan cannot afford to follow the Western political model that rests on a satisfied middle class

The big question that the countries like Pakistan face is why desirable social changes are not taking place in the country. The easy solution is to blame the state and its institutions but a more reasonable thing to do is to blame the lack of ideas. Can we blame the world order of liberal internationalism and one of its vital component democracies for failing to bring about the social change that we deserve? The failure of leftist idea in the West is no more a myth but has the leftist idea failed in countries like Pakistan too? What has caused the failure of leftist idea and why have religion and nationalism become more important set of ideas formulating ideologies than the core leftist idea of class struggle?

Karl Marx, the great leftist revolutionist and the champion of class struggle, if alive today would clearly see that his message of class struggle has got lost, and movements of class struggle have been replaced by nationalist, populace and protectionist movements. Like many other scholars, Marx theory of class struggle had one big wrong assumption — that the bourgeois, the capital owning middle class would remain a small minority. That didn’t happen and as the middle class expanded in the European continent class distinction became a less discussed subject in the vast majority of advanced societies in Europe.

The enlarged middle class in the West sought variety of services from the state and as the industrial and economic revolutions created better economic prospects for the state, the ability of the state to provide social security to its citizens increased manifold. Today the Western countries and many East Asian and some Asian countries have followed that model and created dynamic democratic social welfare states. But as Francis Fukuyama writes this has created a problem for the West, the social democratic model of the West has exhausted and is in search of something new — a new idea to promise something better. The problem with the Third World countries like Pakistan is that it is forced to be part of a world order and copy and run a political system for which it is not properly structured. Historically, the difference of talent and character created unequal groups, societies and nation states but in a vastly advanced technological world this inequality has magnified many times. In countries like Pakistan technology — instead of helping to better the life of masses — is being utilised to highlight the extremes of poor governance, lack of education, poverty and other social miseries that divide us more and create the realisation and frustration that how unequal we are to the rest of the world.

While the social democratic model for the West has exhausted, ours is still to begin. How can liberal internationalism, which is the product of a society where social democracy has peaked, can be emulated in a part of the world where it has yet to take a descent start? It can only be a system designed by the West to control the rest of the world by setting up a set of arrangements, both regional and international, to create global political stability but it may not be a system which a country like Pakistan may be ripe to follow. If Marxism, like many say, laid the groundwork for progress and evolution and if this great German philosopher could create the sense in the working class of the West to rise up and question all the injustices enforced upon them through their wages, lifestyle and oppression and make Marxism a populist leftist movement then why no such leftist movement has taken birth in a country like Pakistan? Is it because practising liberal internationalism doesn’t allow left the political space to create such movements?

Class struggle and the communist utopia in the West ended because the capitalist world created a huge middle-class society. Progress of democracy and the goals it achieved was much easier in those societies and therefore given absence of middle class if the ‘class-gap’ between the elites and the poor is as high as in countries like Pakistan, how can liberal internationalism or democracy with its declared goals of creating liberty and equality function and give desired results? The rich continue to hold power, grab it with whatever methods and exploit the struggling poor class. Resultantly instead of democracy creating middle class — the core around which any society evolves — democracy actually creates an uncompromising and exploiting higher class and a poor and poor middle class that does not get to have the social structures which can lead their lives to better ends.

Countries like Pakistan cannot afford to follow the Western political model that rests on satisfied middle class. Middle class is such an important social base and kleptocracies like Pakistan hardly do anything to expand that — in fact, they eat it and further reduce it in size. In the erosion of the middle class lies the answer to the critical question: why is liberal democracy failing in the countries like Pakistan? Liberal democracy in the West only succeeded because it created the socioeconomic structures in society. What keeps leaders in countries like Pakistan in power is their continued ability to deprive the society with these socioeconomic structures.

Simply put, if people continue to have a government that they don’t want or there is an unpopular government which wants to impose itself on the people by not calling for elections or even when elections are called and held but are rigged then how can you say that you have social and political structure that supports liberal democracy? This is only one aspect of elections, there are others related to education, religion, families, employment, culture etc. Liberal democracy in Pakistan is the art of the possible (the possibility of utilising unfair means to stay in power) and not the art of willed (leaders bowing in front of the peoples will and mandate).

Published in The Express Tribune, January 22^nd, 2023.

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