Home : Asia : India and Pakistan
By Staff Reporter of The Dawn
March 2000
On Monday the 20th March, the editor of "In Defence of Marxism"Alan Woods spoke at a public meeting in Karachi organised by thePakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. The subject was the crisis ofworld capitalism. In spite of the problems caused by the Eid holidays(many workers were out of town) 150 people attended the meeting,mostly leading trade union activists. These included the leaders ofthe Pakistan Steel Mill (65,000 workers) the Karachi MunicipalCorporation, the Karachi Port Workers, the Karachi Electrical SupplyCorporation, the Telecommunication workers, leaders of the Postalworkers in Karachi, the PIA workers, leaders of the unions of severalmultinationals based in Karachi and the president of the PakistanPeople's Party workers' wing known as the People's Labour Bureau. Themood of the meeting was enthusiastic from start to finish. This isthe report which appeared in one of the main English language dailiesof Pakistan The Dawn:
Workers condemn policy of downsizing
By our staff Reporter
Karachi, March 20th: Speakers at a seminar here on Monday urgedworkers to struggle against the capitalist system and work hard toget the socialist system implemented in the country.
Speaking at the seminar on "Future of Workers in present politicalcrisis and the international chaos," organised by the Pakistan TradeUnion Defence Campaign, they said the future of capitalism, based onthe exploitation of workers, was bleak.
"Earlier countries were conquered and ruled by force, but nowthough independent, their economies are being controlled byinternational lending agencies, the agents of capitalism," they said.
They said the US economy had been experiencing a boom for the pasteight years, still workers there staged a demonstration during ameeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle recently. Thisproved workers were not satisfied even in the US, they added. Theysaid the burst of this economic bubble would have a horrible effecton the economies of all the countries as these were interdependent.
They said a recent UN report said more than a billion people wereunemployed even during this boom. They said the capitalists hadenough money, but more than 7 million children died every year due todiarrhoea, owing to lack of clean drinking water.
The speakers said foreign-funding controlled economies weredelicate and they could be crippled anytime by the capitalists as hadbeen seen in the recent past in the East Asian countries like SouthKorea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand etc.
They said in the capitalists system new technologies did not meanless work-hours, higher wages for workers. But these meant, theydeplored long working hours, mass-scale sacking, increased pressureon workers and according to the capitalists, high profits. "Profitsare in fact unpaid wages of the workers," they said.
"Conditions in the country are ripe again and a similar workersmovement that in 1967-78 brought about change in the country, couldagain be witnessed soon," the speakers said.
Criticising the policies of downsizing, rightsizing, privatisationof industries and mass-scale retrenchments, they demanded that morejobs be created to counter the growing menace of unemployment.
London-based journalist Alan Woods, Editor of Socialist Appeal andauthor of many books including "Reason in Revolt," "History ofPhilosophy," "History of Bolshevism," etc. was the main speaker.Shaikh Mohyuddin, Dr. Zia, Lal Khan and others also spoke. Aquestion-answer session followed the speeches.
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