geoisie and the Pakistan Army, the result of the December 7th General Election is a much bigger shock than the aftermath of the cyclone which left nearly a million dead Bengali bodies in its wake. It was widely expected that Sheikh Mujibar Rehman and his Awami League would win an overwhelming majority in East In the circumstances the Awami League has won virtually every seat in the Fast which gives It an overall majority in the new Constituent Assembly. However, what must have come as an even graver surprise to the ruling class is the election results in West Pakistan, where Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's P.P.P. (People's Party of Pakistan) won an overwhelming majority and has virtually destroyed the Muslim League (the party which established Pakistan) as a political force in West Pakistan. The General Election result therefore represents a crushing defeat for the reactionaries in West Pakistan and a tremendous victory for Bengali nationalism in East Pakistan. But while there is no doubt in any one's mind that that the masses overwhelmingly rejected the reactionaries, at the same time no socialist can afford to have any illusions regarding either the Awami League or the PPP. They are both thoroughly bourgeois parties and will be unable to implement even the most modest reform as promised in their pre-clection rhetoric.
Mujibur Rehman-The Paper-Tiger of The tise of the Awami League is undoubtediy due to the inability of the left to understand the importance of the national question in Bengal, By the time the leftists had begun to come to grips with the fact that East Pakistan was a neo colony of the Western part of the country, they were a bit too late. Mujib had already spent some time in prison because of his agitation on this precise question. The 6oint charter of demands on which he has seen campaigning represents the programme o the Bengal bourgeoisie and as such visualises the Central Government dealing only with Defence and Foreign Affairs. It demands "two separate but freely convertible currencies for the two parts of the country, the right of the provinces to taxation and revenue collection, the separate accountine of foreign exchange earnings for the two different parts of the country and the setting up of a militia or paramilitary force for East Pakistan, What Mujibur Rehman is demanding on behalf of the spirant bourgeoisic of East Bengal is an equal shure of the capitalist cake.
Will the Pakistan Army and the capitalist barons of West Pakistan allow these demands to go through? The answer is quite clearly no, What cities of West Pakistan and in doing so smashed will probably happen is that in the short-term Mujibur Rehman will be allowed to increase East Pakistan's percentage of import and export licences and will be allocated a larger share of foreign capital investment. These are the "concessions" which the Army will be prepared to maice in the coming few months. If Rehman accepts them, he will be allowed to stay in power. If not, it will be back to husiness as.
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The Red Mole 1-15 Jan. 1971 Page 10 is no doubt that in the event of another multary coup there will be no holding back the immense grievances of Bengal and the desire for an independent Bengal will increase a hundred-fold. What follows will depend on whether Bengali revolutionaries succeed in building a revolutionary organisation to pose the question of state power. If the political leadership remains in the hands of the Awami League, the result will be yet another betrayal.
The Awami League's leader is guided first by the global interests of American imperialisn and secondly by the urge to replace West Pakistani capitalists by Bengali capitalists. And a change in oppressors is not exactly what East Pakistan needs at this particuist moment.
While the Awami League'S victory represents a slap on the face of the ruling class by the Bengali masses, the latter will discover that a) one slap alone is not sufficient and b) they will have to kick the Awami League as well. The new period which is unfolding in Pakistan today could be the most vital period in its history and in this history the role of Bengal is pivotal. An independent socialist Bengal recognised by China could he the spark which could set alight the whole Indian sub-continent and pave the way to a period of protracted and uneven struggles throughout South Asia. This proces the United States will try and prevent from the very beginning. They will try and ensure a period ofelected government in Pakistan to try and stem the tide. They will even try und press the Pakistan Army to make concessions to the Benpali bourgeoisie, but they will not succeed.
They will not be able to interrupt the march of history.
Zulfigar Ali Bhutto-Whose Grave Will He Really Dig?
The total lack of a viable leftist opposition to the Ayub regime and the inality of both the pro-Peking and the pro-Moscow factions of the Vational Awami Party to oppose the dictatorship, was one of the main reasons for the meteoric rise of Zulfigar Ali Bhutto as an oppo sitionist. For seven years be had served Ayub faithfully and the fact that he could emerge as the strongest oppositionist in West Pakistan despite being tainted with his service to Ayun shows clearly the bankruptcy of the traditionsi left parties.
The victory of Bhutto's People's Party is in reality u sign of the fact that the masses in West Pakistan are determined not to go on living in the same old way as before. In his rhetoric Bhutto offered them a new deal. He promised an end to oppression, poverty and misery. He even talked in vague terms of land reform, of social equality, elc. etc. His left face, his "left" voice swept him to power in the into smithereens the right-wing and semi-lascist parties which with their talk of Islam and their acts of terrorism had petrified a section of the left into virtual impotence.
But West Pakistan is not only changing in the cities. In the countryside too there in a fecling of hany landards. Tehed her startly is thy Bhutto bandwagon and have now been elected SPECIALLY RECOMMENDED Lenin's Collected Works, Vol. 45, Contains Lenin's letters to Trotsky (1922) (18/1 Key Problems of the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism: Pierre Frank, George Novack, Ernest Mandel [G/6] Behind China's "Great Cultural Revolution"
Peng Shu-tse & others [G/6] Leon Trotsky: On the Trade Unions, (8/6) Krupskaya's Memories of Lenin (81-1 Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, 3 pols. 130/-] Netti: Rosa Luxembourg [26/BOOKS BY JAMES CONNOLLY The Workers Republic 1211-1 Socialism and Nationalism 121-1 Labour and Enster Week 1211-1 Labour in Ireland [211-] The New Evangel 1251 Labour, Nationality and Religion 12/61 The Re-Conquest of Ireland 17/01 Revolutionary Warfare 116] General YAHYA KHAN: The election result represents a big defeat for him and the Army. The question is how long will he let the politicians stay in power.
to the Constituent Assembly, The leftists inside Bhutto's party are now coming forward and beginning to make serious allegations of treachery and betrayal in semi-public. Evidently a large number of socialists belonging to the P.P.P. were encouraged by Bhutto to court arrest by openly attacking the military dietatorship of Yahva Khan. He assured them that he would get them out before the General Election. Soon after they were arrested. Bhutto made pacts with leading landlords and distributed the seats accordingly. It is acts like this which cause many militants to remark that Bhutto is a gravedigger of socialism rather than feudalism. Only recently Bhutto proudly boasted to a Times correspondent that his victory had "saved Pakistan from Communism.
The change in the countryside is reflected by the fact that in North West Pakistan, near the city of Mardan in Northem Hasht Nagar, the peasants have been engaged in armed conflict with the landlords. The peasants have resisted all attempts to evict them and have had to face Sten guns and light machine-guns of the landlords. In some battles they have routed the police on several occasions and have suffered Some casualties themselves. Over a hundred peasants have been arrested. What is interesting is that one of the landlords, Niser Ahmed Khan, is a leading light of Mr. Bhutto's P.P.P. Small wonder then that the P.P.P. newspaper Musseawar has ignored the Hasht Nagar battles completely us has a bull of both the government and the opposition press. Only Sober, the BOOKS ON IRELAND Liam de Puor: Divided Ulster (5/-) Andrew Boyd: Holy War in Belfast [8/6] Fifty Years of Liberty Holl [316] The Years of the Great Test 1104 J.W. Boyle: Leaders and Workers [5/-] Cilton Younger: Ireland's Civil War 110-)
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Two, Three, Many Hasht Nagars Episodes such as Hasht Nagar are Likely to multiply in the near future as the more advunced" landiords are today attempting to "modernise" their part of the countryside by evioling the peasant proprictors and replacing them with tractors and agricultural labourers. The next period is therefore going to see an intensification of strugeles in the countryside against the landlords. No matter what political party the latter aligned themselves with, their end is not far off.
While Bhutto and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman celebrate their pyrrhic victories they prefer to forget that there are many working-class mill tants in prison in both East and West Pakistan. Raja Anwar in West Pakistan and Mahbubullah in Bast Pakistan, who have only recently been released (i.e. after the election), understand better than most the real meaning of the General Election. The trade union leaders who are in prison for leading strikes will no doubt be better prepared to struggle against the capitalist class with added fervour once they are released. We will sce whether or not the new government releases the political prisoners, guirantees trade union freedoms. allows the establishment of a Communist Party, removes the curbs on the Press and takes out of the statute book all the repressive rogulations which have existed since the days of British imperialism and which have been improved by the Pakistan Army.
The now constituent assembly has been given 120 days to frume a new constitution. But it has to be upproved by General Yahya Khan before it is allowed to operate and if it is against "the interests or the ideology of Paki stan" then, of course, the General can refuse to approve the new Constitution, dissolve the Assembly and call a new General Election. With Mujibur Rehman having won a complete majority of the seats, it is clear that he will try to reach some sort of an "understanding" with Yahya Khan and maybe even with Bhutto. This "understanding" whatever it is will sound the death-knel of any hopes the Bengali masses may have placed in their leader The General Election has shown quite unambiguously that the objective conditions in both parts of Pakistan are rotten ripe for socialism. The task of creating the necessary subjective factor-a revolutionary party of the urban and rural proletariat —confronts the socialist left as a stark necessity. Unless the revolutionary left wakes up to this task it will find that well-organised faseist porties, like the Jamaat-i-Islami, will move in with a distorted popillist rhetoric and it is possible that in the absence of a left alfernative they could pose themselves as a credible force. If the United States decide to pressurise the Army to allow a period of bourgeois democratic government (in order to try and delay a mobilisation of the masses) then ciearly this period should be utilised to try and create the necessary subjective conditions—a revolutionary force with its roots in the uhan and rural proletariat.
Tariq Ali
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THE MAN WHO WILL NEVER BUY A RED BOOK