The adjacent article is the transcript of the speech Farooq Tariq, General Secretary of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) made to a London audience on January 25.
The meeting was organised by the International Socialist Group, after it became clear that an initial suggestion that the Socialist Alliance host the event was controversial.
The ISG had been approached by our sister organisation in France, who was bringing Farooq to Europe to speak at the launch of their presidential election campaign. We felt that given the controversy within the Socialist Alliance, the best basis for a successful event was to organise the meeting ourselves.
We were already in contact with the LPP, a serious Marxist organisation in Pakistan. Our positive opinion of the LPP was fully confirmed by Farooq’s speech.
From the response on the night, that opinion was shared by the majority of those at the meeting including many who had disagreements with the LPP. Representatives of virtually every left group in Britain, and from a number of left groups from the sub-continent were present and contributed to the discussion.
Unfortunately Stuart King from Workers Power chose to denounce both speaker and audience in way that lowered the tone of the discussion and served only to show the British left in a poor light.
The decision of the ISG to host the meeting does not however mean that we agree with everything the LPP says. In particular, we do not agree with the press statement issued by the LPP in response to Musharaf’s speech of January 14, which we had not seen at the time of the meeting.
We do not agree with calling for state bans on fundamentalists. Our opposition to this is not because we fail to recognise the serious danger that fundamentalism represents to the working class movement – we also oppose the left calling for state bans on fascist organisations or demonstrations.
This is because we think that such bans will be used also against the left. We think far right organisations can only be defeated by the independent mobilisation of trade unions, black communities etc.
However we also recognise that this position is not held by the whole of the left. The Anti-Nazi League and the main organisation involved in it, the Socialist Workers Party, have called for various mobilisations of the BNP and the NF to be banned by the state – most recently this summer.
The tone of Stuart’s contribution at the meeting implied he considered the LPP an enemy and therefore would not work with them. But he works with the SWP in the Socialist Alliance, in the anti-war movement etc. So what is so different about the LPP?
We also argue that Islamic fundamentalism cannot simply be equated with fascism. Indeed What Farooq himself said was slightly more precise, he said "these fundamentalists represent a new type of fascism".
It is certainly true that the fundamentalist movement shares many of the characteristics of fascism as outlined by Trotsky – its social base, the nature of its political ideology and its totalitarianism and fierce anti-communism
But there are differences. The economic programme of fundamentalism is actually more reactionary than fascism – fascism in power has actually led to a limited development of the productive forces, which could never be the case under an Islamic dictatorship which is more likely to lead to their regression or at best stagnation.
However, on the other hand in some situations the struggle of fundamentalists for power is mainly against big private capital, and where the workers’ movement may be relatively weak, their populist nature comes to the fore. Revolutionaries could therefore be faced with situations where we would find ourselves on the same side of the barricades – something that would be unthinkable in terms of fascists.
Saying this, however does not by any means answer the questions of how we should respond at a tactical level – particularly in a situation like that in Pakistan where the growth of fundamentalism came as a result of the encouragement of a section of the Pakistani state, the Intelligence Service, which necessarily colours the response of the left.
In particular, there is a difference between finding yourself on the same side as fundamentalist organisations and consciously blocking with them, as Stuart advocates.
This is neither justifiable politically – nor advisable from the point of view of defending the class independence of the working class – and the physical survival of the left as the case of Iran and other examples quoted by Farooq so dramatically show.