Between 9 and 12 August, the Revolutionary Communist Party in Pakistan organised their first country-wide three-day ‘Communist School’ in Rawalakot, ‘Azad’ (‘free’) Kashmir, with 350 students, workers, farmers and youth attending.

The Inqalabi Communist Party in Pakistan extends complete solidarity to the students’ movement in Bangladesh and support for all their demands. We condemn the brutality and repression by Sheikh Hasina’s government which has killed at least 200 people and injured thousands more. Curfews have been imposed. Orders to shoot at sight have been issued while the army is deployed on the streets of Dhaka.

Whilst hundreds of delegates from 37 countries were participating in the fifth day of the founding congress of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), we received the shocking news that a government crackdown was underway in Pakistan-held Kashmir against the leaders of the movement that had scored victory against the regime in the fight against electricity and flour price hikes. The delegates, outraged by this news, passed the following motion in condemnation of the government and solidarity with the movement and its persecuted leaders in a unanimous vote.

On 13 May, more than 500,000 people gathered in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled, so-called ‘Azad’ (‘Free’) Kashmir, to demand cheaper electricity and wheat flour. The ruling class of ‘Azad’ Kashmir and Pakistan, despite having brutally attacked the protestors previously, have now partially accepted the masses’ demands. This is a huge victory for the masses in this part of Kashmir, where people have been protesting for more than a year for these demands. This victory has sent shockwaves through the halls of power.

Like workers all over the world, the working class of Pakistan also celebrated May Day 2024 in a period of unprecedented crisis of global capitalism. Already weak and backward, capitalism in Pakistan is in a deepening crisis. The ruling class and the state are becoming ever-more vicious and are conducting an economic massacre of the Pakistani working masses at the behest of global imperialist lending institutions like the IMF.

“The darkness will pass, the red dawn is coming!” This fiery chant in Urdu rang out repeatedly from the hundreds of voices of Pakistani communists who assembled in Lahore on 2-3 March to participate in the congress of Lal Salaam. It was a weekend that combined joyous revolutionary optimism with intense fervour and solemn preparation for a new stage in the class war.

With general elections planned on 8 February, the crisis and splits of Pakistan’s ruling class and state are intensifying, while attacks on workers, under the dictates of the IMF, are continuing and unemployment and inflation are rising at an unprecedented level. No political party participating in the coming general elections has solutions to any of the problems in this country, and all of the political parties represent merely different factions of the ruling class. 

On 2-3 December 2023, a nationwide Workers’ Socialist School was organised by the Red Workers’ Front (RWF) in Landhi Industrial Area, Karachi. A large number of workers from both the public and private sector industries, in Karachi and across the country, took part in this historic occasion. 

An Urdu translation of Alan Woods’ Marxist masterpiece, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution, written on the history of the Bolshevik Party that led the Russian Revolution of 1917, was published by Lal Salam Publications, officially launched at a ceremony on 18 November 2023. 

Countrywide protests against extremely costly electricity have erupted in Pakistan during the past few weeks. The protest wave started in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, where students, workers, small traders, intellectuals, political activists and others organised large-scale public protests in various cities. This wave has now swept a nation that was already on the brink of an explosion.

A huge workers’ rally marched from Hospital Chowrangi to Dawood Chowrangi in Landhi, an industrial area of Karachi, under the banner of Red Workers’ Front, to demand higher wages in the face of grinding poverty and sky-high inflation.

From 21-23 July, the Progressive Youth Alliance (youth and student wing of the Pakistan section of the International Marxist Tendency) held a three-day Marxist school at beautiful Banjusa Lake near Rawalakot in Kashmir. The event attracted students, youth, and workers from across the country and provided a valuable opportunity for young revolutionaries to discuss Marxist theory, amid Pakistan's worst economic crisis, and utter political bankruptcy. The school gathered 220 participants in all, who engaged in important discussions on topics such as Pakistan and world politics, philosophy, economic theory and revolutionary strategy.

On 11 and 12 March, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), Lal Salaam, held its 6th Congress at the Aiwan-E-Iqbal Center in Lahore. Despite the multitude of logistical issues that arose from organising a national meeting amidst crumbling infrastructure and rampant, arbitrary corruption, this landmark Congress was a resounding success.

Progressive Youth Alliance, a countrywide organisation of revolutionary students and youth, held its third central youth convention on 8 December 2022 in Multan. More than 700 students, youth, workers and progressive political activists from across the country participated in the Central Youth Convention.

The crisis of the capitalist system in Pakistan is reaching unprecedented levels, reflecting the fact that it is one of the weakest links in the chain of world capitalism. Alongside the political and economic crises, the crisis of the state is unravelling to a degree never seen before, leading the whole society into an abyss of misery and wretchedness.