“Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and hinder its radical elimination. It is understandable, therefore, that we do not intend to make our publication a mere storehouse of various views. On the contrary, we shall conduct it in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency.”
– V. I. Lenin, “Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra,” Collected Works, Vol. 4, p. 354.
In Pakistan, the left often speaks the language of socialism while abandoning its method and theory. This weakness is most visible in how the left engages with actually existing struggles.
The treatment of Pakistan’s “democracy” illustrates this problem sharply. Much of the left defends democracy in the abstract, while ignoring the actual class composition of parliament (dominated by landlords, industrialists, and tribal chieftains).
In doing so, it typically invokes the Marxist claim that bourgeois democracy constitutes a historical stage preceding socialism. For Lenin, however, this stage has progressive content only where the bourgeoisie fulfills its historical task of breaking feudal power, above all through decisive land reform.
In Pakistan, parliamentary democracy has not arisen through the destruction of feudal power but through its political consolidation. Under these conditions, parliament does not act as a solvent of feudal relations, but as their legal and ideological reinforcement. Rather than clearing the ground for socialist struggle, this form of democracy stabilizes pre-capitalist relations by presenting them as the legitimate expression of popular will.
Some leftists go so far as to deny the persistence of feudalism altogether. But we must call a spade a spade. Those who distort reality to justify the stabilization of pre-capitalist structures under the guise of liberal democracy are not Marxists. They are opportunists who prioritize compromise over the fundamental task of dismantling feudal power, ultimately reinforcing it rather than challenging it.
Religious extremism offers another telling example. The left often condemns it as an ideological issue, or one that would disappear if elements of the ruling class—primarily the military, in their view—were removed.
This perspective ignores the material conditions that sustain extremism, such as rural dispossession, urban precarity, and imperialist violence. It also overlooks the role of civilian leaders like Benazir Bhutto, who, despite her opposition to the military and avowed secularism, entered into a coalition with far-right “Islamists” for political gain.
Similarly, the national question has long been approached in a contradictory and incomplete way. The left has become a cheer squad, blindly applauding every self-styled national liberation struggle without assessing its class character, its relation to imperialism, or its place within the revolution as a whole.
We argue that this line is a crude distortion of Lenin’s principle of the right of nations to self-determination, which demands critical judgment rather than unequivocal support in a complex, largely post-colonial world.
NGO influence has further displaced Leninism in our country. Sections of the left now differ little from Western-funded NGOs, adopting their language, their priorities, and their limits. Class struggle is pushed aside in favor of rights-based rhetoric and single-issue politics that fragment collective resistance.
In defense of NGO engagement by the left, it has been argued that there is “no real difference” between a Western-funded NGO and a capitalist state reliant on institutions such as the IMF or on foreign aid.
From this, some conclude that Western-funded “human rights” activists are no more politically problematic than the state itself. This comparison overlooks that socialists are already in opposition to the state yet are being asked to collaborate with NGOs.
In the contemporary political landscape, NGOs serve the imperialist order by neutering dissent, fracturing collective struggle into issue-based campaigns, and diverting energy from challenging capitalism and imperialism toward liberal reform and “democracy.”
Lenin warned that confusing the working class is one of the gravest errors a revolutionary can commit. We must admit that we have often failed in this responsibility.
We have too often followed spontaneous movements uncritically, reproducing their illusions instead of clarifying them. Against these tendencies, Fatah hopes to restore ideological discipline and organizational independence grounded in a Marxist-Leninist framework.
We hold the conviction that Marxism-Leninism can succeed only through struggle against the ruling class—and against the errors of the left itself, for chauvinism, revisionism, and ultra- “leftism” sap the movement’s strength before it can advance.
Our goal is not to offer definitive answers or claim absolute authority, but to engage rigorously in the ongoing work of clarification—examining and refining tactics, interrogating strategy, and deepening our understanding of revolutionary purpose—so that our interventions remain principled, coherent, and directed toward genuine proletarian transformation.
Compatriots,
We place the columns of this publication at your disposal and commit ourselves to cultivating a revolutionary vanguard for the people of Pakistan.