An Image of the Future

“The country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed one an image of its own future” — these lines, penned by Marx in the preface to Capital Vol. 1, are now nearly a hundred and sixty years old. Depending on one’s vantage point and generosity, they’ve since been proven incorrect to varying degrees.

There was convergence between the advanced and lesser developed countries in Marx’s own backyard of western Europe by the late nineteenth century, and some between the capitalist core and late-late industrialisers in the mid-twentieth century. But for large parts of the world, stagnation and stasis has been the norm these past few decades, even while market-based exchange and the capitalist desire for commodification penetrates all aspects of human life.

I was reminded of these lines, though in a very different context, on a recent trip to Egypt. In a few stark ways, that country shows an image of the future to Pakistan given the latter’s recent political economy dynamics. It isn’t a comparison or juxtaposition that’s made very often — Pakistan is frequently paired for unfavourable comparisons with its much bigger South Asian neighbour, India — but there are plenty of structural and institutional similarities with Egypt that merit a closer look. And the image of the future that comes out is not particularly appealing.

On the economic front, both countries face a perennial economic struggle. Egypt’s per capita income is in the middle-income category and higher than Pakistan’s, but sustainable growth has proven to be elusive across both countries. Visits to the IMF are also fairly frequent for both: Egypt has had 12 arrangements to Pakistan’s 25, but owes a billion dollars more. Conclave style economic structures are found in both countries, with conspicuous consumption of branded retail sustained by the upper classes, who increasingly wall themselves off in large gated suburban developments that look like they’ve been transplanted (in slightly used condition) from Dubai. Little surprise then that both countries are increasingly reliant on remittances, as well as on foreign aid/loans to stave off perpetual current account deficits.

It is that last bit where the comparison really starts to shine. The cast of benefactors for both countries happens to be largely the same. Barring the Chinese who have a bigger footprint here, American and Gulf patronage remains common; it secures their respective geostrategic interests in both regions, and consequently plays a key role propping up a domestic political and economic structure where the military establishment remains fully entrenched.

The justification for this entrenchment frequently makes reference to the Chinese economic miracle. But in doing so, it showcases the limits of its understanding. Chinese authoritarianism, if one must use that label, emerges from a particular combination of the modern state bureaucracy with a mass Marxist-Leninist party. Such arrangements can only emerge in post-revolutionary situations, where a state is built from scratch. The undercurrents of revolutions produce all sorts of visions and aspirations for the future. People sacrifice and are made to sacrifice plenty for such visions. All of society is mobilised in service of these larger goals. The costs are usually very high, but as China and increasingly places like Vietnam show, the rewards are accrued by later generations.

Pakistani authoritarianism is neither revolutionary nor post-revolutionary. In fact, much like Egypt, it is very precisely counter-revolutionary. In both countries, the state elite (civil and military bureaucracies) are overdeveloped legacies of a skin that remains to be shed, i.e., that of a colonial past. In both countries, anti-colonial and populist moments have at various points attempted to forge a new political economy configuration, only to be thwarted by entrenched imperial and domestic interests acting in concert.

Egypt’s national-populist phase was in the middle of the twentieth century under Nasser and the Free Officers, ushering in a period of statist national development and non-alignment during the Cold War. Like many Third World modernisers, this project was top-down; it sought to generate mass consent for rule (i.e., hegemony) through organs of the state. And in doing so it proved to be brittle, as the seventies eventually showed. The next brief opening, provided by the Arab Spring in 2011, proved to be brittle in the other direction: it didn’t have enough organisational heft to survive being outflanked by the Islamists, before eventually collapsing back into authoritarian rule.

Pakistan’s history tells a similar story. A brief sojourn with a populist upsurge was confined to the late 1960s and mid-1970s, with mass mobilisation giving way to a similarly statist project of national development under Bhutto. Much like Egypt, that arrangement too did not survive the inevitable counter revolution from ideological conservatives and the propertied classes. And much like Egypt (to borrow Sara Salem’s phrase), Pakistan too is still living in the afterlife of that aborted project.

None of this is to suggest there aren’t significant differences, especially in their respective political dynamics. Pakistan has a richer history of democratic contestation, thanks in no small part to its ethno-linguistic diversity and the political-economic claims that smaller regions and communities have consistently and bravely made on an (aspiring) unitary state. Consequently, party politics is more robust, authoritarian regimes less permanent and elections more frequent as well. It is these traits that have so far prevented the full Sisi-ification of the Pakistani state.

But the future does not offer any guarantees. Even the usual (hypocritical) lip-service commitment to democratic norms seems to be fading from the Western world. Military might in the face of regional hostility is seen as the primary benchmark of evaluation for all middle powers. With Pakistan joining Trump’s dubious Board of Peace and signing a defence pact with Saudi Arabia, its entanglement with the Middle East region’s political economy grows deeper. And the domestic malignancy of mounting authoritarianism, which such clientelist security arrangements have induced so categorically in a place like Egypt, will likely shape Pakistan’s short-term trajectory as well.