Juan Cole is reporting that the leaders of the Bhutto-ist “Pakistan People’s Party” have anointed Benazir’s 19-year-old son Bilawal to be the party’s next leader, with a feudal lord of some slightly lesser order to be the party’s candidate in the elections that are still scheduled to go ahead January 8. I guess Bilawal’s daddy, Asif Zardari either could not run or would not have made a credible candidate in the elections because of his past convictions for serious corruption. Benazir herself had won an agreement from Musharraf that the indictments outstanding against herself on similar charges would not be pressed on her recent return from exile. But I guess the deal did not extend to wiping Zardari’s slate clean as well.
The crowning of the youthful Bilawal as the leader of this avowedly populist or even perhaps “socialist” party reminds me of leadership norms within Lebanon’s main “socialist” party, the Progressive Socialist party (PSP). It was founded by Druze feudal overlord Kamal Jumblatt and was headed by him until he was killed (by the Syrians) in 1977, at which time the leadership passed immediately to Kamal’s youthful son Walid, who has headed it ever since.
In the case of the PSP, almost no-one in Lebanon takes seriously its claim to be a “socialist” party in any meaningful sense. The only people who apparently do are the leaders of the “Socialist International” who still list the PSP as a “Full member party”. On the other hand, that web-page there, which is on the SI’s official website, also lists Fatah as a “consultative party”, which I find equally hilarious.
6 thoughts on “Oh, those feudal “socialists”…”
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Wasn’t it your generation on the revolutionary left (No.69, May 1974, The Palestine Problem, by Helena Cobban, book review, http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/isj.htm ) that held the Socialist International, in contempt (as the US New Left did to left-liberals in the DP) because it wasn’t open to revolutionary, national liberation movements? Do you guffaw at the Sandinista FSLN, being in the SI, too? The MPLA? Fretlin? I do, for differing reasons.
Your former Cliffite Trotskyist comrades have chosen some rather dubious United Front partners themselves. See Harry’s Place blog, for the fallout in the UK SWP over their, “Right Opportunist, ” Deviationist Tailing of Reactionary Islamists!
I saw two different rightwingnuts take a swipe at the “socialism” of Mme. Bhutto last week, although I’ve forgotten who they were. It looks as if the Big Management Party does not possess any generally recognized experts on Pakistan comparable to their Grand Ayatollah Michael Bin Ledeen for Iran.
But then neither do we donkeys. Only exotic subcontinental lore imported from London or farther east seems worthy of serious attention.
As for “feudal,” should that category include every customer in politics who rushes to the nearest instance of the same surname? Even when the name happens to be Kennedy or Clinton?
JHM, your latter point is an excellent one. David Runciman has a great piece in the latest London Review of Books (sadly only available to subscribers) on the extent to which “Third Way”, i.e. non-ideological, politics in the UK and US has led to consolidation of “family names” in the leadership of parties in both countries…
As for “feudal,” should that category include every customer in politics who rushes to the nearest instance of the same surname?
Maybe not, but it can properly include politicians and political parties whose followings are based on land-ownership-based patronage and family loyalty. The Kennedys and Clintons aren’t quite at that stage – not all dynasties are feudal – but the Bhuttos clearly are.
And while we’re at it, ain’t it “feudal” (as in pathetic)how all these mega-western TV preachers and “televangefleecestas” find it necessary to pass their “ministries” on to their off-spring. Qualifications, calling, showing themselves “approved unto God & man” on their own merits — all irrelevant. (Think Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Rbt Schuller, Jerry Falwell, Hagee, Pat Robertson, — and in nearly every case, with bizarre, disastrous consequences…. In the case of Oral, he went horrendously wrong the day he thought his legacy was not in his students, but in his corrupt offspring…)
And so it goes. Something further about the “human condition” that perhaps hasn’t changed so much in this new millenium…. Feudalism “lives.”
There is also the Hollywood Middle Ages to reckon with under “feudal,” Mme. Bhutto perceived as chatelaine of Camelot II, as “just like Jackie K.,” as a “best and brightest,” &c. &c.
Prof. Cole has of it this morning , going on as if he were facing a carbon copy of the JFK murder: “So what we can conclude is that elements in the Pakistani military forced government physicians to deny that Bhutto was shot. But newly surfaced videotape shows conclusively that she slumped after shots rang out; and she did not throw her head back against the sun roof lever as the physicians were coerced into maintaining. So, why did these military elements make the physicians file a false report? About that we can only speculate. But it should be noted that lying about a crime is usually a sign of guilt. If the military was completely uninvolved, why should it care how she died?”
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“Will LBJ and Sir Mordred get away with it this time? Please stay tuned, everybody!”