The country has been facing the phenomenon of deindustrialization for quite some time. Unfortunately, however, successive governments have only added to the assaults that the industrial sector has been receiving on its existence through a slew of anti-industry policies.
The fact that industrialization helps the country’s economy maintain a balance of imported and exported goods cannot be overemphasized. Ours is an economy where preponderance of the elite capture is too pronounced, so to speak.
Needless to say, elite capture is a form of corruption whereby public resources are strongly skewed towards the benefit of a few individuals who reside on the highest levels of the social ladder.
Our economic policymaking has been found to be aimed at protecting and preserving the interests of the elite or those enjoying the superior social status.
More than 100 years ago, great thinker, theorist and economist Karl Marx in his Das Kapital had alluded to the conditions and practices that are perhaps present or prevalent in today’s Pakistan.
According to him, for example, “Finally, capital as an independent source of surplus-value is joined by landed property, which acts as a barrier to average profit and transfers a portion of surplus-value to a class that neither works itself, nor directly exploits labour, nor can find morally edifying rationalizations, as in the case of interest-bearing capital, e.g., risk and sacrifice of lending capital to others.”
Danish Hunarmand, (Karachi)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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