We as a people are experiencing an acute case of bad conscience expressed in the form of our collective amnesia which has induced a noxious neglect of some of the key provisions for social and economic justice granted by our national constitution. This Leathean approach to the supreme law of our land has spawned multiple disparities and consequent disaffections amongst our people. One reason for this forgetfulness may be the logically inconsistent nature of some of the over-arching goals of our constitution. Consider Article 3, titled, “the elimination of exploitation”, of our constitution, for instance! It spells out the active, mandatory and directive role of the state in ridding our society of all manner of exploitation. This asseveration is joined to the declaration of public intent to realise the “gradual fulfillment of the fundamental principle, from each according to his ability to each according to his work”.
In my view, this collocation represents a classic case of an antinomy combining two irreconcilably contradictory principles in an uncomfortable union. As long as it retains its present formulation it would present an impediment to the goal of economic justice that cannot be surmounted simply because it yokes together two opposing visions to be achieved as part of the one and the same programme of national development. Outside the highfalutin cognitive world of formidable juriconsults, the constituent aims of the third Article, placed in a conjunctive juxtaposition, exist as countervailing socio-economic tendencies.
The truth is both the eradication of exploitation and the realisation of the above-mentioned “fundamental principle” mutually exclude each other. “From each according to his ability to each according to his work” has been the inseparable part of capitalist system of free enterprise since its inception. It is the basis of the system of wage labour. Translated it means that people shall work to the best of their ability and would offer not their actual work but capacity for work for sale and in return they shall be paid not for their capacity for work but for the actual work done and even partially so at that. It has been contended with some justice that, conditioned by the incessant demands of turning a profit, the fixed and dominant social standards of determining the exact amount of work done or labour performed may not be equivalent to the actual product of that labour, thereby compensating people for only a portion of the actual work done, let alone paying them for their capacity for work. Even the specific formulation of the principle implies a conflict between “ability” and “work”.
The disjuncture between actual work and compensation for that work is visible in manual as well as intellectual labour. Promoted by the Article 3 of our constitution, this principle internalises the lack of equivalence between work and remuneration, and as a result of this internalisation, introduces economic exploitation in the market. The rate of exploitation becomes greater or lesser depending upon the higher or lesser degree of this disjuncture. States that are able to reduce the distance between work and wage through market or non-market means are seen as more equity-based than those that fail to reduce this distance.
Article 3 further compounds the confusion when it both declares the principle to be fundamental and then seeks its “gradual fulfillment”. The gradual approach to its fulfillment undermine its fundamental status as it should not be disputed that things perceived to be fundamental have to be realised immediately and not subjected to gradualism which might as well be a euphemism for perpetually practiced postponement of necessary measures. It has to be conceded that urgency of realisation should theoretically be considered a feature of anything fundamental. Even if we were to suppose that the strategy of gradualism was really aimed at reducing the disconnect between work and wages, doing so gradually would only lengthen the social duration of exploitation caused by this asymmetry and increasing its duration would serve not to eliminate exploitation but in fact to strengthen it.
The cumulative result of this constitutional confusion and amnesia is that there is a wide-spread individual and collective non-enforcement of and non-compliance with the Article 3. Exploitation still exists in many undeniable forms across the social spectrum in our country. It appears in different forms like poverty, income disparities, joblessness, illiteracy, sexism etc. One potent indicator of the double crisis of confusion and oblivion is high unemployment. 48 per cent Pakistanis aged 15 and older were unemployed in 2008 according to the World Bank. Unemployment rate stood at 15 per cent last year. It should be mentioned here that unemployment is just a special form of exploitation that appears as an involuntary and inevitable reflex of conscious but structural decisions maintained to ensure a steady quantum of not only labour but conservative obedience in society and is especially related to the mechanics of the so-called fundamental principle.
However, the makers of our constitution were right in recognising the social presence of exploitation and the need to eliminate it but where they may have nodded was in knowing its causes. Thus, Article 3, despite all its best intentions, yields a non-sequitur on closer inspection.
The writer is a Senior Policy Analyst working for the OIC’s Standing Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation and can be contacted at ali.shah78@gmail.com.