A founding meeting of the Revolutionary Socialist Movement was held in Lahore on Tuesday 29th May. Around 35 people attended to discuss the crisis of the state, the lawyer’s movement and working class. In attendance were 15 lawyers, 4 teachers who are fighting against privatisation and 16 other mostly student or youth. A comrade from the RSM introduced on the lawyers movement and how it is growing and the current situation with the different sections of the working class joining the movement. He presented a critique not only of the bourgeois parties, but the limitation of lawyers leadership. He argued that the demands for an independent judiciary against a military dictatorship is progressive but we should have no illusions in the judiciary because it is a part of capitalist system and can therefore never be truly independent off the ruling class as a whole. He made clear the problems of the capitalist system and the misery that it causes the workers and poor in Pakistan, therefore the fight cannot just be against General Musharraf, but also for a struggle to end capitalism and the beginning of world socialist revolution.
Afterwards a lawyer who had been involved in the movement to defend Chief justice Chaudhry spoke to say they had to defy the military regime, he said that ‘we the lawyers are also working class as we work for 10 to 12 hours a day’. A teacher also spoke about the ongoing struggle against privatisation and the need to join the lawyer movement so that workers can put forward slogan in the movement and unite in action against the government.
A left wing lawyer also speak at the meeting and say it was a time for Marxists to put forward their slogans in the movement and win the worker for the movement and convert the democratic struggle into class struggle”. In the end the organiser of the RSM gave a call to join the new organisation and work together in the struggle for workers power. At the end of the meeting the new copies of ’Marxist Voice’ were sold and 3 people joined the RSM.