Version imprimableFirst, I welcome everyone to the International Anti-Imperialist Conference in Lahore on behalf of the Haqooq-e-Khalq Party. I especially welcome the international guests who have travelled long hours to reach Lahore.
1. Friends, comrades, and allies, this Conference is taking place at a very critical time in history. This is a moment where we see that the Western capitalist centres have upped the ante of imperialism in the face of a receding global hegemony.
Donald Trump’s second term, with its far-right agenda, has brought about a shift in the international situation.
With a foreign policy of recolonization and war, together with his partner in massacres, Netanyahu, Trump’s war on Iran was to ensure complete domination of the oil and gas market. This comes after the genocide of the people of Gaza, the invasion of Venezuela, the attempt to strangle Cuba, and threats to annex Greenland.
The tyrant is striving to normalize genocidal language, blackmail, and interventionism, as well as racism, misogyny, and hatred of migrants — attempting to expel millions of workers from the United States.
We all know that imperialism is an essential built in part of capitalism, but we also know that it has been the most reliable partner of Euro-American powers in times of crisis.
With the American Empire lagging behind China and other countries in securing hegemony over renewable energy sources, it has fallen back to strengthening its control over traditional oil supplies. The kidnapping of Venezuelan leadership and the war on Iran are two glaring examples of an empire refusing to innovate amidst the climate change crisis and instead taking violent control over the developing countries resources.
At the same time, the American gangsterism cannot be reduced to securing control over fossil fuel value chains only. Trump’s all-out war against Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, and Cuba must be seen in the larger context of a war against the axis of resistance, even if the opponents don’t happen to be anti-capitalist but anti-imperialist only.
Bloody authoritarianism is the central instrument of imperialism in our time, because it needs to impose policies of hunger, the proliferation of ecocidal technologies and practices, the excessive power of Big Tech, the dispossession of natural and energy resources from all peoples, and increased military spending. If it is not defeated, Yankee imperialism will embark on a blind march toward ecological disaster.
Anti-imperialism directed toward the US is a direct threat to the US hegemony over violence, even if it does not pose a threat to global capitalism.
It is in this context that we must support Iran and other developing countries resisting the imperialist aggression, even if their anti-imperialism seems to be devoid of anti-capitalism.
2. But comrades, this seems like a good strategy only in the short run. In the long run, we must work toward building movements and parties that are both anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.
Anti-imperialism devoid of anti-capitalism, as we all know, is a slippery slope. It can either take the form of a theological anti-American state, as is the case with Iran. Or it can take the form of a secular state capitalism, as is the case with China.
While we resist American imperialism, we must resist these anti-imperialist caricatures too. This obviously does not mean that we don’t support their fight over sovereignty, even if it comes with localised versions of capitalism. But we must be clear that this can be a strategy only in the short run.
Eventually, we cannot afford to reduce the socialist project to a point where capitalism with a human or anti-imperialist face becomes acceptable and desirable. We must not lower the bar to that point; we must fight against both imperialism and capitalism.
3. The third point I want to highlight is about Pakistan. While the world is admiring the Pakistani state’s role as a peacemaker between Iran and the US-Israeli aggression, we also saw the state bulldozing the working-class settlements in Islamabad right in the middle of Iran talks and taking measure for full implementation of Neo liberal agenda. This is of course not an isolated incident but a microcosm of state’s re-invigorated enthusiasm toward dispossessing the urban and rural working masses of their social and ecological cushions in the name of developmentalism. We want to remind the state that it cannot build peacemaking diplomatic credentials abroad while being repressive at home.
Pakistan has faced 32 years of military dictatorship and political activists have given maximum sacrifices for a genuine democracy and Socialism. I personally have spent 8 years in exile, dozens of time arrests and intimidation of my family, not only me but thousands such cases in Pakistan when military takes over. One of our main task is to regains the civic space that has taken over by the military.
4. Finally, we must develop a positive project for progressive, socialist futures against capitalism and the imperialist, fascist, liberal, theocratic, statist, and hybrid forms it takes under electoral and non-electoral conditions.
Despite internal differences within the Left, we must forge a united front against the Right. To this end, the global pro-Palestine movement is a good example, in which progressives from diverse convictions joined hands to fight for the common cause. Similar instances of the Left forces coming together for converging causes and developing a ground-up socialism are rampant across the Third World. Some may question the success of these synergies, but my life-long experience working with movements and parties reveals that there are no quick fixes to the imperialist, genocidal machinery we’re up against. It is only after we develop a powerful confluence of working masses, farmers, and other marginalised classes that we’d have a united front to reckon with.
Bourgeois governments refuse to recognize that popular mobilizations against them are the result of deep social contradictions. Typically, they attribute them to the action of internal or external "agents." We cannot accept this conspiracy conception of history.
Undoubtedly, imperialism and its agencies try to take advantage of struggles, such as that of the Iranian people, but that does not reduce those struggles to an operation of imperialism. We must oppose such intervention, while continuing to support those struggles.
Today more than ever, we must practice consistent internationalism, a solidarity without borders that encompasses the struggles of workers, the oppressed, and for self-determination in all countries of the world, without exception. It is a policy that opposes all forms of imperialism.
It does not subordinate the struggle in any country to that of another country. It is the policy that corresponds to the slogan Workers of the world, unite!
FOR SOLIDARITY WITHOUT BORDERS!
FOR INTERNATIONALISM WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS!
3 May 2026
