Zulfikar Ali Bhutto occupies a uniquely paradoxical position in Pakistan’s political history. Revered by many as the architect of Pakistan’s first populist revolution, and reviled by others as a feudal masquerading as a socialist, Bhutto’s legacy defies simple categorisation. The contradiction between his progressive rhetoric and elite background lies at the heart of both his appeal and his failure.
Bhutto rose to prominence during the waning years of Ayub Khan’s “technocratic” dictatorship, a period marked by growing resentment among the middle and working classes. In 1967, he launched the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) with the electrifying slogan of Roti, Kapra Aur Makaan (bread, clothing and home), calling for radical land reforms, industrial nationalisation and workers’ rights under the banner of “Islamic socialism”.
His early writings, including The Myth of Independence (1969), struck a defiantly anti-imperialist tone, calling for sovereignty and self-reliance in the face of global power dynamics. Stanley Wolpert portrays Bhutto as the country’s first genuine populist, a man who spoke directly to the dispossessed.
Yet the dissonance between Bhutto’s public image and his class identity was stark. Born into a wealthy Sindhi landowning family, Bhutto was steeped in the very feudal structures he claimed to oppose. His elite education in Berkeley and Oxford further insulated him from the lived realities of the working class. Marxist sociologist Hamza Alavi would later characterise him as part of the post-colonial salariat — those whose authority derived from colonial-era bureaucratic and landholding privileges.
Nowhere was this contradiction more visible than in Bhutto’s land reforms. Introduced in 1972 and again in 1977, the reforms were billed as revolutionary but largely failed in implementation. Legal loopholes allowed landowners to retain vast holdings by registering them as family or religious properties. Bhutto’s estates remained intact. As political economist Akbar Zaidi has argued, the reforms were more performative than redistributive, designed to satisfy leftist constituencies while preserving the socio-economic status quo.
His nationalisation drive, another key pillar of his socialist platform, proved similarly flawed. Though intended to dismantle capitalist monopolies, the programme often targeted small and medium enterprises while leaving entrenched landowning elites untouched. It expanded state control but failed to democratise economic power. Corruption, inefficiency and political favouritism marred its implementation.
Politically, Bhutto’s government bore authoritarian hallmarks. Dissent was met with repression; opposition newspapers shuttered, student organisations such as the National Students Federation (NSF) violently suppressed, and political rivals jailed. In Can Pakistan Survive? Historian Tariq Ali argued that Bhutto’s fear of genuine popular mobilisation led him to rely increasingly on the very instruments of elite power he once condemned.
To understand Bhutto’s paradox is to enter the realm of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution, a transformation from above that adopts revolutionary language without dismantling elite structures. Bhutto was adept at this: donning shalwar kameez to mingle with workers in Karachi, delivering fiery speeches against “capitalist exploiters”, while maintaining patronage ties with Sindhi waderas and securing his feudal interests.
Ayesha Jalal, in Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia, characterises Bhutto’s rule as a blend of “patronage politics and authoritarian populism” — a balancing act between military power, landed gentry, and an urban proletariat that was never allowed to organise independently. His politics opened the door for middle and lower-class participation, yet failed to institutionalise any long-term redistribution of power.
This legacy of ambivalence continues to shape Pakistan. The PPP, under Benazir Bhutto, inherited its founder’s populist lexicon but not his capacity for mass mobilisation. The party remains rhetorically progressive but structurally tethered to elite interests. The deeper question Bhutto’s life leaves behind is a persistent one: Can a man born into privilege truly dismantle the systems that uphold that privilege?
Bhutto was not a revolutionary in the tradition of Marx, Mao or Nasser. He was a skilled orator, a master of political theatre and a shrewd tactician. But his socialism was symbolic rather than structural, and his revolution was more rhetorical than real.
His story is emblematic of post-colonial populism across the Global South, where leaders deploy the language of the masses while safeguarding the interests of the few. Bhutto’s contradiction was not a footnote in his political journey. It was the foundation upon which his power was built and the fault-line along which his project ultimately fractured.
So, Bhutto, answering the question, claimed he could. But history suggests he did not.