The effects of decomposition are a major obstacle to working class struggle

In the second half of 2025, a number of Asian, African and Latin American countries, where the depth of the world economic crisis means that poverty is intense and widespread, were hit by popular revolts. The protests started in Indonesia in August followed by Nepal and Philippines in September. Then they spread to countries from Latin America (Peru), to Africa (Morocco, Madagascar, and Tanzania). In total eight revolts in only a couple of months. Anger was fuelled by issues such as inequality, corruption and lack of accountability in countries hit hard by the economic instability of global capitalism. The mainstream media exploited these protests, claiming that the youth, so-called Gen Z[1], were set upon changing the world. But can such revolts bring about real change in a world that is descending into barbarism?

The three countries that this article focuses on face deep economic difficulties. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and is plagued by high inflation, unemployment, and low investment. The economy remains afloat mainly thanks to remittances sent by the hundreds of thousands of young people who work abroad. Indonesia’s economy is under severe strain, with indications that the nation is nearing a financial breaking point that would bring mass lay-offs in the industrial sector and households facing a brutal cost-of-living crisis. The population of the Philippines struggles with chronic poverty levels, considerable income inequality, underemployment, and a looming food crisis

In all three countries the number of young people is on the rise. In the Philippines nearly 30 per cent of the population is under 30 years old; in Indonesia about half of the total population of 270 million and in Nepal even more than half the total population of 30 million is also under 30. In Indonesia youth unemployment is more than 15 per cent, in Nepal more than 20 per cent. For a large proportion of young people the outlook is extremely bleak. This is one of the main explanations for the big involvement of so many young people in the popular revolts.

All three countries are also plagued by high levels of corruption despite passing comprehensive anti-corruption legislation. Senior civil servants, politicians and business managers are regularly charged with corruption offences. But corruption has never diminished. On “Transparency International's 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index” the three countries still rank amongst the most corrupt: Indonesia ranks 99th, Nepal 107th and Philippines 114th among 180 countries. In the protests in Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines the enduring corruption of the ruling clique was one of the central issues.

The rise of popular protests

In Indonesia the protests of 25 August were sparked by the announcement that members of parliament would be granted a housing allowance of 50 million rupiahs per month. This announcement was made against the background of mass lay-offs of more than 80,000 workers, of an increase of more than 100% in property tax, as well as cuts in state expenditures, with the deepest cuts felt in education, public works and healthcare. In the unfolding of the protest the Coalition of Labour Unions (KSPI) tried to get control of the situation with a general strike on 28 August, posing economic demands such as raising the national minimum wage, abolishing outsourcing, stopping redundancies, reforming labour taxes, including a revision of the laws designed to curb corruption. However, on 29 August, a courier was killed by a police car, inflaming the situation, unleashing riots for a week throughout the country. In the course of these riots dozens of official and private buildings were set on fire and more than 2000 people were arrested.

In Nepal the immediate trigger for the protests was a government ban on 26 social media platforms on 4 September. The blocking of social media was perceived as an attempt to shield from accountability the corruption of the political elite. The banners and placards in the protests were on issues like nepotism, corruption, a culture of impunity. For a generation struggling with unemployment, inflation, and disillusionment with traditional parties, nepotism and corruption represent the embodiment of a failed system. The protests escalated when riot police started to use live ammunition on 8 and 9 September, killing more than 70 protesters and injuring more than 2000. Thereafter the reactions of the youth became openly violent, resorting to arson and looting, with the parliament building set on fire, and politicians chased and beaten and their houses torched.

In the Philippines the protests were triggered by a corruption scandal linked to programmes for flood control. An investigation into thousands of projects revealed that a number of them had never been completed and others did not even exist. Despite annual increases in flood control budgets, hundreds of communities continued to be unprotected from rising waters. The Philippine state launched an immediate investigation to uncover the scale of corruption of state functionaries and politicians in these projects. In the meantime, anger further increased when photos and videos of the lavish lifestyle of the children of politicians and rich families, widely known as "nepo babies,” circulated in social media. All this triggered anti-corruption protests on 21 September when in Manilla alone 150,000 people took the streets. This mobilisation was called for under the slogan “If there were no corruption, there would be no poor”. On 16 November it was followed by another massive mobilisation of more than half a million people.

Popular revolts as an expression of the rotting of capitalism

These three countries are being hit by the effects of a multitude of crises. In the Philippines for instance regularly occurring extreme weather goes hand in hand with economic instability, a developing food crisis and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The cumulative effect of these crises makes them far worse than the sum of their parts, with the poorest sectors of the working class being the greatest victims. And every year the effects of the decomposition of capitalism have a greater impact on daily life in these countries.

In contrast to the view of the protesters, the mismanagement of the state or the corruption of this politician or that bourgeois faction, which are nevertheless very real, are only a symptom of the rotting of the whole capitalist system that also affects the economy. The suffering and misery in these countries are fundamentally due to the capitalist economy that finds itself in the deepest crisis ever and sacrifices more and more parts of the world population in an attempt to prolong its death agony. The historic crisis of capitalism results in a total absence of a viable perspective for the mass of the population and especially for millions of young people suffering from mass unemployment.

Popular revolts do not solve the woes of the people

Popular revolts have no specific class character and are by definition heterogeneous. They are incapable of developing any perspective other than the illusion of eliminating the inherent abuses of the national state. Popular revolts are not aimed directly against the bourgeois state but only against the negative impacts of its rule over society. When the demands of popular protests are not immediately or satisfactory met, violence is the inherent response. In this sense they are striking expressions of how powerlessness and desperation can turn into blind  rage.

But the confrontations with the repressive forces, the occupation of government buildings, the hounding of members of government and even the massive participation of workers in these actions does not give these revolts a potentially revolutionary character, whatever the extreme left of capital want us to believe.[2]

In Indonesia discontent was building up for months and when the president refused to make any concessions to the 28 August demands, a small spark was enough to inflame riots on a scale not seen in decades. The anger turned against the symbols of the bourgeois state. But the destruction of police stations, of regional parliament buildings, of bus and train stations, did not, of course, bring the solution to their misery any closer. Not least because these protests are regularly exploited, manipulated by bourgeois cliques and used to their own advantage. The struggle against corruption in the Philippines, against income inequality in Indonesia or against the ban on social media in Nepal, all such issues offer bourgeois organisations an excellent umbrella under which they can settle scores with their rivals, as happened for instance at the anti-corruption protest of 17 November in Manilla, which was hijacked by a Christian sect in favour of the Duterte clique.[3]

All these demonstrations result either into a hollow victory, when the old bourgeois faction is replaced by a new one, or outright repression by the state, or both. And the response of the state to these protests is generally brutal; in Nepal it resulted in more than 70 deaths and hundreds injured, and in Indonesia in thousands of arrests. Popular revolts reflect a world with no future, a predominant characteristic of the system's phase of decomposition, and can only spread the misery of rotting capitalism. [4]

The perspective offered by the working class

The demands in the protests remain superficial and do not address the root causes of poverty: the capitalist economy, the basis of social life under capitalism. Therefore, any concessions to the demands of the popular protests neither change the particular situation of the most deprived layers of the population nor the general situation in the country, as the protesters have to quickly concede, much to their displeasure. The only solution to the growing misery is the overthrow of capitalism by the world proletariat.

Popular protests do not constitute a stepping stone to the working class struggle. They constitute at the very least a serious obstacle and at worst a dangerous trap. The demands put forward in these movements “dilute the proletariat into the whole of the population, blurring the consciousness of its historic combat, submitting it to the logic of capitalist domination and reducing it to political impotence”. [5] The proletariat has everything to lose by allowing itself to be swept up into a wave of popular protests totally blinded by democratic illusions about the possibility of a ‘cleaner’ capitalist state.

Instead of participating in these revolts workers must insist on their own slogans and organise their own meetings as part of a movement of their own. The proletariat is the only force in society capable of offering an alternative for the ever more unbearable conditions of an obsolete capitalism. But this cannot succeed within the borders of a single country, especially when the proletariat constitutes only a small proportion of the total population, where the proletarian concentrations tend to be dispersed and workers have little experience in fighting bourgeois democracy and the many traps this class sets for them. Only by developing a common struggle with the working masses of the countries at the heart of capitalism, who have a long history confronting the democratic mystification, can the ground be laid for the necessary overthrow of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity.

Dennis, November 2025