Gleaming office buildings and concrete flyovers, the modern city is increasingly presented as a symbol of progress. Few regard it as the endpoint of a destructive paradigm: the command-centre of an extractive, neoliberal order that has reshaped land, labour and life itself.
If policymakers believe that urbanisation is the natural evolution of a modern nation-state, they should stop to consider that it is based on the deliberate outcome of policies that undermine rural self-sufficiency, commodify soil and force agrarian communities into precarity.
Once traditional farming systems have been destabilised by corporate input regimes, global supply chains, patented seeds and monocultural production, mass migration to cities becomes an inevitability engineered from above. The city thus absorbs the displaced because the countryside has been systematically stripped of opportunities.
But more than this, the urban-industrial system rests on a profound moral and spiritual crisis. Care for land, the dignity of manual labour, intergenerational continuity, local democracy and ecological restraint are values that are fundamentally at odds with the city’s organising principles of speed, consumption, a redefinition of the individual and perpetual economic expansion.
Urban society reduces human beings to instruments in a market system, producing an atmosphere of alienation, competition and mistrust. Pollution, infrastructural breakdown, inflated living costs and stark inequalities are the structural consequences of a model built on dispossession. Whether in places like The Netherlands where there is much talk of a huge tristate city or megacities like Delhi, modern urbanisation is a deeply anti-ecological project that severs people from soil, memory and community.
Moreover, urban planning often masks deeper forms of enclosure, surveillance and corporate capture, reinforcing a vision of the future in which technological management replaces human-scale living.
Despite this bleak assessment, certain moral and cultural residues persist ‘beneath the flyover, beside the temple’ in the form of informal economies, community solidarities and local food traditions that continue to embody an agrarian ethic even within concrete landscapes.
These acts of self-sufficiency and mutual care are expressions of the ‘art of the impossible’: a refusal to submit entirely to the logic of commodification and a testament to the resilience of an older, place-based moral order.
Such practices, though often marginal and unheralded, represent intellectual and ethical resistance to the corporatised urban future. They suggest that the agrarian imagination is not confined space but capable of adaptation and capable of surviving in a system that seeks to extinguish it.
Farmer, poet and writer Wendell Berry’s reflections on stewardship, intergenerational responsibility and the intimate relationships between humans and soil resonate deeply with the practices of community solidarity and local food traditions that persist even within urban landscapes.
Similarly, Gerard Winstanley, writing in the 17th century, envisioned a society in which land and labour were shared as a common good, not commodities to be exploited. His insistence on communal responsibility and ecological justice underscores the radical, enduring potential of agrarian ethics against the logic of extraction and profit.
In this light, the critique of urban-centric development becomes more than an economic critique. It represents a challenge to the very definition of progress. The rejection of the celebratory narrative of neoliberal modernity is a philosophical insistence that a society cannot be judged by its technological prowess while its ecological foundations crumble and its people are alienated from the sources of life.
The modern city, therefore, becomes a battleground where two visions of civilisation confront one another: the dominant model of corporate-led, centrally managed growth and the fragile but persistent ethic of stewardship, locality and shared responsibility.
Genuine development cannot be measured by urban skylines or GDP figures but by the survival of relationships between people, land and community that give meaning to life.
The ultimate aim must be a decentralised and complementary relationship between rural and urban worlds, grounded in ecological sanity rather than profit, and animated by an imagination willing to defy the narrow ‘certainties’ of the present.
Members of a family stay in a room flooded by rainwater in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. [AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena]
More than 200 millimeters of rainfall have accompanied the terrifying “Ditwah” cyclone currently battering Sri Lanka, unleashing floods, landslides and other calamities. By the evening of November 28, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) reported at least 69 deaths, with several others missing. Tens of thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—have been displaced by the ensuing devastation. The disaster is widespread and the worst in living memory.
According to the Department of Meteorology, the storm originated as a low-pressure system over the southwestern Bay of Bengal and Sri Lanka on the 26th. It developed into a deep depression and intensified into Cyclone Ditwah by the 28th, making landfall in Sri Lanka. Similar storms across Southeast Asia in recent days—affecting Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand—have killed hundreds and displaced millions, creating a regional catastrophe.
Since Thursday, Kandy, the capital of the hill country, has been completely cut off, with still no access as of Saturday morning. On Friday, the cyclone hit the war-ravaged northern province.
Areas such as Hettipola, Mahadowa, Kandaketiya, Habarana, Wewessa and Lelkadura have each received over 200 millimeters of rain. The highest rainfall, 300 millimeters, was recorded in Mahakalawewa, Batticaloa. Torrential rains have saturated the highlands, destabilizing slopes and triggering landslides, while major reservoirs are nearing or exceeding capacity.
With the full extent of the disaster still unknown, the death toll and number of injured are expected to rise. The total number of missing remains unclear. As of the 28th, the DMC reported that 43,991 families across 285 divisional secretariat areas in 25 districts have been affected. Forty-two houses have been completely destroyed and another 2,810 partially damaged. Thousands of displaced people have been moved into temporary shelters, including schools and religious institutions.
Disaster conditions exist in 93 divisional secretariat divisions across 20 districts, and red evacuation alerts have been issued for 41 divisions in seven districts. The National Building Research Organization (NBRO) has issued landslide warnings for 10 districts, including Badulla, Hambantota, Kandy, Kegalle, Nuwara Eliya and Ratnapura. The NBRO also reports that 42 of the 73 major reservoirs managed by the Irrigation Department are releasing water, inundating hundreds of downstream villages. However, this warning was useless, as people have no safe places to go, and the government had not arranged any before issuing the warnings.
Numerous rivers and reservoirs are either already overflowing or dangerously close to doing so, displacing thousands in surrounding low-lying regions.
The highest number of deaths—over 35—has been reported in Badulla district in the Central Province, which is experiencing landslides, hillside collapses and flooding. Fatalities have occurred in the divisional secretariat areas of Badulla, Welimada, Lunugala, Passara, Kandaketiya, Uva Paranagama, Soranathota and Ella.
Many residents in these areas are tea estate workers living in dilapidated line rooms that offer no protection against even moderate rain. On the 27th, a major landslide in Badulla killed 11 people, with several still missing.
The Mahaweli River overflow has devastated Mahiyanganaya Hospital, submerging its lower floor under six feet of water. Expensive equipment and millions of rupees’ worth of medicine have been destroyed. Similar reports are emerging from other areas.
A flooded hospital after heavy rains is seen in Chilaw, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025. [AP Photo]
One particularly tragic incident in Nawalapitiya, Central province led to the death of a grandmother, mother and a three-month-old baby when a hillside collapsed on to their home. Road blockages and the dangerous terrain have hampered rescue efforts.
In addition to landslide fatalities in the central hills, major floods in the southern and other provinces have damaged crops and infrastructure. Hundreds of videos are circulating on social media showing horrifying images of cities underwater, people stranded on rooftops, and calls for help from those trapped in submerged homes. Many are also posting appeals for information on missing loved ones.
Landslides have damaged several sections of the central railway line, prompting the suspension of all train services from 6 a.m. on the 28th. With 75 major roads in the Central, Uva and Eastern provinces rendered impassable, transportation has ground to a halt in many regions.
Expressways have also suffered significant damage, according to Road Development Authority Director General Wimal Kandanmbi. A special public holiday was declared on the 28th for all government institutions except essential services. Authorities also shut down the University of Peradeniya and the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens due to the Mahaweli River’s overflow.
Warnings have been issued against fishing and naval activity due to anticipated sea waves of 2–4 meters and wind speeds of 60–70 km/h, with gusts reaching up to 80 km/h.
Electricity is disrupted all over the country. Officially, there have been over 65,000 power outages, only 26,000 of which have been restored. Hundreds of thousands of people are still without electricity. Adverse weather has made repairs extremely difficult. According to the general manager of the Ceylon Electricity Board, the island’s power supply has been disrupted by 25 to 30 percent.
Flooding, landslides and power outage have also severely impacted telecommunications. Phone services have been cut for more than 24 hours in flood-affected areas such as Gampola, Nuwara Eliya, Passara, Kadugannawa and Welimada, as well as much of the Kandy district, where a emergency situation has been declared.
The chairman of the National Water Supply and Drainage Board warned that disruptions at several major pumping stations could lead to a severe shortfall in the distribution of clean drinking water.
Also on the 28th, the president deployed over 25,000 soldiers to assist with rescue operations. Ordinary people across the country are also stepping up to help victims however they can.
Yesterday President Anura Kumara Dissanayake brought several services under Essential Services Regulations, such as petroleum and gas, electricity, health, irrigation and all road and railway maintenance works.
There have been calls for the immediate declaration of a draconian state of emergency by opposition parliamentarians. On the 28th, the main opposition party Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP for Kurunegala, J.C. Alawathuwala, made the call in parliament, while MP Ravi Karunanayake of the United National Party voiced support. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunge also joined the call.
These calls are not made out of genuine concern for disaster victims, but out of fear of social upheaval. The government ministers have said that in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, prices for all essential food items may skyrocket.
Though Dissanayake has not yet declared a state of emergency, he has reportedly decided to place camps for displaced people under military control, according to a report in Lankadeepa.
In the coming days, the prices of vegetables and essential foods will soar, plunging an already struggling population into deeper misery. Food riots are a real and growing possibility. A preliminary estimate revealed that 600,000 acres of rice and vegetable farmland have already been destroyed.
The government has announced 1.2 billion rupees in disaster relief—an amount grossly inadequate in the face of this catastrophe. On the 27th, Dissanayake ordered compensation of one million rupees for each person killed in the disaster.
The government’s infrastructure is incapable of managing such a disaster, and its relief measures are woefully inadequate. One video posted on the “Dasatha” YouTube channel captures this anger, showing residents in the flooded Kaduruwela area denouncing the government for failing to deliver any real aid.
Like their counterparts around the world, Sri Lanka’s capitalist rulers have refused to invest in the infrastructure necessary to protect lives. The current Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National Peoples Power (JVP/NPP) government’s election pledges to “balance economic growth and environmental conservation” have been exposed as lies. There is no such national solutions under a capitalist framework for the economic and social crisis.
Obsessed with meeting the IMF’s austerity demands, the JVP/NPP spends not a cent of the tax money wrung from the people to protect human lives—let alone the environment.
That is why even moderate rainfall leads, year after year, to mass deaths and devastation from landslides and floods. The government has ravaged the environment for unregulated development, abandoned people to their fate during disasters, and made no effort to build infrastructure capable of withstanding natural calamities. There are no serious programs to relocate those living in danger zones to safe areas or to allocate the necessary funds for long-term disaster preparedness.
Global warming, driven overwhelmingly by human activity—specifically the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels by giant industries in the advanced capitalist countries—is fueling the rise of extreme weather events. Large-scale deforestation, industrial agriculture, and urbanization intensify the problem, releasing greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
The Labour government has opened a new front in its assault on the working class, with dire consequences for many of the people who hold Britain’s overstretched health and social care services together.
On November 20, Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled a proposed brutal restructuring of immigration rules under the Orwellian title “A fairer pathway to settlement.” The measures are in fact designed to trap migrant workers in a state of prolonged insecurity.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood speaking in Parliament, September 7, 2023 [Photo by House of Commons/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]
The message could not be clearer: work, pay taxes, fill the gaps left by a collapsing system, but do not expect permanent rights, stability or family life in return. It marks a decisive escalation of Labour’s nationalist, anti-immigrant agenda which mirrors that of right-wing and far-right governments across Europe and the United States.
Mahmood’s proposals on migrants—along with her earlier Restoring Order and Control attack on asylum seekers—could just as easily have been issued under the far-right Reform UK party’s letterhead. Taken together they effectively abolish the right to asylum and extend the residency period required for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and citizenship, laying the legal groundwork for mass deportations.
Under the new system, most migrant workers—including health and social care staff—must live in Britain for 10–15 years before applying for ILR, instead of the current five. If they claim welfare benefits for under a year it becomes 15 years; claim for longer and it rises to 20. Anyone entering the UK through an unsanctioned route could wait 30 years for permanent status.
Even gaining the right to ILR may not secure basic support. Mahmood has suggested tying welfare eligibility not to ILR but to full citizenship—meaning decades of work, taxes and service could still end in second-class status.
The public “consultation”, set to end in February next year, will take place in a toxic climate towards migrants carefully manufactured with the help of the corporate media. Implementation is due in April, and the legal, ideological and administrative groundwork is already in place.
English-language requirements will be raised to A-level, alongside higher salary thresholds and financial checks that penalise debt, irregular income or hardship. One period of illness, a pregnancy, or a rent hike pushing someone into temporary debt—and the clock resets.
The aim is to establish a permanently insecure workforce using citizenship, salary and passport exceptions to divide workers whose employment in the UK reflects the international character of the working class itself. The class bias on migration could not be starker with the wealthy able to glide through comparatively easily: high-earners and “entrepreneurs” earning over £125,140 can obtain ILR in just three years.
The infamous “hostile environment” pioneered by the Tories pales in comparison. So vicious is Labour’s policy that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) warned ahead of the announcement that up to 50,000 migrant nurses could leave the UK under the restrictions.
In a calculated act of political self-preservation, Mahmood ultimately exempted NHS nurses, doctors and teachers from her crackdown—health workers whose roles are highly visible and elicit strong public sympathy. However, private-sector nurses, healthcare assistants, residential care staff, support workers and agency carers—who play a critical role in Britain’s care system—are still in the firing line.
Speaking before Mahmood’s belated announcement exempting NHS nurses from the dragnet, but pointing to the situation which still confronts many others, a migrant nurse at University Hospitals Dorset told the World Socialist Web Site: “I feel very disappointed and discouraged by this plan. Doubling ILR from five to 10 years turns, what is already a demanding process into something that feels endless and insecure.
“ILR isn’t a reward—it’s the basic stability needed to build a life, and stretching the timeline feels punitive. It would mean many more years of visa renewals, high fees and constant work. Instead of being settled, we remain temporary and unsafe.”
“The NHS is already struggling with staff shortage. If settlement becomes harder, many may not come—or will leave for countries with clearer routes. That means worsening shortages, more pressure on staff, longer waiting times and real risks to patient safety.”
A migrant doctor who works as a care assistant in supported living and has lived here more than three years told the WSWS: “The Labour Party is irresponsibly responding to [Reform UK leader] Nigel Farage’s policies against migrants. This affects all skilled workers in Britain waiting for ILR, people who came here giving up jobs, money and properties, hoping for a better future.”
“With this decision people will be helpless and clueless about their future. It affects them physically and emotionally, leading many to be depressed. People will have second thoughts about coming here. This will lead to a collapse of the health and social care system.”
He added, “I have done all the necessary exams to practise as a doctor here, but it is very difficult to find a job in the NHS… I’m worried that even if I succeed, I will have to stay much longer to get ILR.”
This assault comes when the social care system is on the brink. Britain has 130,000 care vacancies and two million elderly people are living with unmet care needs.
Hospitals discharges of many medically fit patients—who require a carer—are routinely delayed because not enough carers exist to support them at home, adding to the NHS gridlock. Patients routinely wait on trolleys in corridors, ambulances queue at A&E bays, and wards overflow.
There is no serious opposition in Westminster to the anti-migrant crusade and its consequences, only competition over which party who can penalise them more efficiently.
Mahmood’s draconian measures were claimed by the Conservative opposition as their own, with shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp stating, “There is much in this statement that I support. I am delighted to see the Home Secretary got out her laptop and started copying and pasting Conservative policies.”
An NHS hospital in Manchester
As for the trade union leaders in the sector, they have responded only with statements of concern, moral indignation and sternly worded press releases. Unison called the proposals “devastating”, the RCN a “betrayal”. But the union bureaucracy proposes nothing practically beyond appeals to the very government carrying out the assault.
Their role is not to lead resistance but to contain and divert it into the safe, harmless channels of “consultation” and parliamentary debate. The bureaucracy performed the same function during the NHS strike wave in 2022-3, dispersing the movement into fragmented, limited stoppages before helping shut them down and foist de facto pay cuts on their members.
In the face of sharp attacks on jobs and wages in the automotive and supplier industries, a rebellion is developing against the IG Metall union and its works council apparatus who are busy enforcing those attacks. This process is already well under way at Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH in Schwäbisch Gmünd, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. The founding of a new trade union organisation there, in opposition to IG Metall, is imminent.
10,000 protest in March 2024 in Gerlingen near Stuttgart against job cuts at Bosch
In a works meeting on November 22 last year, Bosch management in Schwäbisch Gmünd informed the 3,450 employees that by 2030 a total of 1,900 jobs would go, mainly in the production of steering systems.
This formed part of the corporation’s announcement that 9,000 jobs would be eliminated across the world’s largest supplier group. That figure was raised again by a further 13,000 this past September. It is the largest downsizing in the company’s history. Robert Bosch GmbH employs around 418,000 workers worldwide, almost 130,000 of them in Germany, most of whom—around 87,000—work in research and development.
As early as 2017, IG Metall and the works council concluded “framework agreements” and supposed “site security agreements.” These stipulated that the workforce in Schwäbisch Gmünd would be reduced to 2,850 jobs by the end of 2026. An additional 1,300 jobs were then to be cut from 2027. In the meantime, the works council and IG Metall have signed off on the destruction of 1,700 jobs, rather than the originally planned 1,550.
The IG Metall apparatus has justified this, as it has done a thousand times before in other companies. “We had to make painful compromises,” IG Metall’s senior representative in the region, Heike Madan, recited in routine fashion after the agreement was signed in June. “In view of the very difficult initial situation we nevertheless achieved an acceptable result,” lied the IG Metall official. And, yes, there is again a so-called “site guarantee,” not worth the paper it is written on, this time until 2030.
Bosch will close production at plant II; “Of 36 hectares, Bosch will keep six hectares, the rest is to be marketed,” reported Schwäbisch Gmünd’s spokesperson for economic development, Alexander Groll, in the municipal council in mid-October. Bosch will retain only the administrative and office buildings and a test track. The deputy chair of the works council, Andreas Reimer, claims to know nothing about this.
Bosch declares that the company aims to become competitive again through the job cuts. In order to reduce costs, production of steering systems for commercial vehicles is being relocated to Hungary–with the support of IG Metall.
Resistance to this policy and to the role of IG Metall, which millions of workers are currently experiencing first hand, has already erupted at Bosch in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The then deputy chair of the works council, Hüseyin Ekinci, refused to sign a confidentiality agreement and informed the workforce at a works meeting about the secret talks and plans of IG Metall, the works council and management. He was then voted out at the instigation of the works council, chaired by Claudio Bellomo.
Bosch works council rep Mustafa Simsek also opposed this. He accused some works council members of having learned of the downsizing plans from management months beforehand and having kept them secret. He reports that management had already met with works council members on November 5 and 12, 2024, and thus days before the downsizing plans were announced on November 22, including to discuss “the closure of plant II.” His questions at a works meeting as to the reasons for the secrecy were not answered by the official keepers of secrets.
Simsek said he was preparing the founding of a new trade union organisation in order to be able once again represent the interests of the workforce. The new organisation was already in the process of being founded and was to be active nationwide, he said. “We are thinking big and we intend to act big.” Around 200 employees were already involved; he expected many more: “We are going to see a rush. The movement has become an ‘avalanche’ that can no longer be stopped.”
Confidently, Simsek declared: “Many people’s patience has run out. Now the employees are organising themselves.” IG Metall had distanced itself from people’s concerns, “When a trade union loses its voice, the workers must raise their own.” The new “employees’ association” was “a warning call to the entire republic.” “What is happening here is a wake-up call for all employees in Germany: we must once again take our interests into our own hands,” he stressed. The association was to be open to everyone: “Origin, religion, political stance—that does not matter.”
Simsek has stood up to the apparatus and has therefore won support among workers. The response to his initiative shows the enormous anger over IG Metall’s role as a company police. This self-organisation of workers and rebellion against the apparatus are to be welcomed. But what is decisive is that it is really carried out by rank-and-file and does not become a new bureaucratic apparatus. It must be democratic, accountable and international in orientation.
It must be uncompromising. Jobs and wages, the livelihood of the working masses, must not become bargaining chips in order to secure the competitiveness, that is, the profits, of the company.
Simsek and his associates want to defend jobs “without compromise.” “We will not allow jobs here to be cut or relocated abroad quietly and secretly. We stand for the people here on the ground—and we do so resolutely,” says Simsek. But for “the people on the ground,” unity with people all over the world is absolutely essential. Jobs in commercial vehicle production, for example, cannot be defended without fellow workers in Hungary.
Workers—not only at Bosch—face challenges that go far beyond the previous forms of so-called representation within the framework of “social partnership.” Globalisation and the ability to relocate production to another corner of the earth at short notice have pulled the rug from under the unions’ feet. Under these conditions, their nationalist perspective—that of strengthening the competitiveness of their “own” company, because, according to trade union logic, only then can jobs be preserved—turns into the justification of boundless attacks. In global competition, the workforce in Germany is competing with that in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, China, Vietnam and so on. Thus, wages and working conditions in the poorest country become the worldwide benchmark.
On this basis, the unions agree to job cuts, wage reductions and worse working conditions. They play one site off against another, divide workers from their colleagues in other countries and boycott every serious resistance. And not only that. In the escalating international trade war, the unions also stand at the side of “their own” government.
In an article on the Europe-wide economic and political crisis, we recently wrote: “The unions also support their government’s respective war policies. Whereas the IG Metall union used to promote the slogan ‘swords to plowshares,’ it now advocates converting auto factories into tank factories.”
Despite all the personal corruption and degeneracy among the union officials, who sell themselves for lucrative posts on supervisory and management boards, their role as the extended arm of big shareholders and managers, as factory police ensuring calm and order in the workforce, is an expression of these objective developments.
The attempt to replace IG Metall while leaving the social framework untouched is therefore doomed to fail. Simsek says: “The works council was not elected to act as a puppet of the employer. Its task is to represent the interests of the workforce.”
That is not entirely correct. Even though works councils are not obliged to approve every dirty trick of the companies, their class collaboration is enshrined in law. Works councils were legally anchored by the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government under Friedrich Ebert after the November Revolution of 1918 as a response to the formation of workers’ and soldiers’ councils, modelled on the revolutionary soviets. The Works Constitution Act, which came into force in November 1952 and was fundamentally revised in January 1972, further anchored the class collaboration of the works councils.
The law obliges management and works council to “work together in a spirit of mutual trust” and to maintain confidentiality. It forbids the works council from calling for industrial action. Instead, it is required, once a month, “to negotiate contentious issues with a serious will to reach agreement and to make proposals for the settlement of differences of opinion.” (§ 74 para. 2 Works Constitution Act)
This legally regulated class collaboration is directed against the workers and against the defence of their interests through “measures of industrial struggle.”
The newly developing liberation of the workforce from the straitjacket of the unions is therefore a tremendous step forward. What is now necessary is a further bold step: firstly, the building of independent action committees that connect and unite the working masses across all sites, companies, sectors and national borders, so that they can successfully confront shareholders, banks and corporate owners.
