Political warfare deepens as Philippines holds midterm elections

John Malvar

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte arrives to cast her vote at a polling center in Davao City, southern Philippines, Monday, May 12, 2025. [AP Photo/Manman Dejeto]

On Monday, Filipinos voted in record high numbers in the country’s midterm election. Lines began forming outside of precincts at five in the morning and voters endured hours of sweltering heat to cast their ballots. It was universally understood that the stakes in this election were extraordinarily high, as the outcome could prove the tipping point in the fierce political standoff between the camps of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and former President Rodrigo Duterte.

At the time of writing this article, 80 percent of precincts had finished tallying their results. While many races remain uncertain, a majority are now clearly decided. The results leave the bitter political war unresolved, which in itself is a striking setback for Marcos.

The election was, for the ruling elite, a referendum on Philippine ties with its former colonial ruler, the United States. Marcos, son of the former dictator, took office in 2022 in an alliance with the powerful Duterte faction; his vice president and running mate was Sara Duterte, daughter of the former president. Rodrigo Duterte, president from 2016 to 2022, had during his term in office sought to stabilize economic relations with China by distancing Manila from Washington. He rescinded US military basing deals and downplayed Philippine claims to the South China Sea. Shortly after taking office, under intense pressure from the Biden administration, Marcos Jr reversed course, placing the Philippines at the forefront of Washington’s war drive against China and in the process breaking with Duterte.

The rival factions of Marcos and Duterte represent different layers of the Philippine ruling class. Marcos is shored up by older political clans with historic, colonial ties to the United States. They are the Manila elite. Duterte expresses the growing power of the elites of the provincial hinterlands, long resentful of the inadequate and Manila-centric infrastructure of the country. The forces behind Duterte see in Chinese infrastructure investment an opportunity to shore up their economic interests and political power. Securing such investment requires a break with the aggressive anti-China policies of US imperialism.

These tensions have deep roots. They were expressed to an extent in the presidency and ouster of Joseph Estrada around 2000. The possibility of Chinese investment as a solution to the problem of the hinterland elite, and an orientation to China as the economic future of the country, found initial expression in the second term of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from 2004–2010.

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr [AP Photo/Aaron Favila]

But while these tensions have been long boiling, it is the deeply destabilizing second term of Trump that has brought them to a fever pitch. How to deal with Washington has become the one great unavoidable question for the political establishment in capitals around the world.

An entirely different set of concerns brought the majority of the record number voters to the ballot box.

Rice prices, long the most fundamental bellwether of social anger, remain at more than double the price, 20 pesos a kilo, that the Marcos government pledged to achieve in 2022. Over a quarter of all Filipino families reported experiencing involuntary hunger in the past three months according a survey published in December 2024. More than 10 percent of the country’s population is compelled to seek employment as an overseas migrant worker in order to provide for their families. There is an immense popular resentment and hostility that found confused and distorted expression in the midterm vote.

Rodrigo Duterte, heading up the opposition slate to Marcos, repeatedly attacked the president for his inability to control rice prices. More than any other factor, this plank won votes.

However, the rival factions of the ruling elite agree on one thing: they are prepared to use any means to suppress this growing social opposition. While they are torn apart by geopolitics, both factions—the far-right populism of Duterte and the dictatorial pedigree of Marcos—represent the imminent danger of authoritarian rule.

Marcos aggressively prosecuted the midterm election as political warfare. He arranged the arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte to stand trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He pushed through the last-minute impeachment of his Vice President Sara Duterte. He whipped up a war-fever against China, denouncing his rivals as stooges of China and made baseless claims of Chinese meddling and espionage in the election.

While half of Philippine governance, town councils, mayors, governors, congressional representatives are all up for grabs in the election, it is on the Senate race that all eyes are fixed. Senators are elected by the entire nation, the top 12 vote-winners take office. The composition of the incoming Senate will determine the political fate of Sara Duterte. Marcos needs a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate, where Duterte’s trial will be held, to secure a conviction, removing Duterte from office and banning her from running in the future.

The preliminary results show that Marcos has not secured sufficient votes to confidently carry out the removal of the vice president from office.

From his prison cell in The Hague, Rodrigo Duterte ran to be mayor of Davao, the southern city that has for decades been his base of power. He was elected in a landslide. His son, Sebastian, won the vice mayoral race and will likely rule in his father’s stead.

Bong Go and Ronald dela Rosa, the foremost allies of Duterte, currently stand at first and third in the Senate race. Go has received nearly five million votes more than the second candidate. Go is a political cipher, a man with no particular personality or platform. His entire identity is as the right-hand man of Rodrigo Duterte. Dela Rosa was the head of the police under Duterte and more than any other figure was directly responsible for the conduct of the murderous war on drugs that landed the former president in The Hague.

The overseas absentee ballots, overwhelmingly the vote of migrant workers, showed an even stronger backing for the Duterte slate. Not a single Marcos candidate made it into the top twelve of the overseas vote.

The intimate allies of Marcos—Benhur Abalos and Francis Tolentino—have not placed. It is plausible, although unlikely, that Abalos will still make it into the top 12, but the current Senate majority leader Tolentino, who made his political career out of attacking China, fell millions of votes short.

Beyond Abalos and Tolentino, the rest of the Marcos slate was a conjunctural and opportunist alliance. This alliance will hold if Marcos holds power. But the majority of the Marcos slate will defect to the Duterte camp if they sense a change in the winds of power. This process was already underway during the election. Camille Villar, daughter of real estate billionaires, part of the Marcos slate, shifted into the camp of Duterte during the election and campaigned with Sara Duterte.

The Liberal Party, which has been in decline for nearly a decade, experienced something of a resurrection. Its candidates, Bam Aquino and Francisco Pangilinan, both secured seats in the Senate. Its pseudo-left political ally, Akbayan, received a record number of votes, 2.2 million at current count, placing higher than any other party-list organization. In the 2022, Akbayan received a mere 236,000 votes.

The unexpected victory of the Liberal Party-Akbayan tandem expressed a broad sentiment among voters to break free of the Marcos-Duterte rivalry. Throughout the election these two dominant factions were popularly referred to as Team Kadiliman (Darkness) and Team Kasamaan (Evil). The Liberal Party ran a campaign focused on food prices and promised good governance to remedy the country’s economic woes. Pangilinan had been food security secretary under the Benigno Aquino III administration.

While the vote for the Liberal Party is, in terms of mass sentiment, a sharp repudiation of both the Marcos and Duterte camps, its gains will likely be a consolidation in the Marcos wing. The allegiance of the Liberal Party has always been with Washington. The Liberal Party administration of Benigno Aquino III (2010–16), of which Akbayan was an integral component, aggressively prosecuted US interests against China.

Support for the Makabayan organizations, the various party-list groups that follow the political line of the Stalinist National Democratic Front, collapsed. Bayan Muna is poised to win less than 200,000 votes. It is likely to the first election in which these organizations fail to win a single seat.

The political crisis in Manila will only deepen in the wake of the election. The Trump administration poses major threats to the Philippine economy with the possible mass deportation of Filipinos, resulting in a huge decline in remittances, and the unresolved issue of US tariffs on imports from the Philippines. An economic slowdown will only fuel infighting in ruling circles as well as political unrest as the social crisis facing millions of working people worsens.

Kurdish Workers Party dissolves itself amid deepening war in the Middle East

Ulaş Ateşçi & Barış Demir

At its 12th Congress, convened between May 5 and 7, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced its decision to dissolve and end its armed struggle.

Founded in 1978, the PKK launched an armed struggle in 1984 with the aim of establishing an independent Kurdish state, but long ago abandoned this demand. Since 1984, the conflict with the Turkish state has left tens of thousands of people, mostly Kurds, dead and millions displaced.

PKK supporters in London, 2003. [Photo by Juan Pablo Arancibia Medina / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The decision follows a process that began with a call on October 22 by Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Bahçeli said that Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, could be released and permitted to address parliament if he announced that the PKK had been dismantled.

Following negotiations with a delegation from the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), Öcalan called on the PKK to lay down its arms and dissolve itself on February 27. Proposing “integration with the state”, he effectively declared his party’s historical and political bankruptcy.

In the congress’s final declaration, the PKK Congress Board stated:

“The Extraordinary 12th Congress evaluated that the PKK’s struggle has dismantled the policies of denial and annihilation imposed on our people, bringing the Kurdish issue to a point where it can be resolved through democratic politics. It concluded that the PKK has fulfilled its historical mission. Based on this, the 12th Congress resolved to dissolve the PKK’s organizational structure and end the armed struggle, with the implementation process to be managed and led by Leader Apo [Abdullah Öcalan]. All activities conducted under the PKK name have therefore been concluded.

The final declaration also stated:

Leader Apo, by referring to the period before the Treaty of Lausanne and the 1924 Constitution, where Kurdish-Turkish relations became problematic, proposed a framework for resolving the Kurdish issue based on the Democratic Republic of Turkey and the concept of a Democratic Nation, founded on the idea of a Common Homeland and co-founding peoples. The Kurdish uprisings throughout the history of the Republic, the 1000-year Kurdish-Turkish dialectic, and 52 years of leadership struggle have shown that the Kurdish issue can only be resolved based on a Common Homeland and Equal Citizenship.

This nationalist perspective neither explains anything, nor offers a way forward. The so-called “Common Homeland” and “Equal Citizenship” are merely reiterations of the failed notion of reforming or democratising the existing bourgeois nation-state. In reality, the Turkish bourgeoisie is no less incapable of and opposed to the establishing of a genuinely democratic regime than it was in 1923, when the Turkish Republic was founded. The same structural impotence and counter-revolutionary class position applies to the Kurdish bourgeoisie.

As Leon Trotsky, who led the 1917 October Revolution together with Vladimir Lenin, explained in his Theory of Permanent Revolution, the bourgeoisie in the backward capitalist countries is incapable of solving the fundamental tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution, such as securing independence from imperialism and establishing a democratic regime, in the face of the growing threat from the working class. These tasks fall to the international working class, which is the only social force capable of abolishing the national borders and capitalist system that reproduce all relations of oppression and persecution in the direction of the bourgeoisie’s domination.

Today the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisies are tied to imperialism by a thousand threads and its hostility to the threat of socialist revolution by the working class eclipses that of a century ago. Moreover, the Turkish bourgeoisie, which a century ago was incapable of a democratic solution to the Kurdish question, will always tend to see the large Kurdish population inside the country as a “separatist threat” under conditions of an imperialist war of redistribution aimed at redrawing the maps in the Middle East, no matter what kind of agreement is reached with the Kurdish bourgeoisie.

Workers and youth will welcome the end of a bloody war that has cost thousands of lives, served to divide the working class on ethnic grounds and been used by the state as a pretext to suppress democratic rights. However, it is essential to expose the underlying process that led the PKK to dissolve itself and the falsity of its claims of “democracy and peace”.

Ankara’s and the PKK’s claims of democracy and peace come against the backdrop of the consolidation of a presidential dictatorship in Turkey that has eliminated basic democratic rights and the escalation of the Gaza genocide in the Middle East. Accelerated by Trump’s return to power in the US, these trends are global phenomena stemming from the growing crisis of the capitalist system. Thousands of political prisoners are currently in jail; in recent months elected mayors of the DEM Party and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) have been dismissed and arrested, and millions of people denied the right to vote and be elected.

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate for the CHP, is the most significant example of a political arrest in the midst of “peace and democracy” negotiations between Ankara and the PKK. Erdoğan himself had hinted that Imamoğlu would be targeted, despite the allegations of corruption levelled against him not requiring arrest. The main reason for his arrest was that Imamoğlu was ahead of Erdoğan in the latest presidential polls.

Claiming that a regime which violates basic democratic rights, such as fair trials, the right to vote and be elected, freedom of expression and the press, and freedom of assembly, can lead a great democratisation is a deception.

Moreover, the same regime, in line with the reactionary interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie, is deeply involved in the US-led imperialist wars in the Middle East. And therein lies the key to the attempt to reach an agreement between the Erdoğan government and the Öcalan-led PKK. As stated in the final declaration of the PKK congress: “Current developments in the Middle East within the scope of World War III also make the restructuring of Kurdish-Turkish relations inevitable.”

PKK's imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan (middle) and DEM Party delegation on İmralı Island, Thursday, February 27, 2025. [Photo: DEMGenelMerkezi on X/Twitter]

The PKK’s decision to dissolve itself came at a time when all imperialist powers and capitalist states are waging wars for the redivision of the world that could surpass the two world wars of the twentieth century.

The US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine has brought the whole world to the brink of nuclear conflict. The Trump administration has declared a program of global conquest and hegemony targeting both China and its own allies. The US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza is deepening with the implementation of Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan to expel more than two million Palestinians. Regime change in Syria has the potential for a new conflict pitting the occupying allies, Turkey and Israel, against each other and various other forces in the country.

A comment in the Middle East Eye on Öcalan’s call in February stated, “Many insiders in Ankara believe the government’s motivation for engaging in talks with Öcalan is linked to escalating regional tensions between Israel and Iran.”

The US is using Israel as a spearhead in its imperialist plans for domination in the Middle East, particularly targeting Iran and its allies. As Israel has expanded its occupation of Syria and launched air strikes on the military infrastructure of the new Damascus regime, its rivalry with its ally Turkey, which occupies northwest Syria and has close ties with the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) regime, has sharpened.

The declaration by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar that the Kurds in Syria are “natural allies” has raised concerns in Ankara. The People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish nationalist group allied with US forces in Syria, is affiliated with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a sister organisation of the PKK. Ankara is trying to bring the YPG forces, which lead a de facto autonomous administration in Syria, to an agreement with HTS, thus making them part of the Syrian army and putting an end to their autonomous structure.

This geopolitical situation is the main shaper of the agreement between Ankara and the PKK. At the beginning of the process, last October, Erdoğan said: “While the maps are being redrawn in blood, while the war that Israel has waged from Gaza to Lebanon is approaching our borders, we are trying to strengthen our internal front.”

An agreement between the Turkish and Kurdish elites, both US allies, facilitates Washington’s imperialist domination plans. The Trump administration’s main focus now will be on aligning Israel and Turkey in the Middle East under the leadership of US imperialism, especially against Iran and its allies.

Republicans move forward with plan to cut an estimated $715 billion in Medicaid funding

Jacob Crosse

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) speaking as President Trump listens. [AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee]

In a massive attack on the working class, on Sunday, House Republicans confirmed that their main proposal for offsetting some of their planned $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and mega-corporations will come in the form of at least $880 billion in cuts to social programs, centered on Medicaid.

Medicaid is a vital social program and the principal insurer for the elderly and youth in the US, providing healthcare coverage for nearly 60 percent of all nursing home residents. The US government spent $618 billion on the Medicaid program in 2024—less than Social Security, Medicare or the US war budget.

As of 2024, roughly 37 percent of Medicaid enrollees were children under the age of 19. Medicaid coverage is even higher among the poor, with over 8 in 10 children in poverty covered by the program, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicaid also provides coverage for millions of non-elderly adults, who are paid poverty wages, as well as those with and without disabilities.

The 160-page proposal released Sunday night by the House Energy and Commerce Committee mandates cutting $715 billion from Medicaid over the next decade, resulting in an estimated 8.7 million people losing coverage this year and an additional 7.6 million more uninsured people over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Currently, some 71.3 million people—roughly one in five Americans—are enrolled in Medicaid.

The proposal is part of an ongoing effort by Republicans to push through the annual budget without support from the Democratic Party, in a process known as reconciliation. President Donald Trump has called for “one big beautiful bill” that will include making his 2017 tax cuts permanent and cuts to Medicaid.

Medicaid was created in 1965 as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” agenda, which included the Medicare Act—together known as the Social Security Amendments of 1965. Medicare provided health insurance for persons aged 65 and older, while Medicaid provided health insurance for the poor.

These programs were created in response to upheavals from workers in the 1930s and the strike waves in the 1940s and 1950s. Terrified of social upheaval at home and the challenge posed by the Russian Revolution, the US ruling class gave up a portion of its unearned wealth to temporarily save its historically bankrupt system.

Prior to 1965, healthcare coverage for the elderly and poor workers in capitalist America was extremely limited; the 1950 census showed that two-thirds of older Americans—8 million people—had incomes of less than $1,000 annually, and only 8 percent of seniors had hospital insurance in 1950.

After Medicaid was signed into law, healthcare coverage was extended to millions of low-income children, their parents, the elderly and the disabled. By 1968, nearly 20 million people were enrolled in the program. In addition to providing access to hospitals and physicians for the poor, the program hastened desegregation in the South—in order to receive funding from the federal government, hospital facilities were required to comply with civil rights laws.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress increased federal funding to the program, allowing people to remain continuously enrolled, leading to around 94 million people receiving some coverage as of 2023.

As part of the ruling class’s normalization of mass death and infection from COVID-19, that year the federal emergency for COVID-19 was ended, and the federal government began disenrolling millions of eligible people, including children. In roughly a year, 20 million people were kicked off the program as part of the “great unwinding” of Medicaid under the Biden administration.

As of 2025, over a decade after its passage, 40 states and the District of Columbia had implemented Medicaid expansion, while 10 states had not. The cuts proposed in the Republican plan would not only halt any expansion but result in some 8.7 million more uninsured Americans over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

The proposed cuts are not in the form of actual reductions in benefits but in mandating work requirements and updating renewal periods, both of which will lead to kicking people off the program, leaving them with no coverage.

In a section titled “Increasing Personal Accountability,” the bill requires able-bodied recipients to participate in “community engagement compliance” to receive insurance. This requires individuals to engage in “80 hours” of “work,” a “work program,” “community service” or be enrolled in an educational program “at least half-time.”

Work requirement rules have already been instituted by some states. In 2018, Arkansas implemented work requirement rules for Medicaid beneficiaries in their 30s and 40s. Despite 95 percent of the population meeting the work requirements, over 17,000 people have lost their benefits since the program was implemented. This is due in large part to the Byzantine system the government requires people to use to properly report their work. Medicaid enrollees without access to the internet are especially vulnerable to removal.

Another aspect of the bill aimed at denying people insurance is a new requirement that recipients must go through “eligibility redeterminations” every six months, as opposed to once a year. Like the “work requirements” benefit, eligible people will be removed from the program due to bureaucratic hurdles purposely placed in their path.

Keeping in line with Trump’s fascist attacks on immigrants, the bill would reduce federal funding to states that provide Medicaid coverage to immigrants and their beneficiaries without verified citizenship or immigration status.

The bill also prohibits using Medicaid funding to provide “coverage of gender transition procedures as an essential health benefit.”

In addition to Medicaid, the bill proposes amending the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to block immigrants from accessing the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In 2023, over 42 million people participated in SNAP monthly, although it is unclear how many were non-citizens, refugees and green card holders.

At this point, it is unclear if the exact proposal revealed will become law. Several House Republicans and Senate Republicans have already voiced their opposition to the bill, with fascist Senator Josh Hawley warning in a New York Times opinion piece that backing the current iteration of the bill is “politically suicidal.”

In his own op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (Republican) proposed going back to a two-bill reconciliation process, with the first bill centered on funding Trump’s border police expansion, military expenditures and social cuts, with the follow-up bill focused on extending “current tax law to prevent the automatic 2026 increase.”

As Republicans prepare to enact one of the largest transfers of wealth in recent memory, Democrats are predictably doing nothing to stop the onslaught. In a post on her X account Tuesday, New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called on her 13 million followers to “Hit the phones to save Medicaid.”

She wrote that Republicans “on the committee are in tight districts. Call + pressure ARE effective here.”

Trump and the increasingly fascist Republican Party will not be swayed by calls or postcards. Decades of billions spent on imperialist war and bank bailouts for the oligarchy must be paid for one way or another. Seeking to extricate itself from $36 trillion in debt, the US ruling class is cutting social programs and pumping up the military budget in preparation for a “strategic conflict” against its rivals, chiefly China.

The origins of wealth inequality as reflected in the archaeological record

Philip Guelpa

A newly published study (“Economic inequality is fueled by population scale, land-limited production, and settlement hierarchies across the archaeological record,” PNAS, April 14, 2025) provides insight into the initial rise of class societies across the world. Using data from 1,100 archaeological sites from Europe, Asia and the Americas, the researchers trace the beginnings of wealth inequality back to over 10,000 years ago, millennia before the first major civilizations (e.g., Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Maya). The study elucidates some of the primary factors in the transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer social groups to early farming societies in which indications of wealth and status differentiation can be discerned. 

The initial processes that eventually led to the emergence of class societies (although the word “class” does not appear anywhere in the PNAS article) began to appear during the last stages of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene (the post-glacial period in which we have lived for approximately the last 10,000 years). Since there are no written records from those times, the researchers employ a proxy data set—dwelling sizes—specifically the in-ground footprint of structures which are the usual housing remnants, if any, found in archaeological sites. No standing buildings survive from the time period in question. The study gathered data from over 47,000 residential structure remains, documented at 1,100 archaeological sites from around the world. The large sample size alone gives a degree of confidence in the study’s results. 

The study identifies several commonalities in the initial emergence of economic inequality: 

Growth of wealth differences among households has been a long-term though not universal trend in the Holocene. Marked increases typically lagged plant domestication by 1,000 y[ears] or more and were tightly linked to development of hierarchies of settlement size and land-limited production. We infer that the social upscaling (growth of polities in population and area) that typically began one to two millennia after agriculture became locally common, and continued in some areas throughout the Holocene, interfered with traditional leveling mechanisms including enforcement of egalitarian norms.

In general, in egalitarian societies the dwelling sizes of constituent family groups tend to be similar at any given settlement, reflecting a general equality in economic and social status. As wealth and social stratification developed, the study found that differences in dwelling sizes begin to appear. As societies become more complex, the number of levels of dwelling sizes increases, reflecting the different levels of social stratification. 

A significant observation resulting from this study is that the process of differentiation becomes noticeable roughly one to two millennia after the advent of agriculture, the pace of which varies in different parts of the world. The inference is that the factors driving social stratification were not an immediate consequence of the initial forms of agriculture, which were likely little more than plant tending, weeding and other such practices to favor the growth of targeted plant resources.

Indeed, other archaeologists have hypothesized that agriculture originated in societies with what is labeled “harvesting economies.” These are characterized by the presence of multiple naturally occurring food resources which happened to be located in close proximity to each other, together providing a complete diet. Such settings allowed more or less permanent settlement at a single location, or perhaps two seasonally alternating locations, as opposed to the more typical hunter-gatherer pattern of migration between multiple, temporary settlements to exploit spatially dispersed resources. The latter pattern necessitated light, easily transportable and flexible material culture. 

In egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies, the relatively simple technology and more or less equal access to wild food resources means that each family group is on relatively equal footing with every other in a given community. Therefore, no individual or small group can control access to necessary resources for other members of the community. Social distinctions are primarily based on age and sex. Leadership positions, to the extent they exist, are based on the assent of other members of the social group. As a result, dwelling sizes of the members of a given group tend to be similar. 

By contrast, the more sedentary occupation pattern of harvesting economies made the investment of labor to improve the conditions of favored plant species economically rewarding, as well as the development of specialized technology for the efficient exploitation of such resources. Among the latter was the advantage gained through the use of food processing and storage technologies which allowed for the long-term availability of larger amounts of food resources beyond the immediate time of harvest. 

In addition, the more stable settlement locations of groups with harvesting economies and the increased reliability of stored food resources encouraged population growth. This set up a positive feedback (i.e., self-reenforcing) loop. The growing population necessitated an increase in the food supplies, promoting expansion and intensification of agriculture, leading to the development of domesticated plants, improvements in technology, and over time the development of a division of labor. 

As the authors of the study point out, a key limiting factor for such emerging agricultural groups was the availability of arable land. Competition over rights to this limited resource both promoted innovations to increase productivity, such as irrigation, drainage, and terracing, but also inevitably led to conflicts and social tensions which necessitated adjudication by a “higher authority.” The increasing complexity of these technologies and the need to organize large labor forces for their construction, including individuals with specialized knowledge, required the development of administrative roles. 

Another administrative need was the control over and allocation of stored food and other resources. The combination of these factors tended, in areas where such intensification was possible, to a greater need for administrative roles, usually based on the leaders of kinship groups. Since not all land is equally productive, differences in prosperity and wealth would eventually emerge. This tended to lead to the development of hierarchical relationships within and between kin groups. In other words, class differences.

Tikal – An ancient Mayan city in Central America. Mayan society is thought to have collapsed from a combination of environmental stress and class conflict.

Another significant factor in the relative pace of developing economic inequality within regions suggested by the study’s authors, although difficult to verify archaeologically, is resistance by some members of a social group to their loss of independence and to the assertion of control by those in the upper levels of the emerging hierarchy. In some societies, even in the recent past, behaviors known as “leveling mechanisms,” such as redistribution and ostracism, functioned to put restraint on incipient social stratification.

In egalitarian societies, a method of social control was the expulsion of members of a community who fell afoul of social norms (i.e., ostracism). As wealth differentiation grew in agricultural societies, attempts to remove offending individuals would have become more difficult. In some societies, social pressure growing from kinship relations imposed requirements for those in leadership roles to distribute some of the food and other resources over which they exercised control to the lower levels of the group in order to validate their qualifications to hold the leadership position. As levels of inequality increased, the enforcement of such practices would have become more difficult. 

The article goes on to provide a great deal of fine-grained statistical analysis of some of the factors relevant to explaining regional variations in the pace and specific characteristics of the development of social hierarchies. 

Overall, the study concludes that, “Worldwide there is pervasive though not universal evidence for increasing economic inequality some 1,500 y[ears] after plant domestication became locally common (somewhat later in Europe, somewhat earlier in Asia).” Furthermore, “We present strong evidence that a pervasive reworking of settlement structure, partly preceded by, but also accompanying, shifts to more land-intensive strategies of subsistence, together contributed to increasing wealth inequality worldwide. These processes began and had their most important effects on inequality well before writing.”

India’s suspension of Indus Waters Treaty escalates threat of all-out war with Pakistan

Sampath Perera

A Kashmiri villager stands outside his damaged house after overnight shelling from Pakistan at Gingal village in Uri, Indian controlled Kashmir, Friday, May 9, 2025. [AP Photo/Dar Yasin]

The threat of all-out war between India and Pakistan—South Asia’s rival nuclear-armed capitalist powers—continues to rise following New Delhi’s illegal air strikes on the night of May 6-7 against targets in Pakistan and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.

Exchanges of artillery and mortar fire across the countries’ disputed border have erupted every night since. Both of the reactionary communalist regimes have accused the other of launching major attacks across the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistan-held Kashmir and, respectively, in India and Pakistan proper.

Although little commented on in the western media, a key factor in the escalation of tensions is the Indian government’s provocative decision to suspend its participation in the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

New Delhi announced the suspension on April 23, less than 24 hours after a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir for which it immediately declared Islamabad responsible.  

By threatening a resource vital to Pakistan’s economy, New Delhi effectively closed off avenues for de-escalation in a region already reeling from decades of imperialist intervention and the whipping up of communalism by New Delhi and Islamabad.

Predictably, Pakistani political leaders responded with bellicose threats of their own. Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the treaty’s suspension a “declaration of war,” while Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the Chairman of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) told an April 25 rally, “The Indus is ours and will remain ours—either our water will flow through it, or their blood.”

If not rapidly rescinded, the suspension of the treaty risks to have catastrophic consequences for the economy and the people of Pakistan, with the brunt of any disruption or interruption of the Indus’ water flow falling on the country’s tens of millions of impoverished workers and toilers. The vast majority of Pakistan’s agriculture and a significant portion of the country’s electricity generation depend upon water from the Indus.

“Now, India’s water will flow for India’s benefit, it will be conserved for India’s benefit, and it will be used for India’s progress,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday, as Indian fighter jets were preparing to mount cross-border attacks deep inside Pakistan under the cover of darkness. Modi did not name Pakistan when he proclaimed that “India’s water” “will no longer flow outside,” but his target was obvious.

India’s suspension of the IWT, which came into force in 1960, is unprecedented. Despite having fought two declared wars, several undeclared wars, and countless border skirmishes with Pakistan over the past 65 years, never before has New Delhi suspended the treaty.

For now, Islamabad is reportedly preparing to challenge the IWT’s suspension at the Permanent Court of Arbitration or at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, on the basis that New Delhi has violated the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It is also considering raising the issue before the United Nations Security Council.

India’s move was far from an impulsive retaliation. New Delhi has threatened to withdraw from the treaty since at least 2016.

India’s weaponization of water scarcity in Pakistan is part of a concerted attempt by India’s Narendra Modi-led Hindu supremacist government to “change the rules” in New Delhi’s relationship with Islamabad—and all with the aim of establishing India as the regional hegemon.

In doing so, the Indian bourgeoisie seeks to assert its “right” to flout established norms of bilateral treaties and international law. Such an aggressive course of action, however, is hardly conceivable outside of its “global strategic partnership” with the United States. The US has neither condemned India’s air strikes on targets in Pakistan or Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, nor criticised New Delhi’s decision to abandon the IWT.

Washington previously emboldened New Delhi by supporting its cross-border “surgical strikes” on Pakistan in 2016 and 2019. After Indian air strikes went ahead on Tuesday after prolonged speculation that an attack was imminent, Trump and top officials in his administration issued only the most general remarks expressing their hope that the conflict would be “resolved.”

For more than two decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, Washington has sought to build up India as a counterweight to China, while ensuring, in partnership with New Delhi, US dominance over the Indian Ocean—whose sea lanes are critical to China’s access to resources and trade with the world.

As part of its drive to harness India to its military-strategic offensive against China, US imperialism has dramatically downgraded its strategic ties with Pakistan, its former Cold War ally, shifting the balance of power in the region in India’s favour. In response, Pakistan has doubled down on its “all-weather” strategic partnership with China, further antagonizing Washington and New Delhi.

An opinion column in the widely read Pakistani English-language daily Dawn captured the bleak geopolitical prospects for Islamabad in a commentary by Khurram Husain: “Pakistan has not succeeded in getting India to reverse its steps of 2019, through which it absorbed the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir into its federation. It now faces the uphill challenge of getting India to return to its commitments under the IWT.”

Map of the Indus River basin with tributaries labeled. Yellow regions are non-contributing parts of the watershed (e.g. the Thar Desert). [Photo by Keenan Pepper / CC BY-SA 4.0]

The IWT—brokered by the World Bank after the 1947 communal partition of the subcontinent into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India had territorially divided the Indus river basin—was designed to avert conflict over its waters. The agreement allocated approximately 80 percent of the Indus system’s water to Pakistan, granting it control over the Chenab and Jhelum tributaries and the main stem of the Indus. India retained rights over the eastern tributaries of the Indus—the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers.

India was also permitted limited, non-consumptive use of the western rivers, primarily for run-of-the-river hydroelectric projects that did not involve significant storage or diversion. It was obliged, however, to share detailed information on any planned projects on the western rivers, and Pakistan was entitled to raise objections if it believed a project would threaten its water supply.

When India announced it was suspending its participation in the IWT, it was widely assumed that India’s lack of major infrastructure would prevent any immediate disruption to Pakistan’s water supply. However, this assumption has proven at least partially incorrect. According to unnamed Indian officials cited by Reuters, India can now “stop sharing crucial information and data on release of water from barrages/dams or on flooding,” and “will also not be obliged to release minimum amounts of water during the lean season.” Others confirmed that India could divert water “within months” for its own agricultural needs.

On May 5, Reuters reported that India has begun work to increase reservoir holding capacity at two hydroelectric projects among several in Kashmir situated on rivers allocated to Pakistan. This effort began with “reservoir flushing,” a process that releases sediment-laden water downstream, potentially causing sudden inundation, followed by a reduced flow as the reservoirs are refilled. According to Reuters, such operations were previously constrained by the treaty’s requirements.

Reuters further reported on May 6 that the Modi government has “advanced the start date of four under-construction hydropower projects in the Kashmir region by months” after suspending the IWT. All four projects are built on the Chenab, and Reuters noted that the construction of these were generally opposed by Pakistan. As it rapidly advances to disrupt the IWT settlement, New Delhi has made it clear that it is determined to deprive Pakistan of its Indus water lifeline.

The total population living in the Indus basin is estimated at roughly 300 million, the overwhelming majority of whom are in Pakistan. According to some estimates, 90 percent of Pakistan’s population depends on the Indus. Its most populous province, Punjab, lies entirely within the drainage area of the Indus, as does Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while most of Sindh and eastern Baluchistan also fall within the basin. So vast is the dependence on the Indus that 80 percent of Pakistan’s cultivated land relies on its water, accounting for nearly 25 percent of the country’s GDP.

The strain on the Indus system is further illustrated by the increase in Pakistan’s population—from 34 million in 1951, just a few years prior to the IWT’s signing, to over 240 million today. According to Pakistan’s Population Census Organization, per capita water availability dropped from 5,260 cubic meters in 1951 to 2,129 cubic meters in 1981, 1,611 cubic meters in 1991, and 908 cubic meters in 2016.

In 2020, the United Nations Development Programme projected that some 207 million people in Pakistan will face “absolute scarcity” of water, with less than 500 cubic meters available per person by 2025, effectively turning Pakistan from a “water-stressed” into a “water-scarce” country. The situation is exacerbated by climate change. Accelerated glacial melt in the Himalayas, while causing devastating floods in the near term, will rapidly lead to lower summer water supply to the Indus.

The impact on Pakistan’s population that depends on Indus water does not stop at the estimated 43.5 percent of the labour force that works in agriculture. Water scarcity is a significant contributor to worsening food security in the crisis-ridden country. According to the World Food Program, “82 percent of the population cannot afford a healthy diet.”

The social consequences of an all-out war for India and Pakistan’s 1.7 billion people is a matter of utter indifference to both of the reactionary bourgeois regimes involved, to say nothing of the imperialist powers. According to the UNDP’s latest Global Multi-Dimensional Poverty index, released in October 2024, India and Pakistan are the two countries worldwide with the largest populations (234 million and 93 million respectively) living in acute multidimensional poverty. This means they frequently lack adequate housing, sanitation, nutrition, cooking fuel, electricity, and the opportunity to attend school.

New Delhi’s abrogation of the IWT is a step from which it is hard to back down, all the more so given the reliance of the BJP government on the hawkish, rabidly right-wing Hindutva forces it has rallied around the “strongman” posture of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, especially against Muslim Pakistan. “We will ensure no drop of the Indus River’s water reaches Pakistan,” India’s water resources minister, Chandrakant Raghunath Paatil, gleefully declared on X.

Even if the current clashes stop short of triggering a full-scale war, India’s disruption of Indus water flows to Pakistan is set to exacerbate the long-lasting conflict between the two countries and have a disastrous impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of workers and rural poor. In response to India’s US-bolstered military buildup and its own  growing conventional military vulnerabilities, Pakistan has repeatedly threatened to deploy its nuclear arsenal. Speaking in the hours after India’s initial attack on Pakistan this week, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned that were India to “impose an all-out war on the region … then at any time a nuclear war can break out.”

Kenyan filmmakers arrested in crackdown over BBC exposé of Gen-Z massacre

Kipchumba Ochieng

Kenyan filmmakers Nicholas Gichuki, Brian Adagala, Mark Denver Karubiu, and Chris Wamae, were arrested in Nairobi May 2, for their alleged involvement with the BBC’s documentary Blood Parliament.

The arrests were made without formal charges or warrants, indicating that the government of President William Ruto, now in alliance with the former opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) led by billionaire Raila Odinga, is escalating mass repression prior to the one-year anniversary of the Gen-Z uprising.

Blood Parliament (screenshot from BBC website [Photo: Screenshot from bbc.co.uk]

Blood Parliament depicts the Kenyan bourgeoisie’s violent response to the largest youth-led uprising in the country since independence. Released by BBC Africa Eye and available on YouTube, it centres on June 25, 2024, when at least 100,000 protesters gathered in Nairobi to oppose the Finance Bill aiming to raise $2.7 billion. The bill imposed sweeping new taxes on essential goods, including bread, cooking oil, sanitary products, and fuel, amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

State repression left at least 65 people dead across the country and hundreds injured. Thousands were arrested. Dozens more were abducted, never to be seen again. Ongoing investigations, led by the misnamed Independent Policing Oversight Authority, have never been made public and are whitewashes.

Using open-source intelligence and more than 5,000 crowd-sourced images and videos, the BBC identified security personnel who opened fire on unarmed protesters outside Parliament. The investigation singles out not only the officers who pulled the trigger, killing at least three young men, but also senior commanders who issued the shoot-to-kill orders.

Crucially, the documentary reveals that the first killings did not occur when protesters momentarily stormed the parliament fence, but afterward, once they had been pushed out and were retreating. Far from being acts of chaotic self-defence, it shows senior police officers ordering “kuua, kuua” (“kill, kill” in Kiswahili), as officers cover themselves with masks before firing live ammunition.

Galvanised by the killings, protesters then stormed Parliament, breaching the compound and setting parts of the building alight. After just five minutes, they withdrew. As the crowds dispersed, a member of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) opened fire again on retreating demonstrators, killing at least one and injuring two others.

This revelation implicates the military in the bloodshed, even before it was formally deployed by the Ruto government the following day. It breaks Kenya’s longstanding “pact of silence” surrounding its military, which the ruling class protects against public scrutiny regarding its role in domestic political repression and violence abroad, particularly in Somalia.

Drawing on ballistic evidence, CCTV footage and eyewitness testimony, the documentary reveals that officers were given explicit shoot-to-kill orders. This is corroborated by forensic analysis and survivor accounts, painting a picture of a deliberate and coordinated massacre.

The documentary fails to explicitly indict Ruto and the government for the killings. Kenya’s police have a long history of acting with impunity, repeatedly implicated in extrajudicial killings, torture, and disappearances, particularly against social opposition to austerity, corruption and soaring costs of living. The year before, anti-austerity protests led by the opposition were violently suppressed, leaving at least 31 people dead and injured hundreds. No serious reckoning has ever taken place.

It also pays no attention to the role of imperialist powers. Behind closed doors, Washington, London, and European capitals alongside the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were working with Ruto. Their concern was not Kenyan lives, but the risk that the protests could destabilise its key regional ally and capitalist regimes across the continent. They advised Ruto to temporarily withdraw the Finance Bill and stagger the imposition of austerity measures to defuse public anger, while continuing to fund and train the military and police.

Ruto (left) with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on May 9, 2023 [Photo by Haim Zach/Government Press Office of Israel / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Ruto complied, while leaving the austerity agenda firmly in place, with new measures included in the 2025 Finance Bill set to be unveiled on Tuesday.

The BBC has denied that the arrested individuals were involved in the production of the film, stating that they were not staff, crew, or contributors. Nevertheless, authorities detained them, seized their equipment, and subjected them to interrogations.

The arrests are a naked attempt to intimidate journalists and suppress further dissemination of the documentary’s findings. Just days earlier, police shut down a planned screening of the documentary and accompanying panel discussion at Unseen Nairobi cinema.

Despite official censorship, Blood Parliament was viewed over five million times on YouTube within just five days of its release. The total audience is likely even larger, as many have watched it in groups. Hashtags like #BloodParliament and #FreeTheFour have trended for days, with many users demanding justice for the slain protesters, the removal of the Ruto government and an end to police brutality.

Government spokesman Isaac Mwaura said the documentary risked “inciting Kenyans to violence”. Several lawmakers joined a coordinated campaign to discredit the film. George Peter Kaluma said it risked “destabilising” the country. John Kiarie accused the BBC of harbouring “a foreign agenda”, adding, “We must ask whether this is BBC journalism or the voice of British foreign policy. Kenya cannot be lectured by a country whose own soldiers have committed atrocities on our soil.”

ODM lawmaker Peter Kaluma also condemned the BBC, calling for its Africa bureau’s operating licence to be revoked and denouncing the documentary as “twisted, partial, reckless, and intended to incite chaos in Kenya.”

That the BBC is the official voice of British imperialism, cloaked in a fiction of neutrality, is beyond dispute. But Kiarie, and the rest of the Kenyan political class, are stooges of imperialism. The politicians denouncing the BBC have signed defence cooperation agreements to maintain British military bases in Kenya, while Ruto himself paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth II, the monarch who presided over the brutal suppression of the anti-colonial Mau Mau uprising that left hundreds of thousands dead. Britain remains Kenya’s largest European investor, a key donor of development aid, and a strategic partner in military and counterterrorism operations.

ODM Senator Edwin Sifuna defended the documentary, insisting it contained no “fabrications.” But Sifuna remains part of a ruling coalition responsible for the very atrocities the documentary exposes.

In the run-up to the one year anniversary of the Gen Z protests, Chief of Defence Forces General Charles Muriu Kahariri has threatened youth protesters. Francis Atwoli, head of Central Organization of Trade Unions, has called for sweeping censorship of social media. Even schoolchildren’s plays have been violently suppressed for being critical of the government.

The arrest of the filmmakers epitomizes the profound crisis of legitimacy facing the Kenyan bourgeoisie, which is rapidly sliding back into the authoritarianism of the dictatorship of Daniel arap Moi under whom President William Ruto was a loyal protégé.

Moi’s 24-year rule (1978 to 2002) was marked by arbitrary detention without trial, widespread torture, surveillance, and extrajudicial killings. The notorious Nyayo House in Nairobi became emblematic of state terror, where countless journalists, students, unionists, and opposition figures were tortured or disappeared. Ethnic violence was whipped up to divide workers and the rural masses. In the horrific Wagalla Massacre in 1984, the Kenyan army rounded up thousands of ethnic Somali men in Wajir county, held them at an airstrip without food or water, and slaughtered an estimated 1,000 people. Many of the regime’s leading figures, including politicians, senior police, military officers, judges, and civil servants, remained in power in the post-Moi era, some up to the present day.