A week of protests in Indonesia fuelled by glaring social inequality

Peter Symonds

Protests continued yesterday in many cities across Indonesia after a 21-year-old man, Affan Kurniawan, died from being hit by an armoured police vehicle as police aggressively tried to break up a rally in Jakarta on Thursday. Kurniawan was one of the many motorcycle ride-sharing drivers in Indonesia who eke out a living ferrying passengers.

Students confront police during a protest at the Regional Police Headquarters in Jakarta, Indonesia, August 29, 2025. [AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana]

The demonstrations initially erupted on Monday, after it was announced that parliamentarians would be given an exorbitant monthly accommodation allowance of 50 million rupiah ($US3,045), highlighting the country’s worsening social inequality. The figure is up to 20 times the monthly minimum wage of workers in poor areas of the country.

There has been a heavy police presence throughout the days of protest. More than 1,200 security personnel were deployed on Monday to secure the parliament building and fired tear gas as protesters attempted to approach. The police blocked off streets leading to the parliamentary compound, including several toll roads.

Angry ride-sharing drivers, students and many others gathered outside the parliament building and police headquarters in Jakarta on Friday chanting, “Killer! Killer!” amid desperate attempts by President Prabowo Subianto to appeal for calm. Seven police involved in the incident have been detained. At the same time, the government deployed troops from the navy marine corps to contain the protests.

According to the limited press reports, thousands have been involved in the protests in Jakarta and at least 600 have been arrested. Other protests were held in major cities, including Surabaya, Bandung, Yogyakarta and Solo in Java, Medan in northern Sumatra and Gorontalo in Sulawesi.

The protests have been fueled by a groundswell of resentment and anger, particularly among young people, over deteriorating living conditions, glaring social inequality and anti-democratic methods. But the immediate spark for this week’s protests was the accommodation allowance for parliamentarians.

The government’s rationale for the benefit was the decommissioning of the housing complex that provided free accommodation to parliamentarians. However, the monthly allowance of 50 million rupiah is out of all proportion to housing costs, even in expensive central Jakarta, and represents an astronomical sum for most workers. It comes on top of hefty salaries, other allowances and benefits for the 580 members of the House of Representatives.

By contrast, managers in Jakarta, on average, receive monthly salaries of less than 15 million rupiah. The minimum monthly wage for workers in Jakarta is just 5.4 million rupiah and is as low as 2.1 million rupiah in other parts of the country. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of the workforce is in the so-called informal sector, consigned to insecure jobs, and often receive less than the minimum wage.

Young people have been particularly hard hit by worsening economic conditions, which will deteriorate further under the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs of 19 percent on Indonesian goods. While the overall official unemployment rate is 5 percent, the rate for youth is 16 percent. Moreover, the official statistics are widely regarded as an underestimate.

The parliamentary accommodation allowance announcement immediately set off a wave of outraged and derisory commentary on social media, as well as calls for protests. One of the slogans has been for the dissolution of the House of Representatives. The Indonesian Trade Union Confederation (KSPI) joined the protests, demanding protections from mass layoffs and outsourcing, but made no suggestion of strike action.

The wider sentiments among young people were echoed by comedian Aci Resti, who attended a protest at parliament against the housing allowance. “I’m here to voice the opinions of my friends, who are fed up with everything, with the members of the House of Representatives, with everything, with the government,” she said, in comments cited by Reuters.

This week’s protests are the latest this year in expressions of opposition and unrest. In February, students held a nationwide campaign of demonstrations called “Indonesia Gelap,” or Dark Indonesia. They protested against the deep austerity measures implemented by the Prabowo administration to pay for his election pledges, which included a nationwide free school lunch program and more affordable housing.

Prabowo has slashed billions of dollars in government funding for public health, education and works. Thousands of government contractors were sacked. By February, the total cutbacks were raised to $44 billion or more than 15 percent of the state budget. While providing free school lunches, funding for primary and secondary education was reduced by $480 million and the higher education budget was slashed by 25 percent or $2.6 billion.

In March, student demonstrations took place against legislation to strengthen the role of the military in government. The parliament voted unanimously for amendments to the armed forces law to expand the number of institutions in which serving officers could serve, including the Attorney General’s Office, National Counterterrorism Agency, National Agency for Border Management and National Disaster Mitigation Agency.

Hundreds of student activists camped outside parliament the night before that bill was passed. The crowd swelled to a thousand the following day, with banners reading “Against militarism and oligarchy!” and “The New Order [the name of the Suharto dictatorship] strikes back!” Prabowo, who was military dictator General Suharto’s son-in-law and a top military officer, is notorious for his brutal repression of opposition to the regime.

Earlier this month, an unusual but widespread form of opposition emerged after Prabowo in late July called on citizens to “raise the red and white flag wherever you are” in the lead up to Indonesia’s Independence Day on August 17. Instead of the national flag, the flag of the Straw Hat Pirates from the manga comic One Piece began to emerge in houses, streets and on vehicles as a symbol of rebellion and resistance to the government.

“Even though this country is officially independent, many of us have not truly experienced that freedom in our daily lives,” Ali Maulana, a resident of Jayapura in Indonesia, told the BBC. The One Piece story reflected the injustice and inequality that Indonesians experience, he said.

Prabowo is clearly concerned about the days of protest this week, despite the extensive police mobilisation, and the far broader sentiment that they reflect. As well as appealing for calm, the president expressed condolences for Kurniawan’s death and declared that he was “shocked and disappointed by the excessive actions of the officers.” He called for a thorough investigation.

No one should take these hypocritical comments at face value. Prabowo, who was responsible for torture, murder and other atrocities under the Suharto dictatorship, will not hesitate to use every means available to suppress any movement against his government. The deployment of the military and special operations police this week is a warning that his false sympathy can quickly give way to repression.

In comments cited by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) researcher Arif Maulana said that what happened at the Thursday protest reminded him of the New Order Era, “where critical people who open their mouths are seen as enemies” and “people giving their voice [are] dubbed as criminals, being tortured, and being arrested arbitrarily.”

Chancellor Merz declares Germany “can no longer afford the welfare state”

Peter Schwarz

“The welfare state as we know it today is no longer economically sustainable with what we are producing as a national economy,” declared Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Saturday at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) state party conference in Osnabrück.

This is an unmistakable declaration of war on the entire working class. What remains of the hard-won social achievements of the past are to be thrown to the profit-hungry wolves of the stock markets and channeled into rearmament.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz during an election campaign appearance in Erfurt in August 2024 [Photo by Steffen Prößdorf / Wikimedia commons / CC BY-SA 4.0]

At the traditional summer press conference before the holidays Merz had already called for “a major socio-political effort” with regard to “pensions, healthcare provision and long-term care.” At the time we commented:

It is now clear that the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union and Social Democrats (SPD) deliberately omitted the planned social cuts from their coalition agreement and delegated them to expert commissions in order to first push through the massive increase in military spending. They apparently anticipated tremendous resistance if they had announced a huge increase in rearmament spending and social cuts at the same time. But now, as Merz made clear, there is no more time to lose. Workers and the most socially vulnerable are to pay the costs of rearmament and war.

Merz has now confirmed this. He boasted that his government had enacted the largest tax reliefs for corporations in over 20 years, strengthened NATO with a sharp increase in defence spending and halved the number of asylum applications with its “clear course” on migration policy. “I will not allow myself to be distracted by words such as social cutbacks, slash-and-burn and the like,” he threatened. The welfare state in its present form, he said, was no longer affordable.

Merz is thus following an international trend. In the US, the Trump administration has set in motion the process of slashing or abolishing state health insurance for those over 65 (Medicare) and for low earners (Medicaid), in which more than 135 million people are insured. It is establishing an authoritarian police state in order to suppress social resistance.

In France, the Bayrou government is planning budget cuts of €44 billion [$US51 billion] for the coming year, while military expenditure soars. Social benefits are to be frozen, the healthcare system restructured and vast numbers of public-sector employees dismissed. In response, a general strike has been called for September 10.

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), itself in a coalition government with the CDU, has timidly protested against Merz’s declaration of war on working people while leaving no doubt that it supports his general course. Its deputy parliamentary group leader, Dagmar Schmidt, said the party would not tolerate crude benefit cuts and privatisations: “The level of social protection must not fall.” SPD youth movement (Juso) leader Philipp Türmer even claimed that social cutbacks were a red line for the SPD. The party must not move “a single centimetre” on welfare and benefit cuts.

SPD leader Lars Klingbeil called for a socially balanced approach and raised the prospect of tax increases for top earners and the wealthy—knowing full well that the larger coalition partner would never accept them. “What will not work is to say, let’s save €30 billion now on the welfare state,” Klingbeil declared.

Lars Klingbeil [Photo by Sandro Halank / CC BY 4.0]

But this is pure distraction. As finance minister, Klingbeil is already pressing for cuts of €172 billion in the federal budget over the next five years. “Of course we must tackle the social security systems,” he said. No one should be allowed to “lie idle” and receive money from the state at the same time.

Since the Schröder government adopted “Agenda 2010” two decades ago, the SPD has been the driving force behind welfare cutbacks and the redistribution of wealth in favour of the rich. Together with his party colleague, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, Klingbeil is also playing a leading role in funneling one trillion euros into armaments and military infrastructure and in fueling NATO’s war against Russia with billions.

The Left Party has also protested against Merz’s declaration of social war. Parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek warned of an “autumn of social cruelty,” criticised the massive campaign by think tanks, employers’ associations and so-called experts, and demanded the reintroduction of the wealth tax. But since its foundation, the Left Party has supported welfare cutbacks and budget reductions at state level. And in the Bundesrat (upper chamber of parliament) it even voted for Merz and Klingbeil’s one-trillion armaments programme. Whenever it protests, it does so only to capture resistance and lead it into a dead end.

The trade unions, too, stand behind the government and support its war policy. They do not represent the interests of workers but collaborate closely with corporations and administrations to break every form of resistance and enforce cuts and mass redundancies.

The Merz government’s assault on pensions, welfare benefits and healthcare coincides with the mass destruction of jobs in industry and—in administration—as a result of the introduction of artificial intelligence. According to a study by the consultancy EY, some 51,500 jobs were destroyed in the German auto industry alone last year. This, EY stated, was only the beginning of a painful but unavoidable process of contraction.

Outrage and resistance will grow in response to this social devastation and the mass redundancies—just as has already occurred in France. Bitter class struggles are coming. But they can only succeed if they are guided by an understanding of the causes of the crisis and by a clear perspective.

The notion that the ruling elite can be forced to change course by pressure from the streets or moral appeals is entirely illusory. They are systematically preparing for confrontation with the working class. To defend their profits, their wealth and the capitalist system, they are capable of any crime—as their support for the genocide in Gaza demonstrates.

This is also why the Merz-Klingbeil government has adopted the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) anti-migrant policy wholesale. The agitation against refugees, the assault on their democratic rights and their brutal deportation serve to divide the working class, scapegoat the weakest and most defenceless for the social crisis and strengthen the AfD. Here, too, Merz & Co. are emulating Trump. Large sections of the CDU are already flirting with bringing the far-right into government.

Continents are drying at an accelerating rate, severely impacting the supply of fresh water

Philip Guelpa

Water is essential to life. A newly published study in ScienceAdvances, “Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise,” (Hrishikesh A. Chandanpurkar et al.) describes a truly alarming trend of freshwater loss across a significant portion of the earth’s populated land surface. Using data from the NASA GRACE/GRACE-FO (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and GRACE Follow On), undertaken in partnership with the German Aerospace Center, the researchers identify large continental areas, excluding Greenland and Antarctica, and especially concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere, that are undergoing what they term “mega-drying.” 

They observe a contradictory situation. While historically wet areas are getting wetter and dry areas drier, the latter process is proceeding faster than the former. They note: “At the same time, the area experiencing drying has increased, while the area experiencing wetting has decreased.” Terrestrial water storage (TWS) is being depleted at an accelerating rate. A combination of high-latitude water losses (primarily due to increasing glacial melting), droughts especially in Central America and Europe, and groundwater depletion is responsible for 68 percent of the depletion of TWS in non-glaciated continental regions. Especially concerning is the observation that, since 2002, 75 percent of the human population live in 101 countries experiencing fresh water loss. 

In order to provide a sense of the size of the area being affected, the article states that “the continental areas experiencing drying are increasing by about twice the size of the State of California each year.”

In an attempt to compensate for decreased rainfall, people in drought-impacted areas are increasing the rate of groundwater pumping, which is depleting the reserves of fresh water stored in underground aquifers. While this may be viewed as a short-term “solution,” aquifers are a limited resource. If not replenished by infiltration from rainfall, they eventually will be depleted. 

The authors identify some of the impacts of this drying: “The consequences of global groundwater depletion include reduced irrigation water supply and threats to agricultural productivity, reduced capacity for climate adaptation, drought resilience and for growth in desert cities, reduced biodiversity and damage to groundwater dependent ecosystems, decreasing access as water tables fall, and many others.” 

The effects of an extended drought are already being felt, for example, in the Colorado River basin in the US, where an intense, ongoing conflict is raging between urban and rural water users who are increasingly dependent on drawing water from the river due to intensifying drought, while at the same time the volume of flow in the river is decreasing. 

The drought has dried out many of California's forests

Over the past two decades, the Colorado River basin, which encompasses portions of seven western US states, has lost approximately 10 trillion gallons of water. The authors observe that, “The continued overuse of groundwater, which, in some regions like California, is occurring at an increasing, rather than at sustainable or decreasing rates, undermines regional and global water and food security in ways that are not fully acknowledged around the world.”

Another significant impact is the finding that the loss of fresh water from the continents is now making a greater contribution to sea level rise than that from glaciers and ice caps, accelerating the rate of coastal flooding, severely affecting over a billion people, approximately 15 percent of the world’s population, who live in coastal areas and are therefore in danger of being displaced. 

The researchers attribute the changes they observe to human-induced climate change, which, if not reversed, will have truly disastrous consequences. In areas of drying, such as the Mediterranean region and California, wildfires are having devastating impacts. Impacts in wet areas, such as Texas and North Africa, are also severe.

The combined effects of growing extremes of flooding and drought plus rapid sea level rise will severely impact billions of people across the globe, leading mass population displacements, with all of the attendant disruptions. Food supplies will be increasingly threatened, affecting not only the lives of those people forced to migrate due to increasingly difficult living conditions but also those in receiving areas will suffer major impacts. The brutal response to climate refugees is already evident in responses by the US and European imperialist powers. 

The situation is made even worse by the climate change-denying Trump administration’s directive to terminate NASA’s climate study programs—the very source of the data on which the current research is based. 

The authors recommend that, “The expansion of continental drying, the increase in extreme drying, and the implications for shrinking freshwater availability and sea level rise should be of paramount concern to the general public, to resource managers, and to decision-makers around the world.” In fact, the resource managers and decision-makers are doing less than nothing to address this crisis. As the capitalist crisis deepens, the world’s ruling elite is focused on intensifying exploitation of people and resources by any means necessary, no matter the consequences. 

The inability of the moribund capitalist system to effectively address climate change and all its myriad devastating consequences poses an existential crisis for humanity. Unless stopped by the working class, this will soon make the planet unlivable for humans.

Trump’s 50% tariffs on India take force

Keith Jones

President Donald Trump meets with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, February 13, 2025, in Washington. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

The US tariff on most Indian goods doubled to 50 percent on Wednesday, as the 25 percent supplementary tariff that US President Donald Trump slapped on India on August 6—citing its purchases of Russian oil and armaments—came into force.

Only fellow BRICS member Brazil and tiny Lesotho are currently subject to such punishing US tariffs.

The tariffs threaten to badly destabilize an Indian economy that already confronts slowing growth and is characterized by low private investment and mass unemployment and underemployment.

Many Indian industries, including textiles and garments, auto parts, chemicals, gems and jewelry, and carpets and leather, are expected to be gravely impacted by the tariffs. Employers in Tiruppur, the Tamil Nadu city that is the centre of India’s knitwear export industry, have said they expect large scale job cuts and factory closures to begin almost immediately, with 150,000 direct industry job losses anticipated in coming weeks.

The US is India’s largest export market, accounting for 19 percent of its exports in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Analysts estimate that once exemptions for critical minerals, pharmaceuticals and other products are taken into account, the goods that will be subject to the 50 percent tariff account for more than $50 billion of India’s $86 billion in exports to the US last year.

Should the tariffs not be quickly rolled back, they will imperil India’s efforts to attract foreign investment, including from Western firms under US government pressure to lower, if not end their reliance on production facilities and contractors based in China.

Beyond that, the tariffs and Trump’s demand that New Delhi massively downgrade its ties with Russia, effectively ceding to Washington control over key elements of its foreign policy, have upended the long-term strategic calculations of India’s capitalist ruling elite.

For two decades, India’s governments whether led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress Party, have made New Delhi’s “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism the cornerstone of India’s foreign policy. This “partnership,” founded on the Indian bourgeoisie’s readiness to assist US imperialism in its efforts to strategically isolate and encircle China, has seen India increasingly transformed into a US frontline state in Washington’s ever more incendiary, all-sided economic and military-strategic conflict with China.

Under the Modi government, and especially during the past five years, India has integrated itself into a web of bilateral, trilateral and quadrilateral military-security ties with Washington and its chief Asia Pacific treaty allies, Japan and Australia.

In coming weeks, Trump is slated to visit New Delhi and join Modi, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for a heads of government summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—Washington’s informal anti-China, Indo-Pacific alliance

Yet, to its shock and consternation, the Indian ruling class, like that of the European powers and Canada, has had the rug pulled out from under it by its ostensible US ally, as Trump ruthlessly pursues American imperialism’s economic and geopolitical interests with wanton disregard for longstanding agreements and partnerships.

Adding to its indignation and anger is that India appears to being singled out. The Indian government, joined by the opposition parties and media, has complained that the Trump administration has not taken similar action against China and Turkey, which also have maintained extensive economic ties with Russia amid the NATO-instigated Ukraine war.

The US trade war broadside against India, it need be noted, was launched in early August even as Trump was intensifying his efforts to reach a “peace deal” with the Kremlin, with the aim of gaining privileged access to Russian and Ukrainian resources and concentrating America’s military and economic resources on preparing for war with China.

India gropes for a response to Trump’s unexpected broadside

Faced with this sudden, unexpected turn, the Modi government and the Indian ruling class are struggling to find their bearings and articulate a response.

Speaking last week, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said India was “very perplexed” by the Trump administration’s attack on India. He added that if the Western powers do not agree with India’s refining of Russian oil for resale on the world market, all that they need do is cease their purchases of it.

To underline that India will not be bullied, New Delhi has demonstratively moved to strengthen ties with both Beijing and Moscow. Jaishankar visited Russia for three days of talks last week. High on the agenda was finalizing plans for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first visit to India since December 2021.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited New Delhi on August 18-19 and met with India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Jaishankar and Modi. India’s prime minister will himself travel to China for the first time since 2019 at the end of this week to attend the August 31-September 2 Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit in Tianjin. While there Modi is expected to hold discussion on the summit sidelines with Chinese President Xi about lessening tensions over their disputed border—from which some, but not all, of the tanks, warplanes and troops forward deployed after bloody skirmishes in 2020 have been withdrawn—and expanding economic cooperation.

At the same time, New Delhi continues to stress its eagerness to come to an accommodation with Washington and to deepen their strategic partnership.

On Tuesday, Indian and US foreign affairs and defence officials held a virtual meeting as part of the India-US 2+2 Dialogue framework. An Indian government readout highlighted the meeting’s discussion of expanding military-defence cooperation, including through the co-production of armaments, the sourcing of critical minerals, the development of the Quad and the finalization of a new 10-year “Framework for the India-US Major Defense Partnership” to replace the one that expires later this year. A US State Department release said that both sides “look forward to increasing defence cooperation, and build(ing) upon the progress made in these areas under the auspices of the US-India COMPACT (Catalysing Opportunities for Military Partnership, Accelerated Commerce & Technology) for the 21st Century and beyond.”

This meeting aside, Trump, his aides and his officials have been unrelenting in their demands that India make sweeping trade and geostrategic concessions. They have castigated India for its ties with Russia and trade policies, with the fascist US president accusing India of having “the highest tariffs” in the world. In a Financial Times op-ed, White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro accused New Delhi of “cozying up to both Russia and China,” then declared that if India “wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one.”

Trump has repeatedly paused trade actions, including rolling back 135 percent tariffs on China under two successive 90-day trade war “truces,” after Beijing responded with its own 100 percent-plus tariffs and by restricting rare earth exports. However, no respite was given India. Instead just days before the August 27 deadline for the doubling of the tariffs on India, US trade negotiators withdrew from a planned trip to New Delhi.

Clearly, Trump calculates that India is vulnerable to US pressure and is eager to press home the advantage, even if that means defying broad sections of the American political and military-security establishment who fear that in doing so he is unnecessarily putting at risk the Indo-US alliance, which they view as a critical element in the drive to subjugate China.

Trump’s demands and New Delhi’s strategic interests

The demands Trump is making of India threaten what New Delhi and the ruling class as a whole consider vital strategic interests.

Cheap Russian oil, sold at discount prices due to the NATO powers’ sanctions on Moscow, has proven to be a boon to India’s economy under conditions of slowing economic growth, due to falling foreign investment and anemic domestic consumption.

But that is far from the principal reason New Delhi bristles at Trump’s demand that it radically downgrade its relations with Moscow. India’s strategic alliance with Russia dates back to the Cold War and is seen as central to its continuing efforts to maintain “strategic autonomy,” straddling the ever widening faultiness in world geopolitics. Even as it has aligned itself ever more closely with the US in the Indo-Pacific against China, New Delhi has remained wary of Washington’s ruthless pursuit of its own interests and readiness to resort to bullying and aggression.       

While India has moved to lessen its dependence on Russian-made armaments, they remain critical to its military. Russia also plays a vital role in India’s nuclear industry.

Even the Biden administration, which spearheaded NATO’s war in Russia, ultimately opted not to press New Delhi over its continuing ties with Moscow, so as ensure its integration into Washington’s strategic offensive against China proceeded unimpeded.  

Modi and other leading figures in his government have felt compelled to make demagogic declamations, vowing to defend the interests of Indian farmers and dairy producers from Trump’s demands that India throw open its markets to US exports and investment. Although agriculture accounts for only 15 percent of Indian’s GDP, over 45 percent of the population remains dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. The Indian government and bourgeoisie fear the economically and socially explosive consequences of opening India’s economy up to a flood of US agribusiness exports, further squeezing the incomes of hundreds of millions of poor farmers and agricultural labourers.

However the crisis in Indo-US relations develops in the coming weeks and months, it attests yet again to the fact that the post-World War II geopolitical order has collapsed, with US imperialism its key architect leading the wrecking crew in a desperate attempt to restore its global hegemony. What prevails in trade and geopolitical relations is the law of the jungle, with each capitalist state and ruling class ruthlessly pursuing its own interests.

That India and Brazil simultaneously find themselves in Trump’s trade war cross hairs is surely no coincidence, even if the stated motivations for the 50 percent tariffs are quite different. In Brazil’s case, Trump is intervening directly to destabilize the Brazilian government, demanding that it stop prosecuting his fascist ally the ex-President Jair Bolsonaro for his attempt to organize a military coup.    

Modi, a would-be far-right Hindu communalist strongman, is by contrast a political-ideological ally of Trump. What India and Brazil have in common is their attempt to marry close ties with Washington, including their respective militaries and the Pentagon, and a posture of “strategic autonomy,” asserting spheres of influence in their respective regions and the right to pursue their own great-power aspirations.

They are also both founding members along with Russia, China and South Africa of BRICS. The Trump administration has made clear its hostility toward BRICS, especially its efforts to reduce the role of the dollar in world trade, with Trump conceding that were the US dollar to lose its status as the world reserve currency, it would be equivalent to a defeat in war.

Without exception the capitalist ruling classes the world over are responding to the intensification of trade war and geopolitical conflict—that is, an imperialist-led repartition of the world—by intensifying the assault on the working class and moving toward authoritarian methods of rule.

Modi’s August 15 Indian Independence Day speech was a fascistic rant, in which he signaled a further lurch to the right. Without naming Trump or the United States, he made veiled reference to the threat of tariffs in invoking the need for a new wave of pro-investor “reforms.” This was combined with bellicose threats aimed at Pakistan, including a vow to permanently abrogate the suspended Indus Waters Treaty, and Hindu communalist incitement against “infiltrators” (Bangladeshi Muslim migrants), whom he railed against as a threat to the “integrity, unity and progress of the country.”