The combative Indonesian proletariat, facing the onslaught of capital, is still a victim of opportunism and the petty bourgeoisie

Once more, the weight of the contradictions of capitalism proved unbearable for the proletariat, and towards the end of August, millions of Indonesians took to the streets, tearing away the perfumed veil of the bourgeois state—the so-called organization of all citizens in the interests of all citizens—and revealing what lies behind every so-called democracy: the dictatorship of capital.

Across the country—from Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Makassar, etc.— mostly unorganized elements of the working class (urban workers, ojek drivers, delivery riders, street vendors, rural migrants, and sectors of the urban poor), along with students, have clashed with the state over the 50 million rupiah monthly housing allowance granted to parliamentarians, more than ten times the Indonesian minimum wage. Although passed last year, it has become a symbol of bourgeois privilege amid rising food and fuel prices, stagnant wages, higher taxes, and the 306 trillion rupiah (about $18.5 billion USD) austerity package imposed by Prabowo Subianto. Together, these measures have produced a cost-of-living crisis so severe that protesters declared that the government had “made life impossible.” The Indonesian upheaval is not an anomaly, but another symptom of the global disease of capitalism: a system that enriches parasites while bleeding the masses dry.

On August 25, students from Indraprasta PGRI University demonstrated in front of the MPR/DPR/DPD complex demanding the dissolution of parliament. In Medan, thousands of students, workers, and drivers have faced police violence while protesting new tax policies. In Pontianak, students stormed the provincial assembly before being arrested. On August 28 in Jakarta, unions and the Labor Party marched for higher wages and an end to outsourcing, until students broke through the parliament’s fences. That evening, 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver Affan Kurniawan was struck and killed by a Brimob armored vehicle. His death was confirmation of everything the protesters were fighting against, a microcosm of the proletariat under capitalism: a worker, barely able to survive, crushed by the state as he resisted conditions that had made life unliveable.

By the end of the month, demonstrations had spread to over thirty provinces. Between looting and attacks on the homes of parliamentarians, government offices and police stations were set on fire. In Makassar, the regional assembly was burned down; in Surabaya, the Grahadi government building was burned down; in Bandung, a police station was burned down; in West Nusa Tenggara, the parliament was burned down; in Cirebon, the DPRD building was burned down. Police and army invaded the streets, the Marines and Kostrad were deployed, and public transport was suspended. Protesters waved brooms to “sweep away the dirt of the state,” carried signs demanding police reform, and shouted slogans such as “your sweet promises cause diabetes.” Some waved the Jolly Roger from One Piece as a symbol of treachery, others relaunched the hashtag #IndonesiaGelap. True to their nature, the watchdogs of capital made a tactical retreat: revoking the allowance, announcing ridiculous measures on labor, even offering free transportation for a week — concessions aimed solely at stabilizing the situation and maintaining the flow of capital.

These clashes, this repression, and the subsequent retreat must not and cannot be explained by appealing to bourgeois liberal moralism. The narrative of a particularly evil “conservative” military figure, of a “declining democracy,” or accusations of corruption and “personal greed” is an idealistic fairy tale that disarms the working class and masks the reality of class dictatorship as a problem of administration and personality. To combat such falsehoods, it is important to assert that this struggle is intelligible and can only be pursued through the analysis of the historical-material conditions of Indonesia, using the Marxist method and the program of the international communist party.

The August uprising was not a random explosion, but the continuation of a wave of similar protests that began in 2019. In September of that year, tens of thousands of students launched the Reformasi Dikorupsi protests, the largest student movement since 1998. In 2020, protests against the Omnibus Law mobilized workers and unions against deregulation. In 2022, cuts to fuel subsidies and a 30% price increase sparked nationwide demonstrations.

Each of these movements, and many others before them, arose from the rotten economic legacy of the post-1998 “reformasi”. Promising abstract notions of democracy, the reformasi actually only reorganized bourgeois rule after Suharto’s fall during the Asian financial crisis. Politicians of that period paved the way for IMF “restructuring” by cutting subsidies, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and dismantling labor protections. Indonesia was chained to its role in the imperialist chain: exporting coal, palm oil, and nickel, while providing a huge pool of cheap labor. Global brands reaped profits by threatening to move to Vietnam or Bangladesh if wages rose. Later, Joko Widodo pushed through omnibus labor laws, intensified expropriations for megaprojects, and consolidated the military’s role in civil society.

By mid-2025, the crisis had reached a new peak: inflation was close to 4%, and basic necessities such as rice and cooking oil had risen by more than 15%, affecting the poorest most of all. Over 60% of Indonesia’s workforce, comprising 140 million people, remains confined to the informal sector, condemned to insecurity and starvation wages. Behind them are millions of rural workers dispossessed by mechanization, debt, falling agricultural prices, and land confiscation by agribusiness. Even 38–40% of workers in the formal sector survive on stagnant wages of 3–5 million rupiah per month, barely enough to reproduce life in the cities, where rent and food devour almost all of their income.

To make matters worse, it is structurally impossible for that 60% of the proletariat to organize. “Freedom of association” is defined by Law No. 21/2000, which requires ten employees contracted in the same workplace to form a union — completely useless for those who do not have a single employer, a common workplace, or the legal status of “employee.” This clear collusion between capital and the state reclassifies them as partners, creating a scattered mass of atomized gig economy workers, legally deprived of the basic means of collective defense. This legal straitjacket is reinforced by history: the massacres of 1965–66 not only wiped out hundreds of thousands of communists and militant workers, but also eradicated an entire culture of proletarian organization.