Workers on Foot: Capitalism Plants the Seeds for “Winters of Rebellion!”

All over the world, the streets and squares echo with the voices of the workers. Countries and languages are different, but the reasons of the protests are the same: High inflation/cost of living, decreasing of wages, deepening of poverty, unemployment and increasingly unbearable living conditions! The protests that had begun in Sri Lanka turned into a working people’s revolt within a few months. As they storm the presidential palace, the workers overthrew the dynasty of the Rajapaksa family whom they once considered a “divinity”. At the end of the day the Rajapaksa family fled the country. It was a recent and striking example of how everything that was thought to be unchangeable has changed. Changing and worsening living conditions push the working class to struggle. The biggest strike of the railway workers in the last 30 years in Britain, as well as the strikes of the workers in many sectors, shows that the struggle of the working class against exploitation cannot be suppressed!

The working people in a number of countries are holding demonstrations, strikes, rallies, marches against the high cost of living. At the beginning of 2022, workers in dozens of workplaces stopped production to demand higher raises in Turkey. In the face of soaring inflation, they are mounting the struggle again with the demand for an additional increase in their wages. As the anger of the working class of the world spill over the streets, a “summer of discontent” is in the making. The phrase “summer of discontent” expresses the response of the working class to the problems created by capitalism. At the same time, soaring inflation and rising cost of living inevitably pave the way for “winters of rebellion”. Indeed, European rulers have already taken precautions to defend their rotten order, as they say there could be popular uprisings.

As we have said many times, the exploiters cannot stop the revolt of the working class of the world. Because the capitalist system of exploitation based on entirely selfishness and self-interest suffocates humanity. This rotten system cannot offer a solution to social problems, it won’t! We are faced with the subterfuge of presenting a machine that should have been scrapped long ago as if it were the most advanced machine (capitalism) that humanity has ever seen. The mechanism is constantly producing crises that are getting worse and doing damage to the people every time. In our age when science and technology are extremely advanced, humanity is facing a food crisis. Does not even this reveal that we live in such a rotten and exhausted system? It should be emphasized that it is not the Russia-Ukraine war to blame in the first place. War is only one factor aggravating the global food crisis. The main determining factor is the profit-oriented capitalist production system. This is what creates all crises, especially in the economy. Capitalist economic crises are like waves one extending into another and making it bigger. For example, the 2020 crisis broke out before the global economic crisis of 2008 could actually be overcome. The world economy has been hit by a new shock wave before the 2020 crisis could not be solved, which was tried to be covered up with the pretext of the pandemic. The war between Russia and Ukraine has further aggravated the impact of the crisis. The prices of all goods, especially food and energy, are rising all over the world. Real wages and purchasing power are falling. In tens of countries including Turkey, hundreds of millions of people are losing their incomes and living in poverty.

Autumn and winter will be more difficult and painful for all workers in the world! A harsh winter is coming for the working class of Turkey, which has experienced the biggest impoverishment in the country’s history. The policies of the Turkish rulers elevate the inflation rate above the general level of the world. This causes a rapid and devastating impoverishment in Turkey. So, that is much higher than the general impoverishment wave in the world. While inflation in the USA and Europe has reached the 40-year high of 10 percent, it has already exceeded 175 percent in Turkey. While this is real, the government and the pro-government media try to legitimize its anti-worker policies by making reference to the general trend in the world. Depending on the situation, they think that they could deceive and convince the workers. For example, Erdogan said on August 4, 2021: “We will see a decrease in inflation in August. It is not possible that inflation will rise more.” In April 2022, he gave the good news of abundance: “As summer comes and crops come in, the food prices will decrease. This year is the year of abundance.” But the summer months came and the workers can hardly buy fruits and vegetables. Erdogan has now postponed the good news that “inflation will go down” by February and March 2023. Even this postponement is a sign of how inflation will keep rising in the winter months.

With the opening of schools in the autumn, new and heavy burdens will be placed on working families! It is unclear how hundreds of thousands of university students will cope with high dormitory costs and house rents. In our past articles in last September, October and November, we wrote about the rising cost of living, school expenses, and rising house rents. Back then, the real inflation rate was 50 percent. Although not a year has passed, there is a huge difference between the impoverishment then and today. Briefly stated, difficult and distressed days are coming for the working class, not good days. In response, the working class will not just sit still, it should not! We should come together more and strengthen our unity and solidarity networks. It is possible that the protest wave that started in January of this year with the demand for higher wages will resume, the number of strikes including wildcat ones will increase, and reaction of the students will combine with workers’ strikes! It is also very important for the working class to express its anger against the high cost of living in an organized manner.  And at this point, a big responsibility is up to combative unions.

As we mentioned above, the rise of working class action across the world and turning of “summer of discontent” actions into “winter of rebellion” cannot be prevented. The capitalist system of exploitation has literally turned the world into hell for the working people. With current technology, it is possible to feed more than 10 billion people, provide better living conditions, eradicate hunger and disease from the earth, and give work to everyone by reducing the working day to 4 hours! However, despite the objective possibility of establishing such a world, humanity is faced with hunger, unemployment and poverty and suffering! In his novel A Tale of Two Cities, the English novelist Charles Dickens described the intolerable contradictions that led to the French Revolution of 1789:  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…” If we are to describe today’s world, wouldn’t we use similar sentences? Tomorrow will not be better without the overthrow of the exhausted capitalism, which has plagued humanity with countless problems. Otherwise, the living conditions of the workers will worsen, planet will be plundered more, and social problems will become more tangled. The workers’ revolts that have taken place during last 20 years are an expression of the fact that humanity seeks to get rid of capitalism. The winter that capitalism created for humanity can only turn into spring when the working class throws this system to the dustbin of history.