WSWS

The intolerable increases to the cost of living triggered by the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine are producing a massive wave of working-class protests throughout the world. Two years into a pandemic that has killed 20 million people and still rages on, social anger that has been building up around kitchen tables and on shopfloors is now boiling over into the streets. Masses of people of all racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds are reaching the same conclusion: life cannot continue in the old way.

Fifty days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, protests are now taking place on every continent. Demonstrators defy states of emergency and respond to police repression with mobilizations of growing size and intensity. Initial protests in Peru, Sudan and Sri Lanka are not only continuing, but are now spreading to heavily populated and more urban countries. In the major imperialist powers, the same governments that plotted the present war crisis now confront growing strike movements that the trade union bureaucracies are desperately trying to hold back.

In recent days, municipal workers, government employees, oil workers, telecommunication workers and teachers in Iran have walked off the job to demand massive increases to wages and pensions. Economist Ibrahim Razzaqi told Shara newspaper that “every day society is becoming less tolerant of all its problems” and that Iran was witnessing “a popular outburst over critical living conditions.”

In Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population, large student demonstrations erupted last week over the rising price of cooking oil and the recent announcement by President Joko Widodo that he intends to stay in office for another term. Demonstrators in Jakarta, South Sulawesi, West Java and other areas confronted brutal police repression, with one protester suffering life threatening injuries.

In Pakistan, concerns within the ruling class over protests against rising prices are at the heart of the recent parliamentary removal of Prime Minister Imran Khan. The Diplomat wrote Thursday that food prices have increased 15 percent over the last year, and that, like Sri Lanka and Peru, “Pakistan is the latest victim of political instability. The existence of panic in the commodity and financial markets; a global inflationary spiral, rising food prices, and a surge in protests especially in emerging markets, shows that this process will not be confined to Pakistan or Sri Lanka only.”

In Latin America, a region once thought relatively shielded from declines of Russian and Ukrainian exports, mass demonstration took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week as a truckers’ strike has choked the country’s grain exports. El País noted Thursday that “the conflict in the street is growing together with the loss of purchasing power of the local currency” as inflation soared in April to 6.7 percent from March, with year-to-year inflation increasing to 55 percent.

A strike of truckers, taxi drivers and bus drivers shut down Honduras last week, to which the government of Xiomara Castro responded by raising fees for working class passengers.

Social discontent is also growing in the centers of world imperialism. In the United States, where inflation has surged to an annual rate of 8 percent, 30,000 doormen at luxury apartments in New York City authorized a strike Thursday. This powerful sign of opposition comes as contracts for hundreds of thousands of workers in critical industries are set to expire in the coming weeks.

In the United Kingdom, The Guardian warned in an editorial last week that the UK “is sliding into a social and economic crisis, the likes of which its people have not seen for decades. Household fuel bills are on course to top £2,400 by this autumn, while the price of a grocery shop is rocketing.” Inflation in the UK hit 7 percent last month, the highest rate since 1992.

The Guardian noted, “On one projection, one in three Britons – 23.5 million people – will be unable to afford the cost of living this year.”

In every country, strikers and protesters are fighting over matters of life and death. Global food prices have risen 34 percent since last year.

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Via https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/04/16/pers-a16.html