Statement of Solidarity
Marxist Forum — Metro Manila
7 September 2025
Although part of a long wave of mass urban mobilizations spanning years, the wild series of uprisings in Indonesia today began on the 25th of August, when students and workers led demonstrations against proposed additional housing allowances for parliament members, raising their salaries 10 times higher than the national minimum wage of the Indonesian working class. Parliamentary allowances are only the latest in Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s ferocious attacks on the working class, aided by creeping militarization and guided by the diktat of neoliberal austerity: cutting spending worth trillions of rupiah on education, welfare, and public health. Since Thursday of August 28th, with the murder of Affan Kurniawan, a 21-year-old rideshare motorbike driver—run over by an armored military vehicle commandeered by Jakarta police to crush the uprising—we have only seen the acceleration of spreading protests throughout the islands, and the escalation of violence and anger amid the protesters, with a number of politicians’ assets looted and burned to the ground—including, according to Perhimpunan Merdeka (Freedom Association), about half-a-dozen regional offices of the House of Representatives.
On the ground, several of the groups and individuals involved have been among the anarchists and communists, insurrectionaries notwithstanding, organized and otherwise. Demands have been made by various groups, featuring in particular two: Perhimpunan Merderka’s (PM; Freedom Association) demand to abolish the unitary government in favor of direct democracy through “People’s Councils”, and Perhimpunan Sosialis Revolusioner’s (PSR; Revolutionary Socialist Association) call for the workers to take the fight to the factories and workplaces to form and coordinate strike committees and worker’s councils.
In light of recent reports of discouragement, deescalation, and a generalizing urge to retreat, Marxist Forum calls on our anarchist and communist Indonesian comrades to push for a maximalist program within the assemblies and coordinating councils. This entails the organization of self-defense militias—for every worker, a rifle; rearrangement of production away from the capitalists and towards social appropriation, sustaining the rebellions and keeping the workers from going back to work; coordinating with workers of key industries to halt production and operations such as in ports and airfreight, shutting down the national economy; seizing the telecommunication and data centers to facilitate continuous in-flow of information within and with-out of the country, and;
Above all, to RESIST ANY AND ALL ATTEMPTS AT NEGOTIATION. Hijack the union leaderships, expel the middlemen and negotiators of labor, stand against the peace-makers who wish to restore the reproduction of the status quo, resist by any means necessary the cooptation of the rebellions for vested political interests by groups who wish to delimit the Indonesian proletariat’s class anger and make a turn towards liberal pacifism and passivity. The responsibility of the most conscious and organized elements of the rebellions, without taking ownership of the movement and fighting the tendency to lag behind the proletariat in rebellion, is to push the class to advance wherever it lags. The anarchists and communists should not be afraid to go past the proletariat, wherever it is reluctant to advance, and make the class conscious of where it is going and what needs to be done to get there!
The class, while still acting as a class, is now in the political arena. To generalize the rebellions into a full insurrection, it is ever-necessary to imbue the sites of struggle with a clear communising direction and go past the economic and political, to directly and immediately appropriate the social. Comrades, the Indonesian proletariat is on the brink of something potentially bigger than all of us. To take the next step, the class must be compelled to intervene into history directly and begin the conscious communisation of Indonesian society.
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY; THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE.
Panjang umur Revolusi!
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Abolish Parliament! — Perhimpunan Merdeka: https://perhimpunanmerdeka.org/2025/09/02/statement-august-2025-protest/
Take the fight to the factories! — Perhimpunan Sosialis Revolusioner: https://revolusioner.org/bergerak-ke-pabrik-pabrik-sebarkan-revolusi-ini-ke-kelas-pekerja/