After the social uprisings that have shaken Tunisia, Egypt, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka and, a few weeks ago, Kenya over the past 15 years, in Bangladesh a new eruption emanates from the social underground.

In our article last January, “Bangladesh: Factories grow – Conflicts between bourgeois marauders erupt – Class struggle flares up”, we described the scenario from which emerged the powerful struggle of the textile workers, more than 4 million across the country, with demands for 200% wage increases. At the end of the strike they only got 56%, a breath of fresh air. A struggle therefore only momentarily appeased, an example for all workers, destined to flare up again in a short time.

The picture of the social crisis

Bangladesh is the eighth most populous country in the world, after Nigeria; the largest in terms of density, considering states with a population of at least 10 million. Its 173 million and growing inhabitants live in an area slightly larger than Greece, which has about 10 million inhabitants. More than 30% of the inhabitants are under 15 years of age. 17% of the population is illiterate.

For several years, statistics have been pointing to a continuous growth of capitalist accumulation in Bangladesh. The country attracts more and more capital thirsty for surplus value, which is mainly realised in the textile industry, which accounts for 85% of exports.

But almost 3/4 of the population still lives in the countryside and half of the working population is employed in agriculture. The exploitative conditions of the working class, with low wages, unemployment and rising inflation, are thus compounded by the social contradictions of a young capitalism, with the ruin and urbanisation of hundreds of thousands of poor peasants and just as many taking the path of emigration.

In 2019, there were 23 million Bengalis considered to be in “extreme poverty”. In 2022, 500,000 were added, while the “moderately poor” increased by 800,000. According to World Bank criteria, “extreme poverty” is defined as those with an income of less than USD 2.15 per day, rising to USD 3.65 for “moderate poverty”. According to forecasts by the previous Bengali government, this will increase in the coming years.

The structure of the territory makes it, in the world of capital, vulnerable. It is the great delta of the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system, spread over more than 700 arms. In the last twenty years, there have been over 200 extreme weather events, often cyclones followed by floods. Parts of the land are flooded. The advancing salinity erodes riverbanks and reduces the fertility of the land. According to data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), it was the country with the highest number of people displaced by natural disasters in 2022. In 2023, there were 1.8 million internally displaced persons.

Every year, around three hundred thousand internal migrants move into the slums of the capital Dhaka. They have no choice, having lost everything to the weather or small farmers choked by debt. They seek wages to survive, usually women in textile factories, men in construction.

Bangladesh is also sixth in the world in the number of emigrants. On average 400,000 leave the country every year. Today, about 15 million Bengalis have emigrated. While the temporary ones look for a salary in Middle Eastern and South-East Asian countries, the permanent ones would like to make a new life in Great Britain, which has always been the main destination, and in other countries. In recent decades, Italy has also become a popular destination. Many are employed in shipbuilding and heavy-duty activities.

Finally, Bangladesh hosts about one million refugees of the Rohingya ethnic group in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar, a city on the eastern coast near the border with Myanmar, from which they fled following the atrocious persecution perpetrated by the army under the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, another champion of non-violence and democracy, nominated in 1991 as Nobel Peace Prize winner. Now it is about to be the turn of the Bengali proletarians to test the worth of politicians deserving of such bourgeois honours!

From student movement to popular movement

It was against this backdrop of social crisis, 10 months after the textile workers all-out strike, that the student protests triggered a mass movement that ended with the fall of the government. Until 2018, 56% of the available posts in the civil service were reserved for specific categories: 10% for those from less economically developed areas, 10% for women, 5% for indigenous communities, 1% for the disabled and, the most contested quota, 30% for the descendants of the “freedom fighters”, those who fell during the 1971 war of independence that led the then East Bengal to separation from Pakistan. The system, which favoured the grandchildren of the 300,000 or so soldiers of that war, was an important patronage tool for the bourgeois parties administering the interests of the ruling class, for the Awami League, born out of a split of the All Pakistan Muslim League, which has been in government continuously since January 2009.

A ruling in 2020 had reduced the guaranteed quotas for civil service recruitment. When the High Court reintroduced the previous quotas on 6 June, protests began, called by some student organisations in the capital’s universities, demanding the complete abolition of all quotas, excluding those for the disabled and indigenous communities.

The movement thus began with a demand that, in the social framework described above, appears to affect a limited and privileged stratum of the population, those who can aspire to secure state employment, thus with a petit-bourgeois nature. After weeks of rising tensions, the demonstrations escalated from Monday 15 July, partly due to the government’s clear refusal to go along with the demands of the students, defined by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as “razakar”, the term used in 1971 to refer to paramilitary collaborators of the Pakistani army.

The student movement, which began with a particular claim, acted as a catalyst for the general social discontent, generating a popular movement that, due to its nature, kept the student organisations in charge.

Clashes in the streets gradually escalated. Dhaka burst into flames. For days, the government blocked all internet services to prevent protesters from organising and imposed a curfew. Police and army switched from tear gas to stun grenades and then to shooting. The death count began. The notorious paramilitary corps RAB, Rapid Action Battalion, already well known to the Bengali working class, also intervened. Violence was also carried out by the Chhatra League, the youth wing of the ruling Awami League party.

Demonstrations even took place in the United Arab Emirates, where there are almost one million Bengali emigrants, the third largest immigrant community in the country. Fifty-seven were arrested: 53 were sentenced to 10 years in prison, one to 11 years and 3 to life imprisonment!

After a few days of harsh clashes, 200 people were already dead. Undeterred, the demonstrators stormed dozens of police stations, prisons, set fire to Awami League offices, state television and government buildings.

Faced with the strength of the movement, on 21 July the Supreme Court reduced the quota for veterans’ descendants to 5%. But by then it was too late, as that was not the issue that was setting such large masses in motion. The demonstrations spread beyond the capital, to Bogura, Pabna, Rangpur, Magura, touching dozens of districts in the country.

With the waves of violence, the demands of the movement, led by student organisations, changed. A list of nine points has been drawn up: the obligation for leading members of the Awami League to resign; dismissal of all police forces in the areas where students were attacked; trial of the police forces involved in the murders; resignation of the vice-chancellors of the universities where the violence took place; ban on the Chhatra League from educational institutions; a public apology by the prime minister; compensation for the families of the victims; reopening of educational institutions.

These demands are devoid of any economic-social content that could affect the working class, they only target the ruling party and not the entire ruling class regime, for whose defence, on the contrary, they call for measures against a section of the police in order to restore a climate of trust and social peace. On Monday, 5 August, twenty days after the protests broke out, Prime Minister Hasina, who had won a fourth term in January in an election round boycotted by the opposition, while her residence was under attack by protesters, resigned by fleeing to India in a military helicopter. The news was greeted with jubilation on the streets.

At the end of the demonstrations, various sources reported over four hundred dead, thousands injured and arrests. It is certain that much of the blood shed is that of the proletariat. As reported by one of the textile workers’ union federations, the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), some of the victims were workers, including 11 textile workers and 5 members and organisers of this union. Certainly many others were young proletarians. The working class, however, with its organisations and demands, did not participate in the movement.

The workers did so individually, following a student leadership of a popular, hence interclass movement. Strikes were neither called nor broke out spontaneously. The bosses prudently held lock-outs to prevent the working class from going on strike.

One of the reasons for Prime Minister Hasina’s capitulation may have been to avoid this which is the real terror of any bourgeois regime. In Egypt, in 2010, after weeks of oceanic popular demonstrations, three days of strikes, which had by then infected the whole country, were enough for the ruling class to unseat Mubarak and implement a ferocious repression.

After the former Prime Ministe fled, schools, shops and factories were reopened within days. Demonstrations and protests ceased.

The bourgeoisie changes uniform

On 6 August, President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament. As always, when the fiction of legislative power falls, the bourgeois regime shows the true backbone of its rule and it is the army that takes over the reins of government, waiting for the conditions to mature to restore the fiction that can interpose a levee between the bourgeois state, the machine of class rule, and the proletariat. The army thus held a series of talks with various political parties and some student associations. An interim government was formed headed by Mohammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2006, known for the Grameen Bank “the micro-credit bank”, clamoured for by the students.

In its inception, its composition, its ideology, its outcome, the Bengali movement thus appeared to express essentially the dead-end struggle of the petty-bourgeoisie, ruined by the development of a young national capitalism within the framework of a senescent global imperialist capitalism.

The new Bengali executive put a useful puppet at its head to give the petty-bourgeoisie “hope”. It has also included two leaders of the “Students Against Discrimination” movement, both from Dhaka University, sons of the bourgeoisie, and assigned them petty-bourgeois posts.

To the Interior went Army Chief of Staff General M. Sakhawat Hossain, while former Central Bank Governor Salahuddin Ahmed will occupy the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning.

The “ethical banker” – supported in the past by US presidents and the International Monetary Fund – has now been placed at the head of the government, with the blessing of the Bengali military, to appease the petty-bourgeois strata that spearheaded the uprising. The new government will pretend to defend the petty-bourgeoisie no less than “left-wing” governments pretend to defend the working class.

As for the theories on ethical banking and “micro-credit”, suffice it to recall that the Nobel Prize winner Prime Minister’s bank, with over 2500 branches, offers one of its main loan packages at a “subsidised” interest rate of 20%.

In 2007, the banker tried, unsuccessfully, to launch a party, the Nagorik Shakti (“Power of the Citizens”), which vaguely called for the nationalisation of all banks which, finally in the hands of the “citizens’ state”, would have to meet the needs of the community by creating “a new model of development”.

After taking the oath of office, Yunus reiterated some unequivocal concepts: “Anarchy is our enemy and must be defeated ... A return to full democracy will restore the honour and past glories of the armed and security forces ... The first task of my government and the government that emerges from the elections will be to rebuild the institutions and make Bangladesh a true democracy ... We will not tolerate any attempt to disrupt the global garment supply chain, in which we are a key player”.

International capital can rest assured: the “ethical” banker will ensure the continuation of the oppression and exploitation of the working class, drawing on the democratic ideological repertoire.

The role of imperialisms

Bangladesh, like all mid- and small-scale national capitalisms, is a terrain of contention between the big imperialist powers, above all: the USA, China and India.

Over the last few decades, the Bengali bourgeoisie has taken advantage, with some success, of the rivalry between Beijing and New Delhi, juggling between the two powers. China has for years consolidated and strengthened relations with Dhaka by allocating huge sums to a country that is in a crucial geographical position for its capitalist interests. About 80% of the energy reserves needed by the Chinese giant cross the Indian Ocean and come from the Bay of Bengal. Large Chinese investments are being made in the infrastructure of the coastal countries in the area – Bangladesh and Burma – and in the construction of new pipelines. Last year, the first integrated sea-land oil storage and transport system was inaugurated in the Bengali port of Chittagong, a project executed by the China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau (CPP). An alternative, albeit partial, route to the transport of crude oil through the Strait of Malacca. In July, during the protests, the former premier visited Beijing and signed several agreements in the fields of trade, digital economy and infrastructure development. It is also worth mentioning that China is Dhaka’s leading arms supplier and the first joint military exercise called Golden Friendship 2024 was announced on 25 April.

Even more obvious is the link with India, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Bangladesh’s energy sector and infrastructure, and which with its fleet effectively guards the Bay of Bengal. Indian influence, economic and political, is a fact. It is no coincidence that the premier has taken refuge precisely in Delhi. There is also military cooperation between the two neighbouring countries to counter fundamentalist groups in the region. Bangladesh includes the former Indian province of East Bengal. West Bengal has remained part of India and the border between the two countries still remains rather porous due to shared ethnic and linguistic ties.

US imperialism has always had a support base in the Bengali army. One of the first statements by the refugee Hasina was: “I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the island of Saint Martin, thus allowing the Americans to control the Bay of Bengal”. The former Prime Minister was referring to the coral atoll, currently a marine protected area, which would be denied to the US who wanted to build a military base there.

Bangladesh did not want to join the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), a strategic alliance between Australia, Japan, India and the United States, essentially in an anti-Chinese perspective. Also along these lines, the Awami party in power until 5 August had – like India – refused to take sides in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and has long maintained fruitful relations with Russia. It is also true that Dhaka cannot afford to give up its relations with the United States, now India’s ally and the leading importer of Bangladeshi-made garments.

A complex scenario, as always, that of inter-imperialist contrasts, which will have its first test in the forthcoming elections.

But it is to be ruled out that a movement of hundreds of thousands of men was set in motion by “agents” of some power, an explanation to which the ousted bourgeois factions or the bourgeoisie as a whole always resort when it sees its class domination threatened, and to which even the political wreckage of Stalinism draws, for whom history is not the product of the struggle between classes but of the manoeuvres of powerful puppeteers.

The only revolutionary programme is Communism

The Bengali uprising had a popular, i.e. inter-class character, which, by now throughout the world, can no longer confer any progressive, revolutionary function on social movements, but only perpetuate the illusion of reforming capitalism. The petty-bourgeoisie has been the revolutionary wing of the bourgeoisie for as long as there have been pre-bourgeois regimes to overthrow, such as the exterminated mass of poor peasants in tsarist Russia.

Once the society and regime of capital is established, this function of the petty-bourgeoisie comes to an end and it can, at the height of its radicalism, in order to oppose the historical tendency that necessarily leads it to end up in the proletariat, nurture movements that are extremist in their practical action, even to the point of individual terrorism, but conservative or openly reactionary in their political programme.

The social force that alone opposes Capital is that of the proletarian class, which in its movement to defend the living conditions of its members clashes with the laws of Profit. The political destiny of the proletarian economic class struggle is the destruction of the bourgeois state and its replacement by the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, not a change of tunic of the bourgeois regime, keeping intact its machinery of state domination, which is what a popular movement can at best aspire to. Already in last October’s textile strike movement, the bourgeois opposition parties, in particular the Bangladesh National Party, had tried to break into the workers’ demonstrations and divert the class demands (more wages, less hours, better living and working conditions) towards generic demands for more democracy. A banner, that of democracy, which, passed off as being above class divisions, in fact was not taken up by the working class to be taken up instead, a few months later, by the students.

Instead, the popular, petit-bourgeois character of the social movement made it far more permeable to the influences of the bourgeois parties. Islamists, liberals and fake radical parties intervened in force in the squares to vie for control of the movement. On 5 August, the same day PM Hasina fled to India, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, a former BNP member and under arrest since 2018 for corruption, was freed by President Mohammed Shahabuddin.

The path of the wage-earning class is to defend their living conditions with ever more extensive, united and powerful strikes, for which strong class-based trade union organisations are needed. In this struggle, which springs naturally from the economic undergrowth of capitalism, the proletariat will meet, out of an objective practical necessity, the authentic communist party, overcoming decades of bewilderment generated by the course of the Stalinist counter-revolution, whose nefarious effects we see wearing off and, finally, coming to an end in these years, with their historical inertia, despite the collapse of the USSR’s false socialism. The Bengali workers will soon gauge the bourgeois nature of the new government and continue their generous trade union struggle.

The historical programme that their most advanced section, adhering to the Communist Party, will take up will be that of the drastic reduction of working hours, the abolition of wage labour, up to the struggle for power and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

When the mighty movement of struggle has risen from the economic-union level to the political level, with the Communist Party taking the lead in the struggle and the trade union organisations, a part of the petty-bourgeois strata will join the movement, following the working class.

The popular uprising movements we have witnessed in the last 15 years are thus the present expression of the crisis of world capitalism, but the future is far more threatening and unmanageable for the international bourgeoisie, because it will lead to proletarian movements, therefore finally, truly revolutionary, which will open up the historical outlet of Communism.