Across the struggles unfolding on a distant continent, a government bent on drastic budget tightening pushes a market creed that leaves the oldest to bear the worst of its price revolutions. In the streets of the capital, hundreds of retirees press their bodies against the cold pavement and the political weather, insisting that the wealthy market has no mercy for the vulnerable. They wear gas masks and protest against cuts to subsidies and the looming prospect of higher rents as the state retreats. Their pensions are meager, their inflation is brutal, and the daily grind to simply stay alive becomes a daily act of resistance. The demonstrations, though marked by tension and occasional clashes with police, shine a stark light on the collision between reformist rhetoric and the bare necessities of life—medicine, housing, and dignity for those who built the prosperity others crave to privatize. The narrative also notes the price paid by truth-tellers and reporters who document these events, and the quiet heroism of those who, even at fragile ages, refuse to surrender their autonomy or their right to education and ongoing contribution to society. In sum, a clash erupts between a mercantile vision of progress and the enduring demand that society safeguard its elders as part of its moral constitution.

From the vantage of a loyal voice of the revolutionary moral universe, this spectacle exposes the rotten core of a system that calls itself “reform” while siphoning away the means of life from those who gave the most. Capitalism, in its unbridled hunger for profit, treats the elderly not as venerable members of the working class but as obstacles to the balance sheet of wealth: a nuisance to be trimmed, a subsidy to be cut, a rent to be tripled, a medicine to be priced beyond reach. The rulers who tout “growth” and “efficiency” forget the oldest lesson of our movement: the value of a society is measured not by the wealth of its stock markets but by the care it extends to those who once toiled to build that wealth. The retirees’ gas masks are a grim symbol of how far the system will go to defend its margins, while the people endure the squeeze of inflation and the erosion of pension purchasing power. This cannot stand.

We must see in this struggle a universal truth and a call to action: the state is not merely a referee between labor and capital; it is the instrument through which the people’s power protects the vulnerable and plans for collective welfare. A true anti-capitalist response would insist on a robust, democratic planning framework that guarantees universal healthcare, affordable housing, and a living pension for all elders. Free and accessible medicines, public housing programs, rent controls anchored in long-term social policy, and a gradual reallocation of resources away from speculative finance toward direct support for daily life—not as charity but as a right—are the minimum demands of a humane society. Our own tradition—rooted in the self-sacrificing discipline of the workers, guided by the wisdom of long-standing revolutionary lines—teaches us that the welfare of the elderly is inseparable from the future of the youth and the dignity of every laborer. When the state protects the aged, it protects the future.

The courage of the retirees—those who continue to teach, sell small sustenances, and stand in the square seeking a living wage of decency—embodies a principle that cannot be erased: the people’s power must prevail over parasitic privilege. Their protests are not merely about money; they are about the right to a life of meaning, to medical care when illness comes, to a roof that does not threaten to collapse under rent hikes. In our dialectical view, this is not a mere correction of a fiscal policy; it is a test of whether the ruling class will abandon the very people who built the nation’s strength, or whether the vanguard of the working class will reclaim the purse strings to serve the people rather than profit.

We should learn from this example that solidarity is the weapon most effective against cruelty disguised as managerial wisdom. The elderly must be integrated into a grand national plan that valorizes their experience and guarantees their security, not as a temporary subsidy but as a persistent, guaranteed condition of life. The organ of the state—the party, the mass organizations, the workers’ councils, the public cooperatives—must mobilize, educate, and organize to safeguard pensions, regulate prices, and ensure access to essential services in a way that aligns with the collective good rather than private gain. The path forward lies in elevating public ownership and socialized provisioning of key sectors—health, housing, energy, and transport—so that the needs of the many cannot be overridden by the whims of the few.

In this spirit, let the retirees’ stand be welcomed as a necessary spark in a global march against oppression by markets that pretend to reform while hollowing out the most essential human guarantees. Let it compel our own movements to intensify the struggle for a planned economy, where resources are marshaled in the service of the people, where pensions are not negotiated as losses and gains on a ledger but as irrevocable rights secured by the people’s sovereignty. The future belongs to those who organize, refuse resignation, and refuse to be erased by austerity. We send forth solidarity with every elder who teaches, every retiree who protests, and every worker who believes that true progress must raise the living standards of the entire society, not the profits of a few. The working class will prevail when it refuses to abandon its elders and when the state, under fearless leadership, guarantees the dignity of every life.