Recent protests against political corruption in the Philippines led to violent clashes at the presidential palace. The country’s rulers shouldn’t be surprised at the reaction after imposing their own forms of violence on its working classes for so long.

Last month, tens of thousands of Filipinos took to the streets following a series of revelations that some of the country’s highest officials had been receiving kickbacks worth millions of dollars from government contracts.

They included a group of around a thousand protesters, reportedly consisting mostly of youth from the urban poor, who marched on the presidential palace and threw petrol bombs at heavily armored police. They refused to back off even under a hail of live ammunition, with some chanting “Revolution! Revolution! Revolution

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