Showing posts with label MAY DAY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MAY DAY. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Monday, May 30, 2011
MAY DAY CELEBERATIONS
EDITORIAL OF THE VOICE OF WORKING WOMEN –MAY, 2011
The Voice of the Working Woman extends its warm fraternal greetings to workers, all over the country and all over the world, on the occasion of May Day. On May Day, which symbolises the struggle of the international working class for an eight hour work day, we extend our solidarity to all our brothers and sisters who are fighting against the attacks on their hard won rights including the right to eight hour work.
The ruling classes in all the capitalist countries want to come out of the present global economic crisis and protect their profits by putting the entire burden of the crisis on to the working class and the common people. They are trying to rob the workers of whatever little benefits they have today by attacking whatever rights they have won, through decades of struggle and sacrifice.
The ruling classes in our country are no exception. The rights of the working class – the right to organisation, the right to strike, the right for a minimum wage, the right to social security, maternity benefits, child care facilities, the right to equal wages – are all under attack. In addition, the workers, particularly the lakhs and lakhs of workers in the unorganised sector, the working women, are reeling under the unprecedented rise in the prices of all essential commodities. The government, instead of providing any relief to the people is busy protecting those involved in looting public money. Never before in the history of independent India have so many scams erupted one after another as under the regime of this Congress led UPA II government, which has earned the dubious distinction of being the worst patron of corruption at high places.
It was these issues - price rise, corruption, attacks on the rights of the people – that were focussed by the Left in the campaign for the elections to the five state Assemblies which are going on as we observe this May Day. The pro monopoly, pro rich policies of the Congress and its allies and the alternative pro people and pro worker policies propagated by the Left parties and pursued by the Left led governments in Kerala and West Bengal presented a sharp contrast before the people. These elections have also witnessed blatant use of money, muscle and media power by the ruling classes to mislead the people. Huge amounts of the money looted from public exchequer, money which could have been utilised to provide basic education, health and other benefits to the people, is now being used to corrupt them, to purchase their votes and distort democracy itself.
The elections in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu are already over; the elections in West Bengal have just started. The results will be out and people’s verdict will be known in a month. We believe that despite all the concerted attempts by the ruling classes to mislead, misinform and manipulate the people, the LDF will be voted back to power for a second successive term in Kerala, breaking the tradition of alternate terms and the Left Front will be re-elected for a historic 8th term in West Bengal and the Left will strengthen its presence in the other states.
However, whatever the people’s verdict, the struggles against the attacks on the working class and the people have to be strengthened at the national level to protect the working and living conditions of the people. The united struggle of the working class based on the five major demands of the people and against corruption voiced during the March to Parliament on 23rd February will have to be further intensified and carried forward.
On this May Day, let us take the pledge to rededicate ourselves to this urgent task.
Courtesy: www.citucentre.org/
MAY DAY 2011 AND THE CHALLENGES AHEAD
A.K. Padmanabhan
May Day in 2011 comes in the midst of serious political developments in various continents. In India, working class is involved in political and economical battles against the reactionary forces, who had grouped together in their offensive against the working class and also against the Left forces. This struggle has been intensified in view of the electoral battle in five state legislatures and especially in the states of West Bengal and Kerala.
During the last one year, working people all over the world have faced intensive offensives of the finance capital and also the Imperialist forces. Working people in all the continents have come out on the streets enmasse, to protest against these offensives.
In the United States, UK and other developed countries, recent efforts have been to go for severe reduction in public spending aimed at reducing wages, social security and other hard earned benefits of the employees and the masses in General. ‘Tea-Party’ led campaign in US, with advisors from think tanks of the like from The Economist, put every issues of workers and employees in Public Sector as issues of ‘Tax eaters’ Vs the ‘Tax payers’.
Recent enactments in the state of Wisconsin in US, curtailing democratic and Trade Union rights and rights of collective bargaining has seen huge and unprecedented demonstrations and struggles. There have been huge job cuts in health, education and other departments in many states in the US including Ohio, Indiana. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in an article on 22nd February noted that these austerity measures are really aimed at taking away the bargaining capacity of workers. Referring to the so called austerity measures of British Govt., Paul Krugman, recently (March 2011) noted that “the Economy has stalled and business confidence has fallen to a two year low”. Even the Managing Director of IMF, Dominique Strauss Kahn, (Hindu, 16 April) “made a strong case for reducing global inequality, if economic growth has to be sustained”. Mr. Kahn argued that because unemployment was at “record” levels, the global economic recovery underway was “not creating jobs and is not shared broadly, as a result of which many people across nations faced a Social Crisis that was every bit as serious as the financial crisis”. “Mr. Kahn also warned that “what should have been a brief spell in unemployment is turning into a life sentence, possibly for a whole lost generation”.
These struggles in certain regions like North Africa and the Middle East, turned into big political upsurges – The basic slogans being bread, jobs and freedom. From Egypt and Tunisia where the authoritarian rulers had to flee, the struggle spread to various other countries in the region where repressions have been let loose on the protestors and many have been killed. There have been massive mobilisations in Yemen, Baharin, Jordan, Oman, Morocco, Turkey and in Iraq also.
Various forces have been involved in these struggles and we saw the imperialist forces led by the US and others militarily intervening in Libya while in Baharin, armies of other Gulf countries had marched in to suppress the protesters with the connivance of imperialist forces. While in Libya, NATO has moved in with heavy armoury in the name of saving the Libyan people, in Baharin it is at the request of the hated rulers to ‘save the country’. In Yemen, the much hated President Ali Abdullah Saleh a trusted ally of the Western Countries, continues his massive repression; about which the democracy loving Western Countries have no concern!
As Comrade Fidel Castro has rightly said on the war on Libya, we should raise our voice “in favour of immediate peace and full respect for life and rights of all citizens, with no foreign intervention that would only serve to prolong the conflict and NATO interests.”
We saw the Nobel Peace laureate US President Obama declaring war against a sovereign country, all in the name of a UN Security Council resolution, on which even the permanent members as well as a few other members of UN Security Council had expressed apprehension. Recently BRICS summit in China has also opposed use of force! The game plan of the imperialist forces have to be understood by the working people all over the world. For the imperialists, the only question to use their deadly armed forces with most modern weaponry to attack a sovereign country is whether it is with them or not!
HORROR IN JAPAN
During this period we experienced the nature’s fury in various countries in different parts of the world but the most dreaded situation has been that in Japan. Added to the earth quake and Tsunami, the meltdown in nuclear plant in Fukushima have brought out many issues regarding the safety of nuclear power stations and also how the profit mongering corporations, both equipment manufactures and power producers have not been caring for the safety of the people. These types of questions, though not such a very serious and threatening situation, were also raised at the time of Oil Spilling by BP in the Mexican waters! For the corporates, it is profits and profits alone that matters!
These happenings in nuclear plants in Japan, now have their repercussions in various countries including India. The much hyped campaigns on nuclear agreements with US are now being questioned. It is becoming more and more clear to even those who supported it at that time, that the nuclear agreements and related issues were part of a large-scale programme of subjugating India into an ever obliging ‘strategic’ ally. While Wikileaks, on the whole exposed the U.S. imperialists, the India related exposures have brought out the extent to which the U.S. tentacles are spreading. There is no area of administration where they are not involved directly or indirectly. It is also exposed how political and administrative leadership in the country has willingly become their tools.
It is for the working people in the country to be vigilant and to understand the severity of these developments and take up real class positions and mobilise themselves to challenge these reactionary, anti people forces.
INDIAN SITUATION
Working people and their Trade Union organisations in India can take credit to the fact they could come up on a united platform to take up at least some of the immediate demands of the people as a whole and demand a change in policies related to these issues!
The powerful countrywide strike after the last May Day, on 7th September 2010 and the massive March to Parliament on 23rd February 2011, with an unprecedented participation of men and women workers are the silver linings in the present situation. The neo liberal policy offensive finds the ruling alliance and the main ‘opposition’ party coming together on ‘policy’ issues, while they continue to quarrel and grab head lines on various other issues! Latest in these ‘united moves’ was the unity expressed by voting for the introduction of the PFRDA bill in the Lok Sabha on 23rd March! Exactly after a month of the Delhi rally by all unions, which demanded social security to unorganised workers, the bill is being brought to snatch away even existing benefits and mobilise every possible rupee even from unorganised workers, to the share markets!
This brings out the reality of the situation that when it comes to policies of liberalisation and serving the interests of the multinationals and investors, it is the class that matters and not the colour of the flags or the location of seats in the Parliament!
It is our responsibility to see that the unity that could be forged among the Central trade Unions and National Federations is further expanded and strengthened with the anti-working class, reactionary forces preparing to further unleash all out attacks on the working people in this country. The importance of united resistance, that too at the grassroots level have to be underscored. It is obvious, that more and more attacks are in the offing. This unity of the working people have to be further strengthened by also mobilising all the progressive sections of masses and their organisations like that of peasants, agricultural workers, youth and women who are prepared to take up these issues along with their own issues and struggles, For the workers, various forms of inhuman exploitations have to end. We should be able to link up this with our day to day issues. With the deepening crisis of the capitalist system, the offensive against workers are bound to increase. This reality has now been underlined once again by the just concluded 16th Congress of World Federation of Trade Unions in Athens, Greece. WFTU, after its reorientations to its class characteristics at the time of its foundation in 1945 and the presently required updating has declared itself as a platform for more united movements and struggles of the working people all over the world. The clarion call of the Congress, for struggles against imperialist offensives and the barbaric capitalist system and for a exploitation free world has to be taken down to the workers and toiling masses in our country, so as to further enlighten them towards the class orientation of our trade union movement.
At the same time, the issue based united movement in our country has to be further strengthened. On this May Day, when we raise our clinched to salute our class brethren all over the world, let us pledge to carry forward these tasks and the revolutionary tradition of this Historic Day.
Long live May Day.
Long live Working Class Unity.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
MAY DAY CELEBRATED IN AKG BHAWAN
MAY Day was observed at A K Gopalan Bhawan, Central Committee office of the CPI(M). M K Pandhe, Polit Bureau member, hoisted the Red Flag and addressed the meeting.
S Ramachandran Pillai, K Varadharajan, Polit Bureau members, V Srinivasa Rao, Central secretariat member, Noorul Hooda and Sudha Sundararaman, Central Committee members and cadres working in various offices of the Party participated in the function.
(INN
Courtesy: People’s Democracy
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Sunday, October 31, 2010
CITU’S MAY DAY MANIFESTO – 2010
On the occasion of May Day – 2010, the day of the international solidarity and unity of the working class, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) extends warmest revolutionary greetings to the working class and the toiling people of the country and the world. On this great day the CITU re-affirms its commitment to class struggle and reiterates its goal for establishment of a Socialist State and complete emancipation of the human society from all forms of exploitation.
RISING STRUGGLES WORLDWIDE
This year’s May Day is being observed world-over in the ongoing process of mounting protest mobilizations and united actions by the toiling masses against the onslaught brought down on them by the worst-ever global crisis of the capitalist order in the form of mass-scale joblosses, lay-off, closure, wage-cut etc. ILO estimated a jobloss of more than 50 millions within a few months of the outbreak of the crisis by the end of 2008 making the total unemployeds swell to 230 million over above the figure of working poor of 200 millions (living below US$ 1 a day). By the end of mid 2009, another 38 millions was added to the figure of joblosses. The figure swelled further thereafter since on the plea of crisis, closure, lay offs, retrenchment, wage freeze, curtailment of social security measures etc continued unabated by the employers’ class in collusion with the respective governments. India, despite remaining comparatively less affected by the crisis owing to dominance of public sector in her financial sector, witnessed direct loss of jobs of around 50 lakh workers besides several lakhs more affected by wage-cuts, forced leave without pay, lay-off, closures and shut-down etc.
The toiling people refused to accept the attack on their life and livelihood lying down and the intervening period since the May Day 2009 witnessed waves of strike struggles and protest mobilizations throughout the globe. France, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Portugal and UK in Europe and USA itself had been the theatre for strikes and protest mobilizations denouncing onslaught on workers’ rights and liberal bail-outs to the handful of capitalists and the private financial giants out of the public exchequer. There have also been strikes and powerful mobilizations in South Korea, Kazakasthan, Iran, Japan, Pakistan and other Asian countries. And Latin American countries continued to be the centre of voicing strong denouncement of neoliberalism and imperialism.
DEVELOPMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA
On the occasion of May Day 2010, CITU notes with pride the positive developments in the entire Latin American continent where the victory of progressive forces have mounted a serious challenge both to the neo-liberal economic policies and to imperialism. The bitter and protracted struggles fought by the working people of these countries over the decades against the plunder under the neo-liberal pro-US regimes, led to these positive developments.
And these developments also reassert that the struggle against the most inhuman and the worst-ever manifestation of the world capitalist order –the neoliberal economic policy regime is organically linked with the struggle against imperialism. Without strong anti-imperialist focus and content, struggle against neoliberalism cannot advance in the right direction.
GREETINGS TO SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
On this May-day, the CITU conveys its warm fraternal greetings to the working class of China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea for consolidating the gains of socialism and sustained improvement in the standard of living and rights of the people. They could make remarkable achievement in the midst of worldwide crisis of the capitalist order, and hold high the banner of socialism and defend the superiority of the working class.
RISING STRUGGLES WORLDWIDE
This year’s May Day is being observed world-over in the ongoing process of mounting protest mobilizations and united actions by the toiling masses against the onslaught brought down on them by the worst-ever global crisis of the capitalist order in the form of mass-scale joblosses, lay-off, closure, wage-cut etc. ILO estimated a jobloss of more than 50 millions within a few months of the outbreak of the crisis by the end of 2008 making the total unemployeds swell to 230 million over above the figure of working poor of 200 millions (living below US$ 1 a day). By the end of mid 2009, another 38 millions was added to the figure of joblosses. The figure swelled further thereafter since on the plea of crisis, closure, lay offs, retrenchment, wage freeze, curtailment of social security measures etc continued unabated by the employers’ class in collusion with the respective governments. India, despite remaining comparatively less affected by the crisis owing to dominance of public sector in her financial sector, witnessed direct loss of jobs of around 50 lakh workers besides several lakhs more affected by wage-cuts, forced leave without pay, lay-off, closures and shut-down etc.
The toiling people refused to accept the attack on their life and livelihood lying down and the intervening period since the May Day 2009 witnessed waves of strike struggles and protest mobilizations throughout the globe. France, Italy, Sweden, Greece, Spain, Portugal and UK in Europe and USA itself had been the theatre for strikes and protest mobilizations denouncing onslaught on workers’ rights and liberal bail-outs to the handful of capitalists and the private financial giants out of the public exchequer. There have also been strikes and powerful mobilizations in South Korea, Kazakasthan, Iran, Japan, Pakistan and other Asian countries. And Latin American countries continued to be the centre of voicing strong denouncement of neoliberalism and imperialism.
DEVELOPMENTS IN LATIN AMERICA
On the occasion of May Day 2010, CITU notes with pride the positive developments in the entire Latin American continent where the victory of progressive forces have mounted a serious challenge both to the neo-liberal economic policies and to imperialism. The bitter and protracted struggles fought by the working people of these countries over the decades against the plunder under the neo-liberal pro-US regimes, led to these positive developments.
And these developments also reassert that the struggle against the most inhuman and the worst-ever manifestation of the world capitalist order –the neoliberal economic policy regime is organically linked with the struggle against imperialism. Without strong anti-imperialist focus and content, struggle against neoliberalism cannot advance in the right direction.
GREETINGS TO SOCIALIST COUNTRIES
On this May-day, the CITU conveys its warm fraternal greetings to the working class of China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea for consolidating the gains of socialism and sustained improvement in the standard of living and rights of the people. They could make remarkable achievement in the midst of worldwide crisis of the capitalist order, and hold high the banner of socialism and defend the superiority of the working class.
CITU salutes with pride the victorious completion of 50 years of the Great Cuban Revolution which is a saga of a constant battle against the US imperialism. The Cuban experience conclusively demonstrates that consistent adherence to ideology of socialism necessarily entails confronting imperialism.
FIGHT THE IMPERIALIST MACHINATIONS
On this May Day the CITU expresses condemnation against the hegemonic machinations of the imperialist forces led by US. Besides Iraq and Afghanistan still remaining the hotbed of aggressionism by US imperialism, the possibility of yet another front of so called “war on terror” is being sought to be opened by US imperialist power in Yemen in the Arabian peninsula with the US Missiles raiding Yemen stated to be for fighting Al-Quaida.
CITU reiterates its solidarity with the valiant Palestinian people in the face of inhuman military onslaught by Israel with active support of the US and its European allies. Besides fully backing Israel to continue its occupation of Palestinian and Arab territories, the US imperialist is continuing with its conspiracy to attack Iran, Syria and DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).
But there are indications of changes too arising out of murmuring and not so loud contradictions within the imperialist powers and their allies. The contradiction between US and Russia over deployment of missile defence system in Europe and subsequent backtracking of USA, indicates prospect of emergence of multipolarity in the international arena which must be taken note of.
In the face of the rising opposition to its economic political and military hegemony and its increasing isolation, the US has become desperate to consolidate its influence. The US has been desperately attempting to tighten its grip over the ruling polity in the developing countries in the eastern hemisphere including the Indian sub continent. The strategic military cooperation and the Indo US nuclear deal are expressions of this intent. US imperialism has redoubled its conspiratorial attempts to weaken the opposition to its manoeuvres by the Left and other progressive forces in the developing countries, including India.
CAPITALISM STANDS EXPOSED
The current spate of crisis fuelled by so called global financial meltdown has been the inevitable culmination of the finance capital driven neoliberal imperialist order where all aspects of economic governance are subordinated to finance capital’s lust for quickest possible gain. This crisis thoroughly exposed the extreme fragility of the world capitalist order and also totally exploded the much-touted idea of considering certain aspects of the neoliberal package as “opportunity for development”. It has also exposed the dubious mode of operation of modern capitalism under neoliberal order. They create artificial boom in the market by fraudulent methods using public funds for their personal or cartels’ gains. When the boom bursts, the government rescues the collapsing institutions by public funds, but the people continue to lose through unemployment, loss of savings, wage cut etc. This is the real face of present day capitalism under neoliberal globalisation, which is nothing but a loot and fraud on the people and the economy. On this May-day, CITU renews its commitment to work for exposing this dubious system before the people while continuing to fight against its depredations.
The IMF in its latest update of the economic outlook in January 2010 has expressed optimism about the recovery of the world economy. But what is being witnessed is nothing but a partial slowing down of the pace of decline owing to huge bail-out packages and fiscal measures funded by the public exchequer and not the recovery as such. Actually, all noise of recovery is being made by the imperialist agencies as a plea for not reversing their speculation-driven neoliberal path in the face of severe criticisms to such policies. It is calear attempt to rope in the developing economies more firmly with their pursuit of aggressive finance-capital-driven neoliberalism and get their economies totally deregulated to the advantage of the rich industrialised economies.
AT HOME
CITU takes pride along with the entire toiling class that owing to consistent opposition and united countrywide struggle by the working class and stout resistance by the Left forces in Parliament, the financial sector of the country could not be privatised or deregulated fully, privatisation of public sector units could be halted and the country’s economy could be saved, at least partially, from inevitable collapse and disaster in the midst of global economic meltdown.
Instead of taking lessons from the crisis, the UPA Govt, after assuming its second term after the 15th Lok Sabha elections, has become more desperate in practically putting the national economy almost on the auction to the advantage of imperialism. At the same time, it has set in motion a regime of loot and fraud on mass of the people. Price-rise is being promoted unbound and so also unhindered speculation in the commodity market to ensure windfall gains for their mentors in the capitalist, traders and big landlord lobby. Public exchequer is being frittered away for the so called stimulus for the big capitalists, both domestic and foreign. At the same time the mass of the people are being cruelly fleeced through higher burden of taxes and duties and drastic cut in basic subsidies like food, fertilizers and fuels. The whole economy is being aggressively pushed to such dangerous direction that most of the crucial inputs and commodities like fuel, fertilizers, medicines etc are being sought to be priced at par with global rates while keeping the mass of the people deprived of even the statutory minimum wages at home and/or minimum level of earnings to ensure a barely human living. The crucial public utilities like health, education, roadways, transport etc are being sought to be privatized and commercialized through so called PPP model to sub-serve the interests of big business. Simultaneously, blue chip public sector units in strategic, infrastructure and natural resources sector are being sought to be privatized in phases at throw-away prices. The stage is being sought to be set for loot by the big corporates and traders lobby both domestic and foreign by the corporate captive Govt. And all these signals pro-active capitulation by the Indian rulers to imperialist’s game plan.
And as a supplementary measure to such process of loot and plunder on the people, all basic labour laws are being allowed to be desperately violated by the employers in collusion the custodians of law and order. Trade unions are not being allowed to be formed in many places and rampant victimization of workers for forming trade unions has become the order of the day. Move is afoot and the blue-print has already been drawn to convert the entire country into an ultra-special economic zone in the name of National Manufacturing Investment Zone (NMIZ) to make all the workplaces free from unions and any labour rights and complete freedom for the employers to rule on enslaved workforce. The motive is to weaken the peoples’ opposition and resistance to anti-people policies and anti-national designs. The attack on the labour rights, as the history shows, has always been precursors to onslaught on the democratic rights and institutions.
On this May-day, CITU vows to redouble its initiative to unite the toiling class in the resistance to the regime of loot and plunder on people, who produces wealth and push up GDP numbers by their sweat and blood. The working class has to resist the onslaught on its right to organize and struggle by aggressively asserting those rights in the struggle against exploitation and onslaughts. The brutality of the employers class, howsoever atrocious it might be with the active patronage of those in governance, have to be combated by the working class through demonstration of greater vigour and conviction to combat and defeat the exploitation and the exploiting class as well.
That is the challenge destined to be taken up by the working class in the coming days and let this May-day reinvigorate that revolutionary spirit within the working class movement. CITU notes with confidence, while the correlation of forces in the political arena inside Parliament has somewhat tilted towards right, developments outside signal differently. All the trade unions irrespective of affiliations came together on the same platform to raise voice against price-rise, against state-sponsored violation of labour laws, against reckless contractorisation and casualisation of workforce, against disinvestment and privatization and demanding universal social security coverage for unorganized sector workers. The demands together demonstrate a strong disapproval to the policy of loot and plunder by the ruling polity. Already the six lakh coal workers and all their unions embarked on the path of resistance struggle announcing three days countrywide strike action from 5TH May 2010 against disinvestment and also the entire workforce of the public sector telecom giant BSNL announced their resolve to resort to indefinite strike if the Govt treads on the path of disinvestment in BSNL. About a million workers courted arrests through militant demonstration throughout the country on 5th March this year and several millions more are going to join the next course of actions. On this May-day CITU calls upon the working class to carry the united struggle of the working people to a militant height reflecting stronger determination of the working class to fight for reversal of the anti-people pro-imperialist policy regime.
COMBAT THE DIVISIVE FORCES
On this May-day, CITU reiterates its commitment to fight for defending and preserving the unity of the working class and the people which is under constant attack by disruptive forces of various hues. Communal forces are still active in the social and political arena seeking a polarization based on religious divide. The casteist and parochial forces are also at work in creating divisive tension and riotous situation in various parts of the country which got reflected in a number of incidents of conflicts. Terrorist and extremist outfits of both rightwing and ultra-Left variety are also active in the society in their bid to dechannelise the popular discontent to the ultimate advantage of the exploiting class. The working class movement has to continue relentless fight against all such reactionary and divisive outfits organizationally and ideologically to defend and broaden the unity of the working class and the people. Simultaneously, the fight against all kinds of social oppression and untouchability on the dalits and downtroddens must continue with all seriousness.
COMBAT THE ONSLAUGHT ON LEFT AND DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT
On this May-day CITU calls upon the working class movement to fight and combat the grievous onslaught being perpetrated on the Left and democratic movement which always stand by the working class in all its struggle and always voice their concern. In the face of Left’s uncompromising stance against neoliberal and pro-imperialist policies of the ruling class and its successful blockade to many of their anti people projects, all the forces of right reaction aided and abetted by the imperialist agencies have become desperate in launching an all round attack against the Left movement. The entire machinery of governance, the media controlled by big bourgeoisie and various imperialist agencies together ganged up in unleashing malicious campaign against the Left for quite some time now.
Along with, concerted physical attack is also being launched against the Left and democratic movement in the strongest bastion of Left in West Bengal by the gang-up of extreme right reaction and extreme ultra-Left combine in the garb of so called Maoist outfit. The Trinamool Congress and so called Maoist goons together are carrying on murderous assault on the activists of Left and democratic organizations of workers, peasants, students, youth and women in various parts of West Bengal. They have been setting houses on fire, blowing up railway lines, exploding mines and bombs, killing innocent people, forcing women and children at gunpoint to frontline of the armed contingents of the goons as a shield to confront the Security Forces. Since last Lok Sabha elections, more than 200 activists of the democratic movement of peasants, workers, students, youth and women and also common people were killed brutally and the number is increasing every day. The entire game plan is to create a fear-psychosis and spread an atmosphere of terror in which this hoodlum-extortionist contingent can reign on and mute the voice of the democratic movement.
The comrades in West Bengal, the working class and the democratic movement of peasants, agricultural workers, students, youth and women have decided not to yield the ground to these worst enemies of people. They are combating the organised plan of terror and killings bravely with the people by their side and have been authoring an epic of sacrifices and commitment every day.
And it is West Bengal which has always remained the advanced outpost of the struggle of working class as well as the Left movement, contributing to the decisive intervening capability of the Left forces. The intervening and deterring capability of the Left is crucial for defending the national economy from the imperialist’s grip, saving the country’s national assets and resources from the greedy targeting by the international finance capital, for building resistance to capitulation by the ruling polity to US imperialist’s politico-economic hegemonist strategy and for defending the rights of the working class thereby defending democracy as such.
The people of West Bengal have been physically in the frontline of this resistance struggle, bleeding and laying down lives. The enemy they are fighting is the enemy of the entire toiling class, enemy of democracy, enemy of peoples’ empowerment and finally the enemy of the people. On this May Day CITU pledges to rouse the working class throughout the country ideologically and organizationally, to unite and fight against the brutal physical onslaught on their fellow travellers in West Bengal who always remained in the frontline of battle championing the cause of the working class and led the struggle against exploitative regime of the capitalist order.
FRATERNAL GREETINGS
CITU extends warm fraternal greetings and expresses solidarity to the millions of agricultural workers, poor and middle peasantry in their struggle for right to better wages, employment, right to land, remunerative prices, cheaper credit and infrastructural and input support through massive public investment. CITU looks forward to strengthen workers-peasants alliance for intensification of class struggle against neoliberal policies aggravating the agrarian crisis.
CITU also conveys its fraternal greetings and message of solidarity to the struggles of the youth and students organizations for the right to education and employment and against commercialization and privatization of education. CITU conveys its warm greetings to united struggle of women against discrimination, violence and for equality and right to appropriate representation and empowerment. On the centenary year of the International Women’s Day, CITU asserts its firm commitment to advance and popularize the struggles of the working women.
THE APPEAL OF MAY DAY 2010
On this May-day, CITU reiterates the commitment to international solidarity to the struggles of the toiling people all over the globe against imperialism and neoliberal economic order.
CITU appeals to the working people in the country to work for strengthening all in unity of the class to combat and confront the onslaught being brought down by the corporate captive ruling polity on the rights and livelihood of the workers at every workplace; the struggle against attack on labour rights in workplace must be supplemented by solidarity actions in all others. Solidarity actions must form an inseparable part of the day to day collective life of the working people. This is the call of Hey market martyrs.
On this May-day CITU calls upon the working class to remain vigilant and fight against the divisive forces of all hues- communalism, casteism and parochialism while defending and expanding the unity of the class and the people in the struggle against oppression and exploitation.
Long Live International Solidarity of the Working Class !Down with Imperialism !Down with Neoliberal Imperialist Globalisation !Long Live Socialism !Workers of the World Unite !
Source: www.citucentre.org
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
ALEXANDER TRACHTENBERG. MAY DAY ARCHIVE
THE HISTORY OF MAY DAY
Published: International Pamphlets, 1932;HTML: for marxists.org in March, 2002;Proofed and Corrected: by Dawen Gaitis 2007.
THE FIGHT FOR THE SHORTER WORKDAY
The origin of May Day is indissolubly bound up with the struggle for the shorter workday – a demand of major political significance for the working class. This struggle is manifest almost from the beginning of the factory system in the United States.
Although the demand for higher wages appears to be the most prevalent cause for the early strikes in this country, the question of shorter hours and the right to organize were always kept in the foreground when workers formulated their demands against the bosses and the government. As exploitation was becoming intensified and workers were feeling more and more the strain of inhumanly long working hours, the demand for an appreciable reduction of hours became more pronounced.
Already at the opening of the 19th century workers in the United States made known their grievances against working from "sunrise to sunset," the then prevailing workday. Fourteen, sixteen and even eighteen hours a day were not uncommon. During the conspiracy trial against the leaders of striking cordwainers in 1806, it was brought out that workers were employed as long as nineteen and twenty hours a day.
The twenties and thirties are replete with strikes for reduction of hours of work and definite demands for a 10-hour day were put forward in many industrial centers. The organization of what is considered as the first trade union in the world, the Mechanics' Union of Philadelphia, preceding by two years the one formed by workers in England, can be definitely ascribed to a strike of building trade workers in Philadelphia in 1827 for the 10-hour day. During the bakers' strike in New York in 1834 the Workingmen's Advocate reported that "journeymen employed in the loaf bread business have for years been suffering worse than Egyptian bondage. They have had to labor on an average of eighteen to twenty hours out of the twenty-four."
The demand in those localities for a 10-hour day soon grew into a movement, which, although impeded by the crisis of 1837, led the federal government under President Van Buren to decree the 10-hour day for all those employed on government work. The struggle for the universality of the 10-hour day, however, continued during the next decades. No sooner had this demand been secured in a number of industries than the workers began to raise the slogan for an 8-hour day. The feverish activity in organizing labor unions during the fifties gave this new demand an impetus which, however, was checked by the crisis of 1857. The demand was, however, won in a few well-organized trades before the crisis. That the movement for a shorter workday was not only peculiar to the United States, but was prevalent wherever workers were exploited under the rising capitalist system, can be seen from the fact that even in far away Australia the building trade workers raised the slogan "8 hours work, 8 hours recreation and 8 hours rest" and were successful in securing this demand in 1856.
EIGHT HOUR MOVEMENT STARTED IN AMERICA
The 8-hour day movement which directly gave birth to May Day, must, however, be traced to the general movement initiated in the United States in 1884. However, a generation before a national labor organization, which at first gave great promise of developing into a militant organizing center of the American working class, took up the question of a shorter workday and proposed to organize a broad movement in its behalf. The first years of the Civil War, 1861-1862, saw the disappearance of the few national trade unions which had been formed just before the war began, especially the Molders' Union and the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union. The years immediately following, however, witnessed the unification on a national scale of a number of local labor organizations, and the urge for a national federation of all these unions became apparent. On August 20, 1866, there gathered in Baltimore delegates from three scores of trade unions who formed the National Labor Union. The movement for the national organization was led by William H. Sylvis, the leader of the reconstructed Molders' Union, who, although a young man, was the outstanding figure in the labor movement of those years. Sylvis was in correspondence with the leaders of the First International in London and helped to influence the National Labor Union to establish relations with the General Council of the International.
It was at the founding convention of the National Labor Union in 1866 that the following resolution was passed dealing with the shorter workday:
The first and great necessity of the present, to free labor of this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which 8 hours shall be the normal working day in all states in the American union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained.
The same convention voted for independent political action in connection with the securing of the legal enactment of the 8-hour day and the "election of men pledged to sustain and represent the interests of the industrial classes."
The program and policies of the early labor movement, although primitive and not always sound, were based, nevertheless, on healthy proletarian instinct and could have served as starting points for the development of a genuine revolutionary labor movement in this country were it not for the reformist misleaders and capitalist politicians who later infested the labor organizations and directed them in wrong channels. Thus 65 years ago, the national organization of American labor, the N. L. U., expressed itself against "capitalist slavery" and for independent political action.
Eight-hour leagues were formed as a result of the agitation of the National Labor Union; and through the political activity which the organization developed, several state governments adopted the 8-hour day on public work and the U. S. Congress enacted a similar law in 1868.
Sylvis continued to keep in touch with the International in London. Due to his influence as president of the organization, the National Labor Union voted at its convention in 1867 to cooperate with the international working class movement and in 1869 it voted to accept the invitation of the General Council and send a delegate to the Basle Congress of the International. Unfortunately Sylvis died just before the N. L. U. convention, and A. C. Cameron, the editor of the Workingmen's Advocate, published in Chicago, was sent as delegate in his stead. In a special resolution the General Council mourned the death of this promising young American labor leader. "The eyes of all were turned upon Sylvis, who, as a general of the proletarian army, had an experience of ten years, outside of his great abilities – and Sylvis is dead." The passing of Sylvis was one of the contributing causes of the decay which soon set in and led to the disappearance of the National Labor Union.
FIRST INTERNATIONAL ADOPTS THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY
The decision for the 8-hour day was made by the National Labor Union in August, 1866. In September of the same year the Geneva Congress of the First International went on record for the same demand in the following words:
The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive....The Congress proposes 8 hours as the legal limit of the working day.
MARX ON THE EIGHT HOUR MOVEMENT
In the chapter on "The Working Day" in the first volume of Capital, published in 1867, Marx calls attention to the inauguration of the 8-hour movement by the National Labor Union. In the passage, famous especially because it contains Marx's telling reference to the solidarity of class interests between the Negro and white workers, he wrote:
In the United States of America, any sort of independent labor movement was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself where labor with a black skin is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new vigorous life sprang. The first fruit of the Civil War was an agitation for the 8-hour day – a movement which ran with express speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California.
Marx calls attention to how almost simultaneously, in fact within two weeks of each other, a workers' convention meeting in Baltimore voted for the 8-hour day, and an international congress meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, adopted a similar decision. "Thus on both sides of the Atlantic did the working class movement, spontaneous outgrowth of the conditions of production," endorse the same movement of the limitation of hours of labor and concretize it in the demand for the 8-hour day.
That the decision of the Geneva Congress was prompted by the American decision can be seen from the following portion of the resolution: "As this limitation represents the general demand of the workers of the North-American United States, the Congress transforms this demand into the general platform of the workers of the whole world."
A similar influence of the American labor movement upon an international congress and in behalf of the same cause was exerted more profoundly 23 years later.
MAY DAY BORN IN THE UNITED STATES
The First International ceased to exist as an international organization in 1872, when its headquarters were removed from London to New York, although it was not officially disbanded till 1876. It was at the first congress of the reconstituted International, later known as the Second International, held at Paris in 1889, that May First was set aside as a day upon which the workers of the world, organized in their political parties and trade unions, were to fight for the important political demand: the 8-hour day. The Paris decision was influenced by a decision made at Chicago five years earlier by delegates of a young American labor organization – the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, later known under the abbreviated name, American Federation of Labor. At the Fourth Convention of this organization, October 7, 1884, the following resolution was passed:
Resolved by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions the United States and Canada, that eight hours shall constitute legal day's labor from May First, 1886, and that we recommend to labor organizations throughout their jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.
Although nothing was said in the resolution about the methods by which the Federation expected to establish the 8-hour day, it is self-evident that an organization which at that time commanded an adherence of not more than 50,000 members could not declare "that eight hours shall constitute a legal day's work" without putting up a fight for it in the shops, mills, and mines where its members were employed, and without attempting to draw into the struggle for the 8-hour day still larger numbers of workers. The provision in the resolution that the unions affiliated to the Federation "so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution" referred to the matter of paying strike benefits to their members who were expected to strike on May First, 1886, for the 8-hour day, and would probably have to stay out long enough to need assistance from the union. As this strike action was to be national in scope and involve all the affiliated organizations, the unions, according to their by-laws, had to secure the endorsement of the strike by their members, particularly since that would involve the expenditure of funds, etc. It must be remembered that the Federation, just as the A. F. of L. today, was organized on a voluntary, federation basis, and decisions of a national convention could be binding upon affiliated unions only if those unions endorsed these decisions.
PREPARATION FOR MAY DAY STRIKE
Although the decade 1880-1890 was generally one of the most active in the development of American industry and the extension of the home market, the year 1883-1885 experienced a depression which was a cyclical depression following the crisis of 1873. The movement for a shorter workday received added impetus from the unemployment and the great suffering which prevailed during that period, just as at the present time the demand for a 7-hour day is becoming a popular issue on account of the tremendous unemployment which American workers are experiencing.
The great strike struggles of 1877, in which tens of thousands of railroad and steel workers militantly fought against the corporations and the government which sent troops to suppress the strikes, left an impress on the whole labor movement. It was the first great mass action of the American working class on a national scale and, although they were defeated by the combined forces of the State and capital, the American workers emerged from these struggles with a clearer understanding of their class position in society, a greater militancy and a heightened morale. It was in part an answer to the coal barons of Pennsylvania who, in their attempt to destroy the miners' organization in the anthracite region, railroaded ten militant miners (Molly Maguires) to the gallows in 1875.
The Federation, just organized, saw the possibility of utilizing the slogan of the 8-hour day as a rallying organization slogan among the great masses of workers who were outside of the Federation and the Knights of Labor, an older and then still growing organization. The Federation appealed to the Knights of Labor for support in the movement for the 8-hour day, realizing that only a general action involving all organized labor could make possible favorable results.
At the convention of the Federation in 1885, the resolution on the walk-out for May First of the following year was reiterated and several national unions took action to prepare for the struggle, among them particularly the Carpenters and Cigar Makers. The agitation for the May First action for the 8-hour day showed immediate results in the growth of membership of the existing unions. The Knights of Labor grew by leaps and bounds, reaching the apex of its growth in 1886. It is reported that the R. of L., which was better known than the Federation and was considered a fighting organization, increased its membership from 200,000 to nearly 700,000 during that period. The Federation, first to inaugurate the movement and definitely to set a date for the strike for the 8-hour day, also grew in numbers and particularly in prestige among the broad masses of the workers. As the day of the strike was approaching and it was becoming evident that the leadership of the K. of L., especially Terrence Powderly, were sabotaging the movement and even secretly advising its unions not to strike, the popularity of the Federation was still more enhanced. The rank and file of both organizations were enthusiastically preparing for the struggle. Eight-hour day leagues and associations sprang up in various cities and an elevated spirit of militancy was felt throughout the labor movement, which was infecting masses of unorganized workers.
THE STRIKE MOVEMENT SPREADS
The best way to learn the mood of the workers is to study the extent and seriousness of their struggles. The number of strikes during a given period is a good indicator of the fighting mood of the workers. The number of strikes during 1885 and 1886 as compared with previous years shows what a spirit of militancy was animating the labor movement. Not only were the workers preparing for action on May First, 1886, but in 1885 the number of strikes already showed an appreciable increase. During the years 1881-1884 the number of strikes and lockouts averaged less than 500, and on the average involved only about 150,000 workers a year. The strikes and lockouts in 1885 increased to about 700 and the number of workers involved jumped to 250,000. In 1886 the number of strikes more than doubled over 1885, attaining to as many as 1,572, with a proportional increase in the number of workers affected, now 600,000. How widespread the strike movement became in 1886 can be seen from the fact that while in 1885 there were only 2,467 establishments affected by strikes, the number involved in the following year had increased to 11,562. In spite of open sabotage by the leadership of the K. of L., it was estimated that over 500,000 workers were directly involved in strikes for the 8-hour day.
The strike center was Chicago, where the strike movement was most widespread, but many other cities were involved in the struggle on May First. New York, Baltimore, Washington, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and many other cities made a good showing in the walkout. The characteristic feature of the strike movement was that the unskilled and unorganized workers were drawn into the struggle, and that sympathetic strikes were quite prevalent during that period. A rebellious spirit was abroad in the land, and bourgeois historians speak of the "social war" and "hatred for capital" which was manifested during these strikes, and of the enthusiasm of the rank and file which pervaded the movement. It is estimated that about half of the number of workers who struck on May First were successful, and where they did not secure the 8-hour day, they succeeded in appreciably reducing the hours of labor.
THE CHICAGO STRIKE AND HAYMARKET
The May First strike was most aggressive in Chicago, which was at that time the center of a militant Left-wing labor movement. Although insufficiently clear politically on a number of the problems of the labor movement, it was nevertheless a fighting movement, always ready to call the workers to action, develop their fighting spirit and set as their goal not only the immediate improvement of their living and working conditions, but the abolition of the capitalist system as well.
With the aid of the revolutionary labor groups the strike in Chicago assumed the largest proportions. An 8-hour Association was formed long in advance of the strike to prepare for it. The Central Labor Union, composed of the Left-wing labor unions, gave full support to the 8-hour Association, which was a united front organization, including the unions affiliated to the Federation, the K. of L., and the Socialist Labor Party. On the Sunday before May First the Central Labor Union organized a mobilization demonstration which was attended by 25,000 workers.
On May First Chicago witnessed a great outpouring of workers, who laid down tools at the call of the organized labor movement of the city. It was the most effective demonstration of class solidarity yet experienced by the labor movement itself. The importance at that time of the demand – the 8-hour day – and the extent and character of the strike gave the movement significant political meaning. This significance was deepened by the developments of the next few days. The 8-hour movement, culminating in the strike on May First, 1886, forms by itself a glorious chapter in the fighting history of the American working class.
But revolutions have their counter-revolutions until the revolutionary class finally establishes its complete control. The victorious march of the Chicago workers was arrested by the then superior combined force of the employers and the capitalist state, determined to destroy the militant leaders, hoping thereby to deal a deadly blow to the entire labor movement of Chicago. The events of May 3 and 4, which led to what is known as the Haymarket Affair, were a direct outgrowth of the May First strike. The demonstration held on May 4 at Haymarket Square was called to protest against the brutal attack of the police upon a meeting of striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works on May 3, where six workers were killed and many wounded. The meeting was peaceful and about to be adjourned when the police again launched an attack upon the assembled workers. A bomb was thrown into the crowd, killing a sergeant. A battle ensued with the result that seven policemen and four workers were dead. The blood bath at Haymarket Square, the railroading to the gallows of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, and the imprisonment of the other militant Chicago leaders, was the counterrevolutionary answer of the Chicago bosses. It was the signal for action to the bosses all over the country. The second half of 1886 was marked by a concentrated offensive of the employers, determined to regain the position lost during the strike movement of 1885-1886.
One year after the hanging of the Chicago labor leaders, the Federation, now known as the American Federation of Labor, at its convention in St. Louis in 1888, voted to rejuvenate the movement for the 8-hour day. May First, which was already a tradition, having served two years before as the concentration point of the powerful movement of the workers based upon a political class issue, was again chosen as the day upon which to re-inaugurate the struggle for the 8-hour day. May First, 1890, was to witness a nation-wide strike for the shorter workday. At the convention in 1889, the leaders of the A. F. of L., headed by Samuel Gompers, succeeded in limiting the strike movement. It was decided that the Carpenters' Union, which was considered best prepared for the strike, should lead off with the strike, and if it proved successful, other unions were to fall in line.
In his autobiography Gompers tells how the A. F. of L. contributed to making May Day an international labor holiday: "As plans for the 8-hour movement developed, we were constantly realizing how we could widen our purpose. As the time of the meeting of the International Workingmen's Congress in Paris approached, it occurred to me that we could aid our movement by an expression of world-wide sympathy from that congress." Gompers, who had already exhibited all the attributes of reformism and opportunism which later came to full bloom in his class collaborationist policy, was ready to get the support of a movement among the workers, the influence of which he strongly combated.
MAY DAY BECOMES INTERNATIONAL
On July 14, 1889, the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, there assembled in Paris leaders from organized revolutionary proletarian movements of many lands, to form once more an international organization of workers, patterned after the one formed 25 years earlier by their great teacher, Karl Marx. Those assembled at the foundation meeting of what was to become the Second International heard from the American delegates about the struggle in America for the 8-hour day during 1884-1886, and the recent rejuvenation of the movement. Inspired by the example of the American workers, the Paris Congress adopted the following resolution:
The Congress decides to organize a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and in all cities on one appointed day the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well as the carrying out of other decisions of the Paris Congress. Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890, by the American Federation of Labor at its Convention in St. Louis, December, 1888, this day is accepted for the international demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organize this demonstration according to conditions prevailing in each country.
The clause in the resolution which speaks of the organization of the demonstration with regard to the objective conditions prevailing in each country gave some parties, particularly the British movement, an opportunity to interpret the resolution as not mandatory upon all countries. Thus at the very formation of the Second International, there were parties who looked upon it as merely a consultative body, functioning only during Congresses for the exchange of information and opinions, but not as a centralized organization, a revolutionary world proletarian party, such as Marx had tried to make the First International a generation before. When Engels wrote to his friend Serge in 1874, before the First International was officially disbanded in America, "I think that the next International, formed after the teachings of Marx, will have become widely known during the next years, will be a purely Communist International," he did not foresee that at the very launching of the rejuvenated International there would be present reformist elements who viewed it as a voluntary federation of Socialist parties, independent of each other and each a law unto itself.
But May Day, 1890, was celebrated in many European countries, and in the United States the Carpenters' Union and other building trades entered into a general strike for the 8-hour day. Despite the Exception Laws against the Socialists, workers in the various German industrial cities celebrated May Day, which was marked by fierce struggles with the police. Similarly in other European capitals demonstrations were held, although the authorities warned against them and the police tried to suppress them. In the United States, the Chicago and New York demonstrations were of particularly great significance. Many thousands paraded the streets in support of the 8-hour day demand; and the demonstrations were closed with great open air mass meetings at central points.
At the next Congress, in Brussels, 1891, the International reiterated the original purpose of May First, to demand the 8-hour day, but added that it must serve also as a demonstration in behalf of the demands to improve working conditions, and to ensure peace among the nations. The revised resolution particularly stressed the importance of the "class character of the May First demonstrations" for the 8-hour day and the other demands which would lead to the "deepening of the class struggle." The resolution also demanded that work be stopped "wherever possible." Although the reference to strikes on May First was only conditional, the International began to enlarge upon and concretize the purposes of the demonstrations. The British Laborites again showed their opportunism by refusing to accept even the conditional proposal for a strike on May First, and together with the German Social-Democrats voted to postpone the May Day demonstration to the Sunday following May First.
ENGELS ON INTERNATIONAL MAY DAY
In his preface to the fourth German edition of the Communist Manifesto, which he wrote on May 1, 1890, Engels, reviewing the history of the international proletarian organizations, calls attention to the significance of the first International May Day:
As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is mobilized for the first time as One army, under One Bag, and fighting One immediate aim: an eight-hour working day, established by legal enactment.... The spectacle we are now witnessing will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!
The significance of simultaneous international proletarian demonstrations was appealing more and more to the imagination and revolutionary instincts of the workers throughout the world, and every year witnessed greater masses participating in the demonstrations.
The response of the workers showed itself in the following addition to the May First resolution adopted at the next Congress of the International at Zurich in 1893:
The demonstration on May First for the 8-hour day must serve at the same time as a demonstration of the determined will of the working class to destroy class distinctions through social change and thus enter on the road, the only road leading to peace for all peoples, to international peace.
Although the original draft of the resolution proposed to abolish class distinctions through "social revolution" and not through "social change," yet the resolution definitely elevated May First to a higher political level. It was to become a demonstration of power and the will of the proletariat to challenge the existing order, in addition to the demand for the 8-hour day.
REFORMISTS ATTEMPT TO CRIPPLE MAY DAY
The reformist leaders of the various parties tried to devitalize the May First demonstrations by turning them into days of rest and recreation instead of days of struggle. This is why they always insisted on organizing the demonstrations on the Sunday nearest May First. On Sundays workers would not have to strike to stop work; they were not working anyway. To the reformist leaders May Day was only an international labor holiday, a day of pageants and games in the parks or outlying country. That the resolution of the Zurich Congress demanded that May Day should be a "demonstration of the determined will of the working class to destroy class distinctions," i.e., the demonstration of the will to fight for the destruction of the capitalist system of exploitation and wage slavery, did not trouble the reformists, since they did not consider themselves bound by the decisions of international congresses. International Socialist Congresses were to them but meetings for international friendship and good-will, like many other congresses that used to gather from time to time in various European capitals before the war. They did everything to discourage and thwart joint international action of the proletariat, and decisions of international congresses which did not conform with their ideas remained mere paper resolutions. Twenty years later the "socialism" and "internationalism" of these reformist leaders stood exposed in all their nakedness. In 1914 the International lay shattered because from its very birth it carried within it the seeds of its own destruction – the reformist misleaders of the working class.
At the International Congress at Paris in 1900 the May Day resolution of the previous Congresses was again adopted, and was strengthened by the statement that stoppage of work on May First would make the demonstration more effective. More and more, May Day demonstrations were becoming demonstrations of power; open street fighting with the police and military taking place in all important industrial centers. Numbers of workers participating in the demonstrations and stopping work on that day were growing. May Day was becoming more and more menacing to the ruling class. It became Red Day, which authorities in all lands looked at with foreboding when each May Day came around.
LENIN ON MAY DAY
Early in his activity in the Russian revolutionary movement Lenin contributed to making May Day known to the Russian workers as a day of demonstration and struggle. While in prison, in 1896, Lenin wrote a May Day leaflet for the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, one of the first Marxist political groups in Russia. The leaflet was smuggled out of prison and 2,000 mimeographed copies distributed among workers in 40 factories. It was very short and written in Lenin's characteristically simple and direct style, so that the least developed among the workers could understand it. "When a month after the famous textile strikes of 1896 broke out, workers were telling us that the first impetus was given by the little modest May Day leaflet," wrote a contemporary who helped to issue it.
After telling the workers how they are exploited for the benefit of the owners of the factories in which they work, and how the government persecutes those who demand improvement in their conditions, Lenin proceeds to write about the significance of May Day:
In France, England, Germany and other countries where workers have already been united in powerful unions and have won for themselves many rights, they organized on April 19 (May 1) [the Russian calendar was then 13 days behind the West-European] a general holiday of Labor. Leaving the stifling factories they march with unfurled banners, to the strains of music, along the main streets of the cities, demonstrating to the bosses their continuously growing power. They assemble at great mass demonstrations where speeches are made recounting the victories over the bosses during the preceding year and lay plans for struggle in the future. Under the threat of strike the bosses do not dare to fine the workers for not appearing at the factories on that day. On this day the workers also remind the bosses of their main demand: 8 hours work, 8 hours rest, and 8 hours recreation. This is what the workers of other countries are demanding now.
The Russian revolutionary movement utilized May Day to great advantage. In the preface to a pamphlet, May Days in Kharkov, published in November, 1900, Lenin wrote:
In another six months, the Russian workers will celebrate the first of May of the first year of the new century, and it is time we set to work to make the arrangements for organizing the celebrations in as large a number of centers as possible, and on as imposing a scale as possible, not only by the number that will take part in them, but also by their organized character, by the class-consciousness they will reveal, by the determination that will be shown to commence the irrepressible struggle for the political liberation of the Russian people, and, consequently, for a free opportunity for the class development of the proletariat and its open struggle for Socialism.
It can be seen how important Lenin considered the May Day demonstrations, since he called attention to them six months ahead of time. To him May Day was a rallying point for "the irrepressible struggle for the political liberation of the Russian people," for "the class development of the proletariat and its open struggle for Socialism."
Speaking of how May Day celebrations "can become great political demonstrations," Lenin asked why the Kharkov May Day celebration in 1900 was "an event of outstanding importance," and answered, "the mass participation of the workers in the strike, the huge mass meetings in the streets, the unfurling of red flags, the presentation of demands indicated in leaflets and the revolutionary character of these demands – eight-hour day and political liberty."
Lenin upbraids the Kharkov Party leaders for joining the demands for the 8-hour day with other minor and purely economic demands, for he does not want the political character of May Day in any way beclouded. He writes in this preface:
The first of these demands [8-hour day] is the general demand put forward by the proletariat in all countries. The fact that this demand was put forward indicates that the advanced workers of Kharkov realize their solidarity with the international Socialist labor movement. But precisely for this reason a demand like this should not have been included among minor demands like better treatment by foremen, or a ten per cent increase in wages. The demand for an eight-hour day, however, is the demand of the whole proletariat, presented, not to individual employers, but to the government as the representative of the whole of the present-day social and political system, to the capitalist class as a whole, the owners of all the means of production.
MAY DAY POLITICAL SLOGANS
May Days became focal points for the international revolutionary proletariat. To the original demand for the 8-hour day were added other significant slogans on which the workers were called upon to concentrate during their May Day strikes and demonstrations. These included: International Working Class Solidarity; Universal Suffrage; War Against War; Against Colonial Oppression; the Right to the Streets; Freeing of Political Prisoners; the Right to Political and Economic Organization of the Working Class.
The last time the old International spoke on the question of May Day was at the Amsterdam Congress of 1904. After reviewing the various political slogans which were employed in the demonstrations and calling attention to the fact that in some countries these demonstrations were still taking place on Sundays instead of May First, the resolution concludes:
The International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam calls upon all Social-Democratic Party organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace. The most effective way of demonstrating on May First is by stoppage of work. The Congress therefore makes it mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop work on May First, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.
When the massacre of the strikers in the Lena goldfields in Siberia in April, 1912, placed again the question of revolutionary mass proletarian action on the order of the day in Russia, it was on May Day of that year that hundreds of thousands of Russian workers stopped work and came out into the streets to challenge black reaction, holding sway since the defeat of the first Russian Revolution in 1905. Lenin wrote about this May Day:
The great May strike of the workers all over Russia, and the street demonstrations connected with it, the revolutionary proclamations, the revolutionary speeches to the working masses, show clearly that Russia has once more entered the period of a rising revolutionary situation.
ROSA LUXEMBURG ON MAY DAY
In an article written for May Day, 1913, Rosa Luxemburg, herself a staunch revolutionist, stressed the revolutionary character of May Day:
"The brilliant chief idea of the May Day celebration is the independent action of the proletarian masses, is the political mass action of the millions of workers.... The excellent purpose of the Frenchman Lavigne at the international congress in Paris combined with the direct international mass manifestation, the laying down of tools, is a demonstration and fighting tactic for the 8-hour day, world peace and Socialism."
Always a close student of imperialist rivalries, Rosa Luxemburg saw the war coming and she was anxious to make clear that May Day was especially the day for the dissemination of the ideas of international solidarity among workers, a day for international action against imperialist war, writing a year before the war broke out she called attention to the fact that
"the more the May Day idea, the idea of resolute mass action as demonstrations of international solidarity and as a fighting tactic for peace and for Socialism, even in the strongest section of the International, the German working class, strikes root, the greater guarantee we shall have that from the world war, which will inevitably take place sooner or later, there will result an ultimately victorious settlement of the struggle between the world of labor and that of capital."
MAY DAY IN WAR TIME
The betrayal by the Social-patriots during the war appeared in bold relief on May Day, 1915. This was a logical outgrowth of the class peace they made with the imperialist governments in August, 1914. The German Social-Democracy called upon the workers to remain at work; the French Socialists in a special manifesto assured the authorities that they need not fear May First, and the workers were importuned to work for the defense of "their" country. The same attitude could be found among the Socialist majorities of the other warring countries. Only the Bolsheviks of Russia and the revolutionary minorities in other countries remained true to Socialism and internationalism. The voices of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht were raised against the bacchanale of social-chauvinism. Partial strikes and open skirmishes in the streets on May Day, 1916, showed that the workers in all warring countries were freeing themselves from the poisonous influence of their traitorous leaders. For Lenin, as for all revolutionists, "the collapse of opportunism (the collapse of the Second International. – A. T.) is beneficial for the labor movement" and Lenin's call for a new International, free of the betrayers, was the demand of the hour.
The Zimmerwald (1915) and the Kienthal (1916) Conferences resulted in crystallizing the revolutionary internationalist parties and minorities under Lenin's slogan of turning the imperialist war into civil war. The huge demonstrations in Berlin on May Day, 1916, organized by Karl Liebknecht and his followers in the Socialist movement, bore testimony to the living forces of the working class, which were breaking through in spite of the police prohibitions and the opposition of the official leadership.
In the United States May Day was not abandoned when war was declared in 1917. The revolutionary elements in the Socialist Party took seriously the anti-war resolution of the party adopted at the Emergency St. Louis Convention early in April and utilized May Day to protest against the imperialist war. The demonstration in Cleveland held on Public Square and organized by Charles E. Ruthenberg, then local secretary of the S. P. and later one of the founders and leaders of the Communist Party, was particularly militant. Over 20,000 workers paraded the streets to Public Square and were augmented there by many thousands more. The police brutally attacked the meeting, killing one worker and fatally wounding another.
May Day, 1917, the July Days, and finally the October Days in Russia were but stages in the development of the Russian Revolution to its fulfillment. May Day, together with other days rich in revolutionary traditions – January 22 ("Bloody Sunday," 1905), March 18 (Paris Commune, 1871), November 7 (Seizure of Power, 1917) – are today holidays in the First Workers' Republic, while the 8-hour day, the original demand of May Day, has been superseded in the Soviet Union by the inauguration of the 7-hour day.
THE COMINTERN INHERITS MAY DAY
The Communist International, inheritor of the best traditions of the revolutionary proletarian movement since Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, carries on the traditions of May Day, and the Communist parties of the various capitalist countries call upon the workers each year to stop work on May Day, to go into the streets, to demonstrate their growing strength and international solidarity, to demand a shorter work day – now the 7-hour day – without reduction in pay, to demand social insurance, to fight the war danger and defend the Soviet Union, to fight against imperialism and colonial oppression, to struggle against race discrimination and lynching, to denounce the social-fascists as part of the capitalist machine, to resolve to build their revolutionary unions, to proclaim their determination and iron will to organize for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for the establishment of a universal Soviet Republic.
A POLITCAL MASS STRIKE ON MAY DAY
Each year the struggles of May Day are lifted to a higher level. Born in the United States in the throes of a general strike movement and in a fight for a major political demand, each May Day should witness a political strike on behalf of the major class issues of the American workers enumerated above. Old and young workers, men and women, Negro and white, should be drawn into participation in the May Day actions. There should be strikes on May Day, for stoppage of work is the very tradition of May First. The strikes should be mass strikes involving great numbers of workers leaving their workshops collectively; not as individuals. Whole industrial units should be stopped, for only such strikes are effective demonstrations of the determined will of the workers to struggle. These mass strikes should be political, i.e., based on major political issues affecting the whole working class.
Although the Communist Party and the revolutionary unions affiliated with the T. U. U. L. have put forth the slogan of the 7-hour day without reduction in wages, the American workers, 46 years after the initiation of the general 8-hour day movement, must still fight for that demand. In many industries workers still labor nine, ten and even more hours a day. The failure to establish the 8-hour day for all during this period is due to the aristocracy of labor who, bribed by the capitalist class with comparatively high wages and better conditions of work, have left the unskilled and unorganized workers without the protection of an organized labor movement, so that they may be more easily exploited for the benefit of the owners of the industries.
THE A.F. OF L. BECOMES FASICIST
Over 40 years ago on Union Square, New York, the leaders of the first May Day demonstration spoke not only about the 8-hour day but about the abolition of the capitalist system. "While struggling for the 8-hour day we will not lose sight of the ultimate aim, – the abolition of the wage system," read the resolution presented to the striking masses assembled at Union Square on May First, 1890, after they had marched there in great columns under unfurled red banners through the working class sections of the metropolis. Now, the A. F. of L. and the Socialist Party make common cause with the bosses and are doing everything possible to prevent the workers from fighting for any improvement in their conditions, and instead of fighting for the abolition of the capitalist system are fighting to preserve it.
Over 40 years ago, the A. F. of L. appealed to the International Socialist Congress in Paris to help the American Federation of Labor with the strike movement inaugurated for May First, 1890, and the International came to the aid of the American workers by making this struggle an international one. Now, President Green and his satellite Mathew Well pledge the support of the A. F. of L. to each and every reactionary organization or movement formed for the purpose of combating the Communist Party which is carrying on the American fighting traditions of May First. The A. F. of L. leaders have developed from class collaborationists into open fascists, serving the capitalists as hangmen of the American working class.
In their attempt to defeat May Day and to draw the workers' organizations which are under their influence away from participation in May Day demonstrations, the A. F. of L. and other reactionary labor organizations have fostered the observance of a so-called Labor Day on the first Monday in September of each year. Labor Day was adopted first on a local scale in 1885 and later granted by the various state governments as an antidote to May First celebrations.
Another campaign against May Day was inaugurated by the federal government with the aid of A. F. of L. leaders when May 1 was adopted as Child Health Day. The hypocrisy of both the government and the A. F. of L. is proven by the fact that a million and more children under 16 are sweated in American mills, shops and fields for the glory of American capital.
The real meaning of this sudden interest in child welfare, however, may be gleaned from the following reference to the subject in a report submitted by the Executive Council to the 1928 Convention of the A. F. of L.:
... The Communists still maintain May 1 as Labor Day. Hereafter May 1 will be known as Child Health Day, as the President is directed by the resolution passed by Congress to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe May 1 as Child Health Day. The object is to create sentiment for year-round protection of the health of children. It is a most worthy purpose. At the same time May 1 no longer will be known as either strike day or Communist Labor Day. (Italics mine – A. T.)
Can it be that the A. F. of L. leaders have not heard the story about King Canute and his attempt to sweep back the tempestuous ocean waves? Or is it that in their eagerness to break the fighting spirit of the workers they are willing to try anything?
THE SOCIAL FASCISM OF THE S.P.
The betrayal of the workers begun during the war was continued by the Socialist parties after the war. They joined bourgeois governments to protect them from the wrath of the workers; they organized counter-revolutions to thwart the workers' struggle for power; they became the butchers of the militant sections of the working class which were fighting for the overthrow of the rule of capital, just as the workers of Russia have done under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the Party of Lenin. The social-patriotism of the Right and the social-pacifism of the Center during the war, have now been merged into social-fascism. The social-fascists have become part of the capitalist state machine, protecting it from the revolutionary actions of the workers and peasants in the imperialist and colonial countries. They call for war against the Soviet Union and organize plots designed to arrest the progress of building Socialism there. They support the war being waged against the Chinese people by Japanese imperialism and the seizure of Manchuria as an eastern base for attacking the Soviet Union.
They have long ago abandoned the demand for the 8-hour day. They hope that the League of Nations will secure for them the shorter workday through conventions between capitalist governments. The Marseilles Congress of the Second International in 1925 declared that the 8-hour day "should be recognized only in principle." They still participate in May Day events, but only on the other side of the barricades, as was exemplified by the fiendish actions of the Socialist Chief of Police of Berlin, Zoergiebel, against the May Day, 1929, demonstrations in the working class sections of that city. In the 1932 presidential elections, the Social-Democracy backed the Bruening fascist government by supporting the re-election of Hindenburg.
The "Socialist" Prime Minister MacDonald sends troops to mow down the Hindu masses who are rising against British imperialism and its agents in India. Wherever capitalism has felt weak to cope with the rising tide of the revolutionary and national liberation movements of the workers and peasants, it has called to its service the Socialist parties, willing agents of capitalism within the labor movement, to help defeat these movements.
In the United States, the Socialist Party plays the same role. Although it is not in office, it has already earned its spurs in the business of betraying the best aspirations and interests of the workers. It joins all reactionary forces who are vilifying the Soviet Union and are trying to whip up sentiment for war upon the workers' republic. It works with the A. F. of L. and the Muste "progressive" labor unions in hounding militant workers, in supporting the bosses against the workers, in applauding the forces of the state when they prosecute and persecute the revolutionary movement of this country. The old leaders of the S. P. (the Hillquits and Oneals) have forsaken whatever Socialism they ever believed in and the new leaders (the Thomases and Brouns) are bourgeois liberals who use the labor movement to advance the programs and the policies of the Theodore Roosevelts of the Bull Moose days and the Robert LaFollettes whose aim has always been to fool the masses with radical shibboleths.
Norman Thomas, the darling of the capitalist press, announces to the world in a recent book that he has brought forth a new kind of socialism, a socialism without Marxism. It has been tried before. An abler man than Thomas, Eduard Bernstein, tried to de-Marxianize Socialism more than thirty years ago. He knew better, however, than to go as far as Thomas goes in his claims. The German pioneer in this he'd only wanted to "correct" Marx, to "bring him up to date." The American, Thomas, knows no halfway measures. He not only "revises" Marx, but abolishes him altogether, without, however, injuring Socialism thereby, as S. P. leaders declare.
Norman Thomas and the class-collaborationist Socialist Party which he represents today perhaps better than anyone else, stand exposed before the workers of this country as the betrayers and open enemies of the only Socialism that means workers' rule, the Socialism of Marx and Lenin, the Socialism for which the Communist Party fights, the Socialism that is being built by the victorious workers and peasants in the Soviet Union today.
REVOLUTIONARY TRADITIONS OF AMERICAN LABOUR
The American labor movement is rich in revolutionary traditions upon which the Communist Party and the Trade Union Unity League can draw in their work of organizing the American working class for revolutionary action. The great labor struggles which dot the history of the United States, bear testimony to the militancy of the American workers. Not only have the workers been ready to initiate struggles or accept provocations of the bosses, but when out on strike, they have stayed out long and fought bitterly against the combined forces of bosses and the minions of the State.
A labor movement which can look back to the general strike movements of 1877 and 1886, to Homestead (1892), to the A. R. U. Strike (1894), to Lawrence (1912), to the Steel Strike (1919), to Seattle (1919), to the many strikes in the coal, railroad, clothing and other industries, to the great struggles in Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the Mesaba Range and, more recently, to Gastonia and Harlan, can also look forward to still greater struggles in the future. With the prevailing objective conditions – constantly deepening economic crisis, growing permanent unemployment, intensified exploitation through speed up methods, acceleration of imperialist rivalries leading to another world war, the American Labor movement, freed of its misleaders, will give an account of itself. The massacre by Ford police of four Detroit auto workers at an unemployed demonstration before his plant, the murder of Negro jobless in Chicago and Cleveland are evidences of the sharpening class struggle and the militancy of the workers.
MAY 1 AND MARCH 8 - CONTRIBUTIONS OF AMERICAN WORKERS
Out of its traditions the American labor movement has given the international working class two fighting days which the revolutionary workers consider as mile posts and which they must pass each year on their way to ultimate victory. Those who were midwives at the birth of these "days" have renounced them as soon as they have acquired revolutionary meaning. The A. F. of L. helped with the inauguration of May Day. It has long expiated that sin against American capital and it is never held against it.
The Socialist Party, a close, even if poor, relation of the A. F. of L., must be considered as having contributed to the origin of International Women's Day, celebrated each year on March 8. About twenty years ago the Socialist women of New York organized, in contradistinction to the bourgeois suffrage movement, a mass participation of proletarian women in the movement for woman suffrage. This particular action took place on March 8. The success of the New York demonstration led to the establishment of March 8 as Women's Day on a national scale. The International Socialist Congress in 1910 made March 8 international.
With the granting of woman suffrage in the United States, March 8 was abandoned by the S. P., since the ballot and election to office has always been the alpha and omega of that party. The Russian working women did not forget March 8 and, following the October Revolution, rejuvenated this important fighting labor day. The Communist International made International Women's Day again a living reality. As in the case of May 1, only the Communist parties are carrying on the traditions of March 8, with men and women workers jointly utilizing this day to call upon the proletarian women to take their place in the struggles beside the men workers.
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO COMMUNISM
For the May Day, 1923, edition of the Weekly Worker, C. E. Ruthenberg wrote: "May Day – the day which inspires fear in the hearts of the capitalists and hope in the workers – the workers the world over – will find the Communist movement this year stronger in the U. S. than at any time in its history.... The road is clear for greater achievements, and in the United States as elsewhere in the world the future belongs to Communism." In a Weekly Worker of a generation before, Eugene V. Debs wrote in a May Day edition of the paper, published on April 27, 1907: "This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the Revolution."
The world is nearer to Communism today. We are living in a more advanced period now. Capitalism has swung downward and is progressively moving in that direction. The sharpness of its own contradictions is making its ability to carry on more difficult. The workers are growing in political consciousness and are engaged in a counter-offensive which is gaining in scope and depth. The oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples are rising and challenging the rule of imperialism.
In the Soviet Union the workers will review on May Day the phenomenal achievements of the building of Socialism. In the capitalist countries May Day will be as always a day of struggle for the immediate political demands of the working class, with the slogans of proletarian dictatorship and a Soviet Republic kept not far in the background.
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