On 1 May 1886, armed goons employed by the industry brutally owners attacked striking the workers assembled at the Hay Market, Chicago, USA. The workers were demanding an eight hour working day. The savagery of the incident sparked off waves of indignant protest by workers all over the world. The government was ultimately compelled to concede this legitimate demand of the workers.
At that time, great Engels was at the helm of affairs of the Second International. In 1889, the International called upon the workers to observe May Day on 1st May every year as the world working class solidarity day. Engels declared that the May Day resolve of the working class must not be confined to the economic demands and trade union rights only, but the working class must also pledge on this day to win political power in order to expropriate capital and convert the means of production into public many years that have passed, May Day has symbolized working class struggle, an occasion when the revolutionary working class renews its pledge every year to not only fight the capitalist onslaughts on their life and living but also to steadfastly work towards putting an end to the capitalist order itself.
Great Lenin hailed May Day in the following words: “May Day is …the day when the workers of all lands celebrate their awakening to a class- conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom. On one side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions of acres of land and mountains of money into their private property. They have made the government and the army their servants, faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed. On the other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their labour they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities… But now these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labour from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a system of society where the wealth created by the common labour will go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. … Let the celebration of May Day win thousands of new fighters to our cause and swell our forces in the great struggle for the freedom of all the people, for the liberation of all who toil from the yoke of capital!” (May Day leaflet written by Lenin in 1904)
Great Stalin held that “Since …the battle-cry of workers’ socialism has rung out louder and louder at meetings and demonstrations on the First of May. The ocean of the labour movement is expanding more and more, spreading to new countries and states, …In the course of only a few decades the formerly weak international workers’ association has grown into a mighty international brotherhood, which holds regular congresses and unites millions of workers in all parts of the world. The sea of proletarian wrath is rising in towering waves and is more and more menacingly advancing against the tottering citadels of capitalism.” (CW Vol II)
But after sad dismantling of the socialist camp due counter-revolution orchestrated by imperialist-capitalist intrigue aided and abetted by the revisionists-reformists, and implementation of capitalist globalization has brought down ruthless exploitation and onslaughts on the working class. The total burden of growing insolvable capitalist crisis endemic of the system is being squarely passed on the working class and other sections of the toiling masses. Onslaught in the form of lay-off and retrenchment, closure of mills and factories and wage cut has become the common characteristic feature in all imperialist capitalist countries. As against permanent employment, what are being promoted today are outsourcing of jobs, contractual employment, fixed-term employment at paltry wage with no security of job, deteriorating working condition, extension of working hours beyond 12 and even 14 hours a day and introduction of gig workers. Also, the hard-earned political and democratic rights are being snatched away in a planned manner. Introduction of new technology is wiping out jobs rapidly.
Competition among imperialist countries over control of markets has accentuated, leading to not only intense trade war among them but also military warfare triggered by US imperialism, chieftain of global imperialism, and its proxies over grab of market and securing absolute domination over key natural resources like oil, natural gas, minerals and precious metals in different countries. Moreover, as pointed out by Comrade Shibdas Ghosh, Founder of SUCI(C) and an outstanding Marxist thinker of the era, way back in 1962, that in their desperate attempt to stave off the economic crisis, the imperialists are taking “recourse to frantic rearmament and militarization of industry…and maintain the boom of the capitalist market, at least temporarily, by artificial stimulation of increased military consumption. But …militarism is aggravating the capitalist contradictions and crisis further still.” (SW Vol II) And in order to release the stockpiled arms, imperialists have been generating wars after wars.
Examples are galore. After invading and laying waste Afghanistan to install a puppet government there, the US illegally occupied Iraq, assassinated Libyan President, formalized the heinous conspiracy to totally dismember and fragment Serbian Republic, abducted elected presidents of Haiti and Venezuela, incited civil war in Syria and Sudan, conducted unprecedented massacre in Gaza and other lands of Palestine and of late, it along with Zionist Israel, its Middle-east front office, has launched a full-fledged war against Iran in the name of pre-emptive strike. This has put the global economy in turmoil and making life of workers and other toiling people increasingly disastrous. Overlordism and brigandage of US imperialism are at the peak in the unipolar world. Likewise, imperialist Russia has been continuing its military assault on Ukraine for over two years.
In India, the ruling BJP government as trusted political manager of the ruling Indian monopolists are not only ruthlessly suppressing legitimate working class movements but in a planned way is snatching the hard earned democratic and trade union rights of the workers. The very word permanent gainful employment has vanished from the lexicon. Instead, most of the works including in government offices are either outsourced or performed by contractual and casual workers at paltry wages. There is no security of job, no safety in working place. Working hours are being stretched to 10, 12 or even 16 hours. Of late, the government has enacted four black labour laws codes which have removed whatever little vestiges of hard-earned rights including trade union rights were hitherto in existence. These notified Labour Codes, it must be understood, are a part of anti-people capitalist globalization and liberalization policies which have cast dark shadows on all the category of the workers, whether organized, or unorganized, whether contract workers or construction workers or GIG workers.
At this critical juncture, May Day assumes an even greater significance. Historically, the working class is poised to lead the anti-capitalist socialist revolution to abolish for good exploitation of man by man. The working class must respond to this history has adjured it by cementing and consolidating worldwide working class unity through concerted action against imperialist-capitalist onslaughts on their life and living, against imperialist wars and war-machinations and steadfastly upholding proletarian internationalism. The main danger within the working class movement which is hindering fulfilment of this need of the hour, is modern revisionism-reformism ensconced in the social-democratic forces who work as a compromise between labour and capital. The social democrats wearing a cloak of a Marxism-Leftism are fostering economism, legalism and opportunism within the working class movement and keeping it confined to securing just some economic demands. These are designed to safeguard and keep entrenched oppressive bourgeois class rule.
So, the working class has to fight out and defeat revisionism in all its manifestations, ideologically and organizationally, so that the labour movement is not emasculated from within and directed not only against the evil effects of capitalism like wage-cut, lay-off, retrenchment and unemployment but also against the root cause of all such evils, the capitalist class rule itself. Great Stalin’s profound observation that one cannot put an end to capitalism without first putting an end to social democratism, that is revisionism — continues to provide the guideline before the international working class movement.
The crisis engulfing the imperialist-capitalist world is not only economic but all pervasive, covering the political, social, moral, ethical and cultural spheres as well. Under pressure of this all-out crisis, the working class is stricken with decadent and vile bourgeois culture, suffering from crass bourgeois individualism and utter selfishness which tend to make them devoid of any sense of social responsibility. One would recall that Great Marx had said that in order to change the world, workers must change themselves.
In order to keep inevitable anti capitalist socialist revolution at bay, the imperialist-capitalist rulers, the imperialist-capitalist rulers are taking recourse to fascism. In fact, fascism has now become a general feature in all imperialist-capitalist countries, whether developed and developing. explaining Fascism Comrade Shibdas Ghosh said: “Fascism is a historically conditioned form of counter-revolution in which capitalism seeks to stave off revolution by an anticipatory move. It is designed to save the crisis-ridden, chaos discredited capitalist order from collapse in the face of mounting dissatisfaction of the people against the existing system….the distinguishing feature (of fascism are) economic centralization, maximum concentration of political power in the state, rigid firmness in administration—all this leading to more and more identification of the interest of the monopolists with that of the state—and cultural regimentation…through a peculiar fusion of technological aspects of science with spiritualism.” Thus, fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, the putrefaction of capitalism penetrates to the innermost core of its ideology and culture, making the masses susceptible to this putrefaction.
Drawing lessons from Vietnam war, the imperialists-capitalists are now conspiring to destroy the moral backbone of the working class and pushing them to unethical means of livelihood, taking advantage of their helplessness. Pointing out this complexity of the situation, Comrade Shibdas Ghosh, repeatedly stressed that it is not enough for the anti capitalist movement of the working class to be militant; to be effective, it must be based on the edifice of higher proletarian ethics and culture so that the working class, freed from the pernicious effect of vile bourgeois culture, can remould itself to become the medium of radical transformation of the society. Only in this way can the trade unions be developed as Schools of Communism in the true sense.
Also notable is the fact that the working class is often bursting out into high-pitched movements around the world. But in absence of proper Marxist-Leninist leadership, which alone can lead such outbursts to their logical culmination, these movements are fizzling out entailing frustration. But how can one acquire that revolutionary consciousness? Comrade Shibdas Ghosh pointed out that “The correct revolutionary consciousness is the correct proletarian class consciousness, and the correct proletarian class consciousness is the correct proletarian party consciousness— which means, whether you have been able to recognize the genuine revolutionary party or not.” (SW Vol. III)
On the historic May Day, the revolutionary working class must take the pledge to build up world-wide militant working class movement, intensify class struggle, take leading role in developing powerful anti imperialist peace movement conducive to anti-communist socialist revolutionary movement, wage all-out struggle to defeat revisionism of all shades, accentuate anti-capitalist struggle on correct base political line and on the edifice of higher proletarian ethics and culture. In the process, the working class can develop the trade unions as true ‘School of Communism’ towards achieving the goal of establishing a classless society free from all exploitations.
