This year will mark the 136th May 1st since it was first born out
of the struggle for the eight-hour work day at Haymarket Square.
Since then, it has become a key date for billions of workers around
the world to unite and struggle for a better world, one free from
imperialism, fascism and capitalist exploitation.
In the
136 years since the announcement of May 1 as International workers
day by the Second International, we have seen the international
proletariat make several monumental strides from Russia in 1917,
China in 1949, the Cultural Revolution and the international turn
against revisionism in 1966 and most recently the People’s Wars in
the Philippines, India, Turkey and Peru. What this demonstrates to us
is that the proletariat is a class that has the ability to assert
itself as the rulers of not just their own destiny but assert
themselves as the final class before true liberation for humanity in
Communism.
We know this because the proletariat is the
class that has nothing else to lose but its chains, where the
romantic revolutions of old were cemented by the destruction of
feudal society, they were replaced by a despotic capitalist class,
whose means of reproducing themselves comes through the accumulation
of capital, the manifestation of dead labour now used to exploit new,
existing labour. This fact is why we are the last class in
history.
However, the terrain of struggle has shifted
greatly, also in the 136 years since the first Mayday, we have seen
capital shift in how it manifests globally and locally. More
specifically, the international proletariat has bared witness to the
rise of imperialism and fascism as two means of defending the
dictatorship of capital over not just the working masses here in the
imperialist heartlands but also for going abroad to find new markets,
land, labour and resources in order to save capitalism from
capitalism’s constant crises. These are two enemies every communist
and beyond that every worker and oppressed person the world over must
struggle against for the benefit of the revolution, against isolation
and the cementation of their class as that which has won the battle
for democracy.
We are now in an age where that system
which came about to save capitalism from its initial crises is now in
an even deeper crisis in its new form. In particular, we see
imperialism just like it did before, especially in the lead-up to the
first world war have to sustain itself through war and the building
of an entire economy based around production for war as the only way
out. This crisis is one which has found all facets of the current
political order from our legal system, our imperialist political
parties, our already fascistic border-regime marching in lock-step
with these preparations. However, we know that there is an
alternative available for those who fight, that being socialist
revolution as the primary way to defeat imperialism as the highest
stage of capitalism.
