May Day yesterday and today

By Vincent Gaynor

International Workers' Day commemorates the general strike on May 1, 1886 who won the day 8 hours for most workers in the United States.

the world of ago 136 years is in many ways incomparable with the current. Nevertheless, there are undeniable parallels that speak of the continuity of the social system, economic and political, the living conditions and problems of the working classes and the struggles and challenges that workers and revolutionaries face.

late 19th century, the development of world capitalism began to find its limits and entered its monopolistic phase, marked by the concentration of capital in a few hands and the growing dispute over a capital gain that was no longer growing at rates sufficient to distribute. The great tycoons arose who concentrated in their hands the economic power on a world scale, los Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie.

And the states that backed them in the global dispute over surplus value intensified their political and military bid to control the world's resources and markets.. The escalation of that dispute would lead to an armed conflict between the powers, the Spanish-American War in 1898, the Russian-Japanese in 1905, that of the Balkans in 1912 and World War I two years later. Capitalism entered its decadent phase, what Lenin called imperialist.

The stagnation of capitalism also triggered the first world economic crises. In 1876 a severe financial crisis triggered a depression in the economies of Europe and the United States that lasted until 1879. In 1885 there was a new world recession, as usual, the capitalists unloaded on their workers, in the form of layoffs, wage cuts, longer working hours and more intense work rhythms.

The working class at the end of the 19th century had grown in the heat of the massive industrialization of the previous decades, and was in the process of organizing its first large unions and its first political organizations.

The Chicago Martyrs

It is in this context that the then union federation in the United States launched a campaign for the eight hours that culminated in the general strike on May 1, 1886 where they stopped 200.000 workers. It is estimated that some 150.000 they won the claim with the sole threat of stopping, and that by the end of the year some 250.000 workers had conquered the eight hours.

In Chicago, a factory responded to the strike of the former with a lock-out and layoffs; a mobilization of its workers against these measures was repressed by the police, who opened fire killing 6 workers and injuring 50. The next day 3000 workers marched to the city center and were repressed again in Haymarket Square. In the middle of the repression an explosive device killed a policeman.

A state of siege was declared and a fierce persecution ensued., detaining hundreds of workers who were beaten and tortured, accused of police murder. Finally, eight leaders of the movement were charged and sentenced, in a completely rigged trial. Three of them were sentenced to prison and five to the gallows..

One of them, August Spies, told the court: “If they think that by hanging us they can put an end to the labor movement, the movement from which the millions of oppressed, the millions who work in misery and need, await your salvation, if this is your opinion, then hang us! Here they trample a spark, but there and there, behind you, in front of you and everywhere, the flames will rise. It's an underground fire. They won't be able to turn it off.".

International Workers' Day

Little more than two years later, the founding congress of the Second International met in Paris, which closed by voting on a resolution calling for an international mobilization for the eight hours. It would be the first coordinated workers' action on an international scale, and the first of May was chosen in commemoration of the sacrifice of the Chicago martyrs.

Three hundred thousand were mobilized in more than one hundred cities of France, thousands more in the main industrialized countries, and many others in dozens of countries throughout the world. On the same day Engels wrote in the preface to a new edition of the Communist Manifesto: “(The International) is more alive than ever and there is no better testimony of this than today's day. As I write these lines, the European and American proletariat reviews its mobilized militant forces, and it is the mobilization of a unique army that marches under a unique flag and has a close objective: the fixing by the law of the normal eight-hour day already claimed by the Paris Workers' Congress in 1889. The spectacle that they will attend today will make the capitalists and landowners of all countries see that in fact the proletarians of all countries are united”.

The first of May in 2022

Today, imperialist capitalism continues its destructive exploitation of humanity and nature. Deepens the concentration of wealth and inequality. The Rockefellers of yesterday are the Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, bill gates today. just like it does 130 years, inter-imperialist disputes over the sharing of resources and markets lead to terrible wars and potential escalation, that threatens the possibility of a catastrophic global atomic war.

this first of may, the workers and revolutionaries of the world have the responsibility and the challenge of confronting the Russian invasion and the inter-imperialist dispute in Ukraine. We have to surround with solidarity the workers and people of Ukraine who are resisting the brutal invasion and occupation of Russian imperialism; we have to face the advances of NATO and western imperialism, support the self-determination of the Ukrainian people and mobilize around the world against all imperialisms.

Since 2008, the recurring economic crises of capitalism turned into an irreversible systemic crisis and the pandemic further plunged the world economy. The obstinacy of the bourgeoisie to resolve its crisis by increasing exploitation more and more has led to the inevitable reaction of the working class in dozens of rebellions and revolutions: the arab spring, the indignados of Spain and the Greek revolt; heprocess Catalan for independence; the revolution of the youth and the Chilean people, The Libano, Colombia; the yellow vests in France; the revolt of black people and youth in the United States...

this first of may, the workers and revolutionaries of the world have to promote the mobilization of the world working class against the austerity plans applied by the capitalist governments of all countries and the imperialist organizations such as the IMF to try to unload their crisis on our backs. The fight against hunger, poverty, unemployment and precariousness, oppression and destruction of the planet, they depend on us defeating those imperialist plans and imposing a working-class solution to the crisis of capitalism.

late 19th century, the working class was building the first industrial unions and rebuilding its political organizations after the defeat of the Paris Commune and the dissolution of the First International. Today we also have the challenge of union reconstruction in the precarious economy, with emerging examples such as the advances of Amazon workers in the United States.

and above all, we also have the challenge of rebuilding the revolutionary parties and a revolutionary international with mass influence, pending task since the dissolution of the Third International by Stalin. This is the greatest task of revolutionaries today. It was the central task when International Workers' Day was established in 1898, and it is the central task of the activity of the International Socialist League and all its sections this May Day.