MAY DAY, WORKERS’ DAY!

May Day is the working class’s international holiday. It’s a day when workers from across the globe march to commemorate our triumphs, propelled by a vision of a world without exploitation, without  capitalist borders, and run by the working class. On this day, we march for the universal demands of all workers: against imperialist war, against racism and sexism, for the unity of immigrant and citizen workers, against wage slavery, against fascist police terror, and for the communist solution to all these attacks facing the international working class.
In this period, there is so much to make our class fearful and raging with anger. As the inter-imperialist rivalry between the bosses in the U.S - NATO, Russia, and China intensifies, workers are bearing the brunt of it from East Africa to Yemen. The dog fight for oil and resources is heightening starvation and poverty, and the bosses have sacrificed millions to be murdered by Covid-19.
 Still, there is so much to celebrate in the midst of the bosses’ crises, from coast to coast workers continue to lead militant struggles against the bosses.  From women workers in Haiti who shut it down, taking the streets with their working-class brothers and sisters declaring “ we fought for independence and we refuse to be re-enslaved.” In New York, Amazon workers led a militant and sharp struggle to unionize, halting production in the warehouses of the second wealthiest bosses on the planet. In Alabama, miners are staging one of the longest strikes in U.S. history. In India, 50 million workers led a two-day national strike that brought six states in the country to a  standstill.
These fightbacks offer us glimmers of hope that our class will one day be the human race. With this unwavering faith in our class, we march on April 30 in New York City and Chicago, hundreds of workers, students, and soldiers will march for communist revolution, workers’ dictatorship, and a world free of the profit system’s horrors. In Los Angeles, many will celebrate at a dinner program around the same theme. In order to win these goals, our Party must grow until our numbers are in the millions. To win a communist world, we must become billions.
Straight out of class struggle
While the bosses try to smear May Day as being “imported from Soviet Russia,” it remains U.S. workers’  contribution to the world’s workers born in the actions of those Chicago strikers. In 1884, the AFL passed a resolution to make eight hours “a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Workers were forced to labor “from sun-up to sundown,” up to 14 hours a day. The Chicago Central Labor Council then called for a general strike on May 1, 1886, to demand the 8-hour day.
May Day was born out of — and honors — the Chicago workers’ historic struggle for the 8-hour day on May 1, 1886, launching a general strike that spread to 350,000 workers across the country. It’s a day when workers around the globe march for their common demands, signifying international working-class solidarity.
On that day, Chicago stood still as “Tens of thousands downed their tools and moved into the streets. No smoke curled from the tall chimneys of the factories and mills,” reported one paper.
On May 3, the cops murdered at least two strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works. The next day thousands marched in protest into Chicago’s Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by a police agent. Four workers were killed, seven cops died and 200 workers were wounded in what became known as the Haymarket Massacre.
Nine demonstration leaders were framed for “instigating a riot.” Four were hanged. A mass protest movement forced the Governor to free those still alive after the government admitted the frame-up.
From the beginning, May Day stood for working-class internationalism. History has shown us that the fight against racism and nationalism and for internationalism is the key to communist victory. The tens of thousands who won the 8-hour day saw it eroded, so another general strike was called for May 1, 1890. At the July 1889 meeting of the International Workers Association, organized and led by Karl Marx, the U.S. delegate reported on the struggle. The Association decided “to organize a great international demonstration, so that...on one appointed day the [world’s] toiling masses shall demand...” the 8-hour day. “Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon by the American Federation of Labor....this day is adopted for the international demonstration.” This kind of international solidarity is vitally needed today.

Turning imperialist war into class war
As it progressed, the international communist movement took up the struggle and organized May 1st celebrations every year. In the U.S., it was championed for many years by the old Communist Party, with 250,000 marching in New York City in the 1940s.
But when that old party abandoned its principles, May Day was resurrected by the Progressive Labor Party in 1971 which advanced more revolutionary ideas. May Day marches have been organized by the PLP for the past 35 years, in many cities — Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Houston, Delano, and others, as well as PLP contingents in Latin America.
The rulers appear strong, and we shouldn’t delude ourselves about the enormous advantages they hold over us. But they have many weaknesses as well. They can’t hold power without oppressing us. They can’t rule the world without driving their rivals to unite against them. Capitalism is an unstable system. It will always lead to war (see editorial, page 2).
History shows that communist revolutions can seize power in the turmoil of imperialist war. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was the most profound event of the last millennium. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s again shook the world.
On May Day we march to remind us of our heroism as a class, reminding workers that we can no longer settle for dead-end reforms that force our class to coexist within a system that hates our existence.
 Workers from China, the Soviet Union, to Cuba, have taken power and created worker’s societies, albeit fraught with errors and defeats, but left us with lessons from which to  build the foundation for the egalitarian communist society we desperately need and deserve. Now more than ever we must build the Party, day-by-day, May Day marcher by May Day marcher, Challenge sub by Challenge sub, recruit by recruit, struggle by struggle for the liberation of our class. Join us!