Download PDF of this full issue: v6n2.pdf (7.6 MB)

May Day 1976

By VVAW

May First. May Day. International Workers' Day, the proudest and most solemn holiday of the world-wide working class.

In countries around the world, workers this year, as every year, greeted this holiday with celebrations and demonstrations from huge, tens of thousands strong, rallies in socialist People's Republic of China to outlawed assemblies in fascist Spain. In the US in over twenty cities across the country working men women marched, rallied and held other activities organized by the United May Day Committees, which were initiated by the Revolutionary Communist for this occasion.

May Day is the day when the working class measures its growing strength to see where things stand it its struggle and to look to the future to see where it is headed. May Day honors those who have died fighting to advance the struggle against the capitalist class that bleeds workers. It's the day that the workers reaffirm their determination to replace the capitalists' rule with a new society that is free of exploitation and oppression. The international holiday is an important day, not only for the working class but for people everywhere who want to fight this system we live under.

May Day started in the US and grew out of the struggle to limit the working day to eight hours. On May 1s, 1886, 190,000 workers took part in a general strike and 350,000 more demonstrated around the country for the eight hour day--called out by the newly formed American Federation of Labor. The action were successful. For many thousands the work day was reduced with no cut in pay.

The famous Haymarket incident is connected to May Day. On May 3rd, 1886, police fired on a workers' rally from the McCormick Harvester plant which had been on strike for several months, killing one worker and wounding others. A protest really was called on May 5th. Someone threw a bomb at police who were surrounding the rally, killing one of them. The killing was used as an excuse to railroad and hang the Chicago area leaders of the eight hour day movement.

But the struggle did not end with these martyr deaths. Plans were made to have another general strike on May 1st, 1890 to further and demand for the eight hour day. At a meeting in Paris, France, of socialist workers' organizations and trade unions it was decided to expand the fight to an international general strike. Since that time May Day, May 1st, has been International Workers' Day.

The three main slogans of May Day, 1976, in the United States were:

FIGHT--DON'T STARVE!
WORKERS UNITE TO LEAD THE FIGHT AGAINST ALL OPPRESSION!
DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM OF WAGE SLAVERY!

In America today 10 million workers are unemployed, while those still with jobs are hit with brutal speed-up and wage cuts. More production and more profits is the exploiters' plan to get out of their crisis. "Make working people pay" is their motto.

And all the while our rulers bombard us with talk of "recovery" and calls for national unity and Bicentennial spirit. "Things are getting," we are told, and "we all have to stick together, bosses and workers alike." But there is no sticking together and there is no recovery.

There is only one thing that is getting better--the working class' ability to unite and fight. Everywhere workers are demanding jobs. Where a couple of years ago the word was that could not fight layoffs, now there are strikes and actions against them across the country. Workers in 30 cities demonstrated for jobs recently, and the Unemployed Workers Organizing Committee nationwide petition for Jobs or Income is gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures. In the factories, there is growing resistance to being ground down in the name of increased productivity--sitdowns, slowdowns, walkouts, strikes. Eighty thousand miners wildcatted for the right to strike. Auto workers in New Jersey walked over forced overtime on top of layoffs. Singer workers sat down against a piece of rate cut. For two months, workers at National Lead in New York have been on strike--turning down a contract that means layoffs for 200 and speed-up for the rest. Every shop floor is a battleground between the workers and the bosses. The working class has no common interest with the handful of rich who run society for their own profit. The first slogan of May Day expresses the determination not to be crushed.

As the capitalist system continues to decay around us, it is not only the working class that is under attack, but the vast majority of the American people. Everywhere cutbacks in social services are the rule, (unemployment insurance, veteran's benefits, food stamps, education and etc.) as the rich try to devote the maximum possible amount of capital to increasing profit to weather the storm.

Increasingly, people are fed up with this "belt-tightening" routine, looking for ways to fight back, and asking themselves how, with the technology and industrial and agricultural capacity, enough to provide for all of humanity, we still are forced to exist in the middle of a living hell, with chaos, war and poverty. But there is a way out. The working class has the power to change things. Within its movement lies the seed of a decent life for all people; the seed of future free of the exploiters and their system of rule. It is the largest class; it produces everything that makes up this society's wealth. Exploited by the bosses whose profits come from legally stealing the wealth workers produce, the working class has no interest in common with our rulers. Producing everything, they have no interest in continuing exploitation or oppression.

This second slogan, then, is both a statement and a call to workers to take up the task of mobilizing as many people as possible against all the attacks we face. The working class has the power to unite all the struggles of the people into one fist, one movement directed against the source of our attacks.

For the capitalists, survival is always a question of squeezing more profits from the labor of workers and the pressure is even heavier as their crisis deepens.

For the workers, survival is a constant battle to keep the heads of their families above water. Workers are, of course, "free to stop swimming," "free" to give up their jobs, but to exercise this "freedom" is to drown. In reality, workers are enslaved by the capitalist to whom they must sell their ability to work in order to live. This third slogan, then, points to the source of this exploitation and misery. Wage-slavery is the heart, the foundation on which all the abuses of capitalism are built.

In addition to these three slogans, each locality where May Day was celebrated also took up the present struggles of workers including the sharp struggles around jobs, cutbacks, the danger of war and the cutbacks on social services. For example, in Chicago workers rallied and heard speakers on struggles of electrical and steel workers and an unemployed worker spoke about struggling for Jobs of Income. They also heard about the plans for the July 4th demonstration in Philadelphia where working people and others will come together to say "We've Carried the Rich For 200 Years, Let's Get Them Off Our Backs!"

After the rally they proceeded by car caravan through residential areas of the south side of the city to the site of the Memorial Day massacre at Republic Steel, where in 1937 a rally of striking steel workers was attacked. Without warning hired police thugs fired point blank into a crowd of men, women, and children killing several outright. From there they proceeded to tear gas and club the entire march, with the final count of ten dead and over 150 wounded. This attack, designed by the factory owners to stop the workers movement, served only to enrage the workers and intensify the struggle and Republic Steel. After repeated struggle, Republic Steel met the workers' demands.

This May Day people in Chicago returned to that site not to mourn the dead but to homage to those who died in the workers' struggle and to re-affirm the commitment to continue the struggle today.

In Milwaukee, workers groups along with youth, students, and VVAW, joined in a militant rally and a spirited march in the city in celebration of May Day. It was the largest May Day celebration in Milwaukee in many years. Of great significance during their celebration was the announcement of the founding of a city-wide workers' organization bringing together workers from the major industries around Milwaukee: a milestone in the struggle of workers in that city.

These two actions and all the others across the US point to the fact that this May Day, just as others to come magnifies the growth of the working class movement.

The rich have always hated and feared May Day. They have tried to bury it, renaming May Day as Law and Order Day and our children are taught vague stories about May Pole Day. Or as in Los Angeles this year, declared it Mae Day, in honor of old time movie star Mae West).

Today's union "leaders" whose early counterparts once stood closer to the interest of the working class, have now joined with the efforts to erase May Day--proclaiming in its place Labor Day in September, (a day totally divorced from militant international working class history.)

From their glittering penthouses the rich look down with disdain on working people and our history. But when workers rise up, these parasites tremble for it means the very foundation of their empire is rebelling.

LONG LIVE MAY DAY!!

FIGHT--DON'T STARVE!

WORKERS UNITE TO LEAD THE FIGHT AGAINST ALL OPPRESSION!

DOWN WITH THE SYSTEM OF WAGE-SLAVERY!