May Day is the day of the international working class. It is a day of celebration, a day of remembrance, and a day of class combat. A hundred and forty years ago, when US workers rose up to demand the eight-hour workday, in Chicago, Illinois they were mercilessly shot down by the Old State’s police, their leaders tried in trumped-up charges and executed. May Day is stained by the blood of the workers. It calls onto us to remember that there can be no peace between the exploited and the exploiters, and the solution lies in dismantling the imperialist system that thrives on human suffering.
Today, the US multinational working class faces an intensified capitalist offensive amid economic crises that have only worsened since the 2008 Great Recession, compounded by the effects of the 2020 Pandemic. Following the examples of Bush, Obama, his own first term, and Biden, the second Trump administration has continued the process of reactionarization, or fascistization in the United States. This means the incorporation of more and more reactionary elements under the bourgeois democratic State structure and the negation of its own “liberal democratic” democratic and liberal principles.
The economic reality for workers is grim. Today, the federal minimum wage is still $7.25 per hour, far from enough to support a basic living standard in any of the major cities, as real wages continue to fall. More than a third of people are working two or more jobs, as the number continues to rise from previous years. The so-called “gig economy” has increasingly gained dominance as stable jobs are harder to acquire. Cost of living, especially rent, healthcare, and education, continues to rise. In a word, what we are witnessing is the general impoverishment of the working class. In particular, the Trump administration has unleashed a wave of repression against immigrants, in particular working class immigrants, and tariffs in order to disrupt production and reduce consumption for the purposes of reactionary economic re-structuring. As the attack on the working class rages on, the state unions – those who claim to represent the working class but are part of the capitalist State’s structure – have split between which party they rush to serve, while on their watch unionization and strikes face heavy repression.
Globally, US imperialism continues its destructive agenda, funding repressive regimes in semi-colonies and supporting wars in Palestine, Yemen, and elsewhere, while escalating tensions with China. US imperialism seeks to maintain control over global resources, exploiting the oppressed peoples of the world for profit, and works to maintain its prominence at the head of the economic and financial system that underpins international imperialism, as the top enemy of the people of the world.
May Day is the day of the majority of our population, the toiling masses of all nations, those who create immense wealth and maintains the society but remain exploited and oppressed. It’s a day to politicize, mobilize, and organize the working class and nationally oppressed masses in the fight to destroy capitalism and replace it with a socialist society – one led by the dictatorship of the proletariat, socialized industries, and a planned economy. It is not enough to celebrate the life and work of the working class. We must take a step forward, no matter how small, towards rallying the class and defeating the enemy, growing our movement not through words but deeds of struggles and victories. May Day is a day of militant class struggle.
Every day that passes is a day an immigrant gets separated from their family, a day where a worker is fired for speaking up against mistreatment, a day where a Palestinian child is killed by Zionist bombings, a day that witnesses the further misery of our class and the peoples of the world. The only response that the working class in the United States can give, a response that is becoming more and more urgent every day, is the socialist revolution. May Day, as well as each day before and after it, must mark an advance in the struggle for such a revolution. Each passing year workers in the United States extend their rebellion, spontaneously demanding unions, class struggle and defending their interests despite repression from the owners and the opportunist leadership of establishment labor. As revolutionaries it is our task to give this rebellion theoretical and practical leadership, raising the class consciousness of the workers through struggle, and destroying all backwards influences among them such as state unionism, American national chauvinism (“patriotism”), sexism, and other discriminatory prejudices. In the place of the failed state managed “unions”, we must build a genuine workers’ movement by raising the principles of class leadership, proletarian unity, self-reliance, purposeful ideological work, trade union democracy, and militant uncompromising struggle. May Day must mark a step forward in the fight for revolution, growing our movement not through words, but through the hard and difficult organizing actions that advance our class toward victory.
May Day is not just a celebration of past struggles but a call to action. It is a day for workers to politicize, mobilize, and organize for revolutionary change. The struggle against capitalism must be at the forefront, linking our daily struggles to the highest goal of socialist revolution. This May Day, we must go among the workers to gather and systematize their grievances: to demand the right to organize free from state control, defend migrant workers, and build independent, militant, class-oriented organizations to combat the capitalist offensive. May Day should be a barometer of the strength of our class; at the same time, it should be a barometer of the effort, however elementary, to retake the red flag of the original 1886 Chicago workers through class struggle. May Day serves as a reminder of the power of the working class in its fight for liberation, and it is time to reignite the flames of this revolutionary struggle. Let it be mark a new stage in the battle for our future!
Workers of the World Unite!
Long Live International Workers’ Day!
Build the Class Conscious Workers Movement!
The Partisan
