May Day - We are on the March

May Day has for over a hundred years symbolised the common struggles of workers around the globe and over those years numerous Labour/Social Democratic Parties governments turned May Day to the purposes of State propaganda but they have now shed any trappings of socialism. The Communist Party regimes that shamefully paraded their military wares on the workers day have gone. Once more May Day now signifies the struggle for a future beyond capitalism rather than just a homage to the failed struggles of the past.

Activists have reclaimed what May Day should mean. It is an expression of the consciousness of the working class. May Day rallies in recent years reflect the growing anger all around the world against a capitalist class that is striving to force working people of the entire world to pay for the economic, social and environmental crises it has created. In their efforts to keep working people divided and weaken resistance to their attacks, the capitalists are using their  media and political parties to fuel racism,  to vilify the poor and to scapegoat immigrants.

But the momentum towards change and the creation of a system that puts the needs of people and the planet before profit cannot be stopped. May Day is when the workers show their loyalty to themselves, to their own interest, to their own class.

Meanwhile, May Day reminds us that the oppressive capitalist system is to be followed by socialism, just as the harshness of winter is followed by spring.

Even though, on this day the World Socialist Movement is too small to take to the streets, it represents the liberating ideas of the struggle for socialism.

For international working class solidarity!

"March Comrades"

Workers and farmers unite
You have nothing,to lose
But your chains
The world is to win
This is May Day! May!
Your armies are veining the earth!

Railways and highways have tied
Blood of farmland and town
And the chains
Speed wheat to machine
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies veining the earth!

Hirers once fed by the harried
Cannot feed them their hire
Nor can chains
Hold the hungry in
This is May Day! May!
The poor are veining the earth!

Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies are veining the earth!

March comrades in revolution
From hirer unchained
Till your gain
Be the freedom of all
The World's May Day! May!
May of the Freed of All the Earth!

Louis Zukofsky
New Masses, May, 1938.