The Socialist Party's May-Day Message

The first of May was set aside as a day on which the working men and women of different countries would suspend work and join in mass meetings to send to each other fraternal greetings and expressions of solidarity in the struggle against capitalist oppression. May-Day is an expression and an indication, no matter how vague, of the growing consciousness of the workers that, nationally and internationally, their interests were fundamentally identical and in opposition to the interests, of the capitalist class.

May-Day is workers' day, the day of our class. However hollow the cries and futile the demonstrations, it remains the anniversary of protest, a continual reminder of exploitation and, subjection. “Class” is the reason and the theme of May-Day – class in its fullest, truest sense. The working class is not the labourers or the artisans or the machine-minders: it is all people to whom wages are life. The working class is international: so is its cause. Among the cries and chants and slogans of May-Day, only one has meaning: “Workers of all countries unite!”

Class consciousness was never more needed than now. Workers have seen war, hunger and poverty; today mankind is under a shadow without precedent -global warming and environmental destruction. The working people of the world have it in their hands to end fear and hatred. Nationalism is not their interest but their rulers'. To the Socialist Party, class-consciousness is the breaking-down of all barriers to understanding. Without it, militancy means nothing. The conflict between the classes is more than a struggle for each to gain from the other: it is the division which reaches across all others. Class-conscious workers knows where they stand in society. Their interests are opposed at every point to those of the capitalist class; their cause can only be the cause of revolution for the abolishing of classes. Without that understanding, militancy can mean little. It is not mere preamble that the Socialist Party's principles open by stating the class division in capitalism: it is the all important basis from which the rest must follow. For over a century, the Socialist Party has addressed its case to the working class on May-Day, demanding not support but understanding. In all those years, it has seen movements rise and fall, heard slogans resonate and fade away, known panaceas acclaimed and discarded. Incredibly, the Left lectures the Socialist Party that it is impractical: impractical, when through their denial of what the Socialist Party's case they have fallen, and with them the hopes of millions! The Socialist Party’s proposition is the only practical one. Class-conscious people need no leaders. The single, simple fact which all working people have to learn is that capitalism causes capitalism's problems so that the remedy – the only remedy – is to abolish capitalism. In that knowledge, they must take hold of the powers of government – for one purpose only: that the rule of class by class shall end. Socialism is not a benevolently-administered capitalism: it is a different social system. Reform is no answer, even though at times – rare times – it benefits working people. The reformists have not even set out to change the world but accept that capitalism shall continue, and is merely trying to alleviate its worst effects. Has poverty – extreme, dire poverty – been abolished by the reforms? Ask those on benefits to the food banks or the sick. Has life been made more satisfying by the Welfare State?

The Socialist Party has been intractable in its opposition to reformists. Working class action, in fact, must be revolutionary. That is the real message of May-Day, for people all over the world. The workers of Britain have common cause with the workers of every other country. They are members of an international class, faced with the same problems, holding the same interests once they are conscious of them. There is only one way of realizing those interests: the immense productive powers of the world must become the common property of every man, woman, and child. May-Day has come again. Let it be an occasion of fresh resolve. There are many who are with us but not of us. The struggle for socialism is a long and arduous one, needing the help of every class-conscious man and woman. On this day, then, we urge the need to work for socialism within the Socialist Party. To spread socialist understanding is the great task of our time: every fresh adherent to the Socialist Party principles is another step towards the emancipation of mankind.