Editorial: Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World, Unite!

International Workers’ Day, May 1, represents more than a celebration of past gains such as higher wages, improved benefits, better working conditions, and shorter hours.  IWD signifies the class struggle to abolish capitalism and to establish a system free of exploitation and oppression.  Only by socialist revolution can the immense majority of humanity create the basis for freedom from want, for a bottom-up economic and political democracy, for a world cleansed of national and gender-based tyranny.  It is the only way to save nature and humanity from the growing threat of extinction caused by a system dominated by carbon energy profiteers and their servants in state power.

May Day originated in the labour movement of the late 19th century. In the United States it was first celebrated in 1886, as part of the struggle for the eight-hour workday. On May First of that year, hundreds of thousands of workers across the U.S. went on strike, demanding better working conditions and shorter working hours. The strike was peaceful, but on May 4, a bomb exploded at a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, killing several people and injuring others.  Eight anarchists were charged and convicted of conspiracy. The evidence presented at trial was that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, but none of those on trial had thrown it, and only two of the eight were at the Haymarket at the time. Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. Illinois Governor Richard Oglesby commuted two of the sentences to life in prison; another died by suicide in jail before his scheduled execution. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893, Illinois Governor John Altgeld pardoned the remaining defendant and criticized the trial.  The question remains:  What role did the Chicago police play in detonating the bomb?

The incident deterred labour activism for a while.  But it also invigorated the movement and led to the establishment of May Day as a day of labour solidarity and radical protest.

International Workers’ Day is no time for the empty rhetoric of a social democratic Sunday picnic speech.  May Day is a fiery revolt against a dying system. It is a bold act of rebellion against minority class rule.  It is an affirmation of the destiny of the working class to build socialism on the ashes of the old order.

To those cynics who say revolutionary change is impossible, we say: Have you forgotten Russia in 1917?  Have you forgotten 1949 China? Have you overlooked Vietnam and revolutionary Cuba?  From the Paris Commune of 1871 to today’s massive global mobilization against the Zionist genocide in Gaza and all of Occupied Palestine, there is a profound revolutionary continuity.  This International Workers’ Day we applaud one of the biggest strikes in decades here - the Quebec public sector general strike, in which over 570,000 participated, the great majority female workers in health and education, all under the slogan “With One Voice.”  Today there are strikes by York University and McGill University teaching assistants, employees of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and others.  3,700 grocery store workers struck at Metro stores in Toronto last Fall.  Toronto Transit Union employees are currently preparing for a strike.

What are the prospects for major social change?   Indigenous people say there can be no reconciliation without restitution.  Women say there is no going back to back-street abortions.  Queer people will not return to the closet.  Hands off Trans youth and their right to self-identify.  Opponents of the inter-imperialist war in Ukraine demand: Abolish NATO, defend the right of the Donbass people to self-determination.  Halt the Russian bombardment of western Ukraine.  Negotiate peace.  Don’t Escalate the war into a nuclear nightmare.

To the NDP top brass we say:  Stop propping up the minority Liberal government.  Stop voting for toxic war budgets.  Justin Trudeau plans to raise Ottawa’s military spending immediately by more than $8 billion, committing $73 billion over two decades.  Consider the damage to the environment, the lack of clean drinking water in many Indigenous communities, and the dire shortage of decent social housing that results from such perverted priorities. We say: End subsidies to the nature-killing oil and gas industry.  Nationalize the resource sector under workers’ and Indigenous control.  March in solidarity with the Palestinian people, for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Zionist apartheid state.  Stand with Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Iran against imperialist intervention.  China is not the enemy.  Build homes, not drones.

Cooperation on the left has never been easy.  But if ever there was a time for collaboration against threats to human survival, the time is now!  To beat back the right wing, to save our water, air, and soil, to stem the tide of authoritarian regression, we must work together.  Socialist Action advocates the united front.  In the unions SA demands:  Organize the unorganized.  No to union raiding.  For international working class action against trade wars, cold and hot wars, repression, and military occupation.  Fight for union democracy. Pay union officials no more than a worker’s living wage.  

The NDP Socialist Caucus unites the left inside the only mass labour party in North America and demands public ownership of big industry.  SA advances transitional demands to increase the confidence and capacity of the working class to achieve gains, and to win power.  The Municipal Socialist Alliance, and Vote Socialist Vancouver, call for a roll back of residential rents and mortgage payments.  No evictions.  Cancel student debt.  Make post-secondary education free.  Expropriate the big landlords.  Seize vacant, habitable spaces.  No one should die on the street.  Build accessible social housing on a mass scale.  Nationalize the telecoms!  The truth is, the only solution is revolution!  Join Socialist Action today.  Let’s make the revolution, together.