"The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle here today." These were the last words of August Spies, hung by the US bosses in 1887 for having helped to organize a general strike on May First, 1886 for the 8-hour day.
Prophetic words! Since 1889, when the Second Communist International declared May First to be the International Workers' Day, millions of workers, soldiers and students have marched worldwide commemorating our murdered brothers in Chicago and proclaimimg our class's demands.
This year's May Day was no exception. Millions worldwide poured into the streets protesting the capitalists'-imperialists' vicious deepening attacks. In Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia, hundreds of thousands marched in solidarity with Bangladeshi garment workers massively fighting against starvation wages and slave-like working conditions.
In South Africa thousands of miners and industrial workers marched against the ANC government. Greek workers staged another 24-hour general strike against the government's and IMF's austerity measures. In Mexico and throughout Latin America, masses of workers marched condemning unemployment and poverty wages.
This attests to the indomitable heroic spirit of our class. Our voices can never be strangled by the capitalist-imperialists. But since its birth, May Day has had a dual voice: one that calls for revolution and the other for reform.
Writing on the eve of the first May Day, Engels, one of the founders of scientific communism, emphasized its reformist character: "the proletariat … is mobilized for the first time as One army, One flag, and fight for One immediate aim: an 8-hour working day."
Since then this reformist voice has haunted the international communist movement. Today, that is the voice we need to strangle.
The Bangladeshi workers wanting to avenge their buried sisters and brothers call for their bosses be hanged. Striking transit workers in South Africa are calling for their corrupt bargaining council to be castrated with razor blades. This clearly shows some deep class hatred of capitalism. Yet, we need go further than that: our call must be for workers' communist power.
Our class must speak with only one voice: the voice of communist revolution. We must forever bury reformism no matter how militant it sounds. Our class – the toiling masses, soldiers and students of the world – must be mobilized for communism. This and only this will break forever the chains that enslave us to capitalism.
In this vein, this May Day, the International
Communist Workers' Party took modest but important steps to mobilize the masses for communism. We mobilized workers and youth to distribute Red Flag and our manifesto, Mobilize the Masses for Communism, in May Day marches in El Salvador, Mexico, Spain, Honduras, Seattle, Los Angeles and Oakland. The masses eagerly took our communist literature and our communist chants reverberated throughout those marches.
These are modest steps that point to a brilliant future: Our class is finally being organized as one army under one flag, one party, with one political line: Mobilize the Masses for Communism. Join us!