SEATTLE, WA, May 1 — "You remember those old movies we saw as kids," mused an experienced Boeing worker as we analyzed this year's May Day march. "You cut off a head of a hydra and a new one grows right back. You really can't make any progress until you go for the heart."

"The same is true about the $15 minimum wage, immigration reform— or any reform. Until you end the wage system, the capitalist will just bounce back, making life even worse for us."

Nearly 1,000 marched three miles to Westlake Center downtown on May Day.  About 400 took Red Flag, including articles on how "The Tyranny of Wages Will Impoverish Workers" and on the struggle at our local May Day dinner to build a Boeing ICWP collective.

The front page introduced International Communist Workers' Party (ICWP) May Day activities from South Africa to Spain to Seattle Boeing, from Mexico to Honduras, from El Salvador to Los Angeles. Each paper included an insert promoting "Communist Education for a Classless Society."

We made contact with a young worker—and his friends—whose older relatives were killed in the war in El Salvador. He came to the march with fmln flags, but left with extra copies of Red Flag, a desire to mobilize for communism and a commitment to come to ICWP events.  Farmworkers and student supporters from north of the city also exchanged phone numbers, as did others.

If You Lie Down With Dogs, You'll Wake Up With Fleas

On the same day, Seattle mayor Ed Murray announced his $15 minimum wage proposal to national publicity.  There were so many exceptions and conditions that it won't take effect for all workers until 2021. Most believe the bosses will eventually sabotage it.

That's what they did when a state initiative passed many years ago mandating smaller class sizes. The state just cries it doesn't have the budget, while class size increases!

The Saturday before May Day, City Council member Sawant and her fake-left group hosted a 15now conference to launch a "cleaner" $15 minimum wage ballot initiative. Local media characterized it as stronger. That, too, is up for debate.

ICWP distributed Red Flag and other communist literature at this conference. We met many, including visitors from other parts of the country, who were suspicious of the electoral strategy and the opportunist alliances made to support it.

Their suspicion was warranted. In order to preserve what they call a "labor" alliance, the conference leadership railroaded an amendment through allowing unions to opt out of the $15 minimum. Under the amended initiative, union leaders can make their members take a wage lower than $15 in exchange for something else negotiators want (like more members). Who needs bosses when you have friends like these?

That was too much for some, causing a minor revolt. In the end, the opt-out amendment passed 186 to 72.

Despite this craven capitulation, the unions double-crossed the 15now leadership five days later. Service Employees International Union Local 775 president David Rolf and co-chair of the mayor's advisory committee stood by Mayor Murray at the May Day press conference. He assured the bosses that unions would not back any ballot initiative after all.

The Devil Don't Change, He Changes You

A lot of May Day marchers agreed we had to get rid of the capitalist wage system to eliminate racism, sexism, and deportations.  This was made even clearer by the disgusting capitalist politicking around the $15 minimum. Many others were open to the idea.

The reformists and socialists have to deal with this revolutionary potential. They confuse the issue, saying we should mobilize for some kind of social revolution at a later date. Today, unite around a $15 minimum wage or a cutback in deportations, as this is the only way to change minds.

The sad truth is that concentrating on reform demands does not create revolutionaries. Instead, it bogs down potential communists in a swamp of capitalist thinking and alliances. Eventually it turns the enthusiasm of youth into cynicism or worse.

The great lesson of May Day is that mobilizing the masses for communism is our duty today and in the future: even more so when the masses are on the move.

We are looking forward to a spring and summer of consolidating the new friends we made this May Day. We're aiming for the heart of the capitalist monster.

Mass May Day Celebration in Honduras:

The Working Class is Willing to Fight the Capitalist System

HONDURAS, May 1—Mass demonstrations of workers, mass organizations, farmworkers, teachers, and community aid groups were held in all the main cities of Honduras, concentrating tens of thousands of workers in the cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.

As in previous years, ICWP comrades participated, distributing Red Flag and the pamphlet Mobilize the Masses for Communism. We made contact with many workers with whom we discussed the precarious situation of the working class and the need to go beyond reformism and take the qualitative step of fighting to destroy capitalism and organize a true communist revolution.

In Honduras, poverty attacks the working class more every day, with poverty wages getting worse. Those who have jobs are subject to ever greater exploitation.  More than forty percent of the population able to work is unemployed. Many migrate to the US in search of work. Society in general is subject to living in an environment of unimaginable insecurity because we have the highest crime rate in the world (83 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants).

The labor movement is immersed in reform struggle, mainly fighting for higher wages which means nothing more than maintaining ourselves as wage slaves. Workers know that whatever increases they might win will be taken away and then some, with the increases in the price of consumer goods. This means that the working class can be won to the struggle for a revolution of the masses, which puts an end once and for all to money, wages and markets. It means that workers can be won to communist ideas.

Honduran workers also celebrated the 60th anniversary of the biggest strike that occurred here. The strike was against the banana companies, including the United Fruit Company and the Tela Railroad Company that paralyzed the main economic activity in the country in 1954. This mass strike achieved temporary gains for the working class, and it was the most militant movement of the working class and the longest lasting at that time.

The desperation of the working class is every day more dramatic. In general, workers don't see this neoliberal capitalist system as a solution to their grave problems, not even for subsistence. In this dead-end street, working-class consciousness is now forming to make clear the antagonism between labor and capital. Workers see how the national and international bourgeoisie are increasing their profits at the cost of workers' labor, and those who work for wages no longer receive enough to even meet the basic needs that a human being requires. 

The workers' response to our communist ideas inspires us to continue with our goal and gives us the strength to build communist revolution worldwide led by ICWP.