May Day 2008

The following is cut and pasted from the World Socialist Party of the United States website and, if I was hazarding a guess, I'd say was the transcript of this talk that was previously advertised on the blog.

We’re celebrating the 122nd anniversary of a General Strike held to win the 8 hour work day. That General Strike of May 1, 1886 was called by the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor and organized throughout the Canada and the US.

On that day 300,000 to half a million workers set down their tools and marched in the largest industrial cities in North America. 80,000 in Chicago, 10,000 in Detroit, New York, St. Louis, etc. In an action of this size happened today, 4 to 6 million would be on strike and 100s of thousands in the streets.

In Milwaukee 7 strikers and witnesses were killed by State Militia and 4 more by Police in Chicago.

On May 4th a rally was held to protest the shootings itself turned violent when police waded into a peaceful crowd and someone threw a bomb into the police line. Shooting broke out and 7 police and at least 4 workers were dead. According to contemporary newspaper reports, most of the police dead were caused by other police fire.

In the aftermath, 7 labor leaders who organized the rally, were arrested for murder of the police. Because of the men’s anarchist politics 6 were sentenced to hang and 4 were executed, including one who had been at home with his children at the time of the rally. This Haymarket Affair and subsequent trial was followed throughout the world. It is widely held as one of the worst cases of judicial injustice in American history.

In 1890, Sam Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) requested that the Socialist International call an international day of action agitating for an 8 hour work day. The International agreed and call for international rallies to be held on May First to commemorate the strike of 1886. This is the origin of Mayday as International Labor Day.

Which Labor Day?

Many incorrectly claim that Mayday is the original Labor Day as opposed to the one held on the first Monday of September in Canada and the US. The September Labor Day had been celebrated for at least 4 years previous to the General Strike of 1886. It was developed by US rank and file unionists from the inspiration from a strike for the 8 hour day held in Toronto in the 1870s (see section on Canada).

So both have much in common and both should be considered as legitimate since both were motivated by a desire to have “8 hours of work, 8 hours of rest and 8 hours for what we will” (from a labor song “Eight Hours“).

The beasts that graze the hillside, And the birds that wander free, In the life that God has meted, Have a better life than we. Oh, hands and hearts are weary, And homes are heavy with dole; If our life’s to be filled with drudg’ry, What need of a human soul. Shout, shout the lusty rally, From shipyard, shop, and mill.

Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest Eight hours for what we will; Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest Eight hours for what we will.

In other words, both Mayday and Labor Day should be reminders of the need of working people to try and capture the good things in life.

What happened?

The strike of 1886 was a flop. While hours dropped to 40 hours a week in some skilled trades where unions could control job conditions easily, the increase in unskilled factory work kept working hours at 50-60 per week until the 1930s. It took the desire for post-World War 2 industrial peace to establish the 40 hour week for some years in the 1950-60s.

Today the average workweek in the US is 46 hours and there is an increase in poorer workers working multiple jobs just to get by. This explains which nearly a third of Americans work more than 50 hours a week. Compare this to the legal maximum of 45 hours the British Empire established for Plantation slaves.

Read it and weep

On average, modern Americans work longer than plantation slaves in the 1800s.

Families need close to 2 wage workers to survive vs. 1.3 in the 1880s. So the total amount of work needed to maintain a household has risen.

It’s taken us 128 years to lower the working week from 60 hours to 46. That means it will take us another 54 years to reach the 8 hour day.

Using the “Unskilled Wage Index” the $175 a year factory workers earned in 1886 Chicago would be equivalent of $22,180 today or slightly more than what American Axle Company is offering it’s workers currently on strike.

Conclusions?

Why is it, that despite all the struggles, the marches, the organizing, we are more or less in the similar place as in 1886?

The WSP argues it is because we haven’t learned the lessons of the first Mayday and Labor Day. We cannot get the ‘life’ our class wanted in the 1880s by confronting the bosses with petition, pickets, pistols or pipe bombs. Each of those strategies assumes we need bosses and they can be intimidated into lessening our poverty.

As Marx first showed, and we have argued since our inception as a political movement, in capitalism, the rich grow richer and all workers can do within capitalism is slow that process down. It is capitalism as a whole system - wages, profits, markets - which needs abolishing. The murder or intimidation of one ruthless boss won’t help. Nor will the formal change of the social structure at a particular workplace into a collective, etc. We need to see the enemy as entirety, only then can we make decisions to free ourselves and the world.

Mayday 2008

In 1886 strikers carried banners which stated a simple truth:

“Labor creates all wealth, All wealth belongs to labor”

Working people need to learn and understand that truth. The capitalists need us, capitalism needs us, we do not need it.

The rich will continue to get richer and we will continue to march on Mayday until a majority of us decide that enough is enough. Sure, let’s support those who try and defend or increase their wages, but let’s face facts, in the long term they aren’t going to be any more than what it takes for us to merely survive.

Capitalism is killing us and it is killing the world.

There is enough for all and a decent life can be had only when socialism is established.

Abolish the Wage System!

FN Brill

May Day - International Workers Day

Cut and pasted below is the text of the leaflet that SPGB members will be distributing at May Day events this coming weekend in various places around Britain. I'll be attending the official TUC march in London and falling as it does this year on a Saturday, there is a strong chance that the numbers will be up on previous years on those people attending. It's probably best if I leave any reflections on attending the event until after I've actually been and gone to the event. ;-)

IS PROTEST ENOUGH?
A Socialist Message to the Workers on May Day

Today's march has a long history. It is well over a century since the TUC began to organise May Day demonstrations in Hyde Park. The main objective was to advance the interests of all workers through stronger trade unions and in time this achieved some success. But there was more to it than the struggle for higher wages and the removal of legal barriers against union action. There can be no doubt that in the minds of many who first marched was an idea of a new and better society - Socialism!

So what has happened since that time? Those earlier campaigns were against the conditions of the capitalist system and today's repeat event shows that nothing has basically changed. For all the great speeches and fine rhetoric, the countless miles marched and the many times of bitter struggle, to secure a living we still have to sell our labour to employers to make profit for a few. This is our only means of getting a living for ourselves and our families.

What does this hold for the future? World wide, the capitalist system is bigger and stronger than ever. It goes on dragging more and more people into its machinery of exploitation. Does this mean that even at the start of this new century there is only the prospect of world domination by global capitalism?

We in the Socialist Party say – no! It is tragic that the TUC became linked with the Labour Party. This was based on the false idea that socialism meant nationalisation. It was even worse when "socialism" was used to justify the tyrannies of state capitalist regimes in Russia and other places. Socialism means none of these things. Before it was corrupted, "socialism" had a clear meaning that we in the Socialist Party still uphold. It means common ownership where all means of life are held in common by all people. It means running the world through voluntary co operation. It means production directly for needs with free access to goods instead of the market system with its buying and selling for profit. It means workers of all countries uniting to work for their common interests. It means organising for a system of true democracy.

The voice of this demonstration is the voice of labour and wherever we look we still see labour in economic shackles. It suffers the waste of unemployment and the miseries of poverty. Its use is distorted in a world armaments industry. As part of the means of human destruction, hundreds of millions are under arms. The work of providing for needs takes second place to making company profits.

The history of May Day shows that protest is not enough. If the millions of workers throughout the world who, over the past century marched against the conditions of capitalism, had joined the work for socialism the capitalist system would have been consigned to history. We would now be living in a world of co-operation, peace and material security. What this means is that the capitalist system will continue indefinitely until we can build a strong socialist movement based on socialist principles that will not be compromised.

The Socialist Party was founded in 1904. We have never been diverted from presenting a clear choice between Socialism and capitalism. We have never given up. Sadly, since then we have seen the continuous rule of reformist governments which have perpetuated the rule of the owning class. The consequence has been the most destructive century in history.

This need not go on happening! What this demonstration should be demanding is free access to all means of production and all resources based on common ownership. These are the natural inheritance of labour. Everything that is best in this inheritance has only one source which has been useful work in all its variety. Generations of working people have built up immense powers of production. The vital demand should be for their take over by the whole community for the benefit of the whole community. World socialism will operate with one simple and ordinary human ability which is universal – the ability of every person on the planet to co-operate with others in a world wide community of interests. Why not make the first step to help bring this about and contact us using the details below.