"Life will assert itself. The Communists must know that the future at any rate is theirs.

" --
LENIN

"Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you--
Ye are many--they are few."

Ours is the future,

Conscious, we raise our heads,
Under our rhythmic tread the world is shaking,
When over our ranks flutters in the morning breeze
The glorious thrill of our red banners!

MARCH ON MAY DAY

On May Day, millions of workers march in every corner of the earth. They march on the day
which our working class ancestors won with their courage and militancy.
"A poor man's fight and a rich man's war."
A lot of truth in that. You never saw war profiteers in the infantry. The workers do the fighting
and dying; the bosses grow rich.
More than any other group, the working class suffers from war; and only the working class, in all
its strength, can lead and win the fight for peace.That's what we march for this May Day, for
peace, for a decent world where our kids can look to a future other than death.
WE MARCH FOR FREEDOM from want on this May Day. There was a time when our great
labor unions could look with pride and confidence on the gains they had won under honest and
militant leadership.
That is not the case today.

Rosa Luxemburg
What Are the Origins of May Day?
The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day
was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete
stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour
day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this
only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian
masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat
the celebration every year.
In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass
work stoppage which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal
slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea
of a proletarian celebration was quickly accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other
countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.
The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they
decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day 200,000 of them
left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented
the workers for many years from repeating this [size] demonstration. However in 1888 they
renewed their decision and decided that the next celebration would be May 1, 1890.
In the meanwhile, the workers' movement in Europe had grown strong and animated. The most
powerful expression of this movement occurred at the International Workers' Congress in 1889.
At this Congress, attended by four hundred delegates, it was decided that the eight-hour day must
be the first demand. Whereupon the delegate of the French unions, the worker Lavigne from
Bordeaux, moved that this demand be expressed in all countries through a universal work
stoppage. The delegate of the American workers called attention to the decision of his comrades
to strike on May 1, 1890, and the Congress decided on this date for the universal proletarian
celebration.
In this case, as thirty years before in Australia, the workers really thought only of a one-time
demonstration. The Congress decided that the workers of all lands would demonstrate together
for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. No one spoke of a repetition of the holiday for the next
years. Naturally no one could predict the lightninglike way in which this idea would succeed and
how quickly it would be adopted by the working classes. However, it was enough to celebrate
the May Day simply one time in order that everyone understand and feel that May Day must be a
yearly and continuing institution [. . .].
The first of May demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. But even after this goal was
reached, May Day was not given up. As long as the struggle of the workers against the
bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be
the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of
the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor
of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.

The History of May Day

Alexander Trachtenberg
The Fight for the Shorter Workday
The origin of May Day is indissolubly bound up with the struggle for the shorter workday--a
demand of major political significance for the working class. This struggle is manifest almost
from the beginning of the factory system in the United States.
Although the demand for higher wages appears to be the most prevalent cause for the early
strikes in this country, the question of shorter hours and the right to organize were always kept in
the foreground when workers formulated their demands against the bosses and the government.
As exploitation was becoming intensified and workers were feeling more and more the strain of
inhumanly long working hours, the demand for an appreciable reduction of hours became more
pronounced.
Already at the opening of the 19th century workers in the United States made known their
grievances against working from "sunrise to sunset," the then prevailing workday. Fourteen,
sixteen and even eighteen hours a day were not uncommon. During the conspiracy trial against
the leaders of striking cordwainers in 1806, it was brought out that workers were employed as
long as nineteen and twenty hours a day.
The twenties and thirties are replete with strikes for reduction of hours of work and definite
demands for a 10-hour day were put forward in many industrial centers. The organization of
what is considered as the first trade union in the world, the Mechanics' Union of Philadelphia,
preceding by two years the one formed by workers in England, can be definitely ascribed to a
strike of building trade workers in Philadelphia in 1827 for the 10-hour day. During the bakers'
strike in New York in 1834 the Workingmen's Advocate reported that "journeymen employed in
the loaf bread business have for years been suffering worse than Egyptian bondage. They have
had to labor on an average of eighteen to twenty hours out of the twenty-four."
The demand in those localities for a 10-hour day soon grew into a movement, which, although
impeded by the crisis of 1837, led the federal government under President Van Buren to decree
the 10-hour day for all those employed on government work. The struggle for the universality of
the 10-hour day, however, continued during the next decades. No sooner had this demand been
secured in a number of industries than the workers began to raise the slogan for an 8-hour day.
The feverish activity in organizing labor unions during the fifties gave this new demand an
impetus which, however, was checked by the crisis of 1857. The demand was, however, won in a
few well-organized trades before the crisis. That the movement for a shorter workday was not
only peculiar to the United States, but was prevalent wherever workers mere exploited under the
rising capitalist system, can be seen from the fact that even in far away Australia the building
trade workers raised the slogan "8 hours work, 8 hours recreation and 8 hours rest" and were
successful in securing this demand in 1856.

Eight-Hour Movement Started in America

The 8-hour day movement which directly gave birth to May Day, must, however, be traced to the
general movement initiated in the United States in 1884. However, a generation before a national
labor organization, which at first gave great promise of developing into a militant organizing
center of the American working class, took up the question of a shorter workday and proposed to
organize a broad movement in its behalf. The first years of the Civil War, 1861-1862, saw the
disappearance of the few national trade unions which had been formed just before the war began,
especially the Molders' Union and the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union. The years
immediately following, however, witnessed the unification on a national scale of a number of
local labor organizations, and the urge for a national federation of all these unions became
apparent. On August to, 1866, there gathered in Baltimore delegates from three scores of trade
unions who formed the National Labor Union. The movement for the national organization was
led by William H. Sylvis, the leader of the reconstructed Molders' Union, who, although a young
man, was the outstanding figure in the labor movement of those years. Sylvis was in
correspondence with the leaders of the First International in London and helped to influence the
National Labor Union to establish relations with the General Council of the International.
It was at the founding convention of the National Labor Union in 1866 that the following
resolution was passed dealing with the shorter workday:
The first and great necessity of the present, to free labor of this country from capitalist slavery, is
the passing of a law by which 8 hours shall be the normal working day in all states in the
American union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained.
The same convention voted for independent political action in connection with the securing of
the legal enactment of the 8-hour day and the "election of men pledged to sustain and represent
the interests of the industrial classes."
The program and policies of the early labor movement, although primitive and not always sound,
were based, nevertheless, on healthy proletarian instinct and could have served as starting points
for the development of a genuine revolutionary labor movement in this country were it not for
the reformist misleaders and capitalist politicians who later infested the labor organizations and
directed them in wrong channels. Thus 65 years ago, the national organization of American labor,
the N. L. U., expressed itself against "capitalist slavery" and for independent political action.
Eight-hour leagues were formed as a result of the agitation of the National Labor Union; and
through the political activity which the organization developed, several state governments
adopted the 8-hour day on public work and the U. S. Congress enacted a similar law in 1868.
Sylvis continued to keep in touch with the International in London. Due to his influence as
president of the organization, the National Labor Union voted at its convention in 1867 to
cooperate with the international working class movement and in 1869 it voted to accept the
invitation of the General Council and send a delegate to the Basle Congress of the International.
Unfortunately Sylvis died just before the N. L. U. convention, and A. C. Cameron, the editor of
the Workingmen's Advocate, published in Chicago, was sent as delegate in his stead. In a special
resolution the General Council mourned the death of this promising young American labor
leader. "The eyes of all were turned upon Sylvis, who, as a general of the proletarian army, had
an experience of ten years, outside of his great abilities--and Sylvis is dead." The passing of
Sylvis was one of the contributing causes of the decay which soon set in and led to the
disappearance of the National Labor Union.

First International Adopts the Eight-Hour Day

The decision for the 8-hour day was made by the National Labor Union in August, 1866. In
September of the same year the Geneva Congress of the First International went on record for the
same demand in the following words:
The legal limitation of the working day is a preliminary condition without which all further
attempts at improvements and emancipation of the working class must prove abortive....The
Congress proposes 8 hours as the legal limit of the working day.
Marx on the Eight-Hour Movement In the chapter on "The Working Day" in the first volume of
Capital, published in 1867, Marx calls attention to the inauguration of the 8-hour movement by
the National Labor Union. In the passage, famous especially because it contains Marx's telling
reference to the solidarity of class interests between the Negro and white workers, he wrote:
In the United States of America, any sort of independent labor movement was paralyzed so long
as slavery disfigured a part of the republic. Labor with a white skin cannot emancipate itself
where labor with a black skin is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new vigorous life
sprang. The first fruit of the Civil War was an agitation for the 8-hour day--a movement which
ran with express speed from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California.
Marx calls attention to how almost simultaneously, in fact within two weeks of each other, a
workers' convention meeting in Baltimore voted for the 8-hour day, and an international congress
meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, adopted a similar decision. "Thus on both sides of the Atlantic
did the working class movement, spontaneous outgrowth of the conditions of production,"
endorse the same movement of the limitation of hours of labor and concretize it in the demand
for the 8-hour day.
That the decision of the Geneva Congress was prompted by the American decision can be seen
from the following portion of the resolution: "As this limitation represents the general demand of
the workers of the North-American United States, the Congress transforms this demand into the
general platform of the workers of the whole world."
A similar influence of the American labor movement upon an international congress and in
behalf of the same cause was exerted more profoundly 23 years later.

May Day Born in the United States

The First International ceased to exist as an international organization in 1872, when its
headquarters were removed from London to New York, although it was not officially disbanded
till 1876. It was at the first congress of the reconstituted International, later known as the Second
International, held at Paris in 1889, that May First was set aside as a day upon which the workers
of the world, organized in their political parties and trade unions, were to fight for the important
political demand: the 8-hour day. The Paris decision was influenced by a decision made at
Chicago five years earlier by delegates of a young American labor organization--the Federation
of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada, later known under the
abbreviated name, American Federation of Labor. At the Fourth Convention of this organization,
October 7, 1884, the following resolution was passed:
Resolved by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions the United States and
Canada, that eight hours shall constitute legal day's labor from May First, 1886, and that we
recommend to labor organizations throughout their jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to
conform to this resolution by the time named.
Although nothing was said in the resolution about the methods by which the Federation expected
to establish the 8-hour day, it is self-evident that an organization which at that time commanded
an adherence of not more than 50,000 members could not declare "that eight hours shall
constitute a legal day's work" without putting up a fight for it in the shops, mills, and mines
where its members were employed, and without attempting to draw into the struggle for the 8-
hour day still larger numbers of workers. The provision in the resolution that the unions affiliated
to the Federation "so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution" referred to the matter of
paying strike benefits to their members who were expected to strike on May First, 1886, for the
8-hour day, and would probably have to stay out long enough to need assistance from the union.
As this strike action was to be national in scope and involve all the affiliated organizations, the
unions, according to their by-laws, had to secure the endorsement of the strike by their members,
particularly since that would involve the expenditure of funds, etc. It must be remembered that
the Federation, just as the A. F. of L. today, was organized on a voluntary, federation basis, and
decisions of a national convention could be binding upon affiliated unions only if those unions
endorsed these decisions.
Preparations for May Day Strike
Although the decade 1880-I890 was generally one of the most active in the development of
American industry and the extension of the home market, the year 1883-1885 experienced a
depression which was a cyclical depression following the crisis of 1873. The movement for a
shorter workday received added impetus from the unemployment and the great suffering which
prevailed during that period, just as at the present time the demand for a 7-hour day is becoming
a popular issue on account of the tremendous unemployment which American workers are
experiencing.
The great strike struggles of 1877, in which tens of thousands of railroad and steel workers
militantly fought against the corporations and the government which sent troops to suppress the
strikes, left an impress on the whole labor movement. It was the first great mass action of the
American working class on a national scale and, although they were defeated by the combined
forces of the State and capital, the American workers emerged from these struggles with a clearer
understanding of their class position in society, a greater militancy and a heightened morale. It
was in part an answer to the coal barons of Pennsylvania who, in their attempt to destroy the
miners' organization in the anthracite region, railroaded ten militant miners (Molly Maguires) to
the gallows in 1875.
The Federation, just organized, saw the possibility of utilizing the slogan of the 8-hour day as a
rallying organization slogan among the great masses of workers who were outside of the
Federation and the Knights of Labor, an older and then still growing organization. The
Federation appealed to the Knights of Labor for support in the movement for the 8-hour day,
realizing that only a general action involving all organized labor, could make possible favorable
results.
At the convention of the Federation in 1885, the resolution on the walk-out for May First of the
following year was reiterated and several national unions took action to prepare for the struggle,
among them particularly the Carpenters and Cigar Makers. The agitation for the May First action
for the 8-hour day showed immediate results in the growth of membership of the existing unions.
The Knights of Labor grew by leaps and bounds, reaching the apex of its growth in 1886. It is
reported that the R. of L., which was better known than the Federation and was considered a
fighting organization, increased its membership from 200,000 to nearly 700,000 during that
period. The Federation, first to inaugurate the movement and definitely to set a date for the strike
for the 8-hour day, also grew in numbers and particularly in prestige among the broad masses of
the workers. As the day of the strike was approaching and it was becoming evident that the
leadership of the K. of L., especially Terrence Powderly, were sabotaging the movement and
even secretly advising its unions not to strike, the popularity of the Federation was still more
enhanced. The rank and file of both organizations were enthusiastically preparing for the
struggle. Eight-hour day leagues and associations sprang up in various cities and an elevated
spirit of militancy was felt throughout the labor movement, which was infecting masses of
unorganized workers.

The Strike Movement Spreads

The best way to learn the mood of the workers is to study the extent and seriousness of their
struggles. The number of strikes during a given period is a good indicator of the fighting mood of
the workers. The number of strikes during 1885 and 1886 as compared with previous years
shows what a spirit of militancy was animating the labor movement. Not only were the workers
preparing for action on May First, 1886, but in 1885 the number of strikes already showed an
appreciable increase. During the years 1881-1884 the number of strikes and lockouts averaged
less than 500, and on the average involved only about 150,000 workers a year. The strikes and
lockouts in 1885 increased to about 700 and the number of workers involved jumped to 250,000.
In 1886 the number of strikes more than doubled over 1885, attaining to as many as 1,572, with a
proportional increase in the number of workers affected, now 600,000. How widespread the
strike movement became in 1886 can be seen from the fact that while in 1885 there were only
2,467 establishments affected by strikes, the number involved in the following year had
increased to 11,562. In spite of open sabotage by the leadership of the K. of L., it was estimated
that over 500,000 workers were directly involved in strikes for the 8-hour day.
The strike center was Chicago, where the strike movement was most widespread, but many other
cities were involved in the struggle on May First. New York, Baltimore, Washington, Milwaukee,
Cincinnati, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and many other cities made a good showing in the
walkout. The characteristic feature of the strike movement was that the unskilled and
unorganized workers mere drawn into the struggle, and that sympathetic strikes were quite
prevalent during that period. A rebellious spirit was abroad in the land, and bourgeois historians
speak of the "social war" and "hatred for capital" which was manifested during these strikes, and
of the enthusiasm of the rank and file which pervaded the movement. It is estimated that about
half of the number of workers who struck on May First were successful, and where they did not
secure the 8-hour day, they succeeded in appreciably reducing the hours of labor.

The Chicago Strike and Haymarket

The May First strike was most aggressive in Chicago, which was at that time the center of a
militant Left-wing labor movement. Although insufficiently clear politically on a number of the
problems of the labor movement, it was nevertheless a fighting movement, always ready to call
the workers to action, develop their fighting spirit and set as their goal not only the immediate
improvement of their living and working conditions, but the abolition of the capitalist system as
well.
With the aid of the revolutionary labor groups the strike in Chicago assumed the largest
proportions. An 8-hour Association was formed long in advance of the strike to prepare for it.
The Central Labor Union, composed of the Left-wing labor unions, gave full support to the 8-
hour Association, which was a united front organization, including the unions affiliated to the
Federation, the K. of L., and the Socialist Labor Party. On the Sunday before May First the
Central Labor Union organized a mobilization demonstration which was attended by 25,000
workers.
On May First Chicago witnessed a great outpouring of workers, who laid down tools at the call
of the organized labor movement of the city. It was the most effective demonstration of class
solidarity yet experienced by the labor movement itself. The importance at that time of the
demand--the 8-hour day--and the extent and character of the strike gave the movement
significant political meaning. This significance was deepened by the developments of the next
few days. The 8-hour movement, culminating in the strike on May First, 1886, forms by itself a
glorious chapter in the fighting history of the American working class.
But revolutions have their counter-revolutions until the revolutionary class finally establishes its
complete control. The victorious march of the Chicago workers was arrested by the then superior
combined force of the employers and the capitalist state, determined to destroy the militant
leaders, hoping thereby to deal a deadly blow to the entire labor movement of Chicago. The
events of May 3 and 4, which led to what is known as the Haymarket Affair, were a direct
outgrowth of the May First strike. The demonstration held on May 4 at Haymarket Square was
called to protest against the brutal attack of the police upon a meeting of striking workers at the
McCormick Reaper Works on May 3, where six workers were killed and many wounded. The
meeting was peaceful and about to be adjourned when the police again launched an attack upon
the assembled workers. A bomb was thrown into the crowd, billing a sergeant. A battle ensued
with the result that seven policemen and four workers were dead. The blood bath at Haymarket
Square, the railroading to the gallows of Parsons, Spies, Fischer, and Engel, and the
imprisonment of the other militant Chicago leaders, was the counterrevolutionary answer of the
Chicago bosses. It was the signal for action to the bosses all over the country. The second half of
1886 was marked by a concentrated offensive of the employers, determined to regain the position
lost during the strike movement of 1885-1886.
One year after the hanging of the Chicago labor leaders, the Federation, now known as the
American Federation of Labor, at its convention in St. Louis in I888, voted to rejuvenate the
movement for the 8-hour day. May First, which was already a tradition, having served two years
before as the concentration point of the powerful movement of the workers based upon a
political class issue, was again chosen as the day upon which to re-inaugurate the struggle for the
8-hour day. May First, 1890, was to witness a nation-wide strike for the shorter workday. At the
convention in 1889, the leaders of the A. F. of L., headed by Samuel Gompers, succeeded in
limiting the strike movement. It was decided that the Carpenters' Union, which was considered
best prepared for the strike, should lead off with the strike, and if it proved successful, other
unions were to fall in line.
In his autobiography Gompers tells how the A. F. of L. contributed to making May Day an
international labor holiday: "As plans for the 8-hour movement developed, we were constantly
realizing bow we could widen our purpose. As the time of the meeting of the International
Workingmen's Congress in Paris approached, it occurred to me that we could aid our movement
by an expression of world-wide sympathy from that congress." Gompers, who had already
exhibited all the attributes of reformism and opportunism which later came to full bloom in his
class collaborationist policy, was ready to get the support of a movement among the workers, the
influence of which he strongly combated.

May Day Becomes International

On July 14, 1889, the hundredth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, there assembled in Paris
leaders from organized revolutionary proletarian movements of many lands, to form once more
an international organization of workers, patterned after the one formed 25 years earlier by their
great teacher, Karl Marx. Those assembled at the foundation meeting of what was to become the
Second International heard from the American delegates about the struggle in America for the 8-
hour day during 1884-1886, and the recent rejuvenation of the movement. Inspired by the
example of the American workers, the Paris Congress adopted the following resolution:
The Congress decides to organize a great international demonstration, so that in all countries and
in all cities on one appointed day the toiling masses shall demand of the state authorities the legal
reduction of the working day to eight hours, as well as the carrying out of other decisions of the
Paris Congress. Since a similar demonstration has already been decided upon for May 1, 1890,
by the American Federation of Labor at its Convention in St. Louis, December, 1888, this day is
accepted for the international demonstration. The workers of the various countries must organize
this demonstration according to conditions prevailing in each country.
The clause in the resolution which speaks of the organization of the demonstration with regard to
the objective conditions prevailing in each country gave some parties, particularly the British
movement, an opportunity to interpret the resolution as not mandatory upon all countries. Thus at
the very formation of the Second International, there were parties who looked upon it as merely a
consultative body, functioning only during Congresses for the exchange of information and
opinions, but not as a centralized organization, a revolutionary world proletarian party, such as
Marx had tried to make the First International a generation before. When Engels wrote to his
friend Serge in I874, before the First International was officially disbanded in America, "I think
that the next International, formed after the teachings of Marx, will have become widely known
during the next years, will be a purely Communist International," he did not foresee that at the
very launching of the rejuvenated International there would be present reformist elements who
viewed it as a voluntary federation of Socialist parties, independent of each other and each a law
unto itself.
But May Day, 1890, was celebrated in many European countries, and in the United States the
Carpenters' Union and other building trades entered into a general strike for the 8-hour day.
Despite the Exception Laws against the Socialists, workers in the various German industrial
cities celebrated May Day, which was marked by fierce struggles with the police. Similarly in
other European capitals demonstrations were held, although the authorities warned against them
and the police tried to suppress them. In the United States, the Chicago and New York
demonstrations were of particularly great significance. Many thousands paraded the streets in
support of the 8-hour day demand; and the demonstrations were closed with great open air mass
meetings at central points.
At the next Congress, in Brussels, 1891, the International reiterated the original purpose of May
First, to demand the 8-hour day, but added that it must serve also as a demonstration in behalf of
the demands to improve working conditions, and to insure peace among the nations. The revised
resolution particularly stressed the importance of the "class character of the May First
demonstrations" for the 8-hour day and the other demands which would lead to the "deepening
of the class struggle." The resolution also demanded that work be stopped "wherever possible."
Although the reference to strikes on May First was only conditional, the International began to
enlarge upon and concretize the purposes of the demonstrations. The British Laborites again
showed their opportunism by refusing to accept even the conditional proposal for a strike on
May First, and together with the German Social-Democrats voted to postpone the May Day
demonstration to the Sunday following May First.

Engels on International May Day

In his preface to the fourth German edition of the Communist Manifesto, which he wrote on
May 1, 1890, Engels, reviewing the history of the international proletarian organizations, calls
attention to the significance of the first International May Day:
As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is
mobilized for the first time as One army, under One Bag, and fighting One immediate aim: an
eighthour working day, established by legal enactment.... The spectacle we are now witnessing
will make the capitalists and landowners of all lands realize that today the proletarians of all
lands are, in very truth, united. If only Marx were with me to see it with his own eyes!
The significance of simultaneous international proletarian demonstration was appealing more
and more to the imagination and revolutionary instincts of the workers throughout the world, and
every year witnessed greater masses participating in the demonstrations.
The response of the workers showed itself in the following addition to the May First resolution
adopted at the next Congress of the International at Zurich in 1893:
The demonstration on May First for the 8-hour day must serve at the same time as a
demonstration of the determined will of the working class to destroy class distinctions through
social change and thus enter on the road, the only road leading to peace for all peoples, to
international peace.
Although the original draft of the resolution proposed to abolish class distinctions through
"social revolution" and not through "social change," yet the resolution definitely elevated May
First to a higher political level. It was to become a demonstration of power and the will of the
proletariat to challenge the existing order, in addition to the demand for the 8-hour day.

Reformists Attempt to Cripple May Day

The reformist leaders of the various parties tried to devitalize the May First demonstrations by
turning them into days of rest and recreation instead of days of struggle. This is why they always
insisted on organizing the demonstrations on the Sunday nearest May First. On Sundays workers
would not have to strike to stop work; they were not working anyway. To the reformist leaders
May Day was only an international labor holiday, a day of pageants and games in the parks or
outlying country. That the resolution of the Zurich Congress demanded that May Day should be a
"demonstration of the determined will of the working class to destroy class distinctions," i.e., the
demonstration of the will to fight for the destruction of the capitalist system of exploitation and
wage slavery, did not trouble the reformists, since they did not consider themselves bound by the
decisions of international congresses. International Socialist Congresses were to them but
meetings for international friendship and good-will, like many other congresses that used to
gather from time to time in various European capitals before the war. They did everything to
discourage and thwart joint international action of the proletariat, and decisions of international
congresses which did not conform with their ideas remained mere paper resolutions. Twenty
years later the "socialism" and "internationalism" of these reformist leaders stood exposed in all
their nakedness. In 1914 the International lay shattered because from its very birth it carried
within it the seeds of its own destruction--the reformist misleaders of the working class.
At the International Congress at Paris in 1900 the May Day resolution of the previous
Congresses was again adopted, and was strengthened by the statement that stoppage of work on
May First would make the demonstration more effective. More and more, May Day
demonstrations were becoming demonstrations of power; open street fighting with the police and
military taking place in all important industrial centers. Numbers of workers participating in the
demonstrations and stopping work on that day were growing. May Day was becoming more and
more menacing to the ruling class. It became Red Day, which authorities in all lands looked at
with foreboding when each May Day came around.
Lenin on May Day
Early in his activity in the Russian revolutionary movement Lenin contributed to making May
Day known to the Russian workers as a day of demonstration and struggle. While in prison, in
1896, Lenin wrote a May Day leaflet for the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Liberation
of the Working Class, one of the first Marxist political groups in Russia. The leaflet was
smuggled out of prison and 2,000 mimeographed copies distributed among workers in 40
factories. It was very short and written in Lenin's characteristically simple and direct style, so
that the least developed among the workers could understand it. "When a month after the famous
textile strikes of 1896 broke out, workers were telling us that the first impetus was given by the
little modest May Day leaflet," wrote a contemporary who helped to issue it.
After telling the workers how they are exploited for the benefit of the owners of the factories in
which they work, and how the government persecutes those who demand improvement in their
conditions, Lenin proceeds to write about the significance of May Day.
In France, England, Germany and other countries where workers have already been united in
powerful unions and have won for themselves many rights, they organized on April 19 (May 1)
[the Russian calendar was then 13 days behind the West-European] a general holiday of Labor.
Leaving the stifling factories they march with unfurled banners, to the strains of music, along the
main streets of the cities, demonstrating to the bosses their continuously growing power. They
assemble at great mass demonstrations where speeches are made recounting the victories over
the bosses during the preceding year and lay plans for struggle in the future. Under the threat of
strike the bosses do not dare to fine the workers for not appearing at the factories on that day. On
this day the workers also remind the bosses of their main demand: 8 hours work, 8 hours rest,
and 8 hours recreation. This is what the workers of other countries are demanding now.
The Russian revolutionary movement utilized May Day to great advantage. In the preface to a
pamphlet, May Days in Kharkov, published in November, 1900, Lenin wrote:
In another six months, the Russian workers will celebrate the first of May of the first year of the
new century, and it is time we set to work to make the arrangements for organizing the
celebrations in as large a number of centers as possible, and on as imposing a scale as possible,
not only by the number that will take part in them, but also by their organized character, by the
class-consciousness they will reveal, by the determination that will be shown to commence the
irrepressible struggle for the political liberation of the Russian people, and, consequently, for a
free opportunity for the class development of the proletariat and its open struggle for Socialism.
It can be seen how important Lenin considered the May Day demonstrations, since he called
attention to them six months ahead of time. To him May Day was a rallying point for "the
irrepressible struggle for the political liberation of the Russian people," for "the class
development of the proletariat and its open struggle for Socialism."
Speaking of how May Day celebrations "can become great political demonstrations," Lenin
asked why the Kharkov May Day celebration in 1900 was "an event of outstanding importance,"
and answered, "the mass participation of the workers in the strike, the huge mass meetings in the
streets, the unfurling of red flags, the presentation of demands indicated in leaflets and the
revolutionary character of these demands--eight-hour day and political liberty."
Lenin upbraids the Kharkov Party leaders for joining the demands for the 8-hour day with other
minor and purely economic demands, for he does not want the political character of May Day in
any way beclouded. He writes in this preface:
The first of these demands [8-hour day] is the general demand put forward by the proletariat in
all countries. The fact that this demand was put forward indicates that the advanced workers of
Kharkov realize their solidarity with the international Socialist labor movement. But precisely
for this reason a demand like this should not have been included among minor demands like
better treatment by foremen, or a ten per cent increase in wages. The demand for an eight-hour
day, however, is the demand of the whole proletariat, presented, not to individual employers, but
to the government as the representative of the whole of the present-day social and political
system, to the capitalist class as a whole, the owners of all the means of production.

May Day Political Slogans

May Days became focal points for the international revolutionary proletariat. To the original
demand for the 8-hour day were added other significant slogans on which the workers were
called upon to concentrate during their May Day strikes and demonstrations. These included:
International Working Class Solidarity; Universal Suffrage; War Against War; Against Colonial
Oppression; the Right to the Streets; Freeing of Political Prisoners; the Right to Political and
Economic Organization of the Working Class.
The last time the old International spoke on the question of May Day was at the Amsterdam
Congress of 1904. After reviewing the various political slogans which were employed in the
demonstrations and calling attention to the fact that in some countries these demonstrations were
still taking place on Sundays instead of May First, the resolution concludes:
The International Socialist Congress in Amsterdam calls upon all Social-Democratic Party
organizations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on May First for the
legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal
peace. The most effective way of demonstrating on May First is by stoppage of work. The
Congress therefore makes it mandatory upon the proletarian organizations of all countries to stop
work on May First, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers.
When the massacre of the strikers in the Lena goldfields in Siberia in April, 1912, placed again
the question of revolutionary mass proletarian action on the order of the day in Russia, it was on
May Day of that year that hundreds of thousands of Russian workers stopped work and came out
into the streets to challenge black reaction, holding sway since the defeat of the first Russian
Revolution in 1905. Lenin wrote about this May Day:
The great May strike of the workers all over Russia, and the street demonstrations connected
with it, the revolutionary proclamations, the revolutionary speeches to the working masses, show
clearly that Russia has once more entered the period of a rising revolutionary situation.

Rosa Luxemburg on May Day

In an article written for May Day, 1913, Rosa Luxemburg, herself a staunch revolutionist,
stressed the revolutionary character of May Day: "The brilliant chief idea of the May Day
celebration is the independent action of the proletarian masses, is the political mass action of the
millions of workers.... The excellent purpose of the Frenchman Lavigne at the international
congress in Paris combined with the direct international mass manifestation, the laying down of
tools, is a demonstration and fighting tactic for the 8-hour day, world peace and Socialism."
Always a close student of imperialist rivalries, Rosa Luxemburg saw the war coming and she
was anxious to make clear that May Day was especially the day for the dissemination of the
ideas of international solidarity among workers, a day for international action against imperialist
war, writing a year before the war broke out she called attention to the fact that "the more the
May Day idea, the idea of resolute mass action as demonstrations of international solidarity and
as a fighting tactic for peace and for Socialism, even in the strongest section of the International,
the German working class, strikes root, the greater guarantee we shall have that from the world
war, which will inevitably take place sooner or later, there will result an ultimately victorious
settlement of the struggle between the world of labor and that of capital."

May Day in War Time

The betrayal by the Social-patriots during the war appeared in bold relief on May Day, 1915.
This was a logical outgrowth of the class peace they made with the imperialist governments in
August, 1914. The German Social-Democracy called upon the workers to remain at work; the
French Socialists in a special manifesto assured the authorities that they need not fear May First,
and the workers were importuned to work for the defense of "their" country. The same attitude
could be found among the Socialist majorities of the other warring countries. Only the
Bolsheviks of Russia and the revolutionary minorities in other countries remained true to
Socialism and internationalism. The voices of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht were raised
against the bacchanale of social-chauvinism, Partial strikes and open skirmishes in the streets on
May Day, 1916, showed that the workers in all warring countries were freeing themselves from
the poisonous influence of their traitorous leaders. For Lenin, as for all revolutionists, "the
collapse of opportunism (the collapse of the Second International.--A. T.) is beneficial for the
labor movement" and Lenin's call for a new International, free of the betrayers, was the demand
of the hour.
The Zimmerwald (1915) and the Kienthal (1916) Conferences resulted in crystallizing the
revolutionary internationalist parties and minorities under Lenin's slogan of turning the
imperialist war into civil war. The huge demonstrations in Berlin on May Day, 1916, organized
by Karl Liebknecht and his followers in the Socialist movement, bore testimony to the living
forces of the working class, which were breaking through in spite of the police prohibitions and
the opposition of the official leadership.
In the United States May Day was not abandoned when war was declared in 1917. The
revolutionary elements in the Socialist Party took seriously the anti-war resolution of the party
adopted at the Emergency St. Louis Convention early in April and utilized May Day to protest
against the imperialist war. The demonstration in Cleveland held on Public Square and organized
by Charles E. Ruthenberg, then local secretary of the S. P. and later one of the founders and
leaders of the Communist Party, was particularly militant. Over 20,000 workers paraded the
streets to Public Square and were augmented there by many thousands more. The police brutally
attacked the meeting, killing one worker and fatally wounding another.
May Day, 1917, the July Days, and finally the October Days in Russia were but stages in the
development of the Russian Revolution to its fulfillment. May Day, together with other days rich
in revolutionary traditions--January 22 ("Bloody Sunday," 1905), March 18 (Paris Commune,
1871), November 7 (Seizure of Power, 1917)--are today holidays in the First Workers' Republic,
while the 8-hour day, the original demand of May Day, has been superseded in the Soviet Union
by the inauguration of the 7-hour day.
The Comintern Inherits May Day Traditions
The Communist International, inheritor of the best traditions of the revolutionary proletarian
movement since Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, carries on the
traditions of May Day, and the Communist parties of the various capitalist countries call upon the
workers each year to stop work on May Day, to go into the streets, to demonstrate their growing
strength and international solidarity, to demand a shorter work day--now the 7-hour day--without
reduction in pay, to demand social insurance, to fight the war danger and defend the Soviet
Union, to fight against imperialism and colonial oppression, to struggle against race
discrimination and lynching, to denounce the social-fascists as part of the capitalist machine, to
resolve to build their revolutionary unions, to proclaim their determination and iron will to
organize for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for the establishment of a universal Soviet
Republic.

A Political Mass Strike on May Day

Each year the struggles of May Day are lifted to a higher level. Born in the United States in the
threes of a general strike movement and in a fight for a major political demand, each May Day
should witness a political strike on behalf of the major class issues of the American workers
enumerated above. Old and young workers, men and women, Negro and white, should be drawn
into participation in the May Day actions. There should be strikes on May Day, for stoppage of
work is the very tradition of May First. The strikes should be mass strikes involving great
numbers of workers leaving their workshops collectively; not as individuals. Whole industrial
units should be stopped, for only such strikes are effective demonstrations of the determined will
of the workers to struggle. These mass strikes should be political, i. e., based on major political
issues affecting the whole working class.
Although the Communist Party and the revolutionary unions affiliated with the T. U. U. L. have
put forth the slogan of the 7-hour day without reduction in wages, the American workers, 46
years after the initiation of the general 8-hour day movement, must still fight for that demand. In
many industries workers still labor nine, ten and even more hours a day. The failure to establish
the 8-hour day for all during this period is due to the aristocracy of labor who, bribed by the
capitalist class with comparatively. high wages and better conditions of work, have left the
unskilled and unorganized workers without the protection of an organized labor movement, so
that they may be more easily exploited for the benefit of the owners of the industries.

The A. F. of L. Becomes Fascist

Over 40 years ago on Union Square, New York, the leaders of the first May Day demonstration
spoke not only about the 8-hour day but about the abolition of the capitalist system. "While
struggling for the 8-hour day we will not lose sight of the ultimate aim,--the abolition of the
wage system," read the resolution presented to the striking masses assembled at Union Square on
May First, 1890, after they had marched there in great columns under unfurled red banners
through the working class sections of the metropolis. Now, the A. F. of L. and the Socialist Party
make common cause with the bosses and are doing everything Possible to prevent the workers
from fighting for any improvement in their conditions, and instead of fighting for the abolition of
the capitalist system are fighting to preserve it.
Over 40 years ago, the A. F. of L. appealed to the International Socialist Congress in Paris to help
the American Federation of Labor with the strike movement inaugurated for May First, 1890,
and the International came to the aid of the American workers by making this struggle an
international one. Now, President Green and his satellite Mathew Well, pledge the support of the
A. F. of L. to each and every reactionary organization or movement formed for the purpose of
combating the Communist Party which is carrying on the American fighting traditions of May
First. The A. F. of L. leaders have developed from class collaborationists into open fascists,
serving the capitalists as hangmen of the American working class.
In their attempt to defeat May Day and to draw the workers' organizations which are under their
influence away from participation in May Day demonstrations, the A. F. of L. and other
reactionary labor organizations, have fostered the observance of a so-called Labor Day on the
first Monday in September of each year. Labor Day was adopted first on a local scale in 1885
and later granted by the various state governments as an antidote to May First celebrations.
Another campaign against May Day was inaugurated by the federal government with the aid of
A. F. of L. leaders when May 1 was adopted as Child Health Day. The hypocrisy of both the
government and the A. F. of L. is proven by the fact that a million and more children under 16
are sweated in American mills, shops and fields for the glory of American capital.
The real meaning of this sudden interest in child welfare, however, may be gleaned from the
following reference to the subject in a report submitted by the Executive Council to the I928
Convention of the A. F. of L.:
... The Communists still maintain May 1 as Labor Day. Hereafter May 1 will be known as Child
Health Day, as the President is directed by the resolution passed by Congress to issue a
proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe May 1 as Child Health Day.
The object is to create sentiment for year-round protection of the health of children. It is a most
worthy purpose. At the same time May 1 no longer will be known as either strike day or
Communist Labor Day. (Italics mine--A. T.)
Can it be that the A. F. of L. leaders have not heard the story about King Canute and his attempt
to sweep back the tempestuous ocean waves? Or is it that in their eagerness to break the fighting
spirit of the workers they are willing to try anything?

The Social-Fascism of the S. P.

The betrayal of the workers begun during the war was continued by the Socialist parties after the
war. They joined bourgeois governments to protect them from the wrath of the workers; they
organized counter-revolutions to thwart the workers' struggle for power; they became the
butchers of the militant sections of the working class which were fighting for the overthrow of
the rule of capital, just as the workers of Russia have done under the leadership of the
Bolsheviks, the Party of Lenin. The social-patriotism of the Right and the social-pacifism of the
Center during the war, have now been merged into social-fascism. The social-fascists have
become part of the capitalist state machine, protecting it from the revolutionary actions of the
workers and peasants in the imperialist and colonial countries. They call for war against the
Soviet Union and organize plots designed to arrest the progress of building Socialism there. They
support the war being waged against the Chinese people by Japanese imperialism and the seizure
of Manchuria as an eastern base for attacking the Soviet Union.
They have long ago abandoned the demand for the 8-hour day. They hope that the League of
Nations will secure for them the shorter workday through conventions between capitalist
governments. The Marseilles Congress of the Second International in 1925 declared that the 8-
hour day "should be recognized only in principle." They still participate in May Day events, but
only on the other side of the barricades, as was exemplified by the fiendish actions of the
Socialist Chief of Police of Berlin, Zoergiebel, against the May Day, 1929, demonstrations in the
working class sections of that city. In the 1932 presidential elections, the Social-Democracy
backed the Bruening fascist government by supporting the re-election of Hindenburg.
The "Socialist" Prime Minister MacDonald sends troops to mow down the Hindu masses who
are rising against British imperialism and its agents in India. Wherever capitalism has felt weak
to cope with the rising tide of the revolutionary and national liberation movements of the
workers and peasants, it has called to its service the Socialist parties, willing agents of capitalism
within the labor movement, to help defeat these movements.
In the United States, the Socialist Party plays the same role. Although it is not in office, it has
already earned its spurs in the business of betraying the best aspirations and interests of the
workers. It joins all reactionary forces who are vilifying the Soviet Union and are trying to whip
up sentiment for war upon the workers' republic. It works with the A. F. of L. and the Muste
"progressive" labor unions in hounding militant workers, in supporting the bosses against the
workers, in applauding the forces of the state when they prosecute and persecute the
revolutionary movement of this country. The old leaders of the S. P. (the Hillquits and Oneals)
have forsaken whatever Socialism they ever believed in and the new leaders (the Thomases and
Brouns) are bourgeois liberals who use the labor movement to advance the programs and the
policies of the Theodore Roosevelts of the Bull Moose days and the Robert LaFollettes whose
aim has always been to fool the masses with radical shibboleths.
Norman Thomas, the darling of the capitalist press, announces to the world in a recent book that
he has brought forth a new kind of socialism, a socialism without Marxism. It has been tried
before. An abler man than Thomas, Eduard Bernstein, tried to de-Marxianize Socialism more
than thirty years ago. He knew better, however, than to go as far as Thomas goes in his claims.
The German pioneer in this held only wanted to "correct" Marx, to "bring him up to date." The
American, Thomas, knows no halfway measures. He not only "revises" Marx, but abolishes him
altogether, without, however, injuring Socialism thereby, as S. P. leaders declare.
Norman Thomas and the class-collaborationist Socialist Party which he represents today perhaps
better than anyone else, stand exposed before the workers of this country as the betrayers and
open enemies of the only Socialism that means workers' rule, the Socialism of Marx and Lenin,
the Socialism for which the Communist Party fights, the Socialism that is being built by the
victorious workers and peasants in the Soviet Union today.

Revolutionary Traditions of American Labor

The American labor movement is rich in revolutionary traditions upon which the Communist
Party and the Trade Union Unity League can draw in their work of organizing the American
working class for revolutionary action. The great labor struggles which dot the history of the
United States, bear testimony to the militancy of the American workers. Not only have the
workers been ready to initiate struggles or accept provocations of the bosses, but when out on
strike, they have stayed out long and fought bitterly against the combined forces of bosses and
the minions of the State.
A labor movement which can look back to the general strike movements of 1877 and 1886, to
Homestead (1892), to the A. R. U. Strike (1894), to Lawrence (1912), to the Steel Strike (1919),
to Seattle (1919), to the many strikes in the coal, railroad, clothing and other industries, to the
great struggles in Colorado, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, the Mesaba Range and, more recently,
to Gastonia and Harlan, can also look forward to still greater struggles in the future. With the
prevailing objective conditions--constantly deepening economic crisis, growing permanent
unemployment, intensified exploitation through speed up methods, acceleration of imperialist
rivalries leading to another world war, the American Labor movement, freed of its misleaders,
will give an account of itself. The massacre by Ford police of four Detroit auto workers at an
unemployed demonstration before his plant, the murder of Negro jobless in Chicago and
Cleveland are evidences of the sharpening class struggle and the militancy of the workers.

May 1 and March 8--Contribution of American Workers

Out of its traditions the American labor movement has given the international working class two
fighting days which the revolutionary workers consider as mile posts and which they must pass
each year on their way to ultimate victory. Those who were midwives at the birth of these "days"
have renounced them as soon as they have acquired revolutionary meaning. The A. F. of L.
helped with the inauguration of May Day. It has long expiated that sin against American capital
and it is never held against it.
The Socialist Party, a close, even if poor, relation of the A. F. of L., must be considered as having
contributed to the origin of International Women's Day, celebrated each year on March 8. About
twenty years ago the Socialist women of New York organized, in contradistinction to the
bourgeois suffrage movement, a mass participation of proletarian women in the movement for
woman suffrage. This particular action took place on March 8. The success of the New York
demonstration led to the establishment of March 8 as Women's Day on a national scale. The
International Socialist Congress in 1910 made March 8 international.
With the granting of woman suffrage in the United States, March 8 was abandoned by the S. P.,
since the ballot and election to office has always been the alpha and omega of that party. The
Russian working women did not forget March 8 and, following the October Revolution,
rejuvenated this important fighting labor day. The Communist International made International
Women's Day again a living reality. As in the case of May 1, only the Communist parties are
carrying on the traditions of March 8, with men and women workers jointly utilizing this day to
call upon the proletarian women to take their place in the struggles beside the men workers.

The Future Belongs to Communism

For the May Day, 1923, edition of the weekly Worker, C. E. Ruthenberg wrote: "May Day--the
day which inspires fear in the hearts of the capitalists and hope in the workers--the workers the
world over--will find the Communist movement this year stronger in the U. S. than at any time in
its history.... The road is clear for greater achievements, and in the United States as elsewhere in
the world the future belongs to Communism." In a Weekly Worker of a generation before,
Eugene V. Debs wrote in a May Day edition of the paper, published on April 27, 1907: "This is
the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the
Revolution."
The world is nearer to Communism today. We are living in a more advanced period now.
Capitalism has swung downward and is progressively moving in that direction. The sharpness of
its own contradictions is making its ability to carry on more difficult. The workers are growing in
political consciousness and are engaged in a counter-offensive which is gaining in scope and
depth. The oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples are rising and challenging the rule of
imperialism.
In the Soviet Union the workers will review on May Day the phenomenal achievements of the
building of Socialism. In the capitalist countries May Day will be as always a day of struggle for
the immediate political demands of the working class, with the slogans of proletarian dictatorship
and a Soviet Republic kept not far in the background.

The Beast of Property

John Most
"Among the beasts of prey man is certainly the worst." This expression, very commonly made
nowadays, is only relatively true. Not man as such, but man in connection with wealth is a beast
of prey. The richer a man, the greater his greed for more. We may call such a monster the "beast
of property." It now rules the world, making mankind miserable. and gains in cruelty and
voracity with the progress of our so called "civilization " This monster we will in the following
characterize and recommend to extermination.
Look about ye! In every so-called "civilized" country there are among every 100 men about 95
more or less destitute and about 5 money-bags.
It is unnecessary to trace all the sneaking ways by which they have gained their possessions. The
fact that they own ALL, while the others exist, or rather vegetate merely, admits of no doubt, that
these few have grown rich at the expense of the many.
Either by direct brute force, by cunning, or by fraud, this horde has from time to time seized the
soil with all its wealth. The laws of inheritance and entail, and the changing of hands, have lent a
"venerable color to this robbery, and consequently mystified and erased the character of such
actions. For this reason the "beast of property" is not fully recognized, but is, on the contrary,
worshipped with a holy awe.
And yet, all who do not belong to this class are its victims. Every off-spring of a non-possessor
(poor man) finds every nook and corner the earth occupied at his entrance into the world. There
is nothing which is "lordless." Without labor nothing is produced; and in order to labor, there are
required not only ability and will, but also room to work, tools, raw materials and means of
sustenance. The poor man must, therefore, by force of necessity, apply to those who possess
these things in plenty. And, behold! the rich give him permission to continue his existence. But in
return for this he must divest himself of his skill and power. These qualities henceforth his
pretended "saviors" use for themselves. They place him under the yoke of labor--they force him
to the utmost of his mental and physical abilities to produce new treasures, which however he is
not entitled to own. Should he desire to deliberate for long before making so unequal a contract,
his growling stomach will soon convince him that the poor man has no time that, for there are
millions in the same position as himself and he will risk that, while deliberating, hundreds of
others will apply--his chance is gone and he again will be at the mercy of the winds.
It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he MUST SELL.
-"VOLUNTARILY" SELL--HIMSELF every day and hour to the "beast of property."
The bygone times, when the "ruling" classes, on their slave-hunting raids, threw their victims in
chains and forced them to work, of which the rulers had all the benefit--the times when christian-
germanic robbers stole entire countries, deprived the inhabitants of the soil, and pressed them to
feudal service, were indeed terrible enough, but the climax of infamy has been reached by our
present "law and order" system, for it defrauded more than nine-tenths of mankind of their means
of existence, reduced them to dependence upon an insignificant minority, and condemned them
to self-sacrifice. At the same time it has disguised this relation with all sorts of jugglery so that
the thralls of today--the wage slaves--but partially recognize their serfdom and outlawed
position, they rather incline to ascribe it to the caprices of fortune.
To perpetuate this state of affairs is the only aim of the "prominent" classes. Though not always
united among themselves-- one seeking to gain advantage over the other by tricks of trade,
cunning in speculation and divers machinations of competition-yet in opposition to the
proletariat they stand in one united hostile phalanx. Their political ideal is, therefore--in spite of
all liberal phrases--a most powerful, centralized and brutal beadle government
If the poor man, who is momentarily unable to sell himself to an exploiter of labor, or is already
flayed to complete helplessness by the "beast of property," has recourse to begging-then the
glutted bourgeois terms it "vagrancy," and calls for police; he demands pillory and prison for the
poor devil who refuses to starve between mountains of food.
Should the unemployed apply a little of the much vaunted self-help, that is, should he do in a
small way, what the rich do daily with impunity on a grand scale, should he, in fact, steal, in
order to live--the bourgeoisie will heap burning coals of "moral indignation" upon his head, and,
with an austere visage, hand him over relentlessly in charge of the state, that in its prisons he
may be fleeced the more effectively, i.e., cheaper.
When the workers combine in order to obtain better wage, shorter hours of labor, or similar
advantages, the money-bags immediately decry it as "conspiracy," which must be prevented.
When the workers organize politically, it is denounced as resistance to the "divine" order of
things, which must be nulified by laws of exception or discrimination.
Should the people finally contemplate rebellion, an unceasing howl of rage raised by the "gold
tigers" will be heard throughout the world -- they pant for massacres and their thirst for blood is
insatiable.
The life of the poor is valued as nothing by the rich. As the owner of vessels he places the lives
of entire crews in jeopardy, when he is to fraudulently obtain high insurance for half decayed
hulks. Bad ventilation, deep excavation, defective supports, etc., etc., annually bring death to
thousands of miners, but this system of operation saves expenses, therefore augments the gains,
and gives the mine owners no occasion to be sorry. Neither does the factory-pasha care how
many of "his" laborers are torn and rent apart by machinery, poisoned by chemicals, or slowly
suffocated by dirt and dust. Profit is the main thing.
Women are cheaper than men: for this reason the capitalistic vampires with insatiate rapacity
seek their blood. Besides, female labor procures them cheap mistresses.
Child flesh is the cheapest: what wonder then that the cannibals of modern society continually
feast upon juvenile victims? What care they that the poor little ones are thereby bodily crippled
and mentally ruined for life-that thousands of them, miserable and worn out at a tender age, sink
into their graves? Stocks rise; that suffices.
As the bourgeoisie, by means of its capital, completely monopolize all new inventions, every
new machine, instead of shortening the hours of labor and enhancing the prosperity and
happiness of ALL, causes on the contrary, dismissal from employment for some, reduction of
wages for others, and an increased and intensified state of misery for the entire proletariat.
When increase of production is accompanied by an augmented pauperization of the masses,
consumption must simultaneously decrease and stagnation and crises must ensue. A
superabundance of actual wealth in the hands of the few must create hunger, typhus, and other
epidemics among the many. The injustice--yea the idiocy--of this state of affairs is evident. The
money-bags of course merely shrug their shoulders. This they will continue to do until a rope
well tied over their shoulders will end all further shrugging.
The worker is not only fleeced in manifold ways as producer, but also as consumer. Numberless
parasites seek to despoil him of his paltry income.
After products have passed through various exchanges and storage stages, and their prices have
been raised by jobbers and brokers ' profits, by taxes and custom house duties, they finally reach
the retailers, whose customers are almost exclusively the proletarians. The wholesalers "make"
(that is, fraudulently obtain) perhaps 10 to 20 per cent profit by their transactions; the retailer is
dissatisfied with less than 100 per cent. He makes use of all sorts of tricks for securing this result,
especially the most shameless adulteration of food. In close relationship to these swindlers are
the numberless poisoners and adulterators of beer, liquors, wine, etc., who render the streets in
all our great cities, and industrial centers unsafe with their nefarious traffic. Then there are the
tenement-lords, who ceaselesly seek means to embitter the existence of the poor. The condition
of the rooms become [sic] steadily worse, the rents higher, and the contracts more galling. The
workers are crowded together more and more into rear houses, attics and cellar-holes, full of
vermin, and musty. Prison cells are frequently far healthier than these pest-holes.
When the worker is out of employment. he is again at the mercy of hordes of speculators in
hunger, who are ready to pounce upon him order to complete his ruin. Pawnbrokers and others of
similar ilk advance small sums at high interest on the last possessions of the poor. Their contracts
are usually so arranged that they can hardly be kept; the pawned objects [are] forfeited and the
poor wretch takes another downward step. The cut-throats, however, amass fortunes in a short
time. The beggar is looked upon as quite a well-paying figure by certain sharks. Every copper
which he has gathered in is unenviable way arouses the covetousness of the keeper of dirty holes
and vile dens. Even thieves are subject to this capitalistic spoliation. They are the slaves of crafty
concealers and "fences," who receive their stolen goods for a song. Yes even those unfortunate
women, whom the present accursed system has driven to prostitution, are shamelessly plundered
by keepers of brothels and houses of ill-fame.
This is the lot of the poor from the cradle to the grave. Whether he produces or consumes,
whether he exists or merely vegetates, he is always surrounded of (sic) ravenous vampires who
thirst for his last drop of blood. On the other hand, the rich man never stops his work of
exploiting, though he may be utterly unable to assign a reason for his greed, He that has
$1,000,000 would have $10,000,000; he that has $100,000,000 would have $1,000,000,000.
The greed for wealth is closely associated with the greed for power. Wealth is not only a
generator of more wealth, it is also a political power. Under the present capitalistic system
venality is an all-pervading vice. It is as a rule a mere matter of price which will buy over who
may he of service either by speech or silence, by the pen or by the press, by acts of violence or
any other means, to the "beast of property," which by its golden dictates is the absolute, almighty
divinity.
In Europe and America there are several hundred thousand priests and ministers, specially
provided for to poison the common sense of the masses. Numberless missionaries wander from
house to house spreading senseless tracts, or commit other "spiritual" mischief. In the schools
strenuous attempts are made to nullify what little good the training in reading, writing, and
ciphering may bring with it. Idiotic maltreatment of "history" excites that blatant prejudice which
divides people, prevents them from recognizing the fact, that their oppressors have so leagued
together against them, and that all politics, past and present, has the only object in view, that of
firmly establishing the power of the rulers, and thereby ensuing (sic) the exploitation of the poor
by the rich.
The hawking trade in "loyalty and other intoxicants" is attended to by the inkslingers of the daily
press, numerous literary perverters of history, by political heelers of the various predominating
cliques, rings, combinations and organizations, by parliamentary windbags with seductive
smiles, pledges on their lips and treason in their hearts, and hundreds of other politicians of all
degrees and shades of villainy.
Whole squads of bushwhackers are specially employed in mystifying the social question. The
professors of political economy for instance, play the part of lackeys to the bourgeoisie, extolling
the golden calf as the true sun of life, and using falsehood and knavery so "scientificaly," that
they make the tanning of workingmen's hides appear as a benefaction to mankind. Some of those
charlatans recommend social reform, or in other words, processes, based on the maxim of
washing without wetting; not to mention their celebrated recipes for economizing and educating.
While thus bamboozling the masses the capitalistic knights of plunder continue to perfect their
mechanism of power. New offices are created. High positions in these are filled in Europe by the
progeny of the former highwaymen (now a "nobleman") in America by the most crafty office
hunters and the most wily thieves, who combine with their original purpose of authoritatively
gagging the proletariat, the very pleasant business of till-tapping and forgery on a grand scale.
They command armies of soldiers, gendarmes, policemen, spies, judges, prison-keepers, tax
collectors, executors, etc., etc. The lower class of the beadledom are almost wholly recruited
from the ranks of the non-possessors, and are only exceptionally [rarely] better paid. For all that,
they display great zeal as spies, eaves-droppers, and poke-noses, as claws, and suckers of the
state, which institution is evidently no
more nor less than the political organization of a horde of swindlers spoliators, who without the
tyrannizing machinery could not exist for one day before the just wrath and condemnation of the
oppressed people.
In most of the old countries this system has naturally reached its point of culmination in the outer
form. The entire disciplinary apparatus of the state concentrates in a monarchic power. Its
representatives "by the grace of God" are, in accordance, the very quintessence of villainy. In
them all vice and crime common to the ruling classes is developed to a monstrous degree. Their
most agreeable occupation is a wholly
murder ( war ) ; when they rob, and they do it often, they always rob entire countries and
hundreds, even, thousands of millions. Incendiarism on a colossal scale serves to illuminate their
atrocities. They adhere to the notion, that mankind exists for them to kick, cuff, and spit upon. At
the best, they make it worth their while to select the most attractive women and girls from among
their "subjects" to satiate their beastly lusts. The others have the right to "most obediently" die
like dogs.
By direct blackmail these crowned murderers of Europe annually pocket $50,000,000.
Militarism, their pet progeny, annually costs $1,000,000, not taking in consideration the loss of
life and labor. An equal sum is paid as interest on $20,000,000,000 of state-debts, which
scoundrels have incurred in a comparatively short time. Monarchism in Europe then cost
annually $2,050,000 000 that is to say, more than 10,000,000 of workers, the supporters of
50,000,000 of people, earn as wages in the same time.
In America the place of the monarchs is filled by the monopolists. Should monopolism in the
alleged "free" United States of America develop at the rate it has in the last quarter of a century,
there will remain free from monopolization only daylight and air, Five hundred million acres of
land in the United States, about six times the area of great Britain and Ireland, have been divided
within a generation by the railroad companies and the great landlords of Europeo-aristocratic
origin. Within a few decades Vanderbilt alone amassed $200,000,000; several dozen of his
competitors in robbery bid fair to outdo him.
San Francisco was settled hardly thirty years ago, to-day it harbors eighty-five millionaires! All
the wealth of this great republic, although established but a century, its mines, its coalfields, its
oil wells, etc., etc. has been "taken" from the people and are the property of a handful of daring
adventurers and cunning schemers.
The "sovereignty of the people" falls prostrate into the dust before the influence of these money
kings, railroad magnates, coal barons and factory lords. These fellows carry the whole United
States in their pockets, and that which is vaunted as untrammeled legislation and free legislation
is a farce, a delusion and a snare.
If this be the condition of the green wood, what may we not expect of the decayed timber? If this
young American republic, with its nearly boundless territory and its almost inexhaustible [sic]
natural resources has been so fatally corrupted and ruined in such a short time by the capitalistic
system-why be surprised at the results of long continued abuses of similar nature in servile,
rotten Europe?
Indeed it seems as though this young American republic had for the present but one historical
mission, of demonstrating beyond controversy to the people on this side of the Atlantic as to
those on the other by the presentation of bare, tangible facts what an outrageous monster the
"beast of property" really is, and that neither the condition of the soil, the vastness of domain, nor
the political forms of society can ever alter the viciousness of this beast of prey; but to the
contrary, it proves, that the less a necessity naturally exists for individual greed and rapacity, the
more dangerous to, and obtrusive upon society it becomes. It is not voracious to satisfy its wants-
it devours for the sake of devouring only!
Let those who labor to live understand, that this monster cannot tamed, nor be made harmless or
useful to man; let them learn to know, that there is but one means of safety: unrelenting, pitiless,
thorough, war of extermination! Gentle overtures are for naught; scorn and derision will be the
result, if by petitions, elections, and like silly attempts the proletariat hopes to command the
respect of its sworn enemies.
Some say, general education will bring about a change; but this advice is as a rule an idle phrase.
Education of the people will only then be possible, when the obstructions thereto have been
removed. And that will not take place until the entire present system has been destroyed.
But let it not be understood that nothing could or should be done by education. Far from it.
Whoever has recognized the villainy of the present conditions, is in duty bound to raise his voice,
in order to expose them, and thereby open the eyes of the people. Only avoid to reach this result
by super-scientific reflections. Let us leave this to those well meaning scientists, who in this
manner tear the mask of humanity from the
'better class" and disclose the hideous countenance of the beast of prey. The language of and to
the proletariat must be clear and forcible.
Whoever thus uses speech will be accused of inciting disturbance by the governing rabble; he
will be bitterly hated and persecuted. This shows that the only possible and practical
enlightenment must be of an inciting nature. Then let us incite!
Let us show the people how it is swindled out of its labor force by country and city capitalists,
how it is euchered out of its meagre wages by the store, house, and other lords; how priests of
pulpit, press, and party seek to destroy its intellect; how a brutal police is ever ready to maltreat
and tyrannize it, and with a soldiery to spill its blood. Patience at last must forsake it! The people
will rebel and crush its foes!
The revolution of the proletariat--the war of the poor against the rich, is the only way from
oppression to deliverance!
But, some interpose, revolutions can not be made! Certainly not, but they can be prepared for by
directing the people's attention to the fact that such events are imminent [sic], and calling upon
them to be ready for all emergencies.
Capitalistic development, of which many theorists assert that it must proceed to the total
extinction of the middle class, (small bourgeoisie), before the conditions favorable to a social
revolution are at hand, has reached such a point of perfection, that its farther progress is almost
impossible. Universal production (in civilized countries ) can only be carried on, industrially as
well as agriculturally, on a grand scale, when society is organized on a Communistic basis, and
when (which will then be a truism) the reduction of the hours of labor keeps pace with the
development of technical facilities, and augmented consumption with production.
This is easily comprehended. By wholesale production from 100 times more may be produced
than the producers need in goods of equivalent value, and there lies the rub. Until lately, this
surplus value has been but little noticed, because by far the greater portion of this so-called profit
has been in turn capitalized, that is, used for new capitalistic enterprises, and because the
industrially most advanced countries (the "beast of property" in those countries) export enormous
quantities of merchandise. Now, however, the thing is beginning to weaken mightily.
Industrialism has made great progress the world over, balancing exports and imports more and
more, and for that reason new investments of capital becomes less profitable, and must,
under such circumstances, soon prove entirely unremunerative. Universal crises must ensue and
will expose these glaring incongruities.
Everything therefore is ripe for Communism; it is only necessary to remove its interested
inveterate enemies, the capitalists and their abettors. During these crises the people will become
sufficiently prepared for the struggle. Everything will then depend on the presence of a well
trained revolutionary nucleus at all points, which is fit and able to crystalize around itself the
masses of the people, driven to rebellion by misery and want of work, and which can then apply
the mighty forces so formed to the destruction of all existing hostile institutions.
Therefore organize and enlarge everywhere the Socialistic revolutionary party before it be too
late! The victory of the people over its tyrants and vampires will then be certain.
Instead of here developing a "programme" it is, under present conditions, of far greater
importance to sketch what the proletariat must probably do immediately after the victorious
battle to maintain supremacy.
Most likely the following must be done: In every local community where the people have gained
a victory, revolutionary committees will be constituted. These execute the decrees of the
revolutionary army, which, reinforced by the armed workingmen, now rule like a new conqueror
of the world.
The former ( present ) system will be abolished in the most
rapid and thorough manner, if its supports-the "beasts of property" and horde of adherents-are
annihilated. The case standing thus: If the people do not crush them, they will crush the people,
drown the revolution in the blood of the best, and rivet the chains of slavery more firmly than
ever. Kill or be killed is the alternative. Therefore massacres of the people's enemies must be
instituted. All free communities enter into an offensive and defensive alliance during the
continuance of the combat. The revolutionary communes must incite rebellion in the adjacent
districts. The war can not terminate until the enemy ( the "beast of property' has been pursued to
its last lurking place and totally destroyed.
In order to proceed thoroughly in the economic sense, all lands and so-called real estate, with
everything upon it, as well as all movable capital will be declared the property of the respective
communes. Until he thorough harmonious reorganization of society can be effected, the
proclamation of the following principles and measures might render satisfaction.
Every pending debt is liquidated. Objects of personal uses which were pawned or mortgaged will
be returned free. No rents will be paid. District committees on habitation, which will sit in
permanence, allot shelter to those who are homeless or who have inadequate or unhealthy
quarters; after the great purification there will be no want for desirable homes.
Until everyone can obtain suitable employment, the Commune will guarantee to all the
necessities of life. Committees on supplies wil regulate the distribution of confiscated goods.
Should their be a lack of anything, which might be the case in respect to articles of food, these
must be obtained by proper agents. Taking such things from neighboring
great estates by armed columns of foragers would be a most expeditious way of furnishing them.
The preparation of provisions will be done effectively by communal associations of workmen,
organized for that purpose.
The immediate organization of the workers according to the different branches of trade, and of
placing at their disposal the factories, machines, raw materials, etc., etc., for co-operative
production, will form the basis of the new society.
The Commune will-at least for the present-be supposed to mediate and regulate consumption. It,
therefore, enters into contracts with individual workers associations, makes periodical advances
to them, which may consist in drafts upon the communal wares collected and stored, and thereby
give the death stroke to the old monetary system.
Good schools, kindergartens, and other institutions for education must be founded without delay.
The education of adults, which then will then be possible, must not be neglected or postponed.
Truth and knowledge will be taught in all churches, where no priestly cant will be tolerated. All
printing presses must be put in operation to produce books, papers and pamphlets of educational
value by the million, to be distributed everywhere, particularly in regions not yet liberated from
thralldom.
All law books, court and police records, registers of mortgages, deeds, bonds, and all so-called
"valuable documents" must be burned. These indications only serve to show that the period of
transition, which generally dismays those who otherwise energetically espouse a reorganization
of society, because it appears difficult and arduous to them, need not be of such enervating
nature.
And now let us take a look at the ideal of our aspirations.
Free society consists of autonomous, i.e., independent Communes. A network of federations, the
result of freely made social contracts, and not of authoritative government or guardianship,
surrounds them all. Common affairs are attended to in accordance with free deliberation and
judgement by the interested Communes or associations. The people, without distinction of sex,
meet frequently in parks or suitable halls, not indeed, to make laws or to bind their own hands,
but in order to decide from case to case in all matters touching Public affairs, or for appointing
individuals to execute their resolves, and hear their reports.
The exterior appearance of these Communes will be entirely different fom that of the present
cities and villages. Narrow streets have vanished, tenement prisons are torn down, and spacious,
well-fitted palaces surrounded by gardens and parks, erected in their places, giving accomodation
to larger or smaller associations brought together by identicalinterests, increasing comforts to a
degree which no individual or family arrangement could reach.
In the country the people will will be more concentrated. One agricultural commune with city
conveniences will take the place of several villages. The uniting farms hitherto separated, the
general application and constant improvement of agricultural implements and chemical
fertilizers, the growing perfection of the means of communication and transportation, etc., have
simplified this process of concentration. The former contrast between city and country
disappears, and the principle of equality gains one of its most important triumphs.
Private property exists no more. All wealth belongs to the people or the communal leagues.
Everybody, whether able to work or not can obtain from them such articles of necessity as he
may desire. The sum total of necessities and comforts demanded, regulates the quantity of
production.
The time of labor for the individual is limited to a few hours
a day, because all those able to work, regardless of sex, take part in production, because useless,
injurious, or similar work will not be done, and because technical, chemical, and other auxiliary
means of production are highly developed and universally applied. By far the greater part of the
day can be spent in the enjoyment of life.
The highest gratification will be found in freely chosen intellectual employment. Some spend
their leisure time in the service of their fellow-men, and are busy for the common weal. Others
can be found in the libraries, where they apply themselves to literary pursuits, or to gathering the
material for educational lectures, or simply for private studies. Others again hasten to the
lyceums, open to all, and there hear science. Academies of painting, sculpture, music, etc., offer
chances of education for such as follow the fine arts.
Friends of childhood, especially those of the female sex, center about the places of education,
where, under the direction of the real mentors of youth, they aid in the rearing and culture of the
growing generation.
Teaching will be done only in well ventilated, light rooms, and during fair weather in the open
air. And in order to secure the equal development of mind and body, merry play, gymnastics, and
work will alternate with the close application of the mind.
Theaters and concert halls will offer free seats to all.
Forced or procured marriages are unknown; mankind has returned to the natural state and love
rules unconstrained.
Vice and crime have disappeared with their original causes, private property and general misery.
Diseases to a great extent cease to appear because bad lodging, murderous workshops, impure
food and drink, over-exertion, have become things unknown.

The Red Flag

Jim Connell

Published: Socialistic Publishing Society, 1886?.

Source: http://www.comms.dcu.ie/sheehanh/rf-lyrics.htm
HTML: for marxists.org in April, 2002

The people's flag is deepest red,

It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts blood dyed its every fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high. (chorus)
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.
Look round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow's vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.
It waved above our infant might,
When all ahead seemed dark as night;
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We must not change its colour now.
It well recalls the triumphs past,
It gives the hope of peace at last;
The banner bright, the symbol plain,
Of human right and human gain.
It suits today the weak and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place
To cringe before the rich man's frown,
And haul the sacred emblem down.
With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.

Russian Revolutionary song

(Rise brothers sunward to freedom)

Published: Socialist Review, April 1924.

HTML: Ted Crawford for marxists.org in July, 2002

Rise brothers, sunward to freedom!

Up, brothers, up to the light!
Out of the dark past behind us,
March for the future is bright.
Slowly the life of millions,
Out of the night comes birth,
Till all the surge of your longing,
Whelms o'er the Heavens and the Earth
Now, brothers, hands clasped together,
Death with a laught we put by!
Holy is this, our last struggle,
Ending our slavery for aye.

Subject Archive | Marxist Writers

Into the Streets May First

Alfred Hayes
Published: New Masses, May, 1934.
HTML: for marxists.org in March, 2002

Into the streets May First!

Into the roaring Square!
Shake the midtown towers!
Shatter the downtown air!
Come with a storm of banners,
Come with an earthquake tread,
Bells, hurl out of your belfries,
Red flag, leap out your red!
Out of the shops and factories,
Up with the sickle and hammer,
Comrades, these are our tools,
A song and a banner!
Roll song, from the sea of our hearts,
Banner, leap and be free;
Song and banner together,
Down with the bourgeoisie!
Sweep the big city, march forward,
The day is a barricade;
We hurl the bright bomb of the sun,
The moon like a hand grenade.
Pour forth like a second flood!
Thunder the alps of the air!
Subways are roaring our milllons--
Comrades, into the square!

"March Comrades"
(Words for a workers' chorus from " 'A'-8")
Louis Zukofsky

Published: New Masses, May 3, 1938.

HTML: for marxists.org in March, 2002
Workers and farmers unite
You have nothing,to lose
But your chains
The world is to win
This is May Day! May!
Your armies are veining the earth!
Railways and highways have tied
Blood of farmland and town
And the chains
Speed wheat to machine
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies veining the earth!
Hirers once fed by the harried
Cannot feed them their hire
Nor can chains
Hold the hungry in
This is May Day! May!
The poor are veining the earth!
Light lights in air blossoms red
Like nothing on earth
Now the chains
Drag graves to lie in
This is May Day! May!
The poor's armies are veining the earth!
March comrades in revolution
From hirer unchained
Till your gain
Be the freedom of all
The World's May Day! May!
May of the Freed of All the Earth!

From a report on the 1918 May Day celebrations on the

streets of Moscow, in the newspaper Izvestiya
3 May 1918
Source: Street Art of the Revolution: Festivals and Celebrations in Russia 1918-33, ed, Vladimir
Tolstoy, Irina Bibikova, Catherine Cooke, Iskusstvo, 1984
HTML: for marxists.org in April, 2002

The streets
Lubyanka Square was swamped in red. The countless silk, velvet and other banners, embroidered
with sequins and glass beads were quite dazzling to the eye. One focus of attention was the metal
workers vehicle, draped in red material and bearing a huge globe with a portrait of Marx on it.
The vehicles of the workers' collective were also striking. On one a band played, while the other
was covered in greenery and flowers arranged in the shape of an arch.
Another wonderful spectacle was the Sokolniki District lorry, decked out from top to bottom in
flowers. Invalids walked on crutches behind the maimed soldiers' lorry.
Next came the machine-gunners, on foot with their guns loaded onto horses. They were followed
by the Alexandrovsky College Training School. A detachment of sailors, smartly dressed in
black, marched past, followed by firemen and then a float displaying emblems of agricultural
work. Children paraded past all holding little red flags. ... Detachment after detachment of the
army of labour, the army of the Revolution....
Speeches were given and a series of meetings held on Skobelev Square in front of the Moscow
Soviet. [This square, with the former Dresden Hotel, was decorated by a group of artists under A.
I. Ivanov.] The column of the stage workers' trade union was particularly interesting; on the front
lorry, beneath a poster reading 'Free Worker', representatives of the most important kinds of
labour stood at their machines; on the second lorry was a band, and behind it an allegorical group
depicting Russia heralding peace to all peoples.
There were performers in the costumes of all nationalities, a peasant woman with a sheaf of rye
in her arms, boys holding rakes and sickles, and nearby the courageous figures of soldiers
holding red banners. And above them all stood Russia with a palm sprig in her hands.
In front of the Moscow Soviet, the participants in these pictures sang the 'Internationale', the
'Marseillaise' and other revolutionary songs to the accompaniment of the band.
Red Square
The Kremlin wall was hung with nags from Nikolsky Gate to Spassky Gate. An obelisk, draped
in red and black canvases, towered above the communal grave of victims of the October
Revolution.
A rostrum was erected nearer Spassky Gate, on which stood the members of the Central
Executive Committee and representatives of the Moscow Soviet. The Place of Execution
(Lobnoye Mesto) was covered in black canvas and an enormous crimson flag fluttered on top.
The columns of people streamed endlessly along the wall, past the communal grave and the
rostrum, the bands and banners at the head of each column. As they passed the grave, they
lowered their banners and the bands played solemnly....
Other districts
In the Presnya District, which is mainly inhabited by workers, the people generally responded
very enthusiastically to this proletarian festival, and the small houses were painted red and
covered with workers slogans, summoning people to fight for the happiness of all...
All the railway stations were beautifully decorated: Alexandrov Station looked grand, Ryazansky
Station, still under construction, was colourful, and Nikolaev Station was rigidly austere in
accordance with its style.
The decoration of the Yaroslavl Station was particularly splendid with the words 'Peace and the
brotherhood of peoples!' printed in large white letters on a red background right above the
entrance. A long red banner with the inscription: 'Long live the Third International!' hung on the
pediment. A vast red sheet with the inscription:'Long live the Soviet Federative Republic!' was
wrapped round the station's tower.
The festivities continued on the streets and in the theatres of Moscow until late in the evening. ...
The lights on the House of Soviets and the House of Unions shone bright against the darkness.
The fountain on Theatre Square looked most effective, bedecked with garlands of electric lights.
Izvestiya VTsIK, no, 88, 3 May 1918

...Let the winds lift your banners from far lands

With a message of strife and of hope:
Raise the Maypole aloft with its garlands
That gathers your cause in its scope....
...Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.
When the World's Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life--not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.
Walter Crane, The Workers' Maypole, 1894

The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain

the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in
1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and
entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day...At first, the
Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first
celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia,
enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the
celebration every year.
Rosa Luxemburg, What Are the Origins of May Day?, 1894