💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anarchist-communist-group-may-day-greetings.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:38:31. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: May Day Greetings! Author: Anarchist Communist Group Date: 1st May 2018 Language: en Topics: May Day Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-15 from https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2018/05/01/may-day-greetings/
“The first of May is the symbol of a new era in the life and struggle of
the toilers, an era that each year offers the toilers fresh,
increasingly tough and decisive battles against the bourgeoisie, for the
freedom and independence wrested from them, for their social ideal.”
Nestor Makhno
The idea of turning the 1^(st) of May into a day of action for workers
was first proposed at the 4^(th) congress of the American Federation of
Labor (AFL). It was decided to launch, starting from the 1^(st) of May
1886, a wide campaign of agitation and struggle focused on limiting the
working week to forty hours. The most radical actions took place in
Chicago. At that time, Chicago had the most developed workers movement
in the USA with a strong anarchist presence.
Following the 1^(st) of May 1886, strikes were still ongoing as the
fight with employers became tougher. On the 4^(th) of May, a meeting
gathering around 15,000 people was attacked by police. By the end of the
day, both sides had suffered numerous dead and wounded. It was a perfect
occasion to muzzle the protest. Eight of the main organisers, all
anarchists, were arrested and sentenced to death. The sentence was
turned to life imprisonment for three of them.
On 11 November 1887, Albert Parsons, Adolphe Fischer, George Engel and
August Spies were hanged. Their comrade Louis Lingg committed suicide
the day before to avoid execution. A few years later, they were
acquitted of all charges and the court admitted that the police and
justice system set up the case to criminalise and break down the
workers’ movement. The eight accused were declared innocent and the
three survivors set free.
The 1^(st) of May is definitely a page of workers history stained with
anarchist blood.
THE 1^(st) OF MAY is an occasion to remind us that the fight against
capitalism is still going on. Nowadays in Europe, strikes and social
struggles are seriously discredited. Yet, the difference between rich
and poor keeps growing, the financial markets are back in the saddle and
traders are still handling billions of dollars. Are we wrong to ask for
more when half of the world’s wealth is owned by 1% of the population?
Meanwhile, workers are asked to make more and more effort to “save” the
economy and put the State back on its feet with its batch of new taxes
(such as the bedroom tax) and cuts in public services. We are heading
toward a neo-liberal capitalist system in which the State’s main purpose
is to maintain social control so capitalism can develop without
constraint.
Workers are producing everything and yet they own very little. This
analysis is old and well known but despite it, workers in Europe slowly
give up the fight for a fair redistribution and instead just hope that
troubles will fall on someone else. In addition, work has been
sanctified so that the idea is widespread that if you don’t want to be a
good worker that produces and obeys it makes you lazy, a parasite or an
idealist (choose yours!).
As anarchists, we think that human beings shouldn’t be defined by the
surplus value they bring to capitalism. Work should be the way to
produce by necessity and not to create new needs. Work must be organized
so everyone can work less, and for means other than profitability. No
capitalist society will ever achieve full employment because it needs a
pool of unemployed people so the necessity to work can make us accept
bad working conditions. In order to reorganise work, we need a society
free from class and leaders, and in which society is managed in a
self-organised way. This is what the Anarchist Communist Group is
fighting for.
Direct action gets the goods, not waiting for an election in 2020, which
just might deliver another Labour government that will continue with
business as usual.