May Day is a living historical element of the international proletarian class struggle and therefore it has faithfully reflected for almost twenty years all the phases, all the factors of the class struggle. From an external viewpoint it seems to be the same monotonous repetition of the same speeches and articles, of the same demands and resolutions. And those whose glance cannot penetrate behind the meaningless surface of things and grasp their essence, believe that thru constant repetition the celebration of May Day has lost its entire significance, that it has become practically an “empty demonstration”. But under the apparently similar external circumstances May Day reveals within itself the constantly changing pulse of the proletarian struggle! It is part of the life of the labor movement, therefore changes with it, and reflects, in its spiritual content, in its sentiment, in its tenseness, the changing situation of the class struggle.
Phases of May Day
The inner history of May Day has passed thru three great phases. In its early years, when it had to force the way open before it, it was greeted with the tense expectations and elevated sentiments of the proletarians of all countries. The workers had won a new weapon for their arsenal. and the first attempts to use this weapon intensified the feeling of power and the joy of struggle of the millions of exploited and oppressed. On the other side, the new demonstration of the class struggle evoked in the bourgeoisie of all countries the deepest hatred and fear. The idea of an international Socialist demonstration appeared to it as the returning ghost of the old International and the eager response to a simultaneous. world celebration of labor, as the death-knell of the entire rule of capital. This accounts for the insane preparations made in the early years to overcome the dangers of May Day with the most brutal police and military violence.
And of course the place of vanguard in the armed battalions of the terrified bourgeoisie was taken by the “free republic” of France–only second to Czarist absolutism, first blood shed by the proletariat in the name of May Day flowed in 1891 in Fourmies (France) and, in 1892 in Lodz, Russian Poland.
But it did not take long before the rulers grew calmer and began to recognize the purely demonstrative character of May Day. Of course this was associated with the long period of primarily parliamentary struggle and the quiet development of political and trade union organizations, that now set in the labor movement. In Germany the first May Day was marked by the collapse of the Socialist “exception law”. In 1893 the Belgian proletariat won access to parliament; in 1896, the Austrian. At any rate, the nineties were a decade of active trade union work and irresistible growth of the parliamentary representation of labor. The demonstration of the laboring masses themselves retreated before the action of the representatives of labor; the idea of the international community of the proletariat retreated before the positive activity and the extension of the workers parties in every country. Gradually May Day became a peaceful folk-festival, regarded with considerable equanimity by bourgeois society.
In recent years a noticeable change in the situation of the labor movement has set in. A fresh wind blows over the fields of battle. In the East the great Russian Revolution. In Germany a sharpening and intensification of the political and economic struggle: extensive lock-out activities against the workers in industry and the consolidation of all bourgeois parties for the parliamentary lock-out of the working class. In France a brutal crusade of the “radical” government against the trade unions and a series of bitter wage struggles. Aroused by the powerful growth of the proletarian organizations during the last fifteen years, terrified by the Russian Revolution, the international bourgeoisie becomes nervous, savage, aggressive.
May Day Arises Anew
And thereby May Day enters upon a new phase. As the immediate demonstration of the masses–their only direct political action hitherto outside of elections, it becomes filled with a new content, with a new spirit, to the degree that the sharpening of the class struggle again pushed to the foreground the role of the proletarian masses. The more that reaction, that the rule of, naked violence of the bourgeoisie contests every step forward in the interests of the proletariat upon the economic and political fields, the more do we approach the time in which the masses will take matters into their own hands, in which the masses will be called upon to defend in their own person the interests of their class emancipation. To prepare ourselves to meet these inevitable times, to arm ourselves in the expectation of these times with the consciousness of our duty and our power, that is today the task of the proletariat and May Day, as the direct demonstration of the masses, is a means towards this end.
At the same time another factor steps into the foreground with vigor: the internationality of the cause of the working class. As long as the class struggle had the least bit of democratic elbow-room and as long as the day of positive parliamentary work lasted, the labor movement was dominated by the peculiarities of its national surroundings, by its national dispersal. But as soon as the fundamental forces of the class struggle arise from the depths of capitalist society to the surface, as soon as the struggle throws the masses sharply up against the ruling powers, then the idea of the world proletariat, one and indivisible, again revives. The preparations of the bourgeoisie of all countries for May Day this year recalls to the proletariat that its struggle for emancipation is one and the same in all countries. Today, at the head of the army of world labor stands the Russian proletariat, the proletariat of the land of revolution. And the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat of this country, its experiences, its problems, constitute the great historical school for our coming great struggles. May Day this year again arouses–as it did in its early days–the hatred and fear of the bourgeoisie; by the working masses, however, it is greeted with determination and the joy of battle, From the very beginning a proletarian demonstration for the eight hour day and against war, it has gradually become a demonstration for the proletarian revolution. Not the decline but the tremendous rise of May Day lies ahead of us for it is borne aloft by the same storm-wind that is already sweeping over the surface of bourgeois society and that will lead us to bitter struggles and to final victory!
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