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May Day, the day of struggle of Labor against Capital, has become a celebration of the enslavement of Workers by Capital!

When will the Workers get their May Day Back?

 

 

They've destroyed everything! They've dismantled the independent trade union organizations of the working class, they have destroyed the class party, they have falsified and disfigured the Marxist theory of communism.

The dominant bourgeois class; the petty bourgeoisie, all the opportunists and collaborators: they've united their forces of conservation to beat back the proletarian class which once dared to not only fight to resist its exploitation, but to struggle to free itself once and for all from wage slavery;  a proletarian class which internationally had raised its fist against all oppression, bourgeois and pre-bourgeois, against all repressions used by the ruling classes of the world to crush it. During the glorious years of the proletarian revolution and following the appeals to revolt launched by the Communist International to the world proletariat, all of earth's entrenched powers trembled: from Berlin to Paris, from London to Petrograd, from Rome to Budapest. Imperialism found before it a proletariat able to rise up against a seemingly immutable world order, which, like the Parisian Communards, was embarking on the conquest of power in Russia, Germany, Hungary and Poland. Moscow had been conquered and became the proletarian and communist capital; Budapest followed but it was lost after a few months as was Germany. The forces of counterrevolution and opportunism gained the upper hand and they could rely on the degeneration of the communist parties of the big countries like Germany and France, and even the Bolshevik Party itself. The great season of the proletarian revolution, sole force able to free the proletariat from wage slavery, ended with a defeat due to the obscene alliance of bourgeois democracy with Stalinism.

Bourgeois reaction was the most terrible where the European proletariat had been the most threatening to the ruling classes: in Germany, Italy, Hungary, Russia. The Bolshevik old guard was eliminated, imprisoned and buried in the forced labor camps of the Stalinist murderers who went on to boast of thus eliminating the "enemies of the people"; in Hungary it was White counter-revolution which liquidated the young Soviet Republic, while in Germany and Italy after the political and military disarmament of the proletariat directed by the Social Democrats, the forces of fascist reaction could finish the work by crushing the working class.

It is because of the victory of this enormous international reaction by imperialism, whether in the Democratic, Stalinist or Fascist straight-jacket, that the proletariat was led to participate, mainly as cannon fodder, in the slaughter of the Second World War.

Since then more than 70 years of increasingly trivial class collaboration have passed. Without doubt the great strikes of the postwar years showed the vitality of the working class. But above all they demonstrated the ability of the bourgeois to use the fuel of the economic expansion that followed the massive destruction generated by the War to concede limited but real improvements of the standard of life of the proletarians in exchange for class collaboration with the invaluable assistance of all the forces of political and trade union opportunism; they continued in this manner the same social policy adopted by fascism. Social control did not need to rely on open repression, democratic methods and means were and are still enough: the proletarians on the whole continue to believe that improved conditions can be obtained through discussion, negotiation, accepting the needs of the capitalists and refusing to take up the methods and means of direct struggle against them and their State.

But facts demonstrate the opposite: without class independence, without independent class organizations for immediate defense, and without their class party, the workers are helpless  against  the class that has all the economic, social, political and  military power; power that this bourgeois class exercises without any scruple solely in its own interests, leaving just a few crumbs to its guard-dogs, slave drivers, union priests, "socialist", "communist" or simply "left" politicians, and the layers of the labor aristocracy that it uses to influence the proletarian masses and to subjugate them to the exigencies of Capital.

Facts demonstrate that the workers fall into  the ranks of the unemployed in always increasing numbers, that they are victims of accidents because the bosses always cut back on security measures; the workers see their living and working conditions inexorably deteriorate even as they toil for ever longer hours, they are victims of repression when they dare to revolt against their conditions of slavery; they remain the ones who fall under bombardment by the oh-so-civilized democratic nations or are forced to take to perilous routs into exile to escape the misery of violence or war caused by or supported by the major imperialist powers.

The facts continue to show that the bourgeois can defend their interests only at the expense of the interests of the proletariat; those who affirm the existence of a community of interests between workers and employers are only deceiving the workers, leaving them helpless against capitalist voracity.

To defend against the daily attacks of the capitalists against their living and working conditions, the workers must break completely with the means and methods of class collaborationist policies. They must re-acquire the weapons of their historic class struggle: the struggle against the bourgeoisie is determined by the class antagonisms that constitute capitalist society. The weapons in this struggle are not those that the bourgeoisie suggests to them through its opportunistic lackeys: these only serve to paralyze their class force by drowning it in individual, corporatist or sectoral concerns, compatible with capitalist interests. The strength of the proletariat lies not so much in its numbers as in the organization and in the methods and means it maintains and uses over time.

To constitute its immediate defensive struggle against the capitalists, the proletarians must independently reorganize on programs for the exclusive defense of their own class interests. They must re-arm politically thanks to the experiences of struggles that demonstrate who their true allies are and who their enemies are; in this battle proletarians can only find direction and indications for action with a party whose mission is to defend the general and historical objectives of the proletarian class, not only on a national but international level: the class party.

History has demonstrated more than once that, even after having suffered terrible defeats, the workers can resume their class struggle under the pressure of economic and material factors that make the conditions imposed on them by bourgeois powers intolerable. The thrust towards struggle does not come from the "will" of individuals or groups to mobilize for an ideal; it stems from the need to survive in conditions even more dire than previous ones, as shown by the masses of refugees and migrants willing to risk and often to lose their lives to reach European and even more distant shores!

The proletariat must commence by asking itself this essential question: "What are the unifying objectives that will enable us to regroup ourselves as a real force"? This is a question which is proper to a class to which one belongs to not by choice but because of the existing social conditions. Priority should thus be given to real demands common to all proletarians, regardless of age, gender, class or nationality, such as:

 

- Drastic reduction of the working day

- Increased wages, greatest increases to the lowest paid categories

- Full salary to the unemployed

- No work without security measures

- No to moonlighting/having to work "off the books"/debilitating hours etc.

 

It is the unlimited strike without notice and which does not stop during negotiations, which must become the main weapon of the proletarians of all countries and all categories, of all races and nationalities. To reorganize in classist economic associations means to unite on a same program of struggle, for the defense of immediate proletarian interests. There is no other way to stop the continuing deterioration of living conditions of the workers, to break out of the impotence into which the bourgeoisie and opportunist collaborationism led them, and to resume the struggle for emancipation.

The struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat does not mean the fight for "more democracy", that would further "prosperity", mean more "freedom" or more "rights". To fight for democracy actually means fighting for social conservation, for the power of the bourgeoisie, for the enslavement of the proletariat to the capitalist; it means engaging in pointless skirmishes bound hand and foot to those who exploit wage labor to enrich and further increase their power, to those who preach peace but prepare for war!

The revolutionary proletariat of the last century ultimately lost the battle, but more by the action of interclassist reformism than by the direct force of the bourgeois class enemy. However the historic war between proletariat and bourgeoisie, globally, is not over; and in the end, like the old feudal ruling classes, the bourgeoisie will inevitably be defeated, because the bourgeoisie produces, above all, its own gravediggers (Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848)

 

 

International Communist Party

May,1st 2016

www.pcint.org

 

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