On International Workers' Day, May 1st, we look at excerpts from statements of Communist and Workers' parties from around the world.
From Mexico, Ireland, Austria, Canada, Greece, India, Spain and a joint statement by 39 parties let working class internationalism and solidarity be reflected and strengthened.
Workers of All Countries Unite!
Socialism or Barbarism: Salute of the Communist Party of Mexico to the working class for May Day
The owners of capital say they support workers: Bullshit! And those parasites know it. Your money alone, saved, does not make a profit. Salaried work is essential to increase profits.
Essential is the oil worker, the electrician, the industrial worker, the construction worker, the stevedore or the courier. Essential is the miner, the education and health worker, the dispatcher. Essential are migrant workers, working women, young workers. Essential is the proletariat, and the bourgeoisie is superfluous: while nothing moves without the strength of the worker, while profit is not created without the exploitation of wage labor, the bourgeoisie is superfluous, because factories, industry can function without it.
And on top of that they ask us for more sacrifices, to bow our heads to the measures that the bourgeoisie and its administrative board take against us. With the fiction of national unity they want to subdue us, so that we tighten our belts more, that we do not protest, that we do not rebel.
Proletarian comrades:
It is necessary to organize and fight. The Communist Party of Mexico, a party of the working class, ready to fight in all conditions, calls on you to raise your fist, keep it up for the new battles that are coming, to face the aggressive measures that the capitalists are preparing against us. Capitalism is in the process of a new and deep economic crisis of overproduction and over-accumulation, the coming times will be of more struggle. We call for strengthening with a class orientation the unions and accentuating the worker-employer conflict, the class against class clash, to face the wave of dismissals that is already underway, the rising cost of living, etc. Above all we call on you to conquer the new world of workers' power and socialism-communism.
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
May Day message, Eugene McCartan, General Secretary, Communist Party of Ireland
The capitalist system is in crisis and is headed into a global depression as hundreds of millions of workers have been sacked, leaving many without any means to support themselves and their families, while at the same time a handful of individuals own more wealth than half the world’s population. This injustice can no longer be tolerated.
As never before, workers must organise to defend and advance our own interests. We cannot go on with “business as usual.” There must be no going back to “normal.” The political establishment, their ideas and institutions are bankrupt. We also know from experience that the ruling classes here in Ireland and around the world will attempt to make us pay a heavy price for the growing and deepening structural crisis of this failing capitalist system. We need to resist them at every stage and at every opportunity.
The time has long past for patching up this inhuman and decaying system. It is time for real. radical change—time to end the destruction of our planet and the impoverishment of itspeople, time to end the capitalists’ booms and busts, time to end global imperialist wars. It is now time for the interests of workers, peasants, the poor and oppressed to come first and a time for unity between women, men and youth, regardless of colour, religion, nationality, or sexual orientation. It’s time for workers’ interests to be first and foremost in economic and political decision-making and to end once and for all the exploitation of man by man.
Workers of all countries, unite!
We have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win!
Party of Labour of Austria, Labour Day 2020
The government, instead of funding the public health system, is taking billions to subsidise capitalist companies and corporations - in fact, on a particularly large scale at present. The working class -whether in employment, part time or unemployed - must continue, and even more so, to live on alms. Those who remain working all the time despite the crisis - in supermarkets, for example - are massively strained and notoriously badly paid. Ridiculous "bonus payments", hypocritical expressions of gratitude by politicians and public applause will not change this. Even the health protection of working people is obviously of no value to the government and capital, because in many industrial companies or in the construction industry work must continue as usual. Disease is a class issue under capitalism. The fact that unemployment figures are exploding and reaching an all-time high cannot be prevented given precarious work model - nor should it: it exists to support the capitalist entrepreneurs, not the workers.
The government knows very well why it must support capital. Because with and after the epidemic comes the economic crisis - on a scale never seen before. As a regularity of the fundamentally flawed capitalist economic cycle, the crisis would have been inevitable anyway, but the epidemic and its accompanying conditions are accelerating and exacerbating the development. Of course, the government and capital will try to shift the burden of the crisis back onto the working class. There will be new "austerity agendas", which will once again affect the social system, pensions, education and - of course - health care. There will be wage losses and the destruction of jobs. For capital, this is just a purification process. For the working class, it means increased insecurity of existence, unemployment, the risk of poverty. The government will lie to us again, it will argue that it was about general necessities and that we must now stick together. In reality, the capitalist losses will be socialised again - on the back of the working class - just as all profits are privatised in times of favourable economic conditions.
Capitalists and workers have no common interests, either in or outside the crisis. The workers can always work, even without a capitalist owner, but the capitalist cannot exist without exploiting human labour. Therefore, it is obvious what would actually save expenses: economizing the capitalist, because he does not work, but consumes and rakes in most of the wealth produced by the workers; he is useless, unproductive and parasitic in society. The workers do not need him. They may just as well - and better - be themselves joint social owners of the means of production, of factories and plants, of machines and tools, of land. With the difference that they would then be free from exploitation and would no longer have to feed the capitalists and unproductive rich. The money for their profits and luxury life would be available for better things. The workers as owners would have the financial and material resources and the political decision-making power to achieve prosperity for all through fair wages, adequate housing, secure pensions, sufficient leisure time and a comprehensive health system. And they would be able to eliminate future crises from economic life through planned production and distribution based on actual needs. Such a system is called socialism.
Message of the CC of the KKE (Greece) on Workers’ May Day
The only path for the working people to not pay for the crisis is the road of struggle and workers’ power.
The coronavirus will be cured and the pandemic will end, just as others did in the past. Capitalism, however, is incurable and will continue to torture humankind, with poverty, unemployment, wars, the destruction of the environment, until the peoples decide to lead the way in the developments.
Today’s system can only be overthrown and replaced by a superior social system, socialism – communism, where social ownership of the means of production with workers’ power, scientific central planning for the satisfaction of people’s needs, workers’ control of all the administrative organs and participation in all the organs of power, from the bottom to the top, can lead to prosperity for the people, to peace and the progress of humankind.
Workers’ May Day symbolizes the invincible battle against the class enemy. This is the precious legacy of our time. With this weapon in our hands and in our thoughts, we honor Workers’ May Day, the dead workers of Chicago in 1886, the tobacco workers of Thessaloniki in ‘36, the 200 executed communists in Kaisariani May 1st 1944, all those who remain unflinching in the class struggle, all those who were sacrificed for a society without exploitation of man by man.
We continue on this path, for the satisfaction of all of the modern social – popular needs.
PROLETARIAT OF THE WORLD UNITE!
MAY DAY 2020: MASS STRUGGLE FOR A PEOPLE’S RECOVERY- Communist Party of Canada
The labour and people’s movements must not accept the corporate prescription for recovery, which will include permanent mass unemployment, falling wages and living standards and more austerity to pay for the corporate bailouts today. The corporate prescription could also very well include militarism and war as a way for corporations to recover their profits. This was how the capitalist countries pulled themselves out previous depressions – and the Great Depression, with massive profits in war production. We are seeing a further rise of ultra-right and fascist ideologies, nationalism, and chauvinism, which were on the march even before this crisis. This has happened before, when capitalist countries pulled themselves out of the Great Depression with massive profits in war production.
The labour and people’s movements must build a powerful united struggle for a people’s recovery based on full employment policies, rising wages and living standards, and expanded social programs and public services. Spending on NATO and militarism should be redirected to civilian spending, to fight the pandemic with all of the resources we can muster, and to build a strong and expanded healthcare system that includes long-term care, pharmacare, dental, vision and mental health care. These funds should be used for free quality post-secondary education, for free quality public childcare, for good jobs and higher wages, pension and living standards for all. We need to build an economy based on sustainable manufacturing and renewable energy, action on climate change and environmental justice. We need peace and an end to racism, exploitation, and oppression. We need to unite for fundamental social change. For socialism.
The coming depression, and the pandemic that triggered it, changes everything. Seven million unemployed and counting changes everything.
The labour and peoples’ movements are at a crossroads: people before profit. Or profit before people.
We’re all in this together, but we won’t all get through this, without a mass struggle led by labour and its allies for a people’s recovery.
This May Day, it’s the unity of the labour movement in the fight to defend workers’ jobs and living standards, and oppose imperialist wars and catastrophic climate change, that will make all the difference.
Communist Party of the Workers of Spain, 1st of May Manifesto
The Government, the capitalist parties and the employers wants us behind the interests of the Spanish bourgeoisie with discipline for the future to come. They want us to defend the interests of the employers instead of fighting for our own interests.
Our answer is absolutely NO. Our answer is that a country where the primary interests are the ones of those who produce all the social wealth with their job – and not their exploiters’ – can and must be built.
Therefore, in this 1st of May, we openly say that the PCTE wants to build a country for the working class.
This new country will not be built by itself. This new country will not be born if there is no organized and rising struggle against capitalists and their governments. This new country will not be born if there are not millions of workers who want to put an end to the exploitation and who, recognizing themselves as the only essential class, want to take over their own future.
The struggles that the class will wage in the immediate future will be decisive.
Communist Party of Iindia General Secretary D, Raja Writes to Party Cadres on the Occasion of May Day
Marx and Engels in Communist Manifesto pointed out that “…the history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…”. They also pointed out that “…every class struggle is political struggle”.
The world capitalism is sick and sinking into further deep crisis. Instead of spending on public health, education and social infrastructure, there is competitive spending on military and war equipment. The report released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reveals that India is third biggest military spender, first and second being the US and China. This raises the question of alternative in the interest of peace and development of the world. Socialism is the only alternative. But there is lure for fascism and neo-fascism. This trend is encouraged by the corporate capitalists.
This situation demands that working people will have to emerge as a force which can bring a real change. As the Manifesto makes the clarion call that “let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win”.
On this May Day, while saluting the working people for their revolutionary historic role, the CPI hails this May Day to renew our pledge to fight for Socialism, a society free from exploitation, injustice and all forms of discriminations.
Statement of Communist and Workers' Parties On the occasion of the first of May the International Labor Day - Signed by 39 parties
Millions of workers have lost their jobs, and labor rights are abolished, thousands of workers, especially the elderly are at risk of losing their lives, and health systems are powerless in the face of this epidemic, the world economy is in big crisis, while the capitalist governments helps the large monopolistic capitalist firms by giving trillions dollars to their companies to protect Capitalism systems, and leaves millions who are suffering from poverty, unemployment and marginalization
The new global crisis is not a result of Covid19 epidemic. We as the Communist and Workers' parties estimate that this crisis is the result of the insurmountable contradictions of the exploitative system, while the emergence of Covid19 epidemic emphasizes the class character of the anti-popular policy of bourgeois governments and Capitalist market economy which neglected policies that serve health and the environment and scientific research.
In this new situation we fight as communist and labor parties in our countries against dictatorships, the extreme right, the new fascism and in general capitalist regimes that exploit the working class and other popular strata. We are fighting against the imperialist plans and interventions of the USA, NATO, the EU and their allies. At the same time, we are fighting together for socialism which will establish real development, which will serve the people's needs and the cause of peace, will abolish the exploitation of man by man.
Capitalism is not the end of history, and the communist and workers' parties seek to coordinate the international struggle to overthrow it.
The struggle for peace, workers' rights, saving the environment, public health protection, ending of poverty and unemployment needs workers' power, Socialism, and the joint struggle of the Communist and Workers' parties, of the working class and the peoples.
The first day of May the International Labor Day remains to motive our fight for socialism which is the bright future of humanity.
