What is May Day? For the most part, the opposite of capitalism.
May Day, celebrated by workers across the globe as International Labor Day, falls on May 1st.
But you'd be forgiven if that's news to you. While the day traces its origins to laborers' fight for a shorter work day and humane working life balance environment.
International Labor Day — also called International Workers' Day — in May 1st stems from a resistance to emboldening worldwide working-class unity. 🤝
The ruling class did not want to have a very active labor force connected internationally. The principle of national patriotism was used against the principle of working-class unity or trade union unity.
Workers commemorating the day, which in recent years has ranged from mass marching for labor rights to open air concerts in public parks.
The meaning of that day keeps changing.
History.
The traditional May Day / Labour Day is an ancient European export.
If you instead associate May Day with baskets of flowers, dancing around maypoles, or simply, the start of summer, those May Day celebrations recall the holiday's much earlier origins. Before May Day was adopted as a day to champion workers, its roots belonged to pagan tradition.
The springtime tradition was inherited from pagan tribes in Ireland and Scandinavia, borrowing ancient Roman practices celebrating the Earth's flowering season.
When the first Europeans came to North America and erected a maypole in Quincy, Mass., they imbibed copious amounts of beer and danced with the Indigenous people.
The Puritans of Boston put an end to it by military force. And yet this tradition of May Day as a time of dancing and play and pleasure persisted right into many parts of the world today.
At the end of the day, no matter whatever your version of May Day, if any, or none, it remains a time meant to celebrate togetherness.
Inevitably, history shows, that May Day comradery has been met with suppression.
May Day in America has bloody origins
May Day in America was born out of the 8-hour workday movement in 19th-century, Chicago. At the time, as the capitalist system gained a foothold in industrial-era America, working-class conditions had worsened. A 16-hour shift wasn't unusual for workers at the time.
Decades before the 8-hour work-day became the country's norm, the organization now known as the American Federation of Labor set May 1, 1886, as the date that workers nationwide should go on strike to demand the 8-hour workday.
The reason was that the decade before there had been terrible unemployment ... and yet new technology had made the employer richer.
The workers followed through. On that May date, anarchists and labor activists in Chicago began a multi-day strike in what became known as the Haymarket affair of 1886.
By May 3, the protests turned violent when police — "which were basically the armed force of the capitalist masters," attacked workers demonstrating near the McCormick Reaper plant.
The following day, a meeting held in the city's Haymarket Square turned even bloodier. Again, the police intervened, triggering clashes that killed both officers and civilians.
A bomb exploded among police ranks in the melee, but historians say it's unclear whether it was intended for the police or the crowd of civilians.
There was a trial of eight men who were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. Even though no evidence was ever produced that any of them had any relationship to this bomb, and four of them were eventually hanged despite a worldwide campaign in England, Europe, Mexico to save their lives.
The influential words of August Spies, one of the convicted men, who just before his execution cried out the famous words: "There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today."
His words "swept the globe,". Throughout Latin America, throughout Europe and in North America, to many, the day became this holiday to celebrate working people.
To honor the Chicago workers, the International Socialist Conference in 1889 named May Day a labor holiday, birthing what many nations now call International Workers' Day.
But in the U.S., anti-communist attitudes during the Cold War, as well as opposition to working-class unity, led authorities to suppress May Day's association with labor movements.
Labor Day became an official federal holiday in 1894, thanks to President Grover Cleveland. At its core, the day is meant to celebrate the common worker.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961, instead declared May 1st as "Law Day" — dedicated to the principles of government under law — and Labor Day is now celebrated in September.
Despite International Labor Day's U.S. origins, many citizens globally, still view May Day as strictly a holiday enjoyed by "communist countries."
In the former Soviet Union, May Day was an occasion to honor workers' contributions with giant parades in Red Square, a tradition that has dwindled in the decades since — a fading remnant of the Bolshevik Revolution that's lost its meaning in modern Russia.
Some of the workers of Czarist Russia also celebrated May Day, but quickly within 10 years, say by the 1930s, it becomes for the Soviet Union a day to display military hardware, military weapons.
As for workers this year, 2023, I mused, 🤔 how it will be celebrated this day?
I'm not sure. I think it'll be exciting to pay attention to see the ways in which its history is remembered.
For a day that celebrates reform and revolution, political discussions and petitions, there's something in it for everyone. Well, maybe not.
There's nothing in it for the capitalist class.
Labor Day should be a moment when we all reflect the critical contributions of working class people to the political, economic and cultural development of this country.
As workers worldwide face growing levels of wage and income inequality, as well as workplace challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, there are lessons we can learn from the past.
The labor question: How can our country balance the need for corporations with labor democracy?
Workers start to look to unions and workplace protections to improve their station conditions. This proved monumental for worker rights.
Upholding of the Act which protects workers' rights to form and join unions.
Workers' right allowed to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining.
Today, unions are still trying to expand national labor law with the Protecting the Right to Organize Act .
Unfair wages and long working hours.
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