May Day: Made in the U.S.A.
Workers picketing in Detroit in front of the
American Axle plant.
PHOTO/DAYMONJHARTLEY.COM
May Day is the international working-class
holiday, observed and celebrated by workers in countries around
the world. But most Americans are unaware that its birth and
roots are deep in American history.
In 1886, the tiny and fledgling American Federation of Labor, founded only five years earlier, called a general strike for the eight-hour day beginning on May 1.
Since wages were then paid by the day, not by the hour, the strike for an eight-hour day would reduce working hours by 20 percent with the same day’s pay. That would leave working people more time for their families, for bettering themselves, for rest, recreation and leisure.
The AFL’s call for a general strike unleashed a popular movement across America, well beyond its ability to control. As the first national action for the eight-hour day anywhere in the world, the 1886 strike had international significance. The entire world had been waiting for May 1st, when the walkout brought work to a halt in much of the United States.
The world got the news after the Chicago police killed strikers at the McCormick plant on May 3 and killed more in Haymarket Square on May 4, where the workers were protesting the killings of the day before. When police rounded up Chicago labor leaders for the affair, sentencing five of them to death, the world’s working-class took up their cause. And at the request of the AFL in 1889, the world labor movement adopted May Day as its international holiday.
This worldwide workers’ holiday was “Made in the U.S.A.” Yet all of this has been written out of most American history books.
What is the significance of this history for revolutionaries today? Simply put, it is about working class consciousness. In the 1880s, as the manufacturing expanded, the mass of workers in the U.S. were becoming conscious of themselves as a class. And a growing number identified the capitalist class as their class enemy.
With this consciousness they built organizations and made demands based on their interests as a class. This all came about as a result of decades of struggle, combined with education and agitation by the revolutionaries of the time.
This sense of class identity lasted until the end of World War II, after which it was all but eliminated from the vocabulary of the American people by the propaganda machine of the capitalist class, combined with a never-seen-before expanding U.S. economy.
Class terminology was carefully replaced with a new and everyday usage of non-class terms such as, “upper class or rich,” “middle class or affluent” and “lower class or poor” combined with a new “we’re-all-in-this-together” approach that made it seem there were no longer any differences in class interests. Any sense of class identity simply vanished, as it was carefully erased from the consciousness of the American working-class.
Today, computerized production is replacing human labor on a worldwide scale. As a result, rather than expanding as in the decades following WW II, the U.S. economy is severely contracting, destroying jobs left and right. And this means that people can—and must—claim their true class identity again.
As revolutionaries, our twenty-first century challenge is to assist a developing new class to become aware of itself. Computerized capitalist production and the globalization of the economy are creating a rapidly growing new class of dispossessed. They are the once-employed, part-time, temporary, or lesser employed and never-to-be-employed workers.
This new class is an objectively revolutionary, communist class in the economic sense. It has the ability and desire to work for a living, but there is increasingly less work to be done. Therefore, this new class has the objective program and demand that all that is socially produced be distributed on the basis of need, rather than based on one’s ability to purchase. Once conscious of itself as a class it can organize itself politically, formulate its program and make its demands for a new, cooperative society.
In 1886, the tiny and fledgling American Federation of Labor, founded only five years earlier, called a general strike for the eight-hour day beginning on May 1.
Since wages were then paid by the day, not by the hour, the strike for an eight-hour day would reduce working hours by 20 percent with the same day’s pay. That would leave working people more time for their families, for bettering themselves, for rest, recreation and leisure.
The AFL’s call for a general strike unleashed a popular movement across America, well beyond its ability to control. As the first national action for the eight-hour day anywhere in the world, the 1886 strike had international significance. The entire world had been waiting for May 1st, when the walkout brought work to a halt in much of the United States.
The world got the news after the Chicago police killed strikers at the McCormick plant on May 3 and killed more in Haymarket Square on May 4, where the workers were protesting the killings of the day before. When police rounded up Chicago labor leaders for the affair, sentencing five of them to death, the world’s working-class took up their cause. And at the request of the AFL in 1889, the world labor movement adopted May Day as its international holiday.
This worldwide workers’ holiday was “Made in the U.S.A.” Yet all of this has been written out of most American history books.
What is the significance of this history for revolutionaries today? Simply put, it is about working class consciousness. In the 1880s, as the manufacturing expanded, the mass of workers in the U.S. were becoming conscious of themselves as a class. And a growing number identified the capitalist class as their class enemy.
With this consciousness they built organizations and made demands based on their interests as a class. This all came about as a result of decades of struggle, combined with education and agitation by the revolutionaries of the time.
This sense of class identity lasted until the end of World War II, after which it was all but eliminated from the vocabulary of the American people by the propaganda machine of the capitalist class, combined with a never-seen-before expanding U.S. economy.
Class terminology was carefully replaced with a new and everyday usage of non-class terms such as, “upper class or rich,” “middle class or affluent” and “lower class or poor” combined with a new “we’re-all-in-this-together” approach that made it seem there were no longer any differences in class interests. Any sense of class identity simply vanished, as it was carefully erased from the consciousness of the American working-class.
Today, computerized production is replacing human labor on a worldwide scale. As a result, rather than expanding as in the decades following WW II, the U.S. economy is severely contracting, destroying jobs left and right. And this means that people can—and must—claim their true class identity again.
As revolutionaries, our twenty-first century challenge is to assist a developing new class to become aware of itself. Computerized capitalist production and the globalization of the economy are creating a rapidly growing new class of dispossessed. They are the once-employed, part-time, temporary, or lesser employed and never-to-be-employed workers.
This new class is an objectively revolutionary, communist class in the economic sense. It has the ability and desire to work for a living, but there is increasingly less work to be done. Therefore, this new class has the objective program and demand that all that is socially produced be distributed on the basis of need, rather than based on one’s ability to purchase. Once conscious of itself as a class it can organize itself politically, formulate its program and make its demands for a new, cooperative society.
From the
Editors
Those of us who seek fundamental social change are engaged in a battle to win the hearts and minds of the people. This can't be done without a revolutionary press. Every month, the People's Tribune strives to bring our readers the stories of those who are struggling to move forward in a world where corporate power is threatening to crush them. Along with those stories, we try to offer some strategic perspective to help put the struggle in context and point the way toward victory. We need your help to continue doing this. The People's Tribune gets no grants and has an all-volunteer staff. We rely completely on subscriptions and donations from our readers to enable us to go on telling the truth. Please donate whatever you can. See the subscription/donation form at the bottom of this page. You can also donate using Pay Pal on our web site, http://www.peoplestribune.org.
Those of us who seek fundamental social change are engaged in a battle to win the hearts and minds of the people. This can't be done without a revolutionary press. Every month, the People's Tribune strives to bring our readers the stories of those who are struggling to move forward in a world where corporate power is threatening to crush them. Along with those stories, we try to offer some strategic perspective to help put the struggle in context and point the way toward victory. We need your help to continue doing this. The People's Tribune gets no grants and has an all-volunteer staff. We rely completely on subscriptions and donations from our readers to enable us to go on telling the truth. Please donate whatever you can. See the subscription/donation form at the bottom of this page. You can also donate using Pay Pal on our web site, http://www.peoplestribune.org.
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PO Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, 773-486-3551, info@peoplestribune.org.
Feel free to reproduce unless marked as copyrighted.
Please include this message with reproductions of the article.
