Revolutionary change is urgent
This May Day must be a day of reckoning for the working class – Business as usual is over

First Secretary of Workers World Party

This International Workers Day is anything but normal

This year, the usual May Day platitudes are insufficient. The economic and political crisis of the capitalist system — for U.S. and world imperialism — is more severe than at any other time in our lifetime. What is happening poses an existential threat to the working class and oppressed peoples everywhere.

But it is no time for pessimism or demoralization. On the contrary, it is a time for serious assessment, regroupment and boldly acting to turn a dangerous crisis into an opportunity to open up a new phase of the global class struggle.

This phase can and must be a big step on the road to ending capitalism and establishing genuine socialism — which can be nothing less than the working class displacing the capitalist ruling class and taking power. 

Class struggle is decisive 

We are confronted with the prospect of more war, economic depression and the danger of fascism. With the dangers there is an earth-shaking opportunity: U.S. imperialism is in irreversible decline. The Global South, with socialist China at the helm, has initiated a new world order that challenges U.S. imperialist hegemony, which has already begun to decline. 

The overwhelming majority of the people on earth welcome this enormous change in the world as a necessary condition for bringing about global revolution. Soon the working class, based in the centers of world imperialism, including the U.S., will understand that the changes in the world are nothing to be afraid of, but rather something to embrace as the changes are in their class interest.

The changes in the world will help the development of the global class struggle against capitalism and imperialism. However, the changes in the world in and of themselves cannot finish the job of consigning capitalism to the dustbin of history. This task rests as it always has on the shoulders of the working class.

The need for a revolutionary transformation of the labor movement 

There must be a reckoning in the labor union movement. It’s not easy to face hard truths, but the survival of labor depends on the development of a movement that is revolutionary and class-wide. This movement must be liberated from the constraints that the capitalist ruling class and its two political parties, the Democrats and Republicans, have encumbered it with. The time for relying on capitalist politicians, instead of class struggle, has to come to an end. Rank-and-file workers have to take the lead. 

Those labor leaders must be pushed aside who are inclined to limit themselves to concern over a comparatively small number of workers — if they are even concerned about them — as against the entire working class, both organized and unorganized. Responding to the attacks on the working class by ducking and covering, trying to make deals with the bosses and waiting and hoping that the storm will pass over will not save the unions. Nor will accommodating those workers who are entrenched in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement preserve organized labor. They must confront MAGA and prevail.

Gaza is the class struggle

The workers, both unionized and unorganized, who joined the struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, opened a big road inside the labor movement that leads to workers breaking with imperialism. This road must be strengthened instead of resisted. 

This much should be clear: The future of the workers’ movement in part depends on the participation of the brave young activists who took the streets and erected encampments in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The countrywide protests against Trump this April were important. However, the bourgeois leadership of the protests’ deliberate exclusion of a demand to end the genocide in Gaza weakened the protests. It also exposed their subservience to U.S. imperialism. 

If it continues, this betrayal of the Palestinian struggle only separates the working class in the U.S. from the rest of the world that is rising up against empire. The workers in Mexico, Palestine, Africa, Canada, Iran and Europe are not the enemies of the working class in the U.S. China is not the enemy. The workers of the world are our allies, and this realization is the essence of International Workers Day.

The fight against war and fascism

U.S. imperialism is like a wounded beast on the threshold of defeat. It is at such a time when a beast is most dangerous. A different regime is in the White House, but this regime is not only committed to endless war. It is ready to expand this endless war to the point of threatening the existence of the planet. Who will stop this threat?

Notwithstanding the Trump regime’s escalation of repression and attacks on the few rights that workers and oppressed people have, fascism has not yet been established, nor is it inevitable that it will be. It is, however, naive to dismiss the threat of fascism. The questions are:  What is fascism? And how can it be defeated?

Fascism is more than the eradication of democratic rights — rights that mostly benefit the capitalist ruling class. Fascism, like imperialist war, is what a desperate capitalist class resorts to when its empire and system are endangered. Trump’s trade war and the roller coaster gyrations of the financial markets are symptoms of the crisis. Capitalism is careening towards a cliff from which there is no way back. 

Ultimately, fascism is a weapon used to stop and crush working-class resistance to a vulnerable and crumbling capitalist system. This is why segments of the bourgeoisie cannot lead the struggle to stop fascism — because they are beholden to the same ruling class that benefits from fascism. 

There are those who want to revive and radicalize the Democratic Party. This is an impossible objective. The working class must take the lead in the struggle against fascism. Moreover, the goal of this struggle must be more than defeating fascism — it must be ending the system that is responsible for producing fascism. 

Ending capitalism is an act of self-defense

The explanation of the need and the struggle to end capitalism is nearly two centuries old. But today we must understand the urgent necessity to end capitalism as though it was a wholly new and urgent imperative. The unprecedented crisis of the capitalist system and the catastrophic consequence of not ending it have rendered the task of overthrowing the capitalist system an act of self-defense.

Whatever struggles that we must embrace — the struggle against cuts to health care, Social Security and other social programs, the struggle to organize workers, to defend migrant workers, trans people, people with disabilities and international students — are all critical. 

But we cannot afford to forget that these struggles must lead to a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system. It is not enough to fight to go backward to a better time. The people of the world and history demand that we fight for the future.

The need for revolutionary unity

The call for unity is more than a catch phrase. The struggle for unity is a critical part of the struggle to strengthen and fortify the political forces that can defeat reaction, war and ultimately end capitalism. 

There can and should be unity between all forces involved in the resistance to the attacks that the working class faces. The most strategic unity is the unity between those who share the same revolutionary goals and those who are steadfastly opposed to imperialism. The capitalist ruling class cannot be defeated unless there is a conscious, deliberate fortification of unity among revolutionary forces. 

We extend a revolutionary, heartfelt appeal for this call.