May Day is not a day of fraternization of workers with the bourgeoisie and its governments. It is a historical day of struggle, part of the memory of the world labor movement for the death of workers at a strike in the USA in 1886. It is a topical day of struggle because the living conditions have only worsened since then. There are signs of barbarism in every city in the world.
By International Workers’ League – Fourth International (IWL-FI)
Labor bureaucracies and reformist parties want to avoid the workers’ struggles against the bourgeoisie. Thus, on May 1st they try to show a social peace that does not exist.
The bourgeoisie throughout the world promotes a real social war against the workers.
Governments, whether the classical rightwing or the “leftwing”, apply the same neoliberal plans to reduce wages, to casualize labor relations, to end retirement and holidays. Hospitals and public schools are scrapped, to facilitate the privatization of healthcare and education.
Workers must be united in the struggle against the neoliberal plans of governments, whether “rightwing” or “leftwing”. It is necessary to resort to workers’ direct action. We cannot wait for the next elections to vote for a new government, which will implement the same plans.
Oppression grows all over the world. Women are increasingly murdered and raped. Police violence kills black youth in poor neighborhoods. Murder and violence against LGBT people increase. The genocide of indigenous peoples continues.
Immigrant workers are treated with the xenophobic backlash of governments, which seek to divide the workers, blaming them for growing unemployment. Caravans of immigrants try to enter the US and are repressed. Waves of African immigrants are repressed in Europe.
It is necessary to unite the male and female workers, whites and blacks, heterosexuals and LGBTs, natives and immigrants. The bourgeoisie wants to divide to defeat us. Let us fight together against the prejudices that divide us. Let us unite to face our true enemy who is the bourgeoisie and its governments and not our working brothers and sisters.
There is an increasing criminalization of social movements and persecution against their leaders, as the murder of Marielle Franco in Brazil, the arrest of Daniel Ruiz and the persecution of Sebastián Romero in Argentina.
Governments want to impose their increasingly hard neo-liberal plans and repress social movements to impose an even greater setback on the workers’ living standards. They want us to pay the costs of the international crisis that started in 2007-09.
Workers are struggling all over the world through strikes and demonstrations. Women are staging gigantic mobilizations against violence and for the right to abortion, both on March 8 or not. Black people carry out uprisings in the outskirts of cities. There are not more struggles because of the labor bureaucracies and reformist parties that want to channel everything through the dead end of the elections.
On May 1, 2019 we will affirm the willingness of the workers worldwide to fight against all this.
Workers Can Only Rely On Their Own Struggle
Do you want to change that? Do not trust anyone who proposes to wait for the next elections. Rely on your direct action, strikes and street demonstrations.
If it depends on the labor bureaucracies and reformist parties, life will always remain the same. They always try to convince us to trust the elections and expect better government from their nationalist or reformist parties. There is a growing rejection of these tools. The mobilizations of the yellow vests in France are an expression of the willingness of the workers to overcome these tools. The strike of Matamoros workers in Mexico, outside the bureaucratic unions, has a similar content.
We reject imperialist governments, starting from the ultra-rightist Trump, with its xenophobia, its unrestricted support for the Zionist government of Israel against the Palestinians. We also reject the imperialist governments of Macron (France), May (England) and Conte (Italy).
We repudiate right-wing governments like Bolsonaro (Brazil), Macri (Argentina), Duque (Colombia), Alvarado (Costa Rica) Juan Orlando Hernández (Honduras), Piñera (Chile), Benitez (Paraguay), Inram Khan and others. They are governments that are enemies of the workers and have already delivered severe attacks on our rights.
But we also reject the “left-wing” bourgeois governments that apply the same neoliberal plans as imperialism like Maduro administration (Venezuela). Ortega (Nicaragua), Evo Morales (Bolivia), Costa (PS, Portugal), Sánches (Spanish State), Ramaphosa (CNA, South Africa). The same applies to the 13-year Workers Party administration in Brazil, the 12-year Kirchner administration in Argentina. When they rule the country, they are rejected by the workers for the plans they apply. Then they go to the opposition to appear “nice” again to return to the government through new elections and do the same they have already done.
One shameful example is Maduro administration in Venezuela, shown as “socialist” and supported by a large number of reformist parties around the world. It is in fact a bourgeois and corrupt dictatorship, representative of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie that emerged on the shadow of the Chávez state apparatus for 20 years. Maduro is widely repudiated by the same Venezuelan masses who defeated the imperialist coup against Chavez in 2002. We are not in favor of any imperialist interference in Venezuela, as Trump, Bolsonaro, Piñera and Duque and their representative Guaidó want. But this does not make us forget at all the “Maduro Out” shouted by the Venezuelan masses with our support. We want the Venezuelan masses, not imperialism, to overthrow Maduro.
There is a false consciousness, spread by the bourgeoisie, as well as by these labor bureaucracies and reformist parties, which divides the world between “right” and “left.” That is a lie.
The real division is between the workers on the one side and the bourgeoisie and its “right” and “left” governments on the other. It is between the backlash of bourgeois governments around the world, and the workers’ fight back. We stand by workers and their struggles around the world. We want to unite the workers in their struggles against the bourgeoisie, and not to make alliances with neither the “right-wing” nor the “progressive” bourgeoisie.
A Call to Fighters Across the World
On May 1, 2019, we want to make a double call. On the one hand, for a broader unity in action, for workers’ direct action against all backlash by bourgeois governments, be they right-wing or “left-wing”.
On the other hand we want to reaffirm that another world will only be possible with the end of capitalism, with a socialist revolution.
That is why we stand for mass movement new leadership, as an alternative to these reformist leaders, these conciliatory labor bureaucracies. We fight for new union leaders and coordination of struggles, such as CSP Conlutas (Brazil), Sitrasep (Costa Rica), Union Eletricitários (Paraguay), No Austerity (Italy), Cobas (Spanish State) and others. We are helping to build the International Labor Network for Solidarity and Struggles, as a hub to group alternative unionism around the world. Join us and help to build new militant leadership for workers’ struggles, to help grassroots rebels against these bureaucrats across the world.
We stick to build revolutionary parties across the world. Join and help us to build revolutionary parties that keep the banner of the socialist revolution up. Enough of the electoral routine, of supporting the dictatorships of Maduro and Ortega, of the workers’ attachment to “progressive” bourgeois sectors.
They say that socialism is outdated. That is not true. There is nothing more decadent than capitalism that threatens us with the barbarism already present in our cities. The new and the future relies on the struggle for a socialist revolution, to end poverty, to fight back oppression of women, blacks, LGBTs and immigrants.
Long Live Workers’ International Day!
All Support to Workers’ Struggles Across the World!
For Workers’ Unity against the oppression of women, blacks, LGBTs and immigrants!
In Defense of the Socialist Revolution!
