IWL May Day Manifesto
May Day is a day of struggle for workers all over the world. But in many places the trade-union bureaucracies and reformist parties are trying to turn May Day into a day of fraternization with the bourgeoisie and its governments.
We workers have nothing to celebrate in a world where the signs of capitalist barbarism are accelerating. We must recover the tradition of May Day, which originated in a hard struggle against the bourgeoisie in 1886, in defense of the eight-hour workday.
Today, the struggle is against growing unemployment, poverty wages and the brutal precariousness we live under, where having a job does not guarantee a decent life and the vast majority have no permanent employment, no vacations and no retirement.
The strugglr is also against the Zionist barbarity of the genocide in Gaza or Putin’s imperialist invasion and occupation of Ukraine. It is against the growing violence against women, LGBTQIs, Black people, migrants and indigenous peoples. It is also a struggle against the environmental catastrophe that leads us to cross several points of no return in the destruction of nature.
The misery to which all bourgeois governments condemn us
Capitalism has been in a deepening crisis since the recession of 2007-09. This has been aggravated by the confrontation between U.S. hegemonic imperialism and the rising Chinese imperialism. The economic plans of the governments to deal with this crisis and fierce competition are increasingly harsh on the workers and nature. This is what determines the growth of signs of barbarism around the world.
These economic plans are implemented both by the governments of the far right and the governments led by the liberal and class conciliation parties.
On the one hand, we have far-right governments like Trump, Meloni (Italy) and Orbán (Hungary) in Europe, as well as Bukele (El Salvador), Milei (Argentina) and Noboa (Ecuador) in Latin America, Modi (India) and Erdogan (Turkey).
But very similar economic plans are also being implemented by bourgeois governments with the participation of reformist parties, as in the case of Sánchez in Spain, Lula in Brazil, Boric (Chile) and Petros (Colombia) in Latin America.
The reformist parties say that the far-right governments are “fascist” in order to justify their own plans to ally with the bourgeoisie and also implement neoliberal plans when they come to power.
We also have countries that were once bureaucratized workers’ states, such as China and Russia, that are now not only capitalist but imperialist. Most reformist parties around the world continue to claim that China is “socialist” and Putin’s Russia is “anti-imperialist.”
Similarly, the bourgeois dictatorships of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua are neither socialist nor anti-imperialist. They are dictatorships at the service of the new bourgeoisies that have emerged from these states and that harshly repress the workers of these countries.
There is no “progressive” imperialism
Trump is the most repulsive face of world imperialism today. He expresses the decline of U.S. imperialism with his imposition of high tariffs and his confrontation with the rising Chinese imperialism. Long gone are the days when imperialism itself spoke of “free trade” to impose its goods. With his tariff war, Trump is aggravating the global economic crisis in a downward spiral that could lead to a new international recession.
The measures taken by the bourgeoisie and the governments at its service to try to get out of the crisis will be expressed in even harsher attacks on the workers and greater subjugation and plunder of the semi-colonial countries.
The competition between the U.S. and China leads a large part of the world’s reformist parties to support the latter against the hated U.S. imperialism as if it were “progressive. There is no progressive imperialism. Chinese imperialism is based on a harsh capitalist dictatorship that imposes very low wages and harsh repression on the Chinese proletariat. Chinese imperialism directly exploits important parts of the world, especially in Asia and Africa, but is also expanding into Europe and Latin America.
And Russian imperialism bases its domination on Putin’s dictatorship and on plunder and military pressure throughout the Eurasian region and the Caucasus of the former USSR, supporting dictatorial regimes such as Lukashenko’s and others. It has even extended its claws into the Middle East, propping up the sinister Assad dictatorship in Syria for a decade. And its mercenary troops are also propping up several brutal dictatorships in Africa.
The inter-imperialist struggle is also leading to a new arms race, with the imperialist governments allocating a larger share of their budgets to military spending. This money should be spent on education, health, social needs or more measures to mitigate climate change, not on the production and purchase of more weapons.
The world proletariat, in its struggle and organization, must regain its political independence from all sectors of the bourgeoisie, whether they are associated with far-right governments or form the basis of liberal and class conciliation governments. Similarly, it is necessary to build workers’ independence and solidarity, including on the international stage, without supporting one imperialism against another.
The masses resist and rise up
The current growing economic, social and political polarization is provoking explosions of mass movements in different parts of the world. The uprisings in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2023-24, the big workers strikes that shook England in 2022, the mobilizations against Macron for his labor reform in France in 2023, the strikes and big mobilizations currently against Milei in Argentina, the gigantic struggles against the Erdogan government in Turkey, and the first big mobilization against Trump in the United States all point to a turbulent process of intensification of the class struggle.
Contrary to what the reformist parties often claim, the world today is not only characterized by the advance of counterrevolution, but by a growing polarization between revolution and counterrevolution, in which it is essential to overcome the weakness of the revolutionary leaderships.
Resistance continues in Palestine
The Zionist genocide has resumed after Netanyahu broke the ceasefire. The Israeli government has reoccupied the Netzarin and Philadelphi corridors and is implementing its plan to completely destroy the houses and infrastructure of Gaza and to expel the Palestinian people. It is also maintaining its partial occupation of southern Lebanon and parts of Syria. It has the full support of Trump, who has already expressed his plan for the final expulsion of the Palestinians from Gaza.
It also has the complicity of European imperialism and the Arab governments in the region, as well as Russian and Chinese imperialism. Iran is more interested in negotiating a nuclear deal with Trump than in effectively supporting the Palestinian struggle.
There is increasing repression by the world’s bourgeois governments against pro-Palestinian activists. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil by the Trump administration in the United States is symbolic of a broader attack that is also taking place in many other countries.
But the Palestinian resistance is not defeated. The ceremonies for the release of the Israeli hostages that took place in Gaza show the world once again that the just, dignified and heroic struggle of the Palestinian people continues even after 80,000 dead and more than 70% of the houses destroyed.
Israel has failed to stabilize its territorial domination and has not even managed to rescue all the Israeli hostages, despite its brutal military superiority.
Today, the Israeli genocide is more widely condemned throughout the world than at any other time in history, despite the support for Zionism by bourgeois governments and much of the world’s media.
The combination of Palestinian military resistance, global solidarity, a new Arab Spring against complicit governments in the region and a new Intifada is what can lead to Palestinian victory and the destruction of the genocidal state of Israel.
On this May Day, we call for support and solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people! Take up arms for the Palestinian resistance! Free Palestine, from the river to the sea! For a socialist revolution in the region, moving towards a socialist federation of Arab countries!
Long live the Ukrainian Resistance!
Even after three years of Russian invasion with the “second most powerful army in the world”, the heroic Ukrainian resistance continues. Despite constant bombing and rocket attacks on homes, schools, hospitals and even playgrounds, the majority of the Ukrainian people refuse to capitulate to the genocidal aggressor.
Trump’s “ceasefire” proposal, with which he continues to blackmail the semi-colonial bourgeois government of Zelensky, is a maneuver to impose Ukraine’s capitulation, acceptance of the division of the country and colonial domination so that the United States can plunder its mineral, energy and nuclear reserves.
All the hypocrisy of the Stalinist parties that supported the Russian invasion in the name of “struggle against imperialism” is now crumbling with Trump’s support for the interests and demands of the aggressor Putin.
European imperialism, which is not giving up its share in this colonization, is showing itself as “solidary and compassionate” while continuing to provide Ukraine with military aid in dribs and drabs and buying gas and oil from Russia, with which it finances Putin’s military machine. This partial and self-serving aid effectively prevents not only any serious offensive but also Ukraine’s own air defenses, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and injuries. It is clear that it also wants to prevent at all costs a victory of the Ukrainian masses over Putin.
No peace with annexations! Weapons for the Ukrainian resistance! Defeat Putin’s invasion! We call on the workers of the world to surround the Ukrainian working class facing imperialism with solidarity! For the unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine! No confidence in the Zelensky government!
In defense of the environment!
Today, the ongoing environmental catastrophe is increasingly present in the consciousness of broader sectors of the masses. Climate disasters such as the floods in Valencia (Spain) and Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil), the fires in Latin America and Los Angeles, and the high temperatures are proving the predictions that scientists have been warning about for years.
Capitalism is destroying nature, imposing a metabolic rift between its unbridled growth and the natural elements. The latest IPCC report shows that the last three years have been the hottest since the pre-industrial era. This threatens most forms of life on Earth because organisms and ecosystems cannot adapt to these climate changes. There are already several points of no return on the horizon for the coming decades, which, once passed, will determine irreversible setbacks in the environment.
None of the capitalist reformist proposals presented at the meetings promoted by the bourgeois governments have had any effect, because there is no solution to the environmental crisis within capitalism. This is for the simple reason that capitalism is driven by profits, and its unbridled accumulation involves the destruction of both workers’ lives and nature.
There is no real energy transition under the control of the imperialist governments. The only way to save the planet is through socialist revolution.
Support all concrete struggles in defense of the environment! For the nationalization under workers control of all polluting industries! For a real energy revolution under workers control!
Socialism or barbarism!
On this May Day, we support all workers’ struggles for their demands for jobs and wages, as well as the struggles against the oppression of women, LGBTQIs, Black people, immigrants and indigenous peoples. We fight for the liberation of all prisoners held by bourgeois governments for defending workers!
It is the unification of these struggles against the ruling governments, whether right-wing or class-collaborationist, that can lead to a mass offensive.
Barbarism is growing in the world. This renews the choice between socialism and barbarism! On this May Day, we want to propose to activists in struggles around the world to defend with us a socialist revolution, which is the only real alternative to capitalist barbarism.
Only a socialist revolution can open the way to the construction of another state, different from and opposed to the bourgeois states. A new state, a workers democracy, with democracy for the majority-the working class-and repression for the minority-the bourgeoisie and its supporters.
A workers’ government that can plan the economy to meet social needs, ending hunger and misery. A workers’ government that ends all forms of oppression. A government at the service of the workers that also makes a revolution in production to achieve the preservation and restoration of the environment.
We invite activists who read us to join us in the revolutionary parties of the International Workers League, to build together the road to the world socialist revolution that is urgently needed to end the exploitation, oppression and barbarism of capitalist imperialism.
