1. May 1st is an international day of struggle of the working class, not a holiday. To have 200 million unemployed around the world cannot be celebrated. According to the ILO, just a quarter of workers have a stable job, and wages are lower each time. For most workers around the world, there is not enough money to get to the end of the month.
Neoliberal plans attack minimum rights, like retirement and paid recess. Poor die before they get attention in public hospitals. Even in imperialist countries, the crisis of public health and education is growing. Police invades poor neighborhoods like an occupation troop, killing indiscriminately. This also happens in imperialist countries, where freedoms are under attack and there is a growing repression, like in France and the Spanish State.
Every day the environment is destructed to get more profits.
Capitalism uses oppression to increase exploitation and divide the working class. Hate against immigrants and male-chauvinist and racist violence, as much as homophobia, put workers against workers, what helps the bourgeois domination.
In the poor neighborhoods of the periphery of the cities around the world there is a deep rage growing. It is in these places that we can feel people’s reality, and not in the fancy halls of shopping centers in the cities.
2. Trump rules the U.S. showing that the true face of imperialism is the face of the extreme-right, of militarism, male-chauvinism, racism, homophobia, repression, environmental destruction.
He aims to put white workers against black workers, women and immigrants. He talks about creating jobs for white people, as if the other workers were responsible for the crisis. The real project of Trump is to divide workers and impose a harsh attack not only for immigrants and Blacks but also for white workers, who will see their wages lowered and their union rights banned.
The reaction against Trump, with a demonstration of three million people in his first day in office, showed that class struggle polarization has reached the heart of imperialism. For this May 1st, U.S. workers, specially the most exploited segments – immigrants – are organizing a major mobilization of repudiation.
Trump wants to impose the interests of U.S. multinationals across the world using the military force and relying on the cowardice of the subjected governments.
The recent attacks in Syria and Afghanistan, and the threat to North Korea, are a serious threaten to workers and peoples of the world. On this May 1st, we have to denounce this with all our strength, and reject his imperialist policy of military aggressions.
Yet, despite his intentions, in many countries there are huge demonstrations against Trump, showing that the anti-imperialist consciousness is growing around the world.
3. Imperialist governments like Hollande (France), Cameron and May (Great Britain), Gentiloni (Italy) or Rajoy (Spanish State) implement violent neoliberal plans against the workers of their countries aiming to survive imperialist competition.
But the important and growing political crisis in Europe – like the Brexit, and like the instability of the governments – show a growing polarization in this continent. The European Union, which exploits and oppresses all Europeans serving the banks and strongest imperialist powers, is already showing signs of exhaustion.
4. The governments of semi-colonial countries implement the same neoliberal plans, yet in a harsher way. This is valid for the hated governments of Temer (Brazil), Macri (Argentina), Peña Nieto (Mexico), Cartes (Paraguay). It is also the case of Greece, which has become a German semi-colony. The huge political crisis in these countries show that the workers are tired of accepting these attacks. It is time to overthrow the governments that attack workers serving the multinationals.
5. Workers across the world must reflect on the role of “reformist” and “nationalist” parties. The major current crisis of governments like Hollande, Maduro or Bachelet is explained because they implemented the same neoliberal plans as the “rightist” governments. The crisis and fall of Dilma’s PT government in Brazil has the same explanation. The governments of those parties are too useful agents of the bourgeoisie and imperialism.
When those parties are in the “opposition”, it responds only to the an electoral interest to return to power to implement the same neoliberal plans.
6. The parties presented as the new anti-austerity, radical and “anti-globalization” left, alternative to the social-democracy, have the same practice when they reach the government.
Such is the example of Syriza in Greece, which won stating it would not accept austerity and cut of rights, and when it got to the government, even after people’s rejection through a referendum, it implemented the harshest neoliberal plan in the country. Such is, also, the course of the Bloco de Esquerda, in Portugal, supporting the government of the Portuguese Socialist Party.
These anti-austerity parties of today are the social-democracy of tomorrow. Podemos, in the Spanish State, will follow the same course as the PSOE, as evidenced in its prefecture in Madrid.
We warn the workers that the PSOL, in Brazil, wants to follow the same steps as the PT. It is not by chance that Lugo (Paraguay) defended together with the rightist government of Cartes an amendment to legalize reelection, something unaccepted by the Paraguayan people, that led them to set the Congress on fire.
7. The union bureaucracies across the world help maintain the bourgeois domination and exploitation. Entrenched to the privileges of the apparatuses, they help reformist and bourgeois parties in office or in “opposition”, to stall the workers’ struggles. It is not by chance that many workers end up taking distance from the unions, because of the role of the leaderships.
It is necessary to strengthen the consolidation of new leaderships from the rank and file, committed to the struggles and to workers’ democracy.
8. Workers in China and Cuba still face, today, capitalist dictatorships which, in name of Socialism, attack workers and enrich the new bourgeoisie emerged of the old bureaucracy of the respective Communist Parties. In these countries, workers have to fight for their freedom of organization.
The parties that keep the legacy of the old Communist parties, clustered in the so called “Castro-Chavism”, which are parties of Stalinist matrix, keep accumulating crimes against the workers and peoples struggles. The support to the genocide al-Assad, responsible for the death of half a million people and for the exile of more than twelve million Syrians, is a betrayal that will not be forgotten.
In Venezuela, under the false speech of XXI Century Socialism and of confrontation with imperialism, Maduro takes one measure after another attacking workers’ democratic rights, while the people does not have access to basic goods and food.
9. Big companies rule the world. They finance the campaigns of the parties and then get what they want of those governments. The “democracy” of the rich has nothing of democratic. The “right” and so-called “left” parties are financed by big companies, thus they implement the same neoliberal plans. People vote but do not decide anything. It is the companies that rule.
The 8 richest persons in the world – owners of big multinational companies – earn as much as the poorest half of humanity. The luxury of the houses, cars and parties of the bourgeoisie is outrageous.
Corruption is present in every government. And the bourgeois media tries to sell the idea that “everyone is corrupt”. That is not true. Corrupts are the politicians and parties financed by big companies and banks that corrupt them to run the national States.
10. The world is built by workers. It is workers’ hands that cultivate food, make cars and houses, hospitals and schools, cellphones and computers. The same workers that cannot eat, study, dress, and have access to dignified health and education.
Capitalism is the father of oppressions, repression and wars, as much as of the accelerated destruction of the environment. If workers had the power and could liberate the full development of productive forces, it would possible to end starvation and unemployment all over the world.
11. May 1st across the world must be a war cry for life. Let’s unite workers to defeat the neoliberal plans and the governments that implement them. Let’s demand from the Union leaderships to unify the struggles toward general strikes to point the path to the future. Let’s call the exploited and oppressed population to defeat the capitalist dictatorships.
Let’s build democratic bodies of the workers and new leaderships for struggle, from the rank and file. Let’s unify the new leaderships through struggle coordinators.
12. It is possible to make a better world for our children. It is not true the world has always been and will always be like this. On this May 1st, it is time to raise high the flags of Socialism.
In 2017 we commemorate the Centenary of the Russian Revolution. This historical experience showed it is possible to change the world. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and planning of economy generated the greatest change even seen in economic history. It ended with misery and starvation; the people had quality health and education; women’s struggle made a historic leap with the conquest of divorce, abortion, and equity of salary. Gay marriage was approved by the Soviet courts. Oppression over nationalities of the Tsarist Russia became a free union, the URSS.
During the first years of the Russian Revolution, before the Stalinist bureaucratization, the Russian proletariat was in power. There was never a democracy like it. Opposite to the current “democracy” of the rich, in workers’ democracy the course of the country was decided by the ones that worked.
For this amazing process to happen, it was necessary for a revolutionary party, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party, to lead and call to build the Communist International.
Nowadays, in 2017, the necessity of building a revolutionary party and international is more current that ever.
Imperialist propaganda attempts to erase those advances from the memory of humanity, equaling the Russian Revolution to the bureaucratic and totalitarian Stalinist regime that ended up restoring capitalism. But the capitalist crisis brought Socialist ideas to scene again. Socialism is discussed once again all over the world.
And our red flags are raised on this May 1st with the pride of Socialist revolutionaries.
Come with us struggle against neoliberal plans of imperialism and its governments. Come with us to build socialist revolutionary parties. Together we will build the International Workers’ League.
Long Live May 1st of workers’ struggle!
Out with Trump and imperialism!
Down with imperialist military bases and interventions!
Down the neoliberal plans! Out with the bourgeois governments!
No trust in reformist parties!
Let’s follow the example of the Russian Revolution!
Long live revolutionary Socialism!
International Secretariat of the International Workers’ League – Fourth International.
Manifesto of the International Workers’ League for May 1st
