The spirit of May Day

May Day is workers’ day. But its origins go back to the  rituals of hallowed antiquity. Long before the emergence of trade unions, May Day was a spring festival dedicated to the spirits that people thought controlled the destinies of humanity. Houses were decorated with green branches. Peasants danced and picked a "May King and Queen", believing this would magically bring about a  good harvest and prosperity. 
Nowadays it’s a time to remember past struggles and achievements and look forward to the bright red future still to come. From the big parades in the people’s democracies to the rallies in Europe and throughout the Global South, May Day is celebrated to honour the generations that have gone before us and to look to the future with confidence and determination. 
We recall the fight for the eight-hour day and the strikes in the United States on May Day 1886 that ended in the murder of six strikers by the police in Chicago, and the deaths of seven police the next day when a bomb exploded during a protest in the city’s Haymarket Square. Eight union leaders were arrested on trumped-up charges and four were later hanged.
In 1889 the First International, the International Working Men’s Association, declared May Day an international working-class holiday to commemorate the Haymarket Martyrs, and the Red Flag, representing the blood of working class martyrs – the martyred dead of Labour’s anthem – was adopted as the international symbol of working people.
Lenin’s May Day was a call to action. He said “May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all lands celebrate Their awakening to a class-conscious life, their solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger, poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this great struggle: the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom.
“On one side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions of acres of land and mountains of money into their private property. They have made the government and the army their servants, faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed.
“On the other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their labour they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities.
“But now these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labour from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a system of society where the wealth created by the common labour will go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. They want to make the land and the factories, mills, and machines the common property of all toilers. They want to do away with the division into rich and poor, want the fruits of labour to go to the labourers themselves, and all the achievements of the human mind, all improvements in ways of working, to improve the lot of the man who works, and not serve as a means of oppressing him”. Let us all follow in Lenin’s footsteps to build a better tomorrow for the generations to come.

Russian communists' front-line report

 

by New Worker correspondent

NCP members held on online meeting with five comrades from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) on Saturday. The main Russian communists speaker for the CPRF was Donbas communist leader Boris Litvinov, who gave the following assessment of the current situation in Donetsk and the Ukraine.
“There is martial law in the Ukrainian controlled parts of Donetsk, so all activities are currently banned. Ukraine’s forces are suffering 1,000-1,500 casualties daily. There are fewer and fewer actual Ukrainians on the front line, and more and more foreign mercenaries from around the world, many from Latin America, in addition to the people seized on the streets in Ukraine. As a result, a growing number of soldiers on the Ukrainian side prefer to surrender at the first opportunity, rather than die” Litvinov said.
“In most areas near the front line less than five per cent of the normal population remains when the Russian and Donbas forces arrive. The Ukrainian military is forcibly removing civilians, including women and children, from towns and villages near the front line they still control. For example in Avdeyivka, only 800 remained from the original population of 32,000”.
When the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was established in 1922 – the first time Ukraine ever existed as a separate territory – the heavily industrialised Donbas, a completely Russian speaking area, was included in the new Ukrainian republic, so Russian has historically been the main language in the region for the past 104 years. But it was outlawed by the Ukrainian fascists.
Litvinov pointed out that “when the Russian forces arrived in Kurakovo there were still 30 children in the town, and their first action was to set up a school for them. Under Ukrainian rule they were brought up to speak only Ukrainian, and couldn't speak any Russian.
“Now NATO is using the territory of the Baltic States to launch attacks on industrial and energy plants in Northern Russia. These attacks are aimed at provoking Russia to strike back at those states leading to an extremely dangerous escalation of the war.
“According to the Russian Federation Ukraine is using drones made in France, Britain and Germany, or built from parts sent to Ukraine, which are being used to target industrial plants all over Russia, just as the USA and Israel are attacking plants all over Iran, and Iran has hit facilities in the Gulf countries.
Refuting Western claims that Russia deliberately targets civilians Litvinov said “the Russian military only ever strikes targets related to military production. Residential buildings or areas are never targeted, and the Russian forces issue warnings to civilians to leave areas they are planning to strike”.
It’s the Ukrainian fascists who target innocent civilians Litvinov said “On Lenin's birthday, 22nd April, from the early morning, Ukrainian forces struck the areas around monuments with missiles and drones, as they knew that local people would be laying flowers there, and several people were injured. But in spite of these attacks, members of the CPRF and trade unionists still managed to lay flowers at the monuments.
“This war would have ended long ago without the massive support Ukraine has received from Western states. We believe that if the USSR had still existed, all these problems, and the war, could have been avoided in other ways. Members of the CPRF are united in the eventual goals of ending all wars, and to defeat imperialism”.