First Published: Workers Viewpoint, Vol. 2, Nos. 2-3, March-April 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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May Day is a declaration of war against monopoly capitalism! May Day 1977 holds a special, historic meaning for us, the U.S. working class. There is much reason for celebration on May Day 1977, because the state of fusion of the workers movement and Marxism-Leninism Mao tse-Tung Thought has never been higher! The working class movement and Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse-Tung Thought in this country, like two mighty rivers fusing together, will give rise to a raging revolutionary torrent! This fusion is inevitable, unstoppable, and a towering historic force for socialism and communism which represent the desires and aspirations of the U.S. proletariat.
May Day was born out of struggle. From its birth, in the Haymarket Square Massacre in Chicago, 1886, May Day has symbolized to workers the world over the struggle to break the chains of wage slavery and to fight for socialism! May Day has always represented the class struggle; it has always symbolized the fight against capitalist exploitation and oppression. The 350,000 workers who went on a general strike in the U.S. in 1886 for the eight hour day represented the be-ginning of a struggle which would shake the very foundations of bourgeois rule: The struggle for the eight hour day reflected the sharpening class contradictions between the rising proletariat class and the rapidly decaying monopoly capitalist class. Attempts by the monopoly capitalists to strangle this movement, such as the firing into the May Day crowds in Chicago, the planting of a bomb, and the hanging of the leaders of the march, only fueled the anger and militancy of the masses!
This spontaneous movement made concrete steps towards adopting Marxism as its own when the Paris Congress of the Second International (led by Freidrich Engels) on July 14, 1889, declared May First to be International Workers Day.
In the 1920’s, the then revolutionary CPUSA correctly made May Day a part of the lives of all U.S. workers. In 1934, for example, CP led over 500,000 workers to turn out for May Day, under the slogans “Down tools on May First! All out into the streets! Build the mighty united front of the working class on May First! Make every city a union city! For the six hour day, for the five day week with no deduction in pay! Forward to a Soviet America!”
Guided by the correct line of Stalin and the Third Communist International, the CPUSA was able to achieve a high degree of fusion with the spontaneous movement. Hardly any strike could take place in the country without communists in the leadership. The great struggles in the 1930’s – Flint, Michigan against General Motors, the San Francisco General Strike,, the struggle against the Scottsboro Frame-up – all represented the leadership of the communist party!
May Day 1977 celebrates the great upsurges in the working class movement. Unmistakable, in countless wildcats and strikes, in advances and setbacks, the working class is demanding communist analysis and communist leadership! As we stated in WVO #2, September 1974, there are distinct trends in the working class and all trends point to the need for the vanguard party of the proletariat.
1) Increasing exposure of misleaders
In the past year, many trade union mis-leaders ran for cover. Their increasingly sophisticated disguises and sweet talk couldn’t stop the hundreds of wildcats that took place this past year:
*In coal, wildcats were a blistering rejection of the mis-leadership of Arnold Miller of the United Mineworkers of America, which sent him whimpering back home to his bosses! Business Week wailed and ranted that they were “disappointed” in Miller’s performance because he no longer could “control the miners!” Business Week already is beating the drum for a newer, craftier misleader to “control the miners.”
*In auto, misleader Woodcock was totally powerless to stop wildcats by over 9,000 auto workers of the United Auto Workers. All of Woodcock’s rubbish about “peaceful settlement” could not stop 170,000 Ford auto workers from striking at 102 plants.
*In agriculture, workers this month in the United Farm Workers were disgusted to see the traitor Cesar Chavez openly collaborate with the Teamster mis-leadership and push the sham Agriculture Labor Relations Act (see WVJ, July 1976, Vol. 1, #4).
*In rubber, many workers on strike saw how misleader Bonmari to deliberately failed to prepare the union for the rubber strike, how he engaged in cozy negotiations with his bosses, the monopoly capitalists, and how he criticized “too much democracy” in the union as the reason for the weaknesses in the strike!
2) Record Breaking strikes show the deepening and broadening of the class struggle
This past year has been contract year, a year when virtually all the major industries were paralyzed with major strikes. One of the longest strikes of the contract year was carried out by the 70,000 workers of the United Rubber Workers, who paralyzed the entire industry to protest wretched wages and massive layoffs. Learning from the sell-out 1973 Goodyear contract, workers in Goodyear, Firestone, Uniroyal, and Goodrich shut down entire plants, despite court injunctions, police arrests and goon tactics. In a show of solidarity, workers from the United Mine Workers, United Steel Workers, Local 1250 of the United Auto Workers and Teamsters supported this struggle.
The broadening and deepening of the class struggle can be seen in the District 1199 and District Council 37 hospital strikes in New York. The 40,000 strikers in 1199 and the 18,000 strikers in DC 37 joined the thousands of workers in Westinghouse, auto, rubber and coal who downed tools that month and took up the fight against monopoly capitalist attacks on the standard of living. The 143 arrests of 1199 hospital workers is a political statement of open defiance against the state apparatus. After a WVO speech at one rally, in the face of police and goon tactics, one worker said, “If that’s what communism is for, and that’s the truth, then I’m for it!” And Local 420 took the lead in the DC 37 strike against massive layoffs and budget cuts, ignoring the stalling tactics of misleader Victor Gotbaum, in direct opposition to the Emergency Financial Control Board of the monopoly banks in New York.
3) Strikes are increasingly directed at monopoly capitalism itself
Through our struggles against speed-ups, layoffs, budget cuts, no-strike clauses, workers are increasingly realizing that the current trade union mis-leadership is not enough.
The rising class consciousness of the U.S. working class clearly demonstrated in the wildcat strike of Local 1759 of the United Mine Workers in Kanawha County, West Virginia. The 213 workers who walked out in direct defiance of the misleaders, the government and police were soon joined by 80,000 miners in Kentucky, Illinois, and Ohio in the third week of the strike. This strike was a political strike directed right at the capitalists! The staunch determination and anger of these miners, in the face of threats of violence, arrests, and trumped up campaigns by the bourgeois media, clearly shows that the miners as with all workers, with communist leadership can carry the struggle through to the end.
4) Rising Proletarian Internationalism!
The merger of the working class movement with the liberation struggles of the people of Azania, Namibia, and Zimbabwe strengthens the unity of the proletariat and oppressed peoples in smashing the chains of colonialism (old and new), superpower hegemonism, and imperialism, Zionism, racism and all reaction. This past year, in hundreds of demonstrations in all major cities, thousands of workers and students marched in solidarity with the struggles of the southern African people! The struggle of the people of Soweto, the guerrilla movements in Zimbabwe, the successes of the SWAPO forces in Namibia – these struggles are gradually being embraced by workers as their very own. The African Liberation Support Committee forum in New York, attended by over 300 workers, students, and communists, demonstrated the correctness of the WVO line in analyzing the international situation and in struggling for proletarian internationalism.
These four trends, which have all deepened, matured, and grown since our earlier analysis in WVJ #2, September 1974, demonstrate once again that the working class is in need of its vanguard, to guide it through the twists and turns toward the breaking of the chains of wage slavery and national oppression and for socialism and communism.
The deepening of the fusion of the working class movement and Marxism Leninism-Mao tse-Tung Thought is impossible without a General Staff, a headquarters for our revolution, which can accumulate revolutionary forces, can gather the scattered isolated revolutionary experiences of the working class, concentrate them, formulate the correct strategic and tactical lines of our revolution and lead the working class to socialism and communism. Only a vanguard party, steeled in struggle, can provide Marxist-Leninist leadership to auto strikes in Detroit, wildcats in coal industry, GI revolts in the U.S. Army, nation-wide walk-outs in the clothing industry, shut-downs in rubber, so that these many streamlets become part of one revolutionary river aimed at overthrowing the U.S. bourgeoisie. Only a genuine Communist Party can link up the thousands of spontaneous strikes into one death blow to monopoly capitalism!
The working class, in its mortal struggle with capitalism, must have the weapon of organization in this class war. Though trade unions, caucuses, etc. and many other organizational forms are necessary as weapons of the proletariat, without a vanguard communist party, the highest form of organization of the proletariat, the political party of the working class, its general staff, the struggle against the bourgeoisie cannot be carried through to the end. History over and over has proven, that the masses make revolution and the Party makes them conscious. This is the relationship between the working class and its Party.
Today, May Day 1977 is particularly significant because it celebrates the near founding of such a Party! The WVO has emerged as the foundation of the General Headquarters of the U.S. proletariat! May Day 1977 celebrates this historic step towards fusion, that one leading line, one leading circle has emerged to unite advanced workers and all genuine Marxist-Leninists into one vanguard Party, to lead our struggles for socialism and communism!
The workers movement, in its spontaneous struggles against the capitalist class for a decent standard of living, better conditions for sale of its labor power and to break the chains of wage slavery, continually strives for scientific socialism. Through its many skirmishes and battles with the capitalist class, the workers strive to want to know how to carry the struggle through to the end. But this scientific understanding can only be brought from without, for such a scientific understanding cannot arise spontaneously from the workers movement itself. Scientific, socialism is a science and must be studied as a science! The movement of scientific socialist thought, Marxism-Leninism-Mao tse-Tung Thought, and its representatives, the Marxist-Leninists, strive to fuse itself with the spontaneous workers movement, for it is only when the workers themselves grasp this science that it can be turned into a material force that smashes, ends the criminal rule of the capitalist class. The fusing of these two great movements will spell the doom for the capitalist system of wage slavery and open the bright future of the socialist system, under the dictatorship of the proletariat. The striving of these two great movements has a long history in the U.S. Fusion was at a relatively high level when the “C”PUSA was carrying out revolutionary work and giving communist leadership to the workers movement, as thousands of workers were won over to communism.
But with the degeneration of the “C”PUSA into a thoroughly counterrevolutionary reformist Party, the working class was left without its vanguard and the task of fusing scientific socialism with the spontaneous workers movement had to be taken up in the main by a new generation of revolutionary Marxists.
In the late 60’s there developed a new anti-revisionist communist movement in the U.S. Since then the fusion of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-Tung Thought with the spontaneous workers movement has un-systematically, but steadily, gone forward, as the new anti-revisionist communist movement has strived to take Marxism-Leninism-Mao tse-Tung Thought to the working class movement. Without a Party this fusion could only be unsystematic and sporadic. That is why Lenin summed up that the formation of the genuine vanguard party of the proletariat is the single biggest step towards fusion. That is why Lenin summed up that first and foremost, immediate and universal preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat consists in uniting the scattered Marxist-Leninists into a single party. By uniting the best Marxist-Leninists under the centralized leadership of the correct ideological and political line, the fusion of Marxism-Leninism-Mao tse-Tung Thought with the spontaneous workers movement can now be carried forward in an all around, deep, and systematic way. This why the struggles for the correct ideological and political line, the struggles to unite the best Marxist-Leninists into one Party, under one leadership – with one center and one line, has been the struggle for the formation of the headquarters of the U.S. proletariat. This is why May Day 1977 has such historic significance for the U.S proletariat. On this May Day, we must celebrate the emergence of the WVO as the only genuine Marxist-Leninist organization capable of founding the U.S. Party of the Proletariat. Having fought against both right and “left” opportunists for the hegemony of the correct ideological and political lines, united the best Marxist-Leninist from all four corners of the U.S., the founding of the Party by the WVO in the very near future will be an epoch making event in the long, great and glorious history of the U.S. proletariat’s struggle to break the chains of wage slavery, end all national oppression, and carry the revolution through to the end – for the noble cause of communism.
BREAK THE CHAINS OF WAGE SLAVERY – FIGHT FOR SOCIALISM!!
END ALL NATIONAL OPPRESSION!
THE WORKERS VIEWPOINT ORGANIZATION IS THE FOUNDATION FOR THE PARTY!!
ALL OUT FOR MAY DAY 1977!!