WORLD WORLDWIDE UK uk United Kingdom - (en) UK, ACG: May Day Message from the ACG - Erica Malatesta (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 "The first of May is the symbol of a new era in the life and struggle of

the toilers, an era that each year offers the toilers fresh,
increasingly tough and decisive battles against the bourgeoisie, for the
freedom and independence wrested from them, for their social ideal."
---- Nestor Makhno ---- The idea of turning the 1st of May into a day of
action for workers was first proposed at the 4th congress of the
American Federation of Labor (AFL). It was decided to launch, starting
from the 1st of May 1886, a wide campaign of agitation and struggle
focused on limiting the working week to forty hours. The most radical
actions took place in Chicago. At that time, Chicago had the most
developed workers movement in the USA with a strong anarchist presence.

Following the 1st of May 1886, strikes were still ongoing as the fight
with employers became tougher. On the 4th of May, a meeting gathering
around 15,000 people was attacked by police. By the end of the day, both
sides had suffered numerous dead and wounded. It was a perfect occasion
to muzzle the protest. Eight of the main organisers, all anarchists,
were arrested and sentenced to death. The sentence was turned to life
imprisonment for three of them.

On 11 November 1887, Albert Parsons, Adolphe Fischer, George Engel and
August Spies were hanged. Their comrade Louis Lingg committed suicide
the day before to avoid execution. A few years later, they were
acquitted of all charges and the court admitted that the police and
justice system set up the case to criminalise and break down the
workers' movement. The eight accused were declared innocent and the
three survivors set free.

The 1st of May is definitely a page of workers history stained with
anarchist blood.

State, Police and Capital

The 1st of May is an occasion to remind us that the fight against
capitalism is still going on. Nowadays in Europe, strikes and social
struggles are seriously discredited. Yet, the difference between rich
and poor keeps growing, the financial markets are back in the saddle and
traders are still handling billions of dollars. Are we wrong to ask for
more when half of the world's wealth is owned by 1% of the population?
Meanwhile, workers are asked to make more and more effort to "save" the
economy and put the State back on its feet with its batch of new taxes
(such as the bedroom tax) and cuts in public services. We are heading
toward a neo-liberal capitalist system in which the State's main purpose
is to maintain social control so capitalism can develop without constraint.

Workers are producing everything and yet they own very little. This
analysis is old and well known but despite it, workers in Europe slowly
give up the fight for a fair redistribution and instead just hope that
troubles will fall on someone else. In addition, work has been
sanctified so that the idea is widespread that if you don't want to be a
good worker that produces and obeys it makes you lazy, a parasite or an
idealist (choose yours!).

The coronavirus has highlighted the uselessness of many jobs and
accentuated the importance of others.

As anarchist communists, we think that human beings shouldn't be defined
by the surplus value they bring to capitalism. Work should be the way to
produce by necessity and not to create new needs. Work must be organised
so everyone can work less, and for means other than profitability. No
capitalist society will ever achieve full employment because it needs a
pool of unemployed people so the necessity to work can make us accept
bad working conditions. In order to reorganise work, we need a society
free from class and leaders, and in which society is managed in a
self-organised way. This is what the Anarchist Communist Group is
fighting for.

It's well over a century since the first May Day demo. Now we slowly
amble through the streets to end up listening to boring speeches from
union bureaucrats. You have to remind yourselves that May Day was once
upon a time when workers all around the globe showed off their
collective strength. But we can do it again. We need revolutionary
politics that can lead us to a free, just and equal society. - a society
where production is to satisfy needs, not make huge profits for a tiny
privileged elite.

https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2025/05/01/may-day-message-from-the-acg/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca