“Hope lies in our struggles”

MAY DAY 2021

May Day 2021 — Statement by the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), representing 105 million workers in 133 countries of the planet, sends a warm militant and internationalist greeting to the workers of the world, on the occasion of May Day 2021, this important day for the world working class. Each reflection, action and plan of the WFTU – especially in this difficult period for the workers and peoples of the world – has as its sole guide the interests of the working class. This 2021 will be a year of preparation for the world’s largest trade union event – the 18^th World Trade Union Congress.

The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly marks the lives and actions of workers throughout the world. Our class mourned millions of deaths around the globe. Our movement found itself in unprecedented situations, demonstrating at the same time that the struggle of the class-oriented unions must encompass the whole of workers’ lives: hygiene and safety in the workplace, access to high-quality food and water, access to a safe education for our children, free, universal and public healthcare services for all.

Long live International Workers’ Day! Long live socialism: Statement by the European Communist Initiative

MAY DAY 2021

Statement by the Initiative of the Communist and Workers’ Parties for the 2021 May Day, the International Worker’s Day:

The Parties of the European Communist Initiative send a warm militant salute to the workers of our Continent, to the working class of the world.

We are inspired by the flame of the workers of Chicago, we honor the men and women of our class who fell on the battlefields of the class struggle.

The struggles of the workers in every period and around the world are the only ones that have made it difficult for the exploiters, who have brought conquests, have questioned their dominance and power. Because the power of the workers can abolish capitalist slavery. This is exactly what the exploiters are afraid of.

“Digital” workers don’t delete Marx on May Day

MAY DAY 2021

 Farooque Chowdhury

Countercurrents | May 01, 2021

“Digital” economy and work, like the imagined and claimed “4^th industrial revolution”, are mesmerizing many scholars that lead them to chorus: “Blue-collars are gone, gone are smoke spewing chimneys, so is Marx”. But, do facts support those scholars’ choir “Cancel Marx” even if data related to blue-collar employees are ignored?

The ILO report The World Employment and Social Outlook, The role of digital labor platforms in transforming the world of work, 2021 (Geneva, Switzerland, February 23, 2021) focuses on digital labor platforms (DLP), which mediate work, and have rapidly penetrated economic sectors. The praise-worthy report helps understand condition of the “digital” workers, exposes bitter facts related to workers’ life.

May Day 2021: Defence and Rights

MAY DAY POETRY 

David Betteridge

Culture Matters | May 01, 2021

… we have come here in the cause of Labour,
in its own defence, to demand its own rights…
– Eleanor Marx, speech on the first May Day
held in Hyde Park, London, 1890

Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

Two syllables, thrice.
Whoever hears this call
understands Distress,
and knows that help’s required.

M’aidez! M’aidez! M’aidez!

Wherever in the world
a ship or plane goes down,
rescuers respond.

Help me!
Tell us who you are.
Help me!
Tell us where you are…
Help me!
… and the reason for your call.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Consider a greater going-down
with greater loss of life
than any ship or plane,
or entire fleets of them.

Consider continents in distress,
nations and peoples, host upon host,
victims of social murder,
war, pestilence, and others’ greed,
victims of the wasting of the world’s good,
and dominance of class by class.

What then?
What source of aid.

May Day:
two words, each of one syllable,
encode the brief answer to that great question
that history has posed.

May Day:
more than a day in a calendar,
more than a signalling of a solidarity
that spans the world,
more than a hope made manifest,
more than a promise of better things;
it is an idea that moves the tectonic plates
of ancient thought, and fires
the actions of peoples everywhere.

May Day!

We must speak for the cause daily,
and make the men, and especially the women
that we meet, come into the ranks
to help us.

So spoke Marx.

Beyond distress and mutual aid,
she looked ahead to defence and rights,
and, further yet, to a reconfiguring
of Culture’s laws and the principles
by which they’re made.

So she spoke,
and lived her short life,
holding Socialism as our goal
stubbornly in sight.

May Day 2021: The Stink

MAY DAY POETRY

Peter Knaggs

Culture Matters | May 01, 2021

At first we thought it was a mop
or a dishcloth and we threw them out –
But the nest day it was still there –
So we swept the floor and opened a window
but it got worse. We held our hands
over our mouth and said JESUS
and – Where’s that coming from?
and – that fuckin’ stinks. We looked
under the stairs and moved the drawers.
It would make the faint-hearted gag
or puke and the women held their noses.
We looked at each other: What is it?
What is it? What is it? It was pin-clean,
we’d washed and got the bleach out
then I had an epiphany and I knew exactly
what it was. It was our government.

May Day 2021: Boris Britain Wallpaper

MAY DAY ART

Jane Burn

Culture Matters | May 01, 2021