04.05.2023

The meaning of May Day

First published on May 1 1907 in Clara Zetkin’s Die Gleichheit (‘Equality’), this article by Rosa Luxemburg skilfully explains the significance of International Workers’ Day - launched at the founding congress of the Second International in 1889

May Day is a living historical element of the international proletarian class struggle and therefore it has faithfully reflected for almost 20 years all the phases, all the factors of the class struggle. From the outside it might seem to be the same monotonous repetition of the same speeches and articles, of the same demands and resolutions. And those whose glance cannot penetrate beneath the meaningless surface of things, and grasp their essence, believe that through constant repetition the celebration of May Day has lost its entire significance, that it has become practically an ‘empty demonstration’. But under the apparently similar external circumstances May Day reveals within itself the constantly changing pulse of the proletarian struggle! It is part of the life of the labour movement. It therefore changes with it, and reflects - in its spiritual content, in its sentiment, in its tenseness - the changing situation of the class struggle.

Phases

The inner history of May Day has passed through three great phases. In its early years, when it had to force the way open before it, it was greeted with the tense expectations and elevated sentiments of the proletarians of all countries. The workers had won a new weapon for their arsenal, and the first attempts to use this weapon intensified the feeling of power and the joy of struggle of the millions of exploited and oppressed. On the other side, the new demonstration of the class struggle evoked in the bourgeoisie of all countries the deepest hatred and fear. The idea of an international socialist demonstration appeared to it as the returning ghost of the old [First] International, and the eager response to a simultaneous world celebration of labour, as the death-knell of the entire rule of capital. This accounts for the insane preparations made in the early years to overcome the dangers of May Day with the most brutal police and military violence.

And the place of the vanguard in the armed battalions of the terrified bourgeoisie was taken by the ‘free republic’ of France - only second to tsarist absolutism. The first blood shed by the proletariat in the name of May Day flowed in 1891 in Fourmies (France) and in 1902 in Łódź, in Russian Poland.

But it did not take long before the rulers grew calmer and began to recognise the purely demonstrative character of May Day. Of course, this was associated with the long period of primarily parliamentary struggle and the quiet development of political and trade union organisations, that now set in within the labour movement. In Germany, the first May Day was marked by the collapse of the Anti-Socialist Law. In 1893, the Belgian proletariat won access to parliament; in 1896, the Austrian followed. At any rate, the 90s were a decade of active trade union work and irresistible growth of the parliamentary representation of labour. The demonstration on the part of the labouring masses themselves retreated before the action of the representatives of labour; the idea of the international community of the proletariat retreated before the positive activity and the extension of the workers’ parties in every country. Gradually, May Day became a peaceful folk-festival, regarded with considerable equanimity by bourgeois society.

In recent years, a noticeable change in the situation of the labour movement has set in. A fresh wind blows over the fields of battle. In the east, the great Russian Revolution. In Germany, a sharpening and intensification of the political and economic struggle: extensive lock-out activities against the workers in industry and the consolidation of all bourgeois parties for the parliamentary lock-out of the working class. In France, a brutal crusade of the ‘radical’ government against the trade unions and a series of bitter wage struggles. Aroused by the powerful growth of the proletarian organisations during the last 15 years, terrified by the Russian Revolution, the international bourgeoisie becomes nervous, savage, aggressive …

Arises anew

And May Day thereby enters into a new phase. As the immediate demonstration of the masses - their only direct political action hitherto outside of elections - it becomes filled with a new content, with a new spirit, to the degree that the sharpening of the class struggle again pushed to the foreground the role of the proletarian masses. The more that reaction - that the rule of naked violence of the bourgeoisie contests every step forward in the interests of the proletariat in the economic and political sphere - the more do we approach the time in which the masses will take matters into their own hands, in which the masses will be called upon to defend in their own person the interests of their class emancipation. To prepare ourselves to meet these inevitable times, to arm ourselves in the expectation of these times with the consciousness of our duty and our power, that is today the task of the proletariat - and May Day, as the direct demonstration of the masses, is a means towards this end.

At the same time, another factor steps into the foreground with vigour: the internationality of the cause of the working class. As long as the class struggle had the least bit of democratic elbow-room and as long as the day of positive parliamentary work lasted, the labour movement was dominated by the peculiarities of its national surroundings, by its national dispersal. But, as soon as the fundamental forces of the class struggle arise from the depths of capitalist society to the surface, as soon as the struggle throws the masses sharply up against the ruling powers, then the idea of the world proletariat, one and indivisible, again revives. The preparations of the bourgeoisie of all countries for May Day this year recalls to the proletariat that its struggle for emancipation is one and the same in all countries.

Today, at the head of the army of world labour stands the Russian proletariat - the proletariat of the land of revolution. And the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat of this country - its experiences, its problems - constitute the great historical school for our coming great struggles. May Day this year again arouses - as it did in its early days - the hatred and fear of the bourgeoisie; the working masses, however, greet it with determination and the joy of battle. From the very beginning a proletarian demonstration for the eight-hour day and against war, it has gradually become a demonstration for the proletarian revolution.

Not the decline, but the tremendous rise, of May Day lies ahead of us, for it is borne aloft by the same storm-wind that is already sweeping over the surface of bourgeois society and that will lead us to bitter struggles and to final victory!

This is a slightly modified version of the translation which appeared on May 1 1931 in The Revolutionary Age, the paper of the Jay Lovestone faction - originally called the Majority Group - which had been expelled from the Communist Party of the USA in 1929 at the prompting of JV Stalin. The translator was probably Bertram Wolfe. Thanks to Bill Wright of the Marxist Internet Archive for locating the article and providing information