May Day and the International

Since 1889, May Day has been taken up by the workers of the world as a day of celebration and struggle for the emancipation of labour. In this year of unprecedented crisis for the capitalist order, the Revolutionary Communist International sends its revolutionary greetings to our readers and to all those organising for socialist revolution around the world.

This May Day, we are also taking the opportunity to republish the following article by Trotsky. Written in 1918, it explains the development of International Workers Day from its militant, revolutionary origins to its transformation into an occasion for radical-sounding speeches by social-democratic politicians and labour movement bureaucrats, but with no connection to the international struggle of the proletariat, under the leadership of the parties of the Second International.

As Trotsky explains, the epoch of class war opened by the First World War and Russian Revolution necessitated that communists reclaim May Day as the festival of the international working class in its revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism.

Today too, there is a need to reclaim the genuine traditions of May Day. Every year, communists organised in the International have taken to the streets worldwide, joining thousands of other workers and young people. Last year, we were involved in demonstrations in over 23 countries, selling thousands of papers and, more importantly, meeting hundreds of potential communists.

This year, we expect to make an even bigger splash, especially as, for the first time, we will be attending these demonstrations as the Revolutionary Communist International. All around the planet, sections of the RCI will be hosting parties, rallies, and marching in demonstrations with the intention of connecting with and organising the most radical workers and youth.

To help us reclaim the revolutionary legacy of May Day, join us in these demonstrations and get involved with the building of the forces of genuine, revolutionary communism wherever you are. 

The following article was originally published in the collection First Five Years of the Communist International, which brings together all of Trotsky’s speeches and writings from the first four congresses of the Third International. Get your copy from Wellred Books here!

May Day and the International

Leon Trotsky, May 1, 1918

The character of the entire workers’ movement during the era of the Second International is reflected in the history and the fate of the May Day holiday.

May 1 was established as a holiday by the Paris International Socialist Congress in 1889.

The purpose of designating it thus was, by means of a simultaneous demonstration by workers of all countries on that day, to prepare the ground for drawing them together into a single international proletarian organisation of revolutionary action having one world centre and one world political orientation.

The epoch of class war opened by the First World War and Russian Revolution necessitated that communists reclaim May Day as the festival of the international working class / Image: public domain

The Paris Congress, which had taken the above decision, was treading the path of the International Communist League and of the First International. For the Second International to adopt the pattern of these two organisations was impossible from the start. In the course of the 14 years which had passed since the days of the First International, class organisations of the proletariat had grown up in every country which carried out their activity quite independently within their territory and were not adapted to international unification on the principles of democratic centralism.

The celebration of May Day should have prepared them for such a unification and therefore the demand for the eight-hour working day was introduced as its slogan, which was conditioned by the development of the productive forces and was popular among the broad working masses of all countries.

The effective task which was assigned to the May Day holiday consisted of facilitating the process of transforming the working class as an economic category into the working class in the sociological sense of the word, into a class, conscious of its interests in their totality, and striving to establish their dictatorship and the socialist revolution.

From this point of view, demonstrations in support of the socialist revolution were most appropriate to May Day. And the revolutionary elements at the congress achieved this. But at the stage of development through which the working class was then passing the majority found that the demand for the eight-hour working day provided a better answer for carrying out the task in front of them. In any case, this was a slogan capable of uniting workers of all countries.

Just such a role was also played by the slogan of universal peace which was subsequently put forward.

But the congress proposed and the objective conditions of the development of the workers’ movement disposed.

The May holiday gradually turned from the means of struggle of the world proletariat into a means of struggle of the workers of each separate country for their local interests. And this was made more possible by putting forward the third slogan—universal suffrage.

In the majority of states, May Day was celebrated either just in the evening after work was finished or else on the following Sunday. In those places where the workers celebrated it by a stoppage of work, as in Belgium and Austria, it served the cause of realising local tasks but not the cause of closing the ranks of workers of all countries into one world working class. Side by side with progressive consequences (as a result of bringing together the workers of a particular country) it had therefore a negative conservative side—it linked the workers too tightly with the fate of a particular state and in this way prepared the ground for the development of social-patriotism.

The task which had been placed on the order of the day by the Paris Congress has not been realised. The formation of an International as the organisation of international revolutionary proletarian action, with one centre and with one international political orientation, had not been achieved. The Second International was merely a weak union of workers’ parties which were independent of each other in their activity.

May Day turned into its opposite and with the war its existence came to an end.

Such were the consequences of the inexorable logic of the dialectical process of development of the workers’ movement.

Wherein lies the cause of this phenomenon? What guarantee is there against its repetition? What is the lesson for the future from this? Of course the basic cause of the failure of the May Day holiday lay in the character of the given period of capitalist development, in the process of its deepening in each separate country and the struggle conditioned by this process for the democratisation of the state system and for the adaptation of the latter to the needs of capitalist development. But even in the development of a capitalist or of any other type of system there exist tendencies of two sorts— the conservative and the revolutionary.

With the working class, which is the active participant in the historical process, its vanguard, the socialist parties, is destined to go ahead of this process and counterpose its revolutionary tendency to the conservative trend at every stage of the workers’ movement and to put forward and defend the overall interests of the whole proletariat in its totality independent of nationality. This is the very task which the socialist parties during the period of the Second International did not fulfil and this had a direct influence on the fate of the May Day holiday.

Under the influence of the party bosses made up of intellectuals and the labour bureaucracy, the socialist parties in the period described concentrated their attention on very useful parliamentary activity which was in its essence national and not international or of a class character. The organisations of workers looked on their activity not as a means of class struggle but as an end in itself. It is sufficient to recall how the leaders of German Social-Democracy argued for transferring May Day to the following Sunday. They said that one could not expose an exemplary party organisation, parliamentary activity and numerous rich trade unions to danger merely for the sake of a demonstration.

The present epoch is directly contrary in character to the past epoch. Opened by the war, and in particular by the Russian October Revolution, it reveals itself as the epoch of the direct struggle of the proletariat for power on a world scale.

Its character is favourable to May Day fulfilling that role to which the revolutionary elements at the Paris Congress of 1889 attempted to assign it. It is presented with the task of facilitating the formation of a Third Revolutionary International and of serving the cause of the mobilisation of proletarian forces for the world socialist revolution.

But to assist in the carrying out of this great role, the lessons of the past and the demands of the present epoch powerfully dictate to socialists from all countries:

1. A radical change in their policy,
2. Putting forward appropriate slogans for May Day.

In the first instance, the following steps are necessary:

1. Concentrate efforts on the formation of the Third Revolutionary International;
2. Subordinate the interests of each country to the general interests of the international proletarian movement and subordinate parliamentary activity to the interests of the struggle of the proletarian masses.

The main slogans of May Day in the present epoch should be:

1. The Third International.
2. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
3. The World Soviet Republic.
4. The Socialist Revolution.