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May Day celebration parade, Tiananmen Square, Beijing 1957

The Brief Origins of May Day

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations.

An estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

  • Workingmen to Arms!
  • War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.
  • The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.
  • One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!
  • MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

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Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):

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630 comments

  • β€œshe’s a terrorist bro, let’s move on.” - ethan klein talking about his wife

    Ok the debate was worth it

    Tweet

    Hasan: Do you believe the IDF is a terrorist organization?

    Ethan: I said yes. I think it’s fair to characterize them that way.

    Hasan: So do you think your wife is a terrorist?

    Ethan: Of course not.

  • Went to the May Day march. There were a lot more commies and leftists that I had anticipated.

    Met a 89 year old Red grandpa who had rolled in with his rollator to sing the Internationale and chatted with him for a while. He had such sparkly all seen eyes and such worry for the times we are in. We sang the songs together, it was very nice.

  • go back in time

    have a bunch of records of classic songs, plan to "write" them and get rich

    none of the songs become hits

    every musician I stole from gets rich with a different "hit"

    mfw I learn that the music industry is all industry plants

  • Spent all day helping a coworker write an insert statement. We were hired with the expectation we know sql. It took them 6 hours to write 6 insert statements. I'm losing my damn mind. I showed this to them many times before but it just won't stick. My manager couldn't help because they get stressed talking to this coworker and their blood pressure is becoming affected because of it. I took one for the team and ended up spending my day helping write 6 fucking insert statements.

  • What really fucks me up about the news stories presenting Falun Gong as peaceful practitioners of meditation persecuted by the Chinese state is that they have to know it is a cult, right? Like, if they are interviewing a regional manager, they would probably look them up before and easily find out they believe some extremely cult stuff, like just meditating instead of taking your medicine. Yet they still choose to promote them to score some propaganda points against China, it's incomprehensibly evil.

  • yeah, yeah, I know, the Marx alienation quote, but I still don't understand how the bourgeoisie aren't just constantly commissioning random art projects on their own whims. it's all yachts and properties and luxury goods n shit. if I had a bajillion dollars, assuming a pure hedonistic standpoint, at the moment I would singlehandedly angel investor a readaptation of Umineko into anime and use what was left to hire people to make my dream game. I'm sure it's happening but it's not enough to make sense to me. it should be happening more. i fundamentally don't get it, deep in my soul

  • The officer with the binder then flicked through the binder and then took a page out, placing it on the table next to the portrait of the young man. My heart sank. It was a screenshot of Hexbear. More panic kicked in because of the worrying implications that I may be some sort of threat to national security. I said nothing but looked at the paper.

    β€œWe know that you have used this website. Can you tell us more about it?”

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  • celebrating my final college essay by doing what i do best: letting my adhd win and doing nothing about it

  • Holy fuck.

    I was opening a can of Progresso soup. It's a wide can.

    After I pulled up the tab thing to open the can - I gently pushed down on the lid to make it easier to come off. The lid did something I never expected. It suddenly collapsed downward and my left thumb went inside the can. I was shocked so I tried to jerk my hand away like an animal would instinctively do if it suddenly found itself caught in a trap. Split pea soup flew here and here.

    I calmed down but I expected a huge amount of blood and tremendous pain. I wondered if I might have to make a trip to the emergency room. With trepidation and delicacy I took my thumb out of the can. I kept waiting for pain but there wasn't any. I cleaned away the soup from my hand because I was certain I must be bleeding. There was no blood either. I only have a very short very faint thin red line on my palm. The line is so shallow it didn't even sting when I washed my had with soap. The skin wasn't broken.

    --

    After an event like this - you remember to be at least a bit more careful in life when you're doing anything at all where you can hurt yourself. Now especially. We're in a reality where the Trump administration and the GOP will limit or cripple all sorts of regulations and regulators.

  • I usually only eat one hot dog at Costco but I convinced my girlfriend that I could have two of them and she said β€œyou better eat them all” and I did but maybe I ate them too fast. About 30 minutes later I start feeling sick and then involuntarily soiled myself in the checkout. I think Costco wins this time

  • i'm reading a breakdown of U.S. debt by michael hudson and uhhhhh... this is making my head hurt

    Well, let me spell out just how this system works. Suppose you go to, you could do what America does and in miniature. Suppose you go to a grocery store and you buy food and other household items. And when the cashier prints out your receipt for $30, you sign an IOU, IOU $30 and put your name. Well, that’s not a credit card. That’s just you’re writing a note, a signed note, IOU $30 to the store or whoever should be the bearer of this note. Well, the manager would come out and ask you, well, what am I supposed to do with this IOU? And you could tell them, well, you can use this $30 IOU to pay whomever you buy your produce from, you know, they’re delivering milk, you know, pay them partly in check and give them my IOU and let it just circulate around and it’ll circulate and everyone will trade it just like they’d trade a dollar bill or a bank check. It’s part of their assets.

    Well, obviously that’s not how the world works for you and for other individuals, but it’s how the international financial system works.

  • ❀️ I love you and think of you often. the world is a terrible and cruel place right now, but please know that you are loved, and I wish for you –:each and every one of you❀️❀️❀️❀️ – to flourish. πŸ«‚ xoxo

  • I don't know who is to blame for the use of dramatic piano versions of classic pop songs in movie trailers, but it's so goofy. Look at this fuckin marvel trailer

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sAOWhvheK8

    It looks soooo stupid. WHY is there a sad piano versions of Under Pressure? What could that possibly have to do with the movie? It's so obviously just to associate a popular song with this bland ass movie. It's honestly hilarious how earnest this movie is trying to be, while also looking so damn soulless.

  • Been image training, visualizing myself eating a whole cheese wheel. When

    locks away the vegan community in the cheese vaults I'll lead us out. Also get to reap cheese eater valor without having to eat cheese.

630 comments