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[The struggle against the state and other essays by Nestor Makhno]

12. THE FIRST OF MAY: SYMBOL OF A NEW ERA IN THE LIFE AND STRUGGLE OF THE
TOILERS

In the socialist world, the first of May is considered the Labor holiday.
This is a mistaken description that has so penetrated the lives of the
toilers that in many countries that day is indeed celebrated as such. In
fact, the first of May is not at all a holiday for the toilers. No, the
toilers should not stay in their workshops or in the fields on that date.
On that date, toilers all over the world should come together in every
village, every town, and organize mass rallies, not to mark that date as
statist socialists and especially the Bolsheviks conceive it, but rather to
gauge the measure of their strength and assess the possibilities for direct
armed struggle against a rotten, cowardly, slave-holding order rooted in
violence and falsehood. It is easiest for all the toilers to come together
on that historic date, already part of the calendar, and most convenient
for them to express their collective will, as well as enter into common
discussion of everything related to essential matters of the present and
the future.

Over forty years ago, the American workers of Chicago and its environs
assembled on the first of May. There they listened to addresses from many
socialist orators, and more especially those from anarchist orators, for
they fairly gobbled up libertarian ideas and openly sided with the
anarchists.

That day those American workers attempted, by organizing themselves, to
give expression to their protest against the iniquitous order of the State
and Capital of the propertied. That was what the American libertarians
Spies, Parsons and others spoke about. It was at this point that this
protest rally was interrupted by provocations by the hirelings of Capital
and it ended with the massacre of unarmed workers, followed by the arrest
and murder of Spies, Parsons and other comrades.

The workers of Chicago and district had not assembled to celebrate the May
Day holiday. They had gathered to resolve, in common, the problems of their
lives and their struggles.

Today too, wheresoever the toilers have freed themselves from the tutelage
of the bourgeoisie and the social democracy linked to it (Menshevik or
Bolshevik, it makes no difference) or even try to do so, they regard the
first of May as the occasion of a get-together when they will concern
themselves with their own affairs and consider the matter of their
emancipation. Through these aspirations, they give expression to their
solidarity with and regard for the memory of the Chicago martyrs. Thus they
sense that the first of May cannot be a holiday for them. So, despite the
claims of "professional socialists," tending to portray it as the Feast of
Labor, the first of May can be nothing of the sort for conscious workers.

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.

Dyelo Truda No.36, 1928, p. 2-3.

Previous Chapter | Table of Contents | Next Chapter

1. Great October in the Ukraine
2. On the 10th Anniversary of the Makhnovist Insurgent Movement in the
Ukraine
3. On Defense of the Revolution
4. A Few Words on the National Question in the Ukraine
5. To the Jews of All Countries
6. The Makhovshchina and Anti-Semitism
7. In Memory of the Kronstadt Revolt
8. The Idea of Equality and the Bolsheviks
9. The Paths of "Proletarian" Power
10. "Soviet" Power - Its Present and Its Future
11. The Struggle Against the State
12. The First of May: Symbol of a New Era in the Life and Struggle of the
Toilers
13. Anarchism and Our Times
14. Our Organization
15. On Revolutionary Discipline
16. The ABC of the Revolutionary Anarchist
17. Open Letter to the Spanish Anarchists
18. On the History of the Spanish Revolution of 1931 and the Part Played by
the Left and Right-Wing Socialists and the Anarchist
19. Bibliographical Afterword

Published by:
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AK Press
