May Day Statement: For a Humanist Alternative to Capitalism

The Los Angeles Chapter of International Marxist-Humanist Organization

Summary: We need the complete uprooting of capital and class, but also of oppressions based upon race, gender, and sexual identity, while also projecting a viable alternative to capitalism. Image: Haymarket Memorial near Chicago — Editors

Armenian Translation
Persian Translation

Spanish Translation

May Day has been celebrated as International Workers’ Day for over 130 years, in memory of the Haymarket martyrs, who gave their lives for our cause on the gallows of Chicago.  We should recall that many of the martyrs were immigrant workers, and that the state demonized them because of this.  As the noose tightened on August Spies in 1887, he shouted, “There will be a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”

Since then, the working class formed a massive global movement, participated in revolutions, and weathered repression and economic crisis.  We have survived, and we continue the struggle!

Today we face new dangers, and at the same time, new possibilities for revolutionary change:

After decades of neoliberalism, which severely undermined the social safety net, education, and the power of organized labor, global capitalism has taken a new turn in the wake of the Great Recession.  With the anemic “recovery” of the past few years, it is increasingly clear that those decades of neoliberalism did not succeed in restoring the decline in the rate of profit that is endemic to capitalism, as was shown by Karl Marx 150 years ago. Desperation within the ruling classes over that problem was crucial to the situation we are facing today.

On the one hand, the coming to power of Donald Trump and similar autocrats around the world, all of whom appeal to racism, sexism, and xenophobia, represents a new and more dangerous phase of state capitalism, with fascist overtones. These new rulers throw around blood-curdling threats of nuclear war, while also taking violent action against immigrants, Muslims, women, racial minorities, intellectuals, and labor, all the while claiming to be populists representing the “real” people, especially those outside the “corrupt” urban centers.

On the other hand, we have witnessed a flowering of radical, revolutionary, and labor movements.  In the Arab world, the hopes of the 2011 uprising have been dashed by severe repression, but in Syria, the Kurds struggle on, and the Palestinian movement has shown new life in the face of Israeli massacres. Trump’s cynical imperialist attack on Syria had nothing to do with protecting civilians against Assad’s murderous regime, since US claims of concern for the people are completely belied by the Muslim ban and the refusal to admit any refugees.

In the US, teachers’ strikes have burst out, achieving a decisive victory in West Virginia and inspiring other states, with women in the lead everywhere.   In Iran, the Islamist rulers faced the slogan, “Down with the Dictator,” in mass demonstrations of working people, also in rural areas.  In France, railroad workers are confronting a vicious plan to downgrade their standard of living.

Struggles outside the labor movement are equally crucial. In Sacramento and elsewhere, the movement against police murder continues to surge against an utterly racist system. The women’s marches and #MeToo, movements in support of immigrant workers and sanctuary cities, as well as youth movements against gun violence and environmental destruction, have shown the mass character of today’s movements of resistance to Trumpism in the USA.

The International Marxist-Humanist Organization calls for the complete uprooting of the system of capitalism, not just neoliberalism or Trumpism. We struggle against capital and class, but also against oppressions based upon race, gender, and sexual identity. We aim to develop and project a viable vision of an alternative to capitalism—a new, human society— that can give direction to today’s freedom struggles.

 

— Los Angeles Chapter, International Marxist-Humanist Organization

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2 Comments

  1. Suren

    Where is the Armenian translation to this article?

    Reply

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