PHOTO/BOB SIMPSON
May Day, the day when the workers of the world put forth demands and express their international solidarity, is of special significance this year.
One hundred twenty-eight years have passed since the first, massive demonstration in Chicago for the 8-hour workday. The call for international solidarity could only be addressed to the workers of Europe and North America. The toiling masses in the rest of the world labored in slavery or under the heel of tyrants.
The call for an eight-hour day was an effort to reform society to conform to the tremendous economic growth created by the steam engine. If capitalism was to survive it was necessary to expand consumption. This was done by the expansion of the workforce and an increase in wages—even though the workers had to fight every inch of the way.
During those years, industrial imperialism reached its zenith. Over the succeeding decades, it was overthrown by a combination of war, globalization of production and the market, the ascendancy of finance capital over industry, and then, speculative capital over investment capital. This was made possible by the step-by-step and stage-by-stage application of electronics to production.
As electronics globalized production it also began the process of creating production with little or no labor. Unemployment and poverty grew along with the expansion of production and the concentration of untold wealth into the hands of billionaires.
The website, www.dosomething.org, recently reported: Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population—more than 3 billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty—less than $1.25 a day. One billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. Eight hundred five million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat. More than 750 million people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. Diarrhea caused by inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene kills an estimated 842,000 people every year globally, or approximately 2,300 people per day.”
The electronic revolution is irreversible. Capitalists survive only by producing more, better, cheaper. This means more and more labor-less production. A corresponding social revolution is inevitable.
The world has entered the first stage of a revolution that will forever end poverty and exploitation by transferring socially necessary means of production into the hands of society. We must continue the fight for concessions—for better wages and working conditions, knowing that the next stage in history was described by the revolutionaries of Paris, who shouted to the world, “Arise! Ye wretched of the earth!”
