Occupy History: May Day and the M1GS General Strike

“Every intelligent person now realizes that there is something radically wrong with the social system under which we are living. Everyone, excepting the beneficiaries of this system, agrees that something ought to be done about it. The trouble is that people at present seem unable to agree on any common program of action. Some accept their unhappy lot with a patience and fortitude worthy of a better cause, others theorize ineffectually and do little, while still others complain bitterly and strike out blindly. Nearly everyone rushes hither and tither seeking escape but without having any clear-cut objective in view. Considering the control of the press and all media of misinformation and propaganda by the present ruling class this situation is not to be wondered at.”–Ralph Chaplin, “The General Strike” 1911

By now, if your reading this; you’ve heard about the Occupy Movement and the Call for a General Strike on May Day (International Workers’ Day) a day when working people (as well as students,the unemployed,the homeless,…in short; the 99%) will strike not only across America, but around the world in a global day of solidarity and direct action. This historic event has been largely ignored by the American corporate media and for good reason, this call for May Day for them is similar to a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past; THEY are well aware of the history of May Day and the threat that it poses to their privileged position and until recently they thought May Day had been written out of the history books forever. That is until now.

So just what is it that the powers-that-be and their journalistic hacks fear so much? Why have there been so many attempts to eliminate this working class holiday?

And why does any of this even matter?

As Poilish-German philosopher and revolutionary Rosa Luxemberg wrote in an 1894 article “What Are the Origins of May Day?” :

“The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour (work) day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.

In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass work stoppage which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea of a proletarian celebration was quickly accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.

The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day 200,000 of them left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented the workers for many years from repeating this [size] demonstration.“

Luxemburg was a staunch believer in the spontaneous nature of proletarian organization, meaning as Capitalism goes into crisis mode (as it did with the 2007 market crash and TARP bailout) the working class organizes itself not only to resist the inevitable austerity measures (like cuts to Medicaid, women’s health services, and public transportation) that will be enacted by the greedy ruling capitalist class; but to overturn the capitalist order itself with allows the parasitic capitalist plutocrats to enrich themselves off the labor and disproportionate taxes of the working class. May Day is an expression of the frustration of the workers with a socio-economic system that in effect, enslaves them to the power of capital. The 1886 American observation of May Day cited by Luxemburg lead to a forgotten chapter of American history today known as the Haymarket Affair. It was due to these events that May Day as we know it came to be.

And now a little history….

America in 1886 was in smack the middle of the Industrial Revolution. The city of Chicago had become home to thousands of American born and immigrant workers employed in factories at wages averaging around $1.50 a day in horrible conditions. As a result, many of the workers in these factories organized themselves into labor unions as well as revolutionary organizations of various ideological stripes. On May 1, 1886 an estimated 40,000 striking workers led by Albert Parsons and his wife Lucy, marched down Michigan Avenue in Chicago demanding an 8 hour workday. This General Strike was well planned by its radical organizers and remained non-violent, that is until May 3; August Spies was advising striking workers at McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. to “hold together, to stand by the union” when the police shot into the crowd, killing at least two McCormick workers. The next day, May 4; local anarchists including Spies and Parsons indignant over the police repression, organized an evening rally at Haymarket Square, a local commercial center. A crowd of several thousand workers gathered despite rain and listened to Spies then Parsons speak as a large police presence watched. As the final speaker, Sam Fielden spoke, the police moved in and tried to disperse the crowd. That’s when a bomb exploded and killed one police officer instantly and mortally wounded several others. The police then shot into the crowd and some demonstrators returned fire. To this day, it is unknown if it was a worker or the Pinkertons or even the police that set off the bomb (Howard Zinn points to Rudolph Schnaubelt, whom he claims he was a provocateur, posing as an anarchist, and threw the bomb so police would have a pretext to arrest Chicago’s anarchist leaders.) but what is known is after the violence seven policemen and at least four workers lay dead in the square. The newspapers immediately blamed the organizers of the rally for the violence and the police rounded up several anarchists. After being convicted in a kangaroo court more focused of their beliefs than evidence, on November 11, 1887; Spies, Parsons, George Engel and Adolf Fischer were hanged. This drew sharp criticism from Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw as well as inspired the labor rights movement to adopt May Day as a day for workers, in honor of the Haymarket Martyrs as well as the rest of those whom have died fighting for the cause of labor. By the early 20th century, May Day as a workers holiday was celebrated all over the world.

Then the 1% gets scared…

1917 saw the Russian Revolution unfold and in America the first “Red Scare” was beginning. The robber barons were getting scared that the revolution would spread to the exploited working class here in the USA, so on top of raiding union halls and sending anarchists, socialists and Wobblies to jail under the Espionage Act of 1917 they had the VFW declare May 1 as “Americanization Day” in the early 1920′s in an effort to put a more “patriotic” spin on May Day. It didn’t work. With the Stock Market crash of 1929 came the Great Depression and throughout the 1930′s large May Day gatherings numbering in the thousands were held in New York’s Union Square and Chicago’s Haymarket Square. In 1949 Americanization Day became Loyalty Day which Wikipedia describes as “a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom”. In 1955 Pope Pius XII declared May 1 as “The Feast of St. Joseph, The Worker” in an effort to keep Catholic workers away from their radical secular comrades. In 1958, May 1 was declared “Law Day” by President Eisenhower, a day dedicated to the role and importance of law in American society. By the 1970′s, the celebration of May Day had all but vanished in America, with the exception of a few marches and rallies organized by leftist groups. That is, until 2006 when Latino immigrant communities around the country called for a May Day General Strike in response to H.R. 4437; a piece of anti-immigrant legislation that could only be described as draconian. Millions of immigrant and American born workers took to the streets on May Day 2006 and in the weeks preceding it in one of America’s largest General Strikes in recent memory.

So just what is a General Strike?

A general strike is when ALL workers in ALL industries go on strike AS A CLASS in an attempt to economically suffocate the capitalist or employing class. In other words’ its when all working class people cease production in an effort to hit the bosses where it hurts, their profits. According to “Big” Bill Haywood, a co-Founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) :

“There are three phases of a general strike. They are:

general strike in an industry;

general strike in a community;

general national strike.” – speech; March 16, 1911

What this means is first workers interrupt “business as usual” by walking out of / not going to work. They shut down the factories, shops, schools,etc. Then they bring the strike from the workplace to the communities where they live, this could mean addressing grievances like police misconduct or tenants disputes with landlords and such. Finally, the General Strike spreads like wildfire throughout the city and/or nation until the moneyed class concedes its loss of control over the workers and admits their defeat at which point their hoarded wealth would be re-distributed to the most oppressed sectors of the working class and the means of production (the tools and machines needed to make things) would be seized and collectivized for the good of all people. Emma Goldman put it this way:

“the General Strike…means a stoppage of work, the cessation of labor. Nor need such a strike be postponed until all the workers of a particular place or country are ready for it...It is as if one man suddenly raised the cry Stop the thief! Immediately others will take up the cry, till the air rings with it. The General Strike, initiated by one determined organization, by one industry or by a small, conscious minority among the workers, is the industrial cry of Stop the thief, which is soon taken up by many other industries, spreading like wildfire in a very short time.” – Syndicalism: Its Theory and Practice, 1913

Is the General Strike, as a direct action tactic; still practical?

Very much so. In fact, General Strikes are becoming more and more frequent. In 2010 immigrants and their supporters called a General Strike and massive protest of Arizona’s S.B. 1070. In 2011, notable General Strikes took place in Greece, Italy, France and Oakland,CA. It was a General Strike that put the final nail in the coffin for Hosni Mubarak during the Egyptian Revolution. In 2012 we’ve already seen General Strikes in Nigeria, India, and Spain. The toiling masses are realizing the power they inherently have as the producers of wealth and the time has come for the global proletariat to reclaim the full fruits of its labor, to “dump the bosses off our backs” to borrow a phrase from Utah Phillips. In closing, the case for the General Strike can best be summed up by Ralph Chaplin :

“The argument for the General Strike is based on the persistent and very logical working class conviction that the ruling class will refuse to permit itself to be dispossessed by any power weaker than its own and that public opinion, political action and insurrection therefore will not be permitted to be developed or used to any appreciable extent. It is further based on the firm belief that Labor alone can save the world from chaos during and following the period of transition. As long as the production of goods under any system depends on the disciplined solidarity of the producing class it is evident that this solidarity alone is capable of stopping the operations of the old order or of starting and continuing those of the new.” – The General Strike, 1911

With all this in mind, it is now up to US and us alone, we can allow ourselves to continue to be subjected to the invisible bonds of capital or we can build a new, more humane society from the ashes of the old. As Mumia Abu Jamal wrote in his 1996 book “Death Blossoms“:

“The choice, as every choice, is yours: to fight for freedom or be fettered, to struggle for liberty or be satisfied with slavery, to side with life or death.”

See ya in the streets!

– Daytona Slim