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Sunday, 1 May 2005  
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May Day thoughts

Today is May Day- the day of solidarity of the international working people. Born in the blood and sweat of struggle for an 8 hour working day in Chicago as far back as 1886, May Day inspired working people all over the globe to dedicate more firmly to the struggle for their economic and political liberation.

The clarion call issued then "Working men of all lands unite!" still resonates with vigour and more and more working people are taking to the streets on May Day.

In Sri Lanka, as in other lands the right to hold May Day was won after hard struggles. Now that it has taken a festive colour in Sri Lanka some of its former militancy is lost. In a sense, political forces outside the working class have hijacked the theme and spirit of the May Day to such an extent that cynical voices are raised whether May Day has any significance at all to the working people here. It has become necessary to question whether it is the unity of the working people or their class solidarity that is promoted or whether it is a subversion of that solidarity to appease other social forces some even bordering on obscurantism and chauvinism.

With the demise of the European system of socialist states spearheaded by the Soviet Union there were many prophets of doom who forecasted the end of socialism and hence the legitimacy of a separate day for international working class solidarity. The reality, however, is different.

While Soviet type of Communism vanished or was vanquished Capitalism never became the winner. Its inability as a social system to uplift millions of the poor including the working people keeps alive socialism as its only alternative. Twenty-first Century will no doubt raise to a new height the struggle between these two social systems. In this context May Day retains its vitality, utility and necessity.

Globalization, a necessary objective process inherent in the very system of capitalist economic relations reached new heights towards the last quarter of the last Century thanks mainly to the modern Scientific and Technological Revolution, particularly that in information and communication technology. Globalization in maximising the productive powers of society has also exacerbated the contradictions among different social strata.

Super-exploitation not only denies the working people a decent living it also pauperises the marginalised societies in the Third World by unjust systems of trade etc.

Globalization under the hegemony of monopoly capital has devised new means of weakening the working class - its most formidable and consistent class enemy. The main strategy of globalized monopoly capital has been to blunt the bargaining and hence political power of the working class by weakening or abolishing labour unions. To this end it has introduced and is using more and more contract and seasonal labour.

Modern day globalization is associated not only with an unprecedented scale of capital exports but also an unprecedented migration of labour across borders thus making native labour superfluous and migrant labour cheaper at the same time.

In the face of global solidarity of capital, the theme of the May Day - international solidarity of the working masses becomes an imperative urgent need. New strategies and new tactics have to be devised to meet the new situation.

The developing countries trapped in perennial debt and abject poverty will have to work out new strategies to charter independent economic and political development. This would not be possible without the solidarity of the working people and their unity with much broader social forces that are threatened by the despotism of monopoly capital.

Since monopoly capitalism thrives in an alliance with collaborative local bourgeois sections it is imperative that the working masses too forge an international alliance to meet the challenge.

Among other strategies devised by global capital to perpetuate its dominance are attempts to incite communal and religious strife and dismember independent states under pseudo-revolutionary slogans. The rapid increase of such movements across the globe following the demise of the Soviet Union and other East European socialist states is no accident of history.

Though the international working class movement has not yet recovered from the reverses consequent to the demise of the European socialist system of states a broad but still embryonic movement against globalization under monopoly hegemony is taking shape though its contours are still hazy. The fate of the international working class will depend on to what extent it can give direction and content to this new alliance that is bound to crystallize in the coming future.

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