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| Sunday, 1 May 2005 |
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Notes for a May Day requiem Point of View by Malinda Seneviratne Someone once told me about an advertisement that appeared in the New York Times on the First of May. It asked a simple question: "On International Workers' Day, what does capitalism do?" The answer was brilliant, in terms of communicative worth: "It works!" Well, advertisements rarely lay out all the attributes of a particular product/brand. There is always some degree of exaggeration and some concealment involved, and this advertisement about capitalism is no exception.
It got me wondering, though; not about the validity of the claim but its subtle undertones. I am still to be offered tangible evidence that can warrant a claim such as "Capitalism works, period." All I know is that capitalism reigns, which is of course not the same thing. Still, thinking of May Day, I can't help think that even though it works only for a handful of people, capitalism does work at times. The First of May, like any other day, apart from the 29th of February, comes once a year. And on the First of May every year, some noise is made about celebrating labour, about articulating workers' grievances, about late capitalism or capitalism being late, the coming crisis in capitalism and how the revolution will not only come, but its coming is imminent. May Day is symbolic of these things. This is when people celebrate valiant struggle, sporadic gains, lament the more frequent defeats and ground conceded and vow to fight the good fight. My question is simple: what happens on the other 364 (or 365) days of the year? When picket campaigns and demonstrations are broken up, unions busted, labour leaders sacked, and in more extreme cases hauled away by vigilante groups, tortured and even murdered, what do we say? That this is how capitalism works? Should we not say, perhaps, that capitalism works this way so that come First of May, someone can run an advertisement in a newspaper about capitalism working? Don't workers work? Where do profits come from? Is social responsibility a notion that can cease to bother the capitalist the moment taxes are paid? Isn't it true that the corporate sector don't pay taxes, and that the true descriptive for them is not tax-payer but tax-collector, considering that all taxes are passed down to the consumer? Am I straying too far from the point? Perhaps. I believe workers work. I also believe that workers continue to work the way they work and subject themselves to value extraction because they do not have a choice in the matter. I believe also that the capitalist has strong albeit disguised allies in the matter of maintaining the business-as-usual status of production relations, namely the political party and sometimes union leaders. This is why I am yet to hear the following line (or some version of it) in any of the many May Day rallies I have been to: "May Day, everyday!" What is May Day in Sri Lanka? Simply, party colour (that's outside of Bala Tampoe's CMU and the many fringe unions that have meetings in dusty rooms in nondescript buildings in the metropolis). They may or may not pay pooja to old man Karl and do the token salutary honours to the hammer and sickle by way of iconography, but May Day is about bragging or complaining, not about the victories and defeats of labour, but being in power or wanting to capture power. You may hear some valiant men and women stretching their vocal chords to sing saadukin pelanavun and the Internationale, and some cursory banners, floats and slogans, I grant. These are however little more than the uncomfortable imperatives in a spectacle that has little or nothing to do with labour issues. Every year it gets worse, this charade, and last year, reading through the now inevitable sloganeering that passes for May Day messages, I sighed, perhaps out of acceptance that Orwell's "1984" came twenty years late and earlier than late capitalism and that in any event, the pigs were really flying. I sighed, "So this is May Day". And I found myself immediately humming John Lennon's song, "So this is Christmas". What if he had written something for May Day, I thought, not an unreasonable conjecture because this is also the man who wrote "Working class hero", where he ridiculed all those who believed things were really a bed of roses now, observing "(they) keep you doped with religion and sex and TV, and you think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still f.....ng peasants as far as I can see." (I think Marx was dead wrong about peasants and that the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is the most reactionary of his texts, and one which has probably provoked and provided justification for the more horrendous crimes against the tillers of land and turning of rural landscapes into cemeteries, but Lennon's point in terms of the worker's self-image is not entirely wrong) Would he change the lyrics and sing these lines, I wondered: So this is May Day And what have you done Another year over And a new one just begun. A very merry May Day Please have your say. Let's hope it's a good one For weak and for strong For rich and the poor ones The world is so wrong! The last lines are prophetic, as far as labour leaders are concerned, I believe: Let's hope it's a good one Without any fear War is over over If you want it War is over Now... What war? Class war? When did it end? And what were the terms of surrender? When will it start again? And if it is not yet over, what forms ought it to take today? I think I've had enough of May Day, because the lie has got so bad that the stink is unbearable. If workers and all other oppressed classes and their would-be or self-proclaimed leaders cannot fight every day, every moment, one way or another, they should retire into permanent disillusionment or absolute apathy, whatever works. If this goes on, very soon, worker's will be sending each other "Happy May Day" cards and filling the coffers of the people who run Hallmark and somehow I am sure I wouldn't feel like laughing then. On the First of May, 2005, I am going to plant a tree with my 4 year old
daughter. Perhaps her sister, who is just 19 months old will toss in a sod
or two of soil, while their mother sprinkles some water. I know capitalism
doesn't work. I will. And not only on the First of May. |
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