“The day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.”
The last words of Haymarket martyr, August Spies.
May Day began as a day of protest, a day to commemorate the legacy of the Haymarket martyrs – the revolutionaries who, in Chicago in 1886, were stitched up by the American government, accused of throwing a bomb at a group of cops. They were accused of doing this at a rally called in solidarity with strikers at a machinery plant, who a few days earlier were shot at by cops, leaving at least three strikers dead. Of the eight activists indicted, four were hanged and one killed himself before his execution date. Two of the four – August Spies and Albert Parsons – were militant anarchists of note, with real histories as organisers and propagandists of the working class cause.
The immense repression was not just directed at the Chicago militants but at the entire American working class, which was undergoing a resurgence. The membership of unions was increasing, strikes were becoming more and more frequent, and socialist organisations were gaining substantial followings. Immigrants with their own radical backgrounds were combining with rebellious American workers, bringing struggles together and posing an existential risk to the American capitalist class.
One of the radical organisations that grew out of the 1880s upsurge was the International Working Peoples’ Association (IWPA), also known as the Black International. Though officially started in the UK as a continuation of the First International, it only grew solid roots in America, gathering a base among the country’s diverse working class toiling in cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh. Its meetings were held in German, English, Czech, Yiddish, Polish and other languages.
IWPA members continued the strategy of the First International in combining revolutionary politics with militant union organising, bringing tens of thousands of workers into the unions with a clear direct-action perspective. They led a number of trade unions, and were central to spearheading the campaign for an eight hour day with no loss in pay.
In 1883, a committee that included Spies and Parsons was delegated to write a Manifesto for the IWPA. It was formally adopted in October of that year, and remains a powerful piece of writing.
It begins with a clear statement that “our present society is founded on the exploitation of the propertyless classes by the propertied”. Workers sell our labour-power for wages paid by capitalists, who reap the profits off the work we collectively do. We work day in, day out without any real prospect of getting out of the working class and liberating ourselves through more labour. Those that do get out and become rich do so from speculative opportunities – opportunities that ultimately rely on taking advantage of the labour of other workers.
The manifesto continues by describing how the “greed and power” of the capitalists grows and grows, and how they use “all the means for competing among themselves for the robbery of the people”. The system inevitably leads to crises, where “the misery of wage-workers is forced to the extreme”. Technological and social development results not in a better life for all, with less work and more recreation, but the opposite: poverty, more work, and a decline in living standards. Workers get pushed out of the system, into unemployment, driven to crime, illness, “suicide, starvation, and general depravity”.
There are many barriers to the destruction of this system; first among them is the state, which has “no other purpose than the upholding of the present order of exploitation”. The Manifesto is clear: “all laws are directed against working people”, and even when they seem to be good, they serve to mislead workers and dodge the actual problems at hand.
Alongside the state are other forces of order. The education system does not provide real, meaningful education, but is there to churn out more workers for the system that needs them; it produces “prejudices, arrogance and servility; in short, want of sense”. The education system, along with organised religion and the capitalist press, has the objective of indoctrinating workers with exactly that “want of sense”. “Far from aiding in the education of the masses”, says the manifesto, these institutions “have for their object the keeping in ignorance of the people”. Accordingly, the manifesto states that:
“The workers can therefore expect no help from any capitalistic party in their struggle against the existing system. They must achieve their liberation by their own efforts. As in former times a privileged class never surrendered its tyranny, neither can it be expected that the capitalists of this age will give up their rulership without being forced to do it.”
While some of the violent rhetoric in the Manifesto might seem strange to contemporary readers (“there remains but one recourse – FORCE!”), it is there to serve an important point: that capitalists will not willingly give up their power. We can’t vote them out of existence. When they support democratic systems, like in Australia, they do so knowing that this system can’t be turned against them. Since we can’t rely on the kindness of the rulers, we have to rely on the revolutionary power of the workers.
The Manifesto concludes with a six point programme. It includes revolutionary demands for the abolition of capitalism, replacing it with a freely organised cooperative society, linked together on a federalist basis.
It is also worth highlighting that the IWPA included a demand for “equal rights for all, without distinction to sex or race”. In the context of the American labour movement of the time, which was shot through with prejudices against women and non-white workers, the IWPA stood out as sincere fighters for class solidarity. This is as important now as it was back then.
The central passage of the Manifesto is worth quoting directly:
“This system is unjust, insane, and murderous. It is therefore necessary to totally destroy it with and by all means, and with the greatest energy on the part of every one who suffers by it, and who does not want to be made culpable for its continued existence by their inactivity […] agitation for the purpose of organisation; organisation for the purpose of rebellion.”
“Agitation for the purpose of organisation; organisation for the purpose of rebellion”. There’s not a word of this that needs to be changed.
In place of this sick system, a truly human society needs to take its place. The means of production – the factories, fields, workshops, offices, hospitals, and so on – should become communal property, possessed by society at large for the benefit of all. Our workplaces and living spaces can and should be reconstructed and reorganised, so we all work as little as possible, while enjoying the best possible living standards and the most meaningful human lives. A world without cops, bosses and politicians is not just possible, but necessary.