Happy May Day Friends and Fellow Workers!
May Day is the international day of labor celebrated around the world and it had its origin here in the United States as I will discuss shortly.
May Day, unlike US Labor Day, which is observed at the end of the summer, has always been an anti-capitalist celebration. Capitalism is the prevailing system in this country as well as, with variations, all the other countries around the globe, including the 2nd world so-called Communist states.
The system has several characteristics:
1. Every workplace is an absolute dictatorship. The boss tells us what we are to do, how we are to do it, and how fast. We give up our volition when we enter the workplace.
2. Everything we produce and every service we provide is owned by the boss. We get back a fraction of the wealth we create as pay. The remainder, after allowing for overhead and other expenses, remains with the boss as profit. Every employer I ever had was a millionaire.
3. Life for a worker under capitalism is marked by precariousness. The moment the boss stops making a profit off us we are thrown out the door. I can’t tell you how many times I was layed off, a common experience for working people.
4. Capitalism imposes on our class the wage system–the system under which we are paid the going rate for our labor. Our labor is, like the products or services we create, a commodity. Alienation from our product and the alienated social relationship working like this produces is the reason Karl Marx, a century and a half ago, called for the abolition of the wage system.
Continue reading “May Day greetings from the Boston Labor Solidarity Committee”
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