PCR - Canada.- MAY 1ST, INTERNATIONAL WORKERS’ DAY Down With Capitalism! Long Live Socialism!

International Workers’ Day is without doubt the most significant political event for the proletariat and revolutionary activists in Canada and elsewhere.

Capitalists and their government stooges are busy offloading the burden of their own economic crisis onto the backs of workers across the world, and Canada is no exception; the conditions of the proletariat here are worsening by the day. Just look at all the plant closures that have happened recently —be it Cascades (Burnaby, BC), Caterpillar (London, ON), White Paper Birch (Quebec City, QC) or most recently, Aveos (Montreal, QC)— or those already announced for the coming months, like Mabe Canada in Montreal (700 layoffs). All these are the result of a system in which the interests of the capitalist class are paramount, to the exclusion of everything else. 

And this is not about to stop! In Canada, class contradictions are intensifying. Workers’ exploitation, especially of women, youth, immigrants and First Nations, is becoming more sharper. In order for capital investments to remain profitable, we have to work more hours at the lowest possible wage; it also requires that the social and welfare programs we won through bitter struggles in the past be systematically gutted or abolished. Job insecurity is becoming a daily reality for a growing number of workers... All this while the bosses enjoy the giant profits thus generated.

Right now, millions of people are struggling against capitalism in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, America and Africa. In Canada too, popular discontent is growing. We saw this all across the country in the tremendous mobilization generated by the “Occupy” movement. Indigenous communities are also mobilizing themselves against the destruction of their land and the practical genocide they face at the hands of capitalist development on their territories. Women continue to rally to denounce the oppression they suffer. In Quebec, the student movement dramatically rose up against the offensive of the bourgeoisie, who launched a full-frontal attacked on people’s right to education. Each in their own way, these resistance struggles express the will of the working class and the popular masses to end the old system of exploitation and oppression.

Everywhere, the bourgeoisie is responding with an unprecedented crackdown. The “rights and freedoms” veneer that the capitalist system used to carry in the last century is now gone. The masses who are spontaneously rebelling today must organize to defeat this rotten system! It is time to organize to move from resistance to revolution and express our will to achieve a true people’s democracy —the only guarantee of justice for the majority.

While worldwide May 1st is a time to struggle against the bourgeois system, in Canada, historically, this date has been targeted for co-optation by the bourgeois-ified left and the dominant social democratic trade unions. In Quebec, the trade unions, who still celebrate it, have made it a day of harmless parades where any critique of capitalism is excluded. In general, the major trade unions are busy colluding with management to “preserve industrial peace.” Instead, May 1st should be a day where workers stand up to express their rejection of capitalism and their will to conquer power and put an end to this decaying old system.

Let’s celebrate International Workers’ Day as it was meant to be celebrated! Let’s make of May 1st a great day of struggle and resistance —a chance to come together, to gather our forces and express our desire for a genuine liberation and socialist revolution! On May 1st 2012, proletarian internationalism should live!

Supporters of this newspaper join with the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP Canada) in calling on you to participate in the various activities announced in these pages and proudly carry the red flag —the flag of the proletariat in struggle— on May Day.