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Year 2009 No. 30, May 1, 2009 ARCHIVE HOME JBBOOKS SUBSCRIBE

May First 2009: Day of the International Working Class

The Working Class Must Take Up Responsibility for Leading the Way Out of the Crisis!

May 1 Statement of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

May First 2009: Day of the International Working Class
The Working Class Must Take Up Responsibility for Leading the Way Out of the Crisis!

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Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

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May First 2009: Day of the International Working Class

The Working Class Must Take Up Responsibility for Leading the Way Out of the Crisis!

May 1 Statement of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

On the occasion of May Day 2009, our Party, RCPB(ML), greets all the workers across England, Scotland and Wales who are fighting for their rights and fighting to defend the rights of all, and who are taking up the struggle to lift society out of the crisis. Our Party also sends its greetings to the working and oppressed people of all countries who are fighting against imperialist interference and aggression and in defence of their right to sovereignty and to choose their own social system and chart their own course. On this May Day, RCPB(ML) hails the unity of the workers and oppressed people all over the world in struggle against the common enemy and for a different world.

In today’s conditions of the depth of the financial crisis and of international neo-liberal globalisation, it is necessary for the working class to affirm that the retrogression and utter havoc that the monopolies and their political representatives are imposing on society can and must be fought by putting the well-being of the working class and people at the centre of all considerations, and not the interests of the rich and the financial oligarchy. It is a vicious trick of the government to claim that to save owners of capital from their own crisis is necessary for the good of society. The exact opposite is the case. The workers must force the owners of capital to serve the public good, or move over and let the working class take power and enable the people to take control over their own lives. This is the challenge that the working class must confront on this May Day, and take up responsibility for leading the way out of the crisis. Today, more than ever, the way out of the crisis lies in putting the well-being of the people at home and abroad at the centre of all economic, political, social and cultural activities.

It is a very big ideological offensive which is being carried out by the political parties in power that there is no alternative to their programme of paying the rich and denying the claims of the people on society. In a modern society, a livelihood is a right, pensions are a right, health care and education are rights. All members of society have these inalienable rights by virtue of being human. For any government to deny this and refuse to guarantee these rights in practice means that they have lost the authority to govern. The task then for the working class is to build the Workers’ Opposition to such a government and assume that authority.

The facts are demonstrating that the rich and their political representatives are neither interested in nor capable of finding a way out of the crisis, but are carrying out a programme of shoring up the system of state monopoly capitalism. The cuts in social programmes, the wrecking of the manufacturing base, the absurd and feverish printing of money, the programme of stepped up militarisation and aggression abroad – these are all unconscionable and criminal acts against the people’s wellbeing, at home and abroad. The denial of the rights of the working class and people, their exclusion from decision-making, signal that the political parties in power are taking society back to medievalism. In this respect, the absolutism of the royal prerogative, the monarch in parliament, is being wielded to serve monopoly right and class privilege.

On this May Day, it is appropriate to declare that the might of the organised workers’ movement must itself be wielded to put a stop to this retrogression and reaction, to turn things around with a renewal of the political processes and institutions, so that the working class can take hold of what belongs to it and use the state to build a powerful socialised economy in the interests of all human beings. It is the right of the workers to appropriate the products of their own labour, and it is the right of the people as a whole to decide on the direction of the economy. The immediate aim of the workers’ movement is to bring the absolutist authority of the monopolies to heel and to block the government from unloading the capitalist crisis onto the shoulders of the people.

In this connection, we call on the working class movement to give rise to its own worker politicians, political representatives of the class and of the workers in the various sections of the economy, in the health and education services, and among pensioners, so that the anti-worker, anti-social offensive of the monopolies can be halted and the working class can begin to take centre stage in political affairs. Such worker politicians represent the spirit that it is our economy, and that we decide. They represent the values of the working class of One for All and All for One, and that An Injury to One Is an Injury to All. They represent the aspirations of the people for an anti-war government.

We further call on all class conscious workers to become worker members of RCPB(ML) and build the Workers’ Opposition and build and strengthen the modern communist party, a mass party which is also the vanguard of the working class.

On the occasion of May Day 2009, a day of unity in struggle, RCPB(ML) reiterates its call to the workers to take up their historic mission to lift society out of its crisis, and end the blocks to progress placed in its path by the rich and powerful whose only concern is with their own enrichment out of the human and material resources of the working people and of Mother Earth. Uphold the unity and co-operation of the workers and oppressed people of all lands on this day!

On behalf of the working class of England, Scotland and Wales, our Party sends its militant and heartfelt revolutionary greetings to the working and oppressed people throughout the globe fighting for their national and social liberation and an end to their impoverishment and enslavement at the hands of Anglo-US imperialism and other big neo-liberal powers. It sends those greetings also to peoples who are continuing their struggle for the independence of their countries, including the peoples of the Republic of Cuba, who are celebrating this year the 50th anniversary of their revolution, and of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who are engaged in a revolutionary upsurge and are defending their sovereignty against all attempts to compromise and sabotage it.

The Working Class Has to Save the Day!

There Is No Middle Way!

For National and Public Control over the Mainsprings of the Economy!

For an End to Paying the Rich! No Bailouts for the Bankers! For Stepped Up Public Funds to Social Programmes and the Manufacturing Base under Public Control!

Defend the Dignity of the Working Class!

Unite in Defence of the Rights of All! Down with the Chauvinism of the Ruling Elite!

Break with the Old and Establish the New!

Working and Oppressed Peoples of All Countries, Unite!

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