Welcome to the May Day edition of These Revolutionary Times, a project of The Political Revolution, a Daily Kos group. Each Sunday, we focus on a small selection of papers, articles, and essays published in various publicly available sources that reflect political change already happening or that we think ought to happen or ought not to happen in 21st Century America. Our goal is to spur people to read these pieces with an open-minded but critical focus and engage here in an interchange of ideas about the issues raised in them.
This week we decided to do something a bit different in celebration of May Day. We decided to post a few links to articles and also some art covering what we consider iconic stories and symbols of the Left. I requested that the members at the Daily Kos group, The Political Revolution, submit works that have inspired them over the years. I think we are all familiar with certain essays, cartoons, and artwork that we return to again and again - always good enough for a reread. So without further ado, let’s get on with the sharing:
The happy idea of using a proletarian holiday celebration as a means to attain the eight-hour day was first born in Australia. The workers there decided in 1856 to organize a day of complete stoppage together with meetings and entertainment as a demonstration in favor of the eight-hour day. The day of this celebration was to be April 21. At first, the Australian workers intended this only for the year 1856. But this first celebration had such a strong effect on the proletarian masses of Australia, enlivening them and leading to new agitation, that it was decided to repeat the celebration every year.
In fact, what could give the workers greater courage and faith in their own strength than a mass work stoppage which they had decided themselves? What could give more courage to the eternal slaves of the factories and the workshops than the mustering of their own troops? Thus, the idea of a proletarian celebration was quickly accepted and, from Australia, began to spread to other countries until finally it had conquered the whole proletarian world.
The first to follow the example of the Australian workers were the Americans. In 1886 they decided that May 1 should be the day of universal work stoppage. On this day 200,000 of them left their work and demanded the eight-hour day. Later, police and legal harassment prevented the workers for many years from repeating this [size] demonstration. However in 1888 they renewed their decision and decided that the next celebration would be May 1, 1890.
In the meanwhile, the workers’ movement in Europe had grown strong and animated. The most powerful expression of this movement occurred at the International Workers’ Congress in 1889. At this Congress, attended by four hundred delegates, it was decided that the eight-hour day must be the first demand. Whereupon the delegate of the French unions, the worker Lavigne from Bordeaux, moved that this demand be expressed in all countries through a universal work stoppage. The delegate of the American workers called attention to the decision of his comrades to strike on May 1, 1890, and the Congress decided on this date for the universal proletarian celebration.
In this case, as thirty years before in Australia, the workers really thought only of a one-time demonstration. The Congress decided that the workers of all lands would demonstrate together for the eight-hour day on May 1, 1890. No one spoke of a repetition of the holiday for the next years. Naturally no one could predict the lightning-like way in which this idea would succeed and how quickly it would be adopted by the working classes. However, it was enough to celebrate the May Day simply one time in order that everyone understand and feel that May Day must be a yearly and continuing institution [...].
The first of May demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. But even after this goal was reached, May Day was not given up. As long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands. And, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.
I especially enjoyed Ms. Luxemburg’s account of when the worker, Lavigne, from Bordeaux calls for a universal work stoppage in support of the eight-hour work day. (Surprise, surprise — I still believe that no one can throw a general strike quite like our French comrades.) Of course the influence of the French upon the Left has been immense, so it is no surprise to see Roland Barthes listed as a favorite that comes highly recommended by tote:
“...a huge influence of mine from the left. His structural analyses of texts empowered and encouraged the reader to suspend and cowrite those texts capable of offering the invitation to do so. He struggled with health issues for much of his life and was barely recognized beyond academia, but at least two works have registered mass influence: The Death of the Author, a five page quasi-manifesto on literary criticism, and the 1955-published Mythologies, his first famous work. Barthes died in 1980 from complications after being hit by a laundry truck. He was at that time the chair of semiology (essentially the study of signs and symbolism) at the college of France. Throughout his career Barthes wrote prolifically on the contemporary politics in France for various left-wing publications such as Combat and Les Lettres Nouvelles, in the latter of which he published the series of essays that led to my favorite text of his.
Mythologies is a systematic deconstruction of several myths of popular culture, such as the healthfulness of red wine as portrayed in advertising, written as a series of essays over time and collected into a powerful book with an extremely compelling theoretical overview of their deconstruction, written last and included as the last chapter of the book. That chapter is titled Myth Today. It is the text I admire the most of Barthes, and return to the most, mainly because I see in it a tremendous amount of explanatory power of the distortion, improper de-politicization and naturalization of right-wing injustices, as well as general corporate and market excesses today. That it was written in 1955 is of no small consequence; it would go on to influence the great Derrida and other French deconstructionist philosophers who are probably still the greatest exemplars we have of cutting edge Marxian philosophical thought. When reading Mythologies I humbly recommend starting with this last chapter, Myth Today, first. It provides both a rubric and template for understanding Barthes systematic thinking on myths, as well as a powerful takedown of the right wing in late capitalist society in a class-based analysis, a timely and not-un-poignant linkage to the Marxian anticolonialist struggles going on between its publication in France and its translation into English in 1972 (1977 was more or less the triumphant year of this struggle as Amnesty International was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), and a deeper set of tools for digesting literature and pop culture. Above all it is relevant for understanding trumpism, swift boating and the Big Lie of the right:
Excerpt (Barthes gives an example of a Myth perpetrated by a bourgeois newspaper headline about fruit prices):
Here is a new example which will help understand clearly how the myth-reader is led to rationalize the signified by means of the signifier. We are in the month of July, I read a big headline in France-Soir: THE FALL IN PRICES: FIRST INDICATIONS. VEGETABLES: PRICE DROP BEGINS. Let us quickly sketch the semiological schema: the example being a sentence, the first system is purely linguistic. The signifier of the second system is composed here of a certain number of accidents, some lexical (the words: first, begins, the [fall]), some typographical (enormous headlines where the reader usually sees news of world importance). The signified or concept is what must be called by a barbarous but unavoidable neologism: governmentality, the Government presented by the national press as the Essence of efficacy. The signification of the myth follows clearly from this: fruit and vegetable prices are falling because the government has so decided. Now it so happens in this case (and this is on the whole fairly rare) that the newspaper itself has, two lines below, allowed one to see through the myth which it had just elaborated--whether this is due to self-assurance or honesty. It adds (in small type, it is true): 'The fall in prices is helped by the return of seasonal abundance.' This example is instructive for two reasons. Firstly it conspicuously shows that myth essentially aims at causing an immediate impression--it does not matter if one is later allowed to see through the myth, its action is assumed to be stronger than the rationa l explanations which may later belie it. This means that the reading of a myth is exhausted at one stroke. I cast a quick glance at my neighbor's France-Soir: I cull only a meaning there, but I read a true signification; I receive the presence of governmental action in the fall in fruit and vegetable prices. That is all, and that is enough. A more attentive reading of the myth will in no way increase its power or its ineffectiveness: a myth is at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable; time or knowledge will not make it better or worse.
annieli also notes the powerful influence of the French Left and of course for better and for worse one of the most unforgettable years in living memory:
There are many items useful for May Day but the image within the article below is important because of its reminiscence but also because much of May 1968 was about the need for revolutionary imagination which is embodied in the artwork/graffiti of the period and beyond Paris.
It was an extension of The Situationist International which started in the 1950s but in terms of praxis emerged in France 1968 which was emblematic of historical change elsewher with the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Struggle in the US.
Cohn-Bendit: The feeling we had in those days, which has shaped my entire life, really, was: we’re making history. An exalted feeling—suddenly we had become agents in world history. Not an easy thing to process when you’re only twenty-three years old.
Leggewie: The most famous image of May 1968 contains all the ingredients of the myth of revolt. It shows you, the twenty-three-year-old sociology student, face-to-face with a nameless member of the CRS [the reserve of the national police], in front of the Sorbonne…
Cohn-Bendit: Disciplinary action had been announced for that day—May 6, 1968—to counter our occupation of the university. We were defended by our professors, by Alain Touraine and others. When the reporter took this picture, we were just about to enter the university, with demonstrations already in full swing outside.
Leggewie: Everything that’s relevant about May 1968 is present in this image: above vs. below, ancien régime vs. youth, system vs. movement, hero vs. villain, power against counterpower, order against anarchy.
Of course no May Day edition would be complete without Dr. King — our American icon who planted his feet firmly in the intersection of Social and Economic Justice as noted by elenacarlena:
My favorite promoter of leftist ideals is Martin Luther King Jr. He was planning a Poor People's Campaign when he was assassinated in 1968. I remember they turned on the televisions in school so that we could watch the news. We were stunned and deeply saddened.
We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work.
-snip-
We will place the problems of the poor at the seat of government of the wealthiest nation in the history of mankind. If that power refuses to acknowledge its debt to the poor, it will have failed to live up to its promise to insure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” to its citizens.
-snip-
America is reaping the harvest of hate and shame planted through generations of educational denial, political disfranchisement and economic exploitation of its black population.
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White America has allowed itself to be indifferent to race prejudice and economic denial. It has treated them as superficial blemishes, but now awakes to the horrifying reality of a potentially fatal disease.....
The American people are infected with racism – that is the peril. Paradoxically, they are also infected with democratic ideals – that is the hope.
-snip-
The future they are asked to inaugurate is not so unpalatable that it justifies the evils that beset the nation. To end poverty, to extirpate prejudice, to free a tormented conscience, to make a tomorrow of justice, fair play and creativity – all these are worthy of the American ideal.
-snip-
All of us are on trial in this troubled hour, but time still permits us to meet the future with a clear conscience.
Many of MLK's speeches and writings inspired many of us back in the day. We were convinced that we could make a difference.
MLK: We need an economic bill of rights. This would guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work. It would also guarantee an income for all who are not able to work.
In 2004, law professor Cass Sunstein (hardly a fiery leftist) wrote a book called "The Second Bill of Rights -- FDR's Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever." Here's an essay he wrote based on that book. It's of course just as relevant today.
Sunstein:
Roosevelt's speech has had a large international influence; the Second Bill of Rights should be seen as a leading American export. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in the shadow of FDR and accepted by the UN General Assembly in 1948, explicitly includes social and economic guarantees. The United States enthusiastically supported the declaration (but has been exceptionally unusual in refusing to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which would help to enforce social and economic guarantees). Many constitutions include social and economic guarantees in a way that can be traced directly to Roosevelt's speech. ...
...Better than any other speech or document, the Second Bill captures the extraordinary shift in the nature of government in the 20th century -- a shift that most of the country continues to support. Most Americans favor a right to education, a right to be free from monopoly, a right to social security; and in many polls, most Americans favor a right to a job and a right to health care. ...
...America's principles and self-understandings help to determine our practices. For much too long, the far right has succeeded in defining the nation's principles, leading Americans and the world to see the United States through a distorted mirror -- one that disserves our own history. The sooner we eliminate the distortion, the better.
igualdad feels inspired as we all do — by that Granddaddy of them all — none other than Karl Marx:
Karl Marx's 200th birthday just passed.
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Karl Marx was born 200 years ago and to celebrate, an exhibition in his hometown Trier looks at his life and work.
Though the rich have sought to distort him or even use him, time has shown that, in the end, Marx was actually mostly right & that the aristocrats, the slave owners, the bankers and Goldman Sachs were wrong... âÂÂHappy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!âÂÂhttps://t.co/M5LbSBLa32
In keeping with that spirit, I am taking the liberty of extending on igualdad’s thinking since Jacobin has some great reads about Marx that went up on May 5:
It will be to our loss and our lasting shame if we allow the 200,000 Dreamers in Texas to be deported as they continue contributing to our communities, state, and country. We need to pass the Dream Act.
After Parkland, the NRA announced their biggest fundraising haul in 20 years: 2.4 million in March alone. They use that money to buy politicians like Donald Trump and Mike Pence to further their agenda.
âÂÂStacey Abramsâ North Star is and always has been service to our state. Georgia, THIS is our time. LetâÂÂs march to the ballot box and elect Abrams for #GAGov.âÂÂ@RepJohnLewis fought and bled for our right to vote. Exercise that right â vote early: https://t.co/IVbMQjqJKS#gapolpic.twitter.com/w4zFlY7tcF
If the runaway pay to corporate executives has got you steamed, you are not alone. Currently there is the following legislation related to CEO-worker pay ratios. Check these out and take action where you can:
Connecticut surtax (HB 6373) (The state general assembly is also considering HB 6747, which would disqualify companies with CEO-worker pay ratios of more than 100 to 1 for state subsidies and grants.)
Rhode Island surtax (H. 5141 and S. 0318) (The RI state senate is also considering S. 0211, legislation that would give preferential treatment in state contracting to corporations that pay their CEOs no more than 25 times their median worker pay)
San Francisco City Council approved a resolution in March 2017 urging the San Francisco Employees Retirement System to vote against “excessive” CEO compensation and publish a report prior to December 1, 2017 including the pay ratios of companies in its domestic portfolio.
Federal surtax: CEO Accountability and Responsibility Act (H.R. 6242)
Always Remember — you are not alone: Letters to the SEC in support of CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure:
A wide range of institutional investors, policymakers, and academics have pressed the SEC for clear and strong federal regulations on CEO pay ratio disclosure. For a full list, see 2017 submissions and 2013/2015 submissions.
