Rosa Luxemburg
1871-1919
Revolutionary Marxist Leader
Armaments and wars, international
contradictions and colonial politics accompany
the history of capitalism from its cradle. It is the
most extreme intensification of these elements,
a drawing together, a gigantic storming of these
contradictions which has produced a new epoch
in the course of modern society. In a dialectical
interaction, both cause and effect of the immense
accumulation of capital and the heightening and
sharpening of the contradictions which go with
it internally, between capital and labor; externally,
between the capitalist states – imperialism has
opened the final phase, the division of the world
by the assault of capital. A chain of unending,
exorbitant armaments on land and on sea in all
capitalist countries because of rivalries; a chain
of bloody wars which have spread from Africa
to Europe and which at any moment could light
the spark which would become a world fire;
moreover, for years the uncheckable specter of
inflation, of mass hunger in the whole capitalist
world – all of these are the signs under which the
world holiday of labor, after nearly a quarter of a
century, approaches. And each of these signs is
a flaming testimony of the living truth and the
power of the idea of May Day.
No wonder! The whole development, the whole
tendency of imperialism in the last decade leads
the international working class to see more
clearly and more tangibly that only the personal
stepping forward of the broadest masses, their
personal political action, mass demonstrations,
and mass strikes which must sooner or later open
into a period of revolutionary struggles for the
power in the state, can give the correct answer
of the proletariat to the immense oppression of
imperialistic policy. In this moment of armament
lunacy and war orgies, only the resolute will to
struggle of the working masses, their capacity
and readiness for powerful mass actions, can
maintain world peace and push away the
menacing world conflagration. And the more
the idea of May Day, the idea of resolute mass
actions as a manifestation of international unity,
and as a means of struggle for peace and for
socialism, takes root in the strongest troops of
the International, the German working class, the
greater is our guarantee that out of the world war
which, sooner or later, is unavoidable, will come
forth a definite and victorious struggle between
the world of labor and that of capital.
Excerpt from "The Idea of May Day on the March" - 1930
