Revolutionary Marxist Leader
1871-1919
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 imperial-
istic policy. In this moment of arma-
ment lunacy and war orgies, only the
resolute will to struggle of the work-
ing masses, their capacity and readi-
ness 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 unavoid-
able, 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 (1913)
