the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
April 20, 2026
The Democratic Party is trying to use May Day to rally support for its candidates in the coming midterm elections. Many union leaderships are playing along.
Ever since the big immigrant rights May Day rallies in 2006 and 2007, Democratic politicians have tried to portray this holiday as a time to rally for themselves. They say, vote for them, and they will protect immigrants from the attacks Trump is carrying out.
But if the history of May Day shows anything, it is that workers can only count on themselves. This holiday was born out of the fight of workers for the 8-hour day—a fight in large part led by immigrant workers who had lost their illusions in the politicians of the two capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans.
In the early days of the industrial revolution, the number of hours squeezed out of workers in factories, mines, and worksites climbed and climbed, from 12 to 14 and even 16 hours a day, often six days a week. In the U.S. almost from the beginning, the bosses counted on a supply of desperate immigrants willing to take these jobs. For instance, refugees from starvation in Ireland could be forced to take any job at any hours—at first.
But workers—including desperate immigrants—did not simply accept these long hours. Already in 1835, Irish coal heavers led a general strike in Philadelphia, demanding a twelve-hour day with two hours for meals.
At the same time, in the South, slaves were forced to work extremely long hours—often as long as it was light enough to see, and sometimes into the night.
The fight of workers in the North and slaves in the South were connected from the beginning. As Karl Marx pointed out: “Every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California.”
Immediately after the Civil War, workers demanded that the Republican Party pass 8-hour-day laws. This was the party of Lincoln that had adopted pro-labor language to mobilize workers to fight in the Civil War. But the Republican Party then as now was a party of the bosses. They were not going to seriously restrict the hours of work. In Illinois, for instance, the Republican-led legislature passed a law in 1867 making the official work day eight hours. But it had a huge loophole: workers could work longer if they signed a contract to do so! In response to the passage of this law, workers launched a major strike in Chicago on May 1, 1867, demanding that employers go along with this “recommended” workday. But after a week, this strike was defeated.
The link between the fight against slavery and the fight of wage workers had a direct, human aspect. Two of the main leaders of the next phase of the workers movement were a couple, Albert and Lucy Parsons. Albert was white and Lucy was probably born a slave. As a teenager after the Civil War, Albert founded a newspaper and worked with the Republican Party in Texas, advocating for the rights of the freed slaves.
In 1873, he and Lucy brought this political experience and his skill as a typographer to Chicago, where they found many impoverished working people. In his autobiography, he said that he “discovered a great similarity between the abuse heaped upon these poor people by the organs of the rich the actions of the late Southern slave-holders in Texas toward the newly enfranchised slaves whom they accused of wanting to make their former masters ‘divide’ by giving them ‘40 acres and a mule’ that it satisfied me there was a great fundamental wrong at work in Society and in existing social and industrial arrangements.” They soon met immigrants, mostly from Germany, who had brought socialist and communist ideas with them, most importantly a man named August Spies, and both Lucy and Albert joined with these militant immigrant workers, both becoming lifelong opponents of the capitalist system.
In 1876, seeing how both major parties supported the interests of the capitalists, Albert Parsons participated in the founding of a “Workingmen’s Party of the United States.” He ran a few times as this party’s candidate, pointing out that both Democrats and Republicans are parties of the capitalists, the enemies of labor. This Workingmen’s Party argued that workers must take over control of the economy from the wealthy class that owns all the factories, mines, railroads, docks, and other things people need to make the necessities of life. At first, Albert Parsons and those who worked with him thought this might be possible by getting workers elected to run this government.
In 1877, workers across the country launched a massive strike, first against the railroads, then against all kinds of employers. In response, government forces at all levels moved against the working class. The U.S. army was put at the disposal of railroad companies. State militia units shot down strikers in Baltimore and Pittsburgh. In Chicago, the police did most of the dirty work, beating and killing strikers and breaking up their meetings.
In the aftermath, Albert and Lucy Parsons, August Spies, and a few others drew more revolutionary conclusions. They concluded that the government was fundamentally against the working class, and that workers would have to arm and organize themselves to defend their movement. They increasingly broke from the idea that workers could solve their problems through elections, since even the politicians that claimed to be on workers’ side had helped send in armed forces against them—or at best, had done nothing.
These revolutionaries turned to the international scene for ideas. They were inspired by the Paris Commune of 1871, where workers had seized power for ten weeks. They soon helped form a small group that considered themselves part of the International Working People’s Association of Marx and Engels.
The International was divided between people who considered themselves socialists or communists, and those who considered themselves anarchists. The Chicago branch of the International would later be labeled “anarchist” by the press, and they embraced that label, but they also called themselves socialists and communists and didn’t differentiate very much between these different sets of ideas.
Parsons, Spies, and their comrades formed an organization of militant activists that tried to bring their political ideas to the working class. They began publishing newspapers in Chicago in German and English that indicted the capitalists and their political servants, discussing the issues facing the working class both in the U.S. and internationally. They joined unions when they could, advocated for workers to defend themselves and organize, and even built workers’ self-defense clubs. They also organized social activities aimed at uniting the working class, including marches and picnics.
In 1885 and early 1886, the workers’ movement was growing throughout the country and especially in Chicago. And even though Chicago’s Democratic mayor Carter Harrison claimed to be on the side of the working class, the police under his control increasingly used violence to break strikes. But police violence did not quell the movement.
One of the workers’ main demands was for the eight-hour day. The militants of the International Working People’s Association helped generalize this demand among Chicago’s workers. They saw the fight for a shorter work day as part of the fight for revolution. Workers needed to have time to read, study, socialize, and organize. They inscribed on their banners “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!”
Under the pressure of the growing workers’ movement, the American Federation of Labor called for a general strike on May 1, 1886. This call was answered beyond their expectations—joined by thousands of workers they had never organized, as well as those in other unions like the Knights of Labor. Perhaps 350,000 workers struck nationally, with 40,000 or so going out in Chicago alone. The city was paralyzed.
Two days later, on May 3, some of these strikers gathered in front of McCormick Reaper Works, where the police had earlier broken picket lines. Reinforced with the masses of workers striking for the eight-hour day, McCormick strikers threw bricks and stones at the scab workers coming out of the plant. Management called the police—and the cops shot into the crowd of strikers, killing at least two and wounding many more.
The next day, August Spies, Albert Parsons and other leaders called for a meeting at the Haymarket west of downtown to protest these police murders. When police moved to disperse that meeting, an unknown person threw a bomb into the ranks of the cops. The police opened fire. At the end of the night, seven cops had been killed.
This played right into the hands of the city’s capitalists. The newspapers increased their already shrill attacks on the workers’ leaders as “vipers,” “serpents,” and “foreign traitors.” The police arrested hundreds of known labor leaders and smashed up meetings. Eight anarchist leaders were eventually prosecuted and four were hanged, including both Albert Parsons and August Spies, even though neither was accused of throwing the bomb. They were prosecuted on the basis of their ideas.
In the short run, this repression broke the May Day strikes, though many employers had been forced to grant the eight-hour day already. But soon, the workers movement rose again.
The First International of Karl Marx and of Albert Parsons and August Spies died. But just a few years later, in 1889, a new workers international was founded in Paris. At its first meeting, it declared May 1 a day for a “great international demonstration” in commemoration of the events in Chicago and in support of workers’ demands for the eight-hour day. In countries throughout the world, workers demonstrated.
Lucy Parsons would remain a militant of the working class for the rest of her life. She kept agitating and organizing working women to confront their problems. And she went on to help found the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905.
The preamble to the constitution of that organization reads: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth.”
Those words remain as true today as they were in 1886, or 1905. That is the true heritage of May Day.