Honouring the dead, fighting for the living

Lionel WIJESIRI

Four decades have sped by and old Piyasena undoubtedly would have left the living world by now, but I shall always recall him about this time of the year: the crotchety, silent loom-fixer in overalls with the wrench hanging at his side. I had just been introduced to the 20th century mysteries of our industrial civilization in the somewhat humble post of a trainee work-study analyst in one of our textile mills.

Old Piyasena was a wizard with the looms and the weavers liked him although they scarcely understood his strange quips which, I suspected, they regarded as the foibles of approaching senility.

"May Day is the workers' New Year Day," he said. "Man who works for a living starts his year on May Day."

Forty May Days have passed since old Piyasena told me that and I have come to believe he wasn't far from right. He had said, with a sweep of his arm that nobody here understood what May Day meant, but that the time would come when they, like him, would regard it as the year's beginning. They're a fresh crop of working people, he said, and they have a lot to learn. But learn they would, as he had learned. He was too old, now, and feeble, he indicated, to teach much, but there were younger men doing the job. May Day, he said, means freedom; all over the world it comes in the springtime and, in Sri Lanka, it comes just couple of weeks after Aluth Aurudda, when workers think of a better life.

Today I pay homage to old Piyasena, one of the obscure, unsung millions of Sri Lankan workers; he crops up in my mind every time May Day rolls around. I thought of him those many May Days when I saw our labouring men and women parading through the streets; I thought of him when the newspaper reports would come in from London, Moscow, Paris and Berlin, telling cryptically of the march of working men and women.

Reform

This year the workers across the world will commemorate May Day in one of the most turbulent and traumatic periods in history. The world is ravaged by wars, terrorism, bloodshed, economic catastrophe and unprecedented poverty, misery, disease and destitution.

The vast majority of the human race has been plunged into the abyss of deprivation, hunger and agonising suffering.

After the failure of the Keynesian model in the 1980s, free market enterprise or the 'trickle down' economy has led to the biggest financial crash in the history of capitalism. And the exploitation and drudgery of the working classes has worsened. The gains of the workers through immense struggles of the last 12 decades are being drastically slashed even in the advanced capitalist countries.

In the largest capitalist country of the world, the USA one percent of the richest households now own more wealth than the 95 percent of the rest of the population.

The same story is repeated throughout the Western world. India has 20 percent of world's population yet hosts about 40 percent of world's poverty and yet now there are more billionaires in India than in Japan.

In his latest book, 'Reformism and revolution', the renowned theoretician, Alan Woods gives a graphic description of this decline.

He writes, "The crisis of the capitalist system is reflected in a crisis of materialistic values, morality, religion, politics and philosophy. The mood of pessimism that afflicts the bourgeoisie and its ideologues in this period is manifested in the emptiness of its spiritual values."

Memory

In the context of these stirrings of the working class, May Day 2012 attains an extraordinary significance.

The unique feature of May Day is that it is perhaps the only anniversary that is commemorated all over the world. It cuts across the prejudices of race, colour, creed, religion, nationality, ethnicity and caste. Hence the real message of May Day is that of worker power. It is also the reaffirmation of the pledge for unity in struggle on a class basis against this system of exploitation and plunder.

Narrow trade unionism cannot offer any way out of this misery. Most of the corporate investment today is not labour intensive in character, but it is capital intensive.

This means it will create more unemployment rather than generating any new jobs. All the technological advances enhance exploitation rather than alleviating the plight of the workers.

The capitalist system cannot cope with the spirit of the new technology to which it has given rise. In the present era we live not only in a world economy, but most social and political relations have also been moulded by this crushing domination of the world market.

That explains why any struggle for worker rights cannot survive on a national basis for long.

Vision

Today the workers celebrate May 1st with a new meaning. Out of the demands that once loomed so large long time ago have today become realities.

The 8-hour day has become the standard of production; in every country universal suffrage is either realized or on the eve of its realization.

On the other hand, international disarmament is still a cherished desire, permanent peace an empty phrase, a dream that will not and cannot be fulfilled so long as super powers exist with greed for territories, markets and spheres of influence.

But arrayed against the precursors of new wars that sit in Western cities and in Washington is a working-class that comes to a truer understanding of worker brotherhood that grows more desperately ready to give its devotion to a cause that has become living reality.

It is because of these facts that the class-conscious workers demonstrate on May Day for redress with the deathless slogan: "All power to the workers!"

As long as the struggle of the workers for betterment of their lives continues, May Day will be the yearly expression of these demands.

And, one fine day, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate May Day in honour of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past.