May Day this year will, for the first time, be celebrated in the midst of a revolutionary situation—with an important detachment of the world proletarian army engaged in a direct mass struggle of huge proportions, fighting for their political rights. This circumstance should and will impart a special character to this year’s May Day. Not only in the sense that the fighting workers of the tsarist empire will be remembered with a few words of sympathy in speeches and resolutions at May Day gatherings everywhere. The current Russian Revolution, if it is not merely to be acknowledged with superficial sentiments of sympathy but also to be thought about seriously by the workers internationally, [must be] recognized as their own cause, which in a very special way is linked up with the real meaning of the international May 1 holiday. It is a major step toward the realization of the two basic ideas of the workers’ holiday, the eight-hour day, and socialism.
The eight-hour day became the main demand of the present revolutionary uprising in the Russian empire from the very start. Among the demands formulated by the Petersburg workers in the famous petition to the tsar, along with demands for basic political rights and liberties, the call for the immediate introduction of the eight-hour day figured prominently. In the general strike that broke out on an enormous scale throughout the empire in response to the Petersburg bloodbath, especially in Russian Poland, the eight-hour day was the most important social demand. Even later, in the second stage of the strike movement, when the general uprising as a political manifestation was temporarily suspended to make room for a long series of partial economic strikes, even here the demand for the eight-hour day was a red thread connecting the struggle for wages in all branches of industry; it set the fundamental tone for all the battles; the unifying element, and sounded the revolutionary note in all these separate struggles. Thus, the first period of the Russian Revolution up to now has manifested itself as a powerful demonstration in support of one of the two main demands of international May Day. Like no other example, it has shown how deeply the idea of the eight-hour workday has taken root in the social soil of the world proletariat, how very much the eight-hour day has become a question of life or death for the workers of all countries.*
No one in Russia gave any special thought in advance to linking the main political demands of the present revolution with the eight-hour day or even to placing the latter demand in the forefront. In all the agitation that had gone on previously, the main weight was placed, with a certain understandable one-sidedness, on purely political demands—the abolition of the autocracy, the calling of a Constituent Assembly, the proclamation of a republic, etc. Then the proletariat rose up en masse, and instinctively it immediately grabbed onto the main social demand, the eight-hour day, along with the political demands. The healthy instinct of the mass uprising, as though of its own accord, corrected the one-sidedness of the Social Democratic agitation, which had been focused politically, and by means of this purely proletarian international demand it transformed the formally “bourgeois” revolution into a consciously proletarian one. A democratic constitution, and even a republican constitution—those were slogans which in their historical content could just as well have been raised by the bourgeois classes. In a way, they actually are a kind of special adjunct belonging to “bourgeois democracy.” Going only that far, the workers of Russia would have stepped onto the political stage merely “on behalf of” the bourgeoisie. In contrast, the eight-hour day is a demand that can only be raised by the working class, and it is not linked either by tradition or in its social meaning to bourgeois democracy. On the contrary, it is hated even more by the main social vehicle of bourgeois democracy in all countries—that is, the petty bourgeoisie —than by the big industrial capitalists. Thus, in Russia, the eight-hour day is not a slogan expressing the “mutuality of interests” of the proletariat and all the progressive bourgeois elements, but rather it is a slogan expressing opposition, contradiction, and conflict—a class-struggle slogan. Inseparably linked with the political-democratic demands, it nevertheless immediately indicates that the proletariat of the tsarist empire in the present revolution has with full awareness transferred its function “on behalf of” the bourgeoisie into its opposite, expressing its antagonism toward bourgeois society, and it is doing so as a class, as part of its effort to achieve its own ultimate liberation.
And this is where the international significance of the Russian Revolution is also found, in connection with the other central idea of May Day—the idea of making socialism a reality. The connection between the two slogans is a very close and direct one. To be sure, the eight-hour day in itself is not yet “a little taste of socialism.” Formally speaking, it is merely a social reform on the basis of the capitalist economic system. When it is realized in part, as we have experienced here and there, the eight-hour day has not brought about any fundamental change of the wage labor system but has merely raised it to a higher and more modern level. But, as a general regulation, having international legal force, which is what we are demanding, the eight-hour day would at the same time be the most radical social reform that can be introduced within the framework of the existing social system. It is a bourgeois social reform, but, at the same time, it is a nodal point where quantity has already begun to change into quality—that is, a “reform” which in all likelihood the victorious proletariat standing at the helm of state power would also put into effect. That is why the Russian Revolution, in which the eight-hour-day demand is setting the basic tone in such a loud and clear way, is at the same time standing under the sign of social revolution. With that, it should by no means be said that as the next product of this revolution something like the beginning of the social overturn is to be expected. On the contrary, as the next conceivable phase of the present struggle there will in all likelihood be merely a fundamental political change in the tsarist empire, and probably it will be an extremely wretched bourgeois constitution that will make its entrance.
But, beneath the surface of this purely formal political change, there will take place just as surely a very deep-going social transformation, and that will be spurred on to an unimaginable extent. And, thereby, the international class struggle of the proletariat. The interconnection of political and social life among the various capitalist countries is such an intensive one nowadays that the repercussions of the Russian Revolution on the social situation in Europe, and indeed in all of the so-called civilized world, will be enormous—going much deeper than the international repercussions of earlier bourgeois revolutions. It is a fruitless task to try to foresee and make prophesies about the specific forms that these repercussions will or can take. The main task is, however, to be fully clear and conscious about the fact that as a result of the current revolution in the tsarist empire there will be a powerful acceleration of the international class struggle, and this will confront us with new tasks and tactical challenges during a time period that will by no means be a long one—it will confront those of us who live in the countries of “old” Europe with revolutionary situations and new tactics and tasks.
It is with this idea and in this spirit that May Day should be celebrated everywhere this year. It should show that the international proletariat has grasped the most important motto: “To be prepared is everything!”