May Day is a holiday for the common working people that goes back to ancient times. Today, it is known as International Workers’ Day, recognized in countries all over the world — but not in the United States. The irony runs deep: the modern identity of International Workers’ Day was born in the U.S., yet the country that birthed it refuses to claim it. That erasure is not accidental. It reflects a capitalist war on workers — and on May Day — that goes back to the origin of capitalism itself.
The history of May Day is coming back to life in the U.S., to shake and break the power of the billionaire class, carried by a working class that has had enough. United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain has called on all unions to align their contracts to expire on April 30, 2028 — setting the stage for a May Day strike that can shift the balance of power toward the many, not the few.
A Celebration of Our Common Life
May Day began as a celebration of spring, of fresh green, of flowers, and of the growth and abundance nature freely gives. Historian Peter Linebaugh calls this the “Woodland Epoch of History,” a time before mass deforestation, before the mass enclosure of the land into someone’s private property. People “went a-Maying” into the woods, performed outdoor theater, enjoyed each other’s company and “all that is free and life-giving in the world. … Whatever else it was, it was not a time to work. … Therefore, it was attacked by the authorities.” (Linebaugh, “The incomplete, true, authentic and wonderful history of May Day”).
These attacks were part of the early development of capitalism in the 16th and 17th century — the same era as the mass burning of women as witches across Europe, the brutal dispossession of indigenous peoples in the Americas, the growth of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the enclosure of the commons, which turned shared wealth into private property owned by the few.
In England, early capitalists had to put a lot of effort into forcing people into factories. As Linebaugh writes, “attacks on May Day were a necessary part of the wearisome, unending attempt to establish industrial work discipline.” The English Puritans treated May Day revelry as unholy, abolishing the holiday outright in 1644 to extend the hours of labor. Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts a similar story playing out in the American colonies in his historical fiction “The May-Pole of Merry Mount.” Capitalism enclosed not only land but time, turning it into endless toil for the profit of the few.
Despite attempts at repression, our ancestors kept May Day alive into the Industrial Revolution, when it became International Workers’ Day.
The Rise of International Workers’ Day
By the late 1800s in the industrialized United States, ten- to sixteen-hour workdays and six-day workweeks were the norm. In 1866, the National Labor Union — the first nationwide labor federation in the country — adopted the demand for an eight-hour day, as did the International Workingmen’s Association, known today as the First International. The slogan: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will.”
1886 became “the year of the great uprising of labor.” In the United States, 400,000-500,000 marched for the eight-hour day. The Knights of Labor in Louisville, Kentucky, marched 6,000 strong — Black and white — into parks that were officially closed to Black people. The Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada — the immediate predecessor of the American Federation of Labor (A. F. of L.)–proclaimed May 1 the day “that eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor.”
Some who fought for more time in our lives lost all the time they had. On May 3, 1886, Midwestern members of Molders Union Local 23 — who made the industrial reaping machines that fed the nation — stood on strike for the eight-hour day. Several were shot and murdered by police.
The next day, a crowd of several thousand people gathered in solidarity in Haymarket Square, Chicago, to listen to speeches about socialism, anarchism, the emancipation of labor. Police — about 200 of them — waited until 10:30 p.m., when only a couple hundred people remained, then violently attacked the workers. No one knows who threw the stick of dynamite, but in the chaos, multiple police were killed, as well as a few workers.
The “justice system” decided it needed someone to blame. A harsh crackdown on union workers ensued. Eight anarchists were arrested and convicted of “conspiracy, with no evidence. Three languished behind bars, one committed suicide in prison, and for the crime of believing the working class should live, four were hanged. The conviction was widely regarded as a frame-up. In fact, in 1893, Illinois Governor Altgeld pardoned the three living Haymarket Martyrs, saying they “were not proven to be guilty of the crime.”
Lucy Parsons, the widow of one of the Martyrs, worked to spread their cause far and wide. Her efforts helped establish International Workers’ Day, a day that was adopted by the Knights of Labor, the A. F. of L., and the Second International. Thanks to the sacrifices of our ancestors, the eight-hour day became a legal standard in the U.S., and workers had more of their own time.
Workers of the World, Unite!
This International Workers’ Day, the Trump regime, backed by “Christian” nationalists, crosses borders in the most predatory ways possible — attacking the people of Venezuela and Iran, blowing up fishing boats in the Caribbean. Tech lords rake in riches for enshittifying the internet, while ICE and police make martyrs of Latine workers who cross borders to productively contribute to society.
All wealth is either given by nature or produced by work. Wealth does not come from landlords and rent-seekers collecting money simply because they already own things. May Day — International Workers’ Day — is a day for the workers of the world to help each other claim the good things of life that the billionaire parasites hoard for themselves.
Karl Marx wrote, “For a thing to be sold, it simply has to be capable of being monopolized and alienated” (Capital, Volume Three). Since the capitalists of the sixteenth century tried to take May Day, they have never stopped taking. Parasitic billionaires still do everything they can to enclose us, to own us, to separate us from ourselves and each other and to reap the benefits at our expense. Elon Musk dreams of owning colonies on Mars only because he dreams of owning the very air we breathe.
During the European colonization of Southern Appalachia, a few rich and favored individuals monopolized the best land, setting the pattern of poverty and elitism we all know. Today, Northeast Tennessee elites want us to subsidize the electricity costs of their data centers, they force us to pay to be spied on by Flock cameras, they criminalize homelessness while housing prices skyrocket, they steal our time with low-wage labor that forces us to get second jobs or starve.
We live under a dictatorship of the billionaires, and we demand freedom.
This is why the UAW’s momentum from their phenomenal 2023 contract victory matters: convincing other unions to align their contracts to expire on April 30, 2028, is a powerful move: economic, political, and a show of solidarity all at once. A coordinated May Day action in a presidential election year could change everything.
Unions, DSA, Indivisible, and many more organizations are building toward that moment. We need all of you to help make that happen — starting today.
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