The Past Ten Years of International Workers Day in the US

Editorial Board

2025 marks a decade of Maoist activity in the US around International Workers Day. In this editorial we will examine the past ten years to extract lessons of the successes and mistakes in combatively commemorating the most important date of the international proletariat. What follows is compiled from researching materials provided by the movement at this time, monopoly media reports, and consultation with attendees and responsible comrades.

The previous sequence of the Maoists in the US spanned for almost a decade, from late 2014 to early 2022, and the current sequence has been one of even greater complexity. The earliest days of the movement emerge in great difficulty, and it is no coincidence that the emergence occurs at the same time the revisionists of the so-called “Revolutionary Communist Party” formally abandoned Maoism as the commander and guide, having essentially never taken it up. The mask had fallen from the rotten face of the “RCP” when they announced “the New Synthesis of Communism” and systematized their reactionary and revisionist positions. Their rotten influence begins to be confronted, and the new generation taking up the banners of Maoism had to undergo a difficult process of overcoming the vile ideological inheritance imparted upon them, and they understandably suffered from amateurism and lacked experience.

May 1, 2015 was the first International Workers Day of this new movement. This date also coincided with the high profile announcement of the indictment of the Baltimore police officers who murdered Freddie Gray, a young Black man, a case which had grabbed national attention during the mass movement against police terror. The comrades in Austin, Texas, took it upon themselves to combine the international proletarian holiday with the demands of the mass movement and set to form a coalition to organize May Day for Freddie Gray.

Mass demonstrations of a militant character were almost non-existent in this city for a long time, and every effort of the masses to express themselves beyond the limit of ruling class acceptability, the law and order of the rich, were snuffed out by opportunists, liberals, and revisionists, mainly followers of the reactionary counter-revolutionary Leon Trotsky. The assorted trash of revisionism could only conceive of the celebratory aspect of May 1^st, they rejected the combative aspect all together, and by doing this, always sought to turn the proletarian holiday into capitulation by organizing strictly legal and depoliticized social gatherings, often on the first weekend following the actual date of International Workers Day, so as to not interfere with the work day. This social-democratic capitulation and domesticated reversal of what May Day is would come to an end in Austin this year.

The IWD coalition led by Maoists rejected hiring protest “marshals” (read: police in plain clothes) and refused to seek a permit from the city on the basis that the people do not require the permission of their oppressors to march. Propaganda and formal event information contained images of the youth in Baltimore destroying a police car; the organizers claimed they chose this to set a tone that would permit the people to express themselves and allow their creative combativity. They called for the city of Austin to be disrupted and shut down in solidarity with the uprising in Baltimore.

The following march effectively met the political objectives: to disrupt the day-to-day normalcy in the city and force attention onto the fact that Baltimore was not an isolated event, but that the rebellion there inspired the people everywhere. The march took place for hours, the police were mainly unable to restrain it, hundreds of people shut down streets, a flag was burned, speeches were made, and the event culminated with a confrontation against police in a short skirmish as marchers attempted to take over the highway.

In spite of the successful and necessary aspects of the event, the amateurishness and infantile deviations could also be witnessed. The march suffered from a lack of strong political work among the working class and progressive masses, and the influence of anarchism and “left” deviations were expressed in low language, cursing, and the wide promotion of masks. Organizationally, the new Maoists presented an incorrect conception of the united front, taking the slogan “it is right to rebel” to mean close work with anarchists, purely on the basis of opposing the police and without a strategic perspective on organizing working people on a class basis. Nonetheless, the successes outweighed the mistakes and a yearly tradition would be born in this city, to observe May 1^st with combat and resistance.

The following year, 2016, would again have a large demonstration, although not as large due to the lack of media attention that was present the previous year. International Workers Day of 2016 intended to focus on the predominantly working class neighborhoods of Austin’s East Side which were being remolded in the interests of capital as playgrounds for the ultra-rich, resulting in scattering families and neighbors and erasing the local culture. The march confronted the bars and patrons of Austin’s Rainy Street, which were built in the houses of evicted working Latin American people to offer high-priced alcohol and craft beer to the new wealthy tech-industry elites. The ideological development of the movement still suffered and presented a number of misconceptions inherited from postmodernism and revisionism.

Particularly present was the lasting influence of the Avakianite position on the national question, which worked in tandem with postmodern identity politics and confused but well-meaning revolutionary nationalism. The amateurism in politics, propaganda and organization was allowed to thrive under the ideological mistakes being made. The anarchist tactics and costumes maintained their presence and had a similarly alienating effect on the people who the marches intended to rally and serve. In an improvement over the previous year, greater efforts were made to link the popular struggles to the struggles for wages taking place, with the inclusion of workers who were fighting for them. However, these were treated as equal to any other conflict and the specific importance of labor struggles was not recognized correctly. The role of identity politics and the useless fumes of vogue “left activism” made dirty fingerprints all over the action.

In spite of the accumulation of defects and the left-in-form right-in-essence deviations, the march represented the accumulation of a solidifying core of active elements generating a Maoist effort which was to continue to face greater complexity. The movement was beginning to shape and find its own independence and self-reliance. Soon the mass movement would go into full swing, following the first presidential campaign and the election of the right-wing extremist Donald Trump as the top boss of US imperialism.

International Workers Day 2017 would follow in the steps of the two previous years, where young militants had to struggle against the forces of reaction to make every step, but represented a leap in terms of being forged in fire. May Day 2017 was intended to focus on US imperialism but its political plans were quickly derailed by the combined forces of civilian reactionaries and revisionism.

Revisionist and right-opportunist elements dissatisfied with the propaganda success of the previous years, afraid for their own skins, formed their own coalition in opposition to the Red May Day march and organized an event called “May Day All Day” which was intended to hold a picnic at the Texas State Capitol. This appealed to and oriented toward NGOs and activists in the pocket of the city. It situated itself completely within the bounds of bourgeois acceptability and working class domesticity.

The Red March persisted in its plans without an understanding of the correct organizational methods and analysis of forces. On the one hand, they were correct to persist in the tradition of combative May 1^st marches; on the other, they underestimated the enemy and did not take enough precaution in planning.

The 2017 action also suffered significantly from the “left” deviation of putchism, as it embarked to carry out an openly armed demonstration. The demarcation of left and right regarding armed marches is not a question of arms primarily, but of how armed marches are organized and for what purpose. While apparently adventurist, the method used in 2017 was actually rightist and conservative. The use of open-carry tactics hinders in every respect the use of revolutionary violence, it represents passive defense and rejects active-defense, concepts put forward by Chairman Mao in his great military strategy.

In spite of the conditions, the coalition failed to prepare for defense against fascists and instead prepared only for a march. Contrary to the claims of the revisionists, the march was not reckless in the sense of taking to the streets. It was correct to take to the streets instead of the capitulation and fear-mongering promoted by the right-opportunists and revisionists. The right-wing extremists lead by organized fascists, directly following Trump’s election, were unfolding a reactionary plan to secure the ability to march in cities with a sizable number of left-wing people and liberal governments, including Berkeley, CA, Portland, OR, and Austin, TX. What resulted was that the May Day march of 2017, numbering around only 100, was confronted by an equal number of armed reactionaries and fascists. This threw the police into a panic, as the old-state had been for months predicting armed struggle between the left-wing and right-wing political movements.

The Maoists had yet to solidify their activists in political education and there was a miserable understanding of philosophy; hence, those in attendance were unable to make an on-the-spot analysis of the contradictions. This created another set of contradictions: what began as a contradiction between the red IWD march and the reactionaries under fascist leadership degenerated when IWD marchers began focusing on insulting the police. March leadership put a stop to this, but too late to prevent exacerbating the contradiction between protesters and the police. Before this, the police presented a facade of impartial reactionary liberal-bourgeois-democrats, but following this, broke ranks and openly sided with the fascists, defying their orders as their commanders looked the other way. The police allowed the fascists free movement through their lines to pass off attacks, nearly resulting in exchange of fire. At the same time, the police would run interference for fascists and prevent them from being attacked.

Just as the activists were not politically prepared, they lacked physical preparedness as well—there was no adequate training for holding a line, for marching against physical attack, and for planned maneuvers. Nonetheless, the march went on against great opposition and the comrades would learn valuable lessons on the spot. The march leaders prevented arrests or serious injury to the participants and every step taken was a battle against the forces of reaction and revisionism. In spite of the odds, the march leaders managed to safely extract all participants under armed guard, preventing and destroying fascist plans of ambush. 2017 would serve as a turning point in the seriousness of the movement in terms of political and organizational preparation. The Left would begin a protracted struggle to consciously apply militarization. The putchist errors were not immediately overcome, but the events of May Day 2017 would deepen the two-line struggle in this regard. The action would be mainly beneficial to the movement and in no way represented a defeat.

Immediately following the march, the movement entered a period of intense combat with the fascists and reactionary movements organized around Trump in the context of increased repression. This led to conditions that allowed the next year’s march to be co-opted by the Right disguised as “Left.” In collusion with right-wing populists and civilian fascist outfits, the state began targeting the movement on two fronts: surveillance and arrest of activists suspected of taking a leading role, and civilian reactionaries seeking to attack the open work among the people.

From the beginning of 2018, numerous suspected communists were rounded up and saddled with absurd charges that required legal and political defense. This created an opportunity for the Rightists in the movement to take over planning May 1^st activity. The first planning meetings organized by the Left included more people than the actual march the Right Opportunists managed to take control of. The logic of the Right in leftist dress was that the repression felt in the movement meant taking up a line of absolute secrecy regarding the march. Long time activists, comrades, and the masses were kept in the dark, and the Right sought to eliminate participation with secrecy and ended up with a small band put at even greater risk of attack. All in all there were less than 40 in attendance, about ¼ of the previous years which never numbered less than 100.

Even with the maneuvering and treacherous betrayal carried out by the Right, the Left line of political and organizational preparation could be seen among the few who managed to attend the IWD march of 2018. The marchers kept formation and produced more advanced propaganda and slogans. The march was held in a then-predominantly working class popular neighborhood. In spite of the Rightist efforts to keep the masses from participating, the march saw a lot of support from the local people. Importantly, the tradition of Red May Day could not be ended by the Rightists within the Maoist movement. As for the White May Day, the revisionists had given up their pretense of organizing anything.

The small march still managed to outmaneuver the police and prevent getting trapped or corralled. The presentation was more serious than the previous years, though political infantilism can still be seen in the reports written by the Left and the Right. Near the end of the march, and after the police had given up and lost sight of the marchers, three reactionaries—members of the “Proud Boys”—turned up to attack and harass marchers. Instead of striking a blow, the Right promoted pacifism. Despite outnumbering the fascists ten to one, they ordered the comrades to suffer the attacks and insults under the backward notion of “security,” exposing how their line of passive defense offers no defense at all.

In 2019, IWD actions were carried out under the banner of Maoism in multiple cities. Austin held its 5^th consecutive march successfully and LA faced a mass arrest. Since the focus of our examination has been on IWD marches, we will only examine the marches in Austin and LA without denying the significance of the smaller actions and successful agitation held around the country.

2019 marked the observed 100 year anniversary of the Communist Party of the USA and the message of Party reconstitution was on the forefront of that year’s events. In Austin, the influence and leadership of the Rightists had been beaten back, the professionalism and discipline increased, and the struggle against putchism developed but not overcome completely, presenting itself in new forms. The Rightist, capitulationist, and useless line of passive defense had been defeated. The number of marchers had significantly increased but not yet overcome the damage done by the Right over the previous year. In response, the police amassed unprecedented numbers in an attempt to rout the march. They brought civilian reactionaries in tow with feeble dreams of preventing observation of IWD.

Mass participation in this year’s march was increased, and the nearly constant attempts to keep marchers out of the street on the part of the police were thwarted. In their desperation, the police commandeered a city bus and attempted to make a blockade, but to no avail. This year’s march had politically matured, centering the slogans of reconstitution and the calls for a Unified International Maoist Conference, which later would give birth to the International Communist League. Large images of the Great Leaders of the International Communist Movement—Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Chairman Gonzalo—were prominent. Due to a miscalculation by police, the march came into contact with the civilian reactionaries, resulting in one being hospitalized and the other less seriously injured. Three marchers were arrested and never convicted. The spirit of internationalism and working class militancy was more developed than any of the previous years.

In LA, the comrades suffered a significant blow when the police kettled and arrested 24 demonstrators, including two journalists. The march began at Mariachi Plaza, a site of cultural importance to the mainly working class area of Boyle Heights, and continued to take over nearby intersections. After comrades provided inspirational and political speeches to the local people, linking communism with the struggles for their daily demands, the police began amassing their forces and preparing to make arrests. As the marches progressed to the so-called “arts-district”, the police became agitated, dispatching cruisers and a helicopter against the march. This is where putchist deviations led to the relatively small and outnumbered march to escalate things: lacking analysis but not courage, the marchers began setting off smoke devices and splattering paint on the decadent and unwelcome art galleries and breweries which had encroached on their neighborhood.

It was only at the end of the march when the small crowd that was left began to disperse that the police launched their trap and arrested 24 comrades. The police used the pretext of “vandalism” and “assault” to justify the arrests, which they had been planning since they heard the speeches given to the people. The arrests did not dampen the morale of the comrades, who even in handcuffs continued to chant the slogans of reconstitution. The release of all comrades was secured later that night, and in spite of everyone being arrested for “rioting”, the police failed to secure charges. They did, however, seize all the electronic devices—including phones and cameras—of those arrested in what some participants denounced as an effort to surveil the movement. Further charges never manifested and no one was ever convicted of anything.

From the two marches in 2019, one is able to gauge the struggle against putchism and the purely military viewpoint. It is worth noting that while anarchist costumes persisted in LA, in Austin some took to dawning military attire—in the former case putchism continued in the old drag, and in the other it only persisted in a new costume. Considering that the two-line struggle would continue but not fully defeat the mentality of roving rebel bands, it is important to note that ideological developments had been made, and the discipline and morale of the marches in both cities had increased. Things were developing in a proletarian direction.

The final year of the first Trump administration represented the culmination of the general economic crisis of imperialism, a cyclical crisis of overproduction exacerbated by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. These objective conditions had an effect on the subjective forces and represented the highest level of activity in the past ten years. Within the movement there emerged two lines. One considered the pandemic as the cause of the economic crisis and considered the threat of illness significant enough to halt large protests and reorient the work toward public health programs. This view manifested in different ways among activists generally, ending IWD commemorations almost everywhere in the US. The other view was that the existing crisis, predicted for at least four years and made worse by the pandemic, indicated the explosiveness of the masses and called for continuing street demonstrations. Soon enough the masses would spontaneously take to the streets in some of the largest uprisings in US history, but May First in Austin proved to be the only sizable march of its kind at that time.

Many of the defects of the marches of the previous year had been overcome: militarist garb was rejected, passive defense was replaced by active defense, and the march showed a high level of discipline and preparation with clear propaganda and slogans. A spirit of militancy and internationalism was high. In spite of the overwhelming presence of police and their non-stop efforts to prevent the march, march leaders managed to keep discipline and maintain ranks. The organizers had even prepared in advance for the police efforts to split the march; when police plans were enacted, the demonstrators were able to quickly reassemble. The march ended at the local jail in an act of solidarity with a group of activists arrested at another action—activists taking part in a rent strike had organized a “car slowdown” protest which was unable to prevent dozens of arrests. Regardless of disagreements on tactics, the Red March and the progressive activists came together to support the arrested, and political speeches were delivered.

Politically Degenerate Right Liquidationists (PDRL), capitulationist and reactionary, today portray this victorious IWD demonstration as a form of “abuse.” They hold fast to the scare tactics of imperialism by claiming that demonstrators were put at risk for traveling and assembling for the demonstration. Instead of proletarian militancy, these elements promote bourgeois self-preservation, postmodernist “self-care”, and a typical aversion to hard struggle and self-sacrifice. The Menshevik position today was in germination in response to the high level of activity in 2020.

2021 would be the final large IWD demonstration of the previous sequence in the Maoist movement in the US. It was as well-organized as the previous year and slightly larger. The police were ill-prepared at the start of the march, which gained support and solidarity from local workers who gave a fist salute as the procession passed them. In an even greater show of solidarity, construction workers used a cement truck to create a blockade against the police who were harassing the demonstration. The march received more solidarity from workers along the route who would bring them water and salutes with a show of support.

Out of paranoia that the march could shut down traffic on the local arterial highway, the police instigated violence and made about 8 arrests. Using anti-riot weapons, they tried and failed to surround and kettle the demonstration. The marchers broke free and increased the volume of their revolutionary chants and slogans. After scaling back the police attack and countering police violence, the march proceeded through a heavy thunderstorm. At a planned rallying point, speeches on the international communist movement, the imperialist crisis and the heroism of the masses over the previous year of rebellion were made. The crowd moved to the nearby jail to show solidarity with their captured comrades, and another physical altercation with police occurred.

In early 2022, the movement suffered a major split, which in turn resulted in more splits. At the heart of this there are two worldviews: that of the international proletariat and that of other classes. On the one hand, the left—which had made its own deviations—historically failed to conduct the proper struggle against the Right, leading to complexity and confusion, and a temporary victory for historical Rightists, who now had an advantage. Most of these would expose themselves in short order as anti-communist reactionaries, becoming Politically Degenerate Right Liquidationists. In Austin, the historically-established Rightists would unpack their old political lines and dive head first toward revisionism of the doctrine and ideology of the international proletariat. The left, in a state of disorganization and struggling to rectify its errors and overcome deviations, was unable to continue the years-long tradition of Red IWD marches. Nonetheless, the Red Flag has continued to be unfurled every year since in the form of agitation and propaganda actions.

The Right, for its part, still had some credit among the movement, and was ingratiating itself in order to preserve its revisionism. They were now able to do what they had always wanted—a whole lot of nothing. Social Democratic practice of the Menshevik variety and the historical methods of local Trotskyite activity replaced the Red March. The Right combined their transgressions of the past and organized another White May Day, as usual in a park, completely within the cage of legality, with only their close friends invited, sure to cause no problems for the ruling class and police. Attendees claim that this May Day “kick back” was depoliticized, with the exception of passing attacks on Maoist unity. In the following years the local Right Opportunists, capitulationists and revisionists have had no IWD celebrations, and have gone in increasingly unhinged and postmodern directions.

The complex situation befalling the Maoists in this country has not halted their activity for IWD; even the dispersal, disagreements and repression of the state have not stopped them from observing the red proletarian day. All over and on multiple sides of the dispersal, genuine comrades have gathered every year to hold public or private events, in steady preparation for the days when large Red marches return and the Red Flag soars. There remains a dedication to the ideology, and increasing groups who proximate it or are struggling to understand it, uphold it, and apply it.

The present situation, the one in which this complexity unfolds, is characterized by the struggle to unite under Maoism. 2025 marks the 10 year anniversary of the first Maoist-led march in 2015, giving symbolic importance to this struggle. The reality is this: the proletariat of the US demands the reconstitution of its Party, capable of leading the class struggle on this front, as part of and in service to the World Proletarian Revolution. Struggle is absolute, and the line of demarcation is increasingly between those who desire unity and struggle for it and those who do not desire unity, unable to struggle for it, instead desiring the preservation of dispersal.

Photo: Tribune of the People, May 1, 2021.

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