[Image: The emblem of the original Red International of Labor Unions, aka the Profintern]

The first day of May is celebrated by laboring people throughout the world as International Workers’ Day. In the US, it is also a remembrance of the Haymarket affair and the 1886 general strike to establish the eight hour working day. On this day, everyone remembers the slogan which concludes the Communist Manifesto: “Workers of the world, unite!”

However, what defines the labor movement today is not unity, or militancy like was seen in the 1886 general strike, but splits and capitulationism. In every country, the labor movement is dominated by labor aristocrats who have divided the movement among themselves and compete with each other for the spoils that can be gained from selling out the workers to the bourgeoisie. In many countries, labor officials are directly employed by the state with the express purpose of preventing work stoppages, with our own country the US having many notorious examples of such state-sanctioned bribery. This in turn leads to the expansion of revisionism via the spoils of the labor aristocracy, further weakening both the international labor movement and the International Communist Movement, especially its left line represented by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties and Party Organizations.

Thus the organization of preparatory work towards a class-conscious labor international, a new Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), is a central issue for the labor movement and for the development of the International Communist Movement. The objective basis for the construction of a class-conscious labor international is primarily in the following tasks: instead of the masses meandering from sellout to layoff, provide correct guidance to new labor organizations and ensure the corruption of old labor organizations finds a proper outlet for exposure and opposition in the creation/expansion of new principled labor organizations; merge the revolutionary minority in the labor movement with the large current of spontaneous labor struggles and enhance the prestige of revolutionaries internationally by providing the labor movement with strong ideological guidance; and facilitate international labor action outside the framework of the International Labor Organization and the various national labor laws. In short, the internal contradiction is primary: if revolutionaries are able to cohere internationally around a strong labor line, then both the international workers’ movement and its conscious revolutionary element will be strengthened. The laboring masses will have leadership capable of steering the spontaneous movement correctly, which in turn will enable the masses to strike more powerful blows against imperialism, which is on the offensive.

On the other hand, we have seen in the last few decades how the internal contradiction is primary in the negative sense. In the US specifically, the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) (the American affiliate of RIM) never broke with the ideology of the New Left, which put forward a fundamentally liberal reformist line in the trade unions. (Recall the RCP’s support for Sadlowski in the United Steelworkers. It would suffice to compare the RCP’s platform for the labor movement with the Port Huron Statement produced by the liberal student org SDS.) Not only did this harm the labor movement in the US, which has only backslid since its post-WW2 peak, it was a precursor to the degeneration of the party itself. The fact is both “left” and right deviations on the labor question have flourished among Maoists and other revolutionaries internationally. The main “left” deviation is the idea that trade unions are obsolete forms of the class struggle, a position popularized by the French organization, Gauche Proletarienne, in the aftermath of the CGT’s betrayal of the masses (alongside the revisionist PCF) in 1968. The main right deviation continues to be acquiescence to the labor aristocratic leadership of the establishment unions and demanding the masses conform to the legal requirements of the bourgeois state. Failure to overcome these deviations essentially froze the American labor movement in place for several decades—but once these issues were brought to the forefront amid the struggle at UPS in 2022, it took fewer than three years for revolutionaries in the US to organize the New Labor Organizing Committee and establish affiliate organizations in some of the most important firms in the nation.

Naturally, there are many factors hindering the development of a class-conscious labor international. The most significant factor is the backwardness of the revolutionary movements in many countries, including the US, whose proletariat has not yet reconstituted its Party. In part the issue arises from the fact that the International Communist Movement is best organized in the semi-feudal nations where the rural masses remain the main force, and is least organized in the industrialized nations (both imperialist and non-imperialist) where the proletariat is both the main and leading force.

However, there is a lot of reason to be optimistic. The Brazilian comrades, Filipino comrades, and other revolutionary workers around the world are proving every day by example that independent unions can contend directly with the labor organizations of the bourgeoisie. The workers in these organizations have decades of experience doing principled labor organizing in contemporary conditions which is largely unknown to US organizers. The current offensive of American imperialism is drawing new masses into the struggle and further discrediting the old revisionist lines in the labor movement. Exploitation and oppression are driving immigration which in turn is facilitating the development of international solidarity. The state and yellow unions are completely unable to cope with the problems created by their own mismanagement of the labor movement. Objectively, a new Profintern is necessary to overcome the problems of the labor movement, and more people are realizing every day that only a complete break with the bourgeoisie can solve the problems faced by the masses.

The internal contradiction is primary, and for the labor movement this means the more revolutionaries cohere around a correct labor line the better for both the revolutionary and the labor movement. At the same time, the more the international and national revolutionary movement and its Left Line cohere around opportunism in the labor movement the worse off for both. Conducting the preparatory work necessary for the establishment of an international committee that will be tasked with organizing a series of international class-conscious labor conferences (similar to the provisional International Trade Union Council established by the Comintern) could centralize line struggle over the fundamental problems of the international labor movement and facilitate information-sharing across nations and industries. This would then lead to an International Class-Conscious Labor Congress. This Congress in turn could be a powerful beacon for the international proletariat and its vanguard and the labor movement if it were successful in setting up a leading body, a new Red International of Labor Unions, passing resolutions on various problems, and providing guidance to new organizers. This work could be both facilitated by work among the pre-existing international organizations of people’s struggles, as well as something that overcomes any existing international affiliations and unites all of class-conscious labor world-wide in a common effort. While the setting up of such conferences, and the work leading up to the Congress would require great efforts and will take many years, it a clear necessity which all would benefit from undertaking.

We have a situation in the US currently where many of the most essential workers are formally legally banned from striking (USPS, the education sector, public works) or de facto banned from striking for reasons of government-trade-union collusion against the workers (UPS, Amazon, any large firm represented by the AFL-CIO, etc.). At the same time, the Trump administration is openly hostile to the organs of liberal democracy, and in spite of this, the union officialdom is tailing the Trump administration on all the issues relevant to the masses. Under these conditions, there can be no middle road between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie: either with the proletariat and oppressed nations and their scientific ideology, Maoism, or with the imperialist bourgeoisie and their revisionist lackeys. As American imperialism is the main enemy of all toiling and oppressed people world-wide, the workers in the United States have a special responsibility to their comrades around the world. Support for the construction of a Class-Conscious Labor International is therefore an immediate question for all class-conscious trade-unionists in the US, and international unity of action and clear demarcation with the agents of imperialism and opportunism the most pressing issues for the labor movement this May Day.

Long Live International Workers Day!

Workers of the World Unite!

New Labor Press