V. I.

Lenin

Comradeworkers! May Day is coming, the day when the workers of all
lands celebrate Their awakening to a class- conscious life, their
solidarity in the struggle against all coercion and oppression of man
by man, the struggle to free the toiling millions from hunger,
poverty, and humiliation. Two worlds stand facing each other in this
great struggle:
the world of capital and the world of labour, the world of
exploitation and slavery and the world of brotherhood and freedom.

Onone side stand the handful of rich blood-suckers. They have seized
the factories and mills, the tools and machinery, have turned millions
of acres of land and mountains of money into their private
property. They have made the government and the army their servants,
faithful watchdogs of the wealth they have amassed.

Onthe other side stand the millions of the disinherited. They are
forced to beg the moneybags for permission to work for them. By their
labour they create all wealth; yet all their lives long they have to
struggle for a crust of bread, beg for work as for charity, sap their
strength and health by back-breaking toil, and starve in hovels in the
villages or in the cellars and garrets of the big cities.

Butnow these disinherited toilers have declared war on the moneybags
and exploiters. The workers of all lands are fighting to free labour
from wage slavery, from poverty and want. They are fighting for a
system of society where the wealth created by the common labour will
go to benefit, not a handful of rich men, but all those who work. They
want to make the land and the factories, mills, and machines the common property of all toilers. They want to do away with the
division into rich and poor, want the fruits of labour to go to the
labourers themselves, and all the achievements of the human mind, all
improvements in ways of working, to improve the lot of the man who
works, and not serve as a means of oppressing him.

Thegreat struggle of labour against capital has cost the workers of
all countries immense sacrifices. They have shed rivers of blood in
behalf of their right to a better life and real freedom. Those who
fight for the workers’ cause are subjected by the governments to
untold persecution. But in spite of all persecution the solidarity of
the workers of the world is growing and gaining in strength. The
workers are uniting more and more closely in socialist parties, the
supporters of those parties are mounting into millions and are
advancing steadily, step by step, towards complete victory over the
class of capitalist exploiters.

The Russian proletariat, too, has awakened to a new life. It too
has joined this great struggle. Gone are the days when our
worker slaved submissively, seeing no escape from his state of
bondage, no glimmer of light in his bitter life. Socialism has
shown him the way out, and thousands upon thousands of fighters
have thronged to the red banner, as to a guiding star. Strikes
have shown the workers the power of unity, have taught them to
fight back, have shown how formidable to capital organised
labour can be. The workers have seen that it is off their labour
that the capitalists and the government live and get fat. The
workers have been fired with the spirit of united struggle, with
the aspiration for freedom and for socialism. The workers have
realised what a dark and evil force tbe tsarist autocracy
is. The work ers need freedom for their struggle, but the
tsarist govern ment binds them hand and foot. The workers need
freedom of assembly, freedom to organise, freedom for newspapers
and books, but the tsarist government crushes, with knout,
prison and bayonet, every striving for freedom. The cry
“Down with the autocracy!” has swept through the length
and breadth of Russia, it has been sounded more and more often
in the streets, at great mass meetings of the workers. Last
summer tens of thousands of workers throughout the South of
Russia rose up to fight for a better life, for freedom from police tyranny. The bourgeoisie and government trem bled at the
sight of the formidable army of workers, which at one stroke brought
to a standstill the entire industrial life of huge cities. Dozens of
fighters for the workers’ cause fell beneath the bullets of the troops
that tsarism sent against the internal enemy.

Butthere is no force that can vanquish this internal enemy, for the
ruling classes and the government only live by its labour. There is no
force on earth that could break the millions of workers, who are
growing more and more class- conscious, more and more united and
organised. Every defeat the workers sustain brings new fighters into
the ranks, it awakens broader masses to new life and makes them
prepare for fresh struggles.

Andthe events Russia is now passing through are such that this
awakening of the worker masses is bound to be even more rapid
and widespread, and we must strain every nerve to unite the
ranks of the proletariat and prepare it for even more determined
struggle. The war is making even the most backward sections of
the proletariat take an interest in polit ical affairs and
problems. The war is showing up ever more clearly and vividly
the utter rottenness of the autocratic order, the utter
criminality of the police and court gang that is ruling
Russia. Our people are perishing from want and starvation at
home—yet they have been dragged into a ruinous and senseless war for alien territories lying thou sands of miles
away and inhabited by foreign races. Our people are ground down
in political slavery—yet they have been dragged into a war
for the enslavement of other peoples. Our people demand a change
of political order at home— but it is sought to divert their attention by the thunder of guns at the other end of the
world. But the tsarist govern ment has gone too far in its
gamble, in its criminal squan dering of the nation’s wealth and
young manhood, sent to die on the shores of the Pacific. Every
war puts a strain on the people, and the difficult war against
cultured and free Japan is a frightful strain upon Russia. And
this strain comes at a time when the structure of police
despotism has already begun to totter under the blows of the
awakening proletariat. The war is laying bare all the weak spots
of the government, the war is tearing off all false disguises,
the

war is revealing all the inner rottenness; the war is making the
preposterousness of the tsarist autocracy obvious to all and is
showing everyone the death-agony of the old Russia, the Russia where
the people are disfranchised, ignorant and cowed, the Russia that is
still in serf bondage to the police government.

Theold Russia is dying. A free Russia is coming to take its
place. The dark forces that guarded the tsarist autocracy are
going under. But only the class-conscious and organised
proletariat can deal them their death-blow. Only the classconscious and organised proletariat can win real, not sham,
freedom for the people. Only the class-conscious and organised
proletariat can thwart every attempt to deceive the people, to
curtail their rights, to make them a mere tool in the hands of
the bourgeoisie.

Comradeworkers! Let us then prepare with redoubled energy for the
decisive battle that is at hand! Let the ranks of the Social-Democrat
proletarians close ever firmer! Let their word spread ever farther
afield! Let campaigning for the workers’ demands be carried on ever
more boldly! Let the celebration of May Day win thousands of new fight
ers to our cause and swell our forces in the great struggle for the
freedom of all the people, for the liberation of all who toil from the
yoke of capital!

Longlive the eight-hour day!

Longlive international revolutionary Social-Democracy!

Downwith the criminal and plundering tsarist autocracy!

---
Notes: