May Day 2023
Challenges Facing the Workers' Movement in 2023
On the occasion of May Day 2023, the Day of International Working Class Solidarity and Struggle, the Workers' Centre of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) sends its warmest greetings to the Canadian, Quebec and international working class and wishes all contingents and individuals well in defending their rights and moving society forward to the New.
How to become an effective organized force is the overall challenge facing the workers' movement in 2023: effective in defending workers' claims on the value they produce, effective in defending the rights of all, and effective in providing solutions that favour them to the problems facing society and the people. The people must empower themselves to make decisions on all issues that affect them and for the right to put those decisions into practice. To become an effective force, workers must continue to speak out and act in their own name on the issues, conditions and problems. This will open a path which reveals the measures which are necessary to take next.
Workers are fighting from coast
to coast to coast and have multiple concerns as they address the
actual conditions. Their concerns centre on the restructuring of
the state being implemented by those in control whereby narrow
private interests, through oligopolies which act as cartels and
coalitions, take over the decision-making power. The legislative
assemblies have become dysfunctional while the prerogative
powers of ministers are given a legal green light to rule by
decree. The integration of the Canadian economy into the U.S.
war economy leads to more handouts to pay the rich and the
refusal to negotiate collective agreements, with the dictate
instead of concessions, wages and working conditions. Permanent
emergency measures are now in place to suppress dissent. In the
name of stability, constitutional order and national security
the direction of the economy is set through ministerial
prerogative and decrees without the say and consent of the
people.
Workers are not enemies of stability, order, national security, peace or a healthy economy and environment. On the contrary, their lives are devoted to having a healthy social and natural environment. But to suggest that these things can be achieved by paying the rich, restructuring the state to make it even more hierarchical, unequal and an instrument of discrimination is disinformation meant to disorganize the working class and prevent it from transcending the limits of what the rulers and their constitution and laws say can and cannot be done. The measures being taken through ministerial prerogative are causing serious problems on every front.
In opposition and to open a way forward for society is the refusal of workers in all sectors of the economy to be made disposable, to be eliminated as an organized force, and to be silenced and criminalized for laying claims on what belongs to them by right and what is just in a modern society.
Speaking in one's own name, representing oneself and fighting for one's own rights within the context of the fight for a society that upholds the rights of all, is the greatest challenge facing the workers' movement today. This is empowering. It breaks the reliance on some so-called higher power to decide for the working people what to think and what they can or cannot do even if the measures decided do not favour the working class and people. Acting in a manner which empowers oneself opens the path for progress and is literally history-making. Since May Day 2022 the workers' movement has made headway in this respect. It provides the workers with confidence and smashes the humiliation of being passive in the face of the dangers inherent in the present and which lie ahead. The Workers' Centre of CPC(M-L) dedicates all its efforts in the coming year to cultivating this perspective and practice.
Long Live the Spirit and Fighting Unity of May
First!
Workers and Oppressed Peoples of All Countries, Unite!
This article was published in
Number 24 - May 1, 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/WF2023/Articles/WO10241.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca