Communists around the world observed a relatively subdued May Day holiday on Monday, with some large marches and plenty of vacations but few fireworks.
The most pugnacious May Day celebration was held in France, where workers have been protesting against a pension reform for months. The proposed reform merely raises the retirement age by two years, from 62 to 64, but outrage against it stems from President Emmanuel Macron’s government invoking a controversial article of the French constitution to impose the plan without a vote in parliament, where Macron lost his majority in the June elections.
Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted that protests against the pension reform began to wane in late April because striking workers were reluctant to keep sacrificing their pay and there is very little hope of reversing the law since it has already been ratified by France’s Constitutional Council. Labor organizers made a big push for vigorous demonstrations on May Day.
After warming up by waving red penalty cards at Macron when he attended a soccer match on Saturday, activists took to the streets on Monday, banging pots and pans and setting fires:
FRANCE – Lyon. The May Day protests begin.
— Bernie's Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) May 1, 2023
The black umbrellas carried by many of the protesters were intended to thwart the fleet of surveillance drones dispatched by police to cover the demonstrations and identify those who engaged in vandalism or violence.
French police said they expected half a million participants in rallies around the country on May Day, which would be larger than the turnouts at rallies in recent weeks, but considerably smaller than the huge rallies conducted early in the battle over pension reforms. Labor leaders said the Communist holiday was their best chance to demonstrate the strength and determination of their movement, matched against Macron’s refusal to withdraw a reform he said was vitally necessary.
“May Day is going to be one of the biggest May Days on social issues in the past 30 or 40 years,” predicted Laurent Berger, leader of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor. “On the morning of May 2, we will decide what to do.”
Left-wing French lawmaker Francois Ruffin urged all French citizens to “go out and catch the sun, to tan while pushing their baby strollers in the streets of Paris and the rest of the country,” in hopes of ensuring “2023 goes down in the country’s social history.”
Meanwhile, Cuba’s Granma struggled to romanticize May Day as a “deep hug” for workers, as enthusiasm for the holiday is not running high in a country that has become the poorest state in Latin America thanks to communism.
As Granma grudgingly admitted, Havana had to cancel its compulsory May Day festivities due to a fuel shortage. Shipments of refined fuel from the countries that normally prop up the communist basket case have not been forthcoming, and the communists have not invested in maintaining Cuba’s own refining infrastructure, leaving the island with less than two-thirds of the fuel it normally consumes every day.
“We still don’t have a clear idea of how we are going to get out of this,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel admitted, a grim slogan to carry into the annual celebration of communism’s supposed economic might. Even smaller local May Day demonstrations that required less fuel to organize were reportedly canceled due to poor weather, although Granma hoped they could be rescheduled for Friday, which will be declared a “work recess” to increase participation in delayed parades.
“We must sing to Cuba, which knows how to preserve its joys when murderous fences are placed around it with invisible strings,” Granma whined, blaming Cuba’s problems on outside forces, as usual.
China has been having its own version of the French pension protests, and a favorite tactic of elderly demonstrators is bellowing the Communist anthem at officials they accuse of abandoning Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong’s ideals.
Communist dictator Xi Jinping issued a May Day proclamation on Sunday that had very little to do with communism, as summarized by China’s state-run Global Times:
Xi called on the working people to foster an ethos of work, foster respect for model workers, and promote quality workmanship.
He asked them to work diligently and boldly engage in innovation to make solid progress in advancing Chinese modernization, encouraging them to play a leading role on the new journey to build China into a stronger country and realize national rejuvenation.
Xi urged Party committees and governments at all levels to protect workers’ legitimate rights and interests, earnestly help them solve their problems and difficulties, and promote a social atmosphere in which work and working people are treated with reverence and great respect.
Xi’s May Day message sounded more like a DEI seminar at a typical 2023 U.S. corporation than a fiery communist battle cry, and his subjects appeared to be more interested in flooding Macau casinos to gamble than marching for collectivist ideology.
Macau officials claimed a record number of visitors over the May Day holiday thanks to the end of coronavirus restrictions and a huge number of travelers coming from the increasingly grim and repressive Hong Kong. Ironically, one of Macau’s biggest problems on May Day was a shortage of laborers to service the tidal wave of visitors hoping to get rich at the gambling tables.
Although South Korea owes its phenomenal standard of living to freedom and capitalism, as President Yoon Suk-yeol noted in his address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress last week, South Korean labor unions managed to put together a few big rallies for May Day.
The militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) took the occasion to announce it would stage a general strike in July to press its demands for higher wages and shorter working hours. KCTU members chanted slogans in Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square, demanding the resignation of Yoon and his administration.
“A union member attempted to set himself on fire in Chuncheon this morning since the government has oppressed union activities. The stronger the oppression, the harder we will work,” a KCTU leader told rally participants.
The less militant of South Korea’s two major union organizations, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), held a more restrained May Day march with about 50,000 participants to oppose labor reforms it dislikes, including an occupation safety law that was revised last year to expand the range of disasters in which supervisors could be prosecuted for negligence.
FKTU also called for a higher minimum wage and protection for workers’ pensions — a running theme of labor marches around the world — as shifting demographics make it difficult for governments to provide hefty pension benefits for a growing elderly population. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Federation of Public Officials Union complained that civil servants were not given May Day as a holiday so they could participate in rallies.
Kenyan President William Ruto used May Day to walk a political tightrope, as the Kenyan opposition threatened to resume nationwide demonstrations against high costs of living and alleged election fraud.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga instructed his Azimio La Umoja Party to halt demonstrations in early April but said they would resume after the Muslim holiday of Ramadan if sufficient progress is not made in talks with Ruto’s government. Ramadan concluded last week.
“Today we have come to the conclusion that as we had feared, the commitment is lacking on the part of Kenya Kwanza,” Odinga said last Monday, referring to Ruto’s governing party.
Ruto attended May Day observances in the company of Francis Atwoli, secretary-general of the influential Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU). Atwoli asked workers to give Ruto’s government a chance to address their concerns and warned that destabilizing the government with protests could harm the economy and eliminate jobs.
Atwoli’s advice could be a tough sell to unhappy Kenyan civil servants, who have not been paid since mid-April. The Ruto administration said it was “broke” and could not pay public employees because it was obliged to repay huge government loans racked up by Ruto’s predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta.
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