First Published: The Worker, for Hawaii, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 20, 1978.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
Remarks and excerpts from a speech given by Gene Parker, of the Revolutionary communist Party at Aala Park.
On behalf of the Revolutionary Communist Party, I’m proud to be here taking part in this year’s May Day celebration. Proud because the working class which has built this world, the farms and factories and all this wealth with its hands and its minds– today we are proclaiming to our slave masters that the brawn and brains we used to build your empire we’re now determined to use to break the chains which have bound us under your rule for too many years.
Yes, these May Day celebrations are small in comparison to the great numbers and strength of our class. But throughout the country, in every major industrial center, workers like us are uniting. We represent the crest of a mighty wave which will one day roll on and over this system of wage slavery.
It is us here today and those like us around the country that the task falls to take the anger and the hatred that our fellow workers have toward this system and take this hatred and arm it with a deep understanding of why we have to live this way, whose fault it is and what we can do about it.
There are two roads we can follow. One is the low road, to say: “Well, that’s too hard to deal with and let’s just deal with the easy problems, just with the day to day problems. Let’s just talk to the workers about things they can agree with us and understand, not about revolution, socialism and communism because that turns them off.”
Others say, “Hell, man, this system’s too big, it’s too big what we’re going against, I got enough problems in my factory, in my community. I got enough problems in my home, man, don’t talk to me about that kind of stuff.
What the high road calls for is to talk about these things that people don’t understand or are unclear on.
Let’s really look and understand what’s happening in the world and this country and not keep it to ourselves but go out and struggle with our fellow workers and arm them with that understanding, so that when the time comes we can make revolution.
It is only by understanding how capitalism runs against the interests of working people, of how capitalism must be fought by the working class and all others who can be united behind it and when the, people can be armed with an understanding of capitalism as the enemy–then we can advance on the road to revolution.
The capitalists always try to tell us you’re wrong to fight us because if our profits go down you’re going to go down the drain.
But the only choice is to fight harder, to let their system fall down, let their profit system fall down, let the big corporations fall, tumble down into their graves. Let the big politicians who work for them tumble down, fight among themselves and get exposed. We don’t care, we’ll let them tumble down, we’ll kick them down, we’ll shove them into the dirt. And then we’ll sweep away their remains and the remains of their system and we’ll build our own, our new, brighter future. A future where we workers will run the factories, produce for our needs and not for the profits of the capitalist bosses.
Only by completely getting rid of this system of wage slavery and its law of profits and the system in which the capitalists own and control everything, including us and our labor can we advance to socialism.
We can’t move forward step by step, winning some education for youth, winning some land in Kaho’olawe, or winning better wages in the hotels or any other industry.
Although we must fight for these concessions to keep from being shoved down, we must realize that the capitalists are forced to give us concessions only because we force them to, as we did to win the eight hour day, unemployment insurance and other things the working class needs. They give us these concessions with an eyedropper but even as they give us these things they’re getting ready to take them back with a bulldozer. This is the history of our struggle: after all, didn’t we fight for the eight hour day, for the right to strike, for women worker laws and isn’t it true that we’re fighting for these things all over again?
There’s no way step by step we can win, it’s only by getting rid of the whole source of these problems, the system of capitalism, that we can build a new society run by and for the working class.
If we stick to this high road in the face of the continuing attacks coming down in the crisis, in the face of a world war, we will, the working class in this country will be able to stand up, we will be able to make revolution, we will be able to go forward to revolution, to socialism and communism.
ONWARD TO THE HIGH ROAD!