From: "Steve Rosenthal" <smrose@exis.net>
To: PSN@CSF.COLORADO.EDU
Date: Fri, 1 May 1998 17:15:45 +0000
Subject: May Day is alive in USA
Reading the messages from Joanna, Martha, and others about memories
of May Day celebrations in other countries and in the past, I feel
fortunate that I will actually be going to a May Day demonstration
tomorrow in DC.  The communist Progressive Labor Party celebrates
May Day every year.  I think they have been holding marches in
Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities around the world
for several decades. 

These marches usually attract at least a couple thousand people.  
They're very multiracial and include a lot of young students and 
workers.  They march not only to celebrate the international holiday 
of the working class, but to affirm continued struggle for an 
egalitarian classless, stateless society all over the world.

It is evident that many on this list identify with the traditions of 
May Day and hope for the development of a new international workers' 
movement.  I think these marches and the party that organizes them is 
trying to achieve that goal.

Yesterday, Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio focused on
May Day and the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto.  As
some recent postings on PSN have noted, a modest effort is under way
to hype this anniversary.   Bourgeois experts are redefining Marx as
a prescient predictor (and champion) of globalized capitalism.  It
seems that the same principles govern the production of commodities
culture as well as the production of other commodities.  Just as
capitalists are compelled to maximize the rate of profit, they are
compelled to reshape and redefine every important person who has
ever contributed to the emancipation of the working class, from Karl 
Marx to Joe Stalin to Paul Robeson.

Let them try.  In the end it will be the bourgeoisie's history and 
the bourgeoisie itself that will be history!

Steve Rosenthal