In the seemingly eternal rains of Nairobi, sitting in a seat that’s newly acquired by my comrade who seems to be pretty excited about it, I enter into those solitary meditations. I am thinking of the struggle of the toilers spanning the many troubled centuries of modernity. It’s May Day, those prominent 24 hours when the worker is centered as an important component of the capitalist hydra. It is preached without shame that this day belongs to him and must not in any way be touched or corrupted. The irony is that the preaching of these sublime ideals is the very essence of corrupting the day and what it stands for. You see, the ones who do the preaching and polemicizing are the ones who partake in the blood, sweat and silent tears of the toiler. They include the big boss of the corrupted union in the service of capital pontificating a ruthless but sanitized message of hope and triumph.

On the other side, or on the fringes of the hegemony, you find the left. That loose set of formations built on a moral economy of ending the slavery of the wage earner. It is the only— I say this as an unarguable sentiment, call it a confirmed bias— fluid monolith that truly cares and hopes to build a world that honors those who sweat in the vast plantations of capital. Yet, as it goes, they too are of many fickle tendencies caught in the contentions of disputes long ago declared to never end. So the regurgitation of ancient debates lives on while the machine slowly and ever patiently eats up that wage worker who was supposed to be the locus of the very discourse that’s decaying this loose formation.

It’s funny recalling the first time I earned a wage and effectively became part of the proletarian antheap; I wrote my very first editorial on May Day and what it stands for. I was then a teen who had become immersed in the marxist movement, and who knew what exactly to write to secure a job. Let’s say that was my resume to a joyful job I held for a while before rebellion took over me and made me to walk out of the machine induced realism. I’m recounting this to not only remind myself of a certain commitment to the struggle but to also never forget how at home in the Gambia, Workers Day is celebrated in a most peculiar manner. You see, they gather workers, mostly civil servants, to participate in sort of Olympic  games while the leaders and rulers watch for their amusement.

In these events, there are hardly any mentions of the plight of laborers or what comes next in their bleak existence. Just high sounding slogans from the leaders of the unions. Off to games and sports then. A whole generation grew up not knowing what’s the significance of the day other than gathering at the stadium with snacks and tracksuits. It seems to be the norm around the continent that this day is either turned into an appeasing process or a metaphysical event. Whither the wage slave and their salvation? Seems a forbidden topic to broach.

Back to the organized left and union politics. The economism that plagued most of the discourse on worker rights still persists. Increase in wages and better working conditions seem to be the only and entire conversation! Of course, these are indispensable in the social reproduction of the toilers, while the gains attained have propelled the unions and their rank and file forward. But what happens to the notion of revolution? What becomes of creating a class unto itself that takes over the very means used to oppress them?

The idea behind the left struggle in relation to the working people has been the understanding that these producers who gain almost nothing from their produce deserve it all. The booty, the loot, the means, the ends.. I mean everything! They’re the ones who suffer through it all and go home to the gut wrenching poverty and bitterness of their working class neighborhoods.

For them to appropriate back the produce that is stolen from them, they must learn to look at themselves through a certain identity and within a certain location in the process of production. They must learn that they are the seeds and determinants of the surplus motive, meaning the whole capitalist machine grinds to a stop without the living labor of the toiler. Coming to this understanding, the laborers are to come together into a class that now knows and recognizes itself through itself. And that, my friends, changes everything.

But being stuck in the narrative of wage increase only will never bring that consciousness. I think you see where I’m going with this. Only a proletarian revolution will blow once again the eastern winds that triumphed aforetime. Any other way is a prolonged process that depletes without filling, and takes without giving.

This was a short reminder that we can win this war and bring to order a new world born out of the ashes of the old. To the gravediggers of capital, a reminder then and a catalyst for revolt is here recounted.

A glorious May Day!