May Day: "The Idea of a Proletarian Celebration"

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) says it was forced to cancel May Day celebrations in four provinces after militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU PF party allegedly threatened to murder union officials if the celebrations went ahead.

Hak Mao noticed. Will recalled an old song.

I was thinking about Joe Slovo, who was among the first to notice how badly things had gone, and to look for a better way:

Among a diminishing minority there is still a reluctance to look squarely in the mirror of history and to concede that the socialism it reflects has, on balance, been so distorted that an appeal to its positive achievements (and of course there have been many) sounds hollow and very much like special pleading. It is surely now obvious that if the socialist world stands in tatters at this historic moment it is due to the Stalinist distortions.

As many as 27 million people in the world today are slaves. We have work to do.

This is how it began.