Every year for International Workers’ Day, American Party of Labor members share what May Day means to them. This year, they’ve answered the question of why they are a communist. Radicalization looks different for everyone, and in the modern world, the personal is political.
Thomas K. | Ohio–
The reason I became a communist is so I can serve my coworkers and my community to the best of my ability. I didn’t want to serve the interests of the business owner, I wanted to stand shoulder to shoulder with the laborer who sacrifices their life daily. Communism is the only political, social, and economic solution for the workers! May Day to me is the day when workers finally get the recognition they deserve. People the world over gather together to honor the workers, and to remember the sacrifices and struggles of the working class. It’s a day of absolute solidarity!
Michael F. | Nevada–
I grew up watching insurance companies deny my mom essential healthcare in privately owned pharmacies and hospitals. I saw her suffer needlessly when the treatments that could have helped her live a decent life were stuck behind a paywall. I watched my family struggle to maintain housing, getting evicted several times, to maintain the leisure of parasitic landlords who don’t work. I saw my hardworking father’s health deteriorate as he was exploited into dust only to make his employers rich while we panicked about bills month after month. I saw my dreams and ambitions melt away when I found out that higher education is reserved for the rich. I saw everywhere homelessness, drug addiction, and premature death among my friends and family, among working people. As a teen I started reading about the world political situation to help me make sense of all the suffering, and learned about colonialism, imperialism, and all the senseless slaughter that they employ in the name of profit. It was incomprehensible to me that anyone could see all of these things and do nothing. That’s why I became a communist.
Josephine R. | Michigan–
Watching your mom load groceries into a cart and simply leave with them because we couldn’t afford to buy them has an effect on you as a child. Hearing your mom cry because specific treatments she needs aren’t covered by insurance and we’re unable to cover them ourselves has an effect on you. Seeing story after story about police killing people and facing little to no consequences shortly after officers pulled guns on you and your dad for no reason has an effect on you. You begin asking questions. Hopefully, you read the right books and find the correct answers. Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Hoxha had the answers I spent years searching for.
Ken S. | New Jersey–
I grew up watching capitalism destroy and disenfranchise a hard-working, working-class person: my dad. Technological advancements made his union job obsolete, he was laid off multiple times, and lost his union pension altogether. It took a while for me to find the right answer and eventually I found communism, the only system that understands and utilizes what it is to be working class. The fight for the working class is the only fight worth having!
John M. | Colorado–
May Day to me, is a day to celebrate gaining class-consciousness and to remember the history of those that struggled before, and reflect on the workers of other lands, and know I’m not alone in this fight against capitalist exploitation.
Most of my adulthood, I was quite backwards. I considered myself everything from apolitical to a conservative libertarian. I’ve worked the last 30 years doing back-breaking labor but was always told hard work pays off… Yes, for the bosses. My life has always been a struggle, but my class-consciousness was in the negatives. I got in a relationship with an amazing woman back in 2018 and, somehow, she got the ball rolling on getting me to turn to the left. Sadly, I came home from work one day and found that she had passed away. A horrendous bout of diabetic ketoacidosis from type 1 diabetes ended up being too much for her body to handle. I was crushed and wanted to hide away forever, but capitalism doesn’t give you time to mourn. I had to figure out life at 40, being truly alone and affording everything by myself. I’ll never own a home, never retire, I’ll work until I’m completely disabled or dead. This is not the mystical and illusive American Dream. It was never for me, a lowly worker. I may never get to see socialism in all its glory in my lifetime, but I’m going to fight like hell to make sure my son and grandson have a chance to, because I can’t fathom seeing them live in a world of barbarism.
Alex M. | Florida–
I was driving to work one day when I thought, “why am I driving an hour plus every day to a job I hate just to survive? Why is modern life like this? What can I do to change it?” Through a series of rabbit holes about different aspects of society led me to realize that my social democrat ways wouldn’t be enough to change anything in any meaningful way. I needed to find a real way to make an impact. Eventually I came across a word that we were supposed to be scared of. Communism. But the more I read, the more it made sense, and the more it became apparent this is the only way forward. After my son was born, I only grew stronger in my beliefs. I want to build a better world, not just for him, but for his friends, and all their friends. I want to make a world worth inheriting, without the mass violence and exploitation. That’s why I became a communist.
Pearse M. | California–
I am a communist because I believe in humanity. I believe in the human experiment, and I want it to continue. I want an end to poverty, exploitation, scarcity, war, and all other forms of social murder which capitalism not only allows but are foundational to its existence. I want it for all of humanity, and I would do anything to make it so.
Ilektra Andricopoulos | Oregon–
I have had a lifelong appreciation of and passion for science, technology, and art. I am in endless awe and wonder of the splendor of the cosmos, the sheer beauty of the natural world and our planet, and the boundless creativity and ingenuity of the people who call it home. All of these things are diminished, crumpled, and undervalued, and will never be able to reach their fullest potential under capitalism, a system which above all else values the accumulation of profits for an increasingly shrinking few. Not only that, the future of our entire planet and everyone who lives on it is at stake due to this very system! When you run society entirely on the basis of “line go up, nothing else matters,” of infinite growth regardless of its sustainability or impact on the biosphere, it turns out that will lead to existential crises like we’re facing now.
Only communism, a system run entirely by and for the working class, the people who actually do the work to build the world we share, can lead to true prosperity and abundance for all. Only under communism, realized through the deliberate application of the principles of Marxism-Leninism, will human ingenuity, creativity, and artistic expression be able to reach the full heights of their potential, and flourish and blossom like never before possible under class society. Only communism, the only system which operates on a rational, scientific basis, will be able to protect and nurture the planet we call home, while still allowing us to live and prosper in a technologically advanced, sustainable civilization. Only communism will allow us to truly push the boundaries of human knowledge, to develop the tools we need to reach into the cosmos and begin to fully understand the very nature of our existence.
I am a communist because to be a communist is to be human, to believe in humanity and its truly limitless potential, and to believe that we have simply come too damn far as a species to throw it all away just so a couple parasites and fat cats can engorge themselves on the fruits of our labor just a few years longer before our environment falls into complete collapse. The future belongs to the working class, but only if we work together to seize it. We will win, of that, I haven’t the faintest doubt.
Ian H. | Colorado–
I grew up being taught virtues such as “treat others as you want to be treated” and “everyone is created equal.” Throughout my late childhood and young adulthood, I realized that many people around me were simply parroting these virtues rather than living them. I became interested in sociology, philosophy, economics, and political science in high school and started on my lifelong journey of independent study of these topics. After identifying the hypocrisy of the family around me, I quickly discovered that of the US government. After a decade of identifying with the Democratic Party, I had to acknowledge the inevitability of their capitulation to their wealthy donors and I could no longer believe the party would ever truly support the interests of working-class people.
Tired of being duped and manipulated by the constraints of what options were being presented to me, I started seeking less conventional wisdom. I started learning history from the perspective of the oppressed rather than what had become clear to me as capitalist propaganda. As an already self-described “socialist” I stumbled across “Socialism For All” on Youtube, which publishes old socialist and communist theory in audiobook format. This was extremely useful to me, as a blind person. I had already read the Communist Manifesto, but after hearing some other texts, such as Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism by V. I. Lenin, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels, I quickly realized that I had finally found what I had been looking for: a sound, scientific theory for overcoming the suffering caused by the contradictions of the capitalist system. After studying some more, I searched for a community which organized itself around Marxist-Leninist principles. I have found the American Party of Labor to be the home for me, particularly due to the non-reformist approach to socialist revolution being necessary for the fight to end capitalism.
M. | California–
I am a communist because I need to do all I can to fight for a sustainable future for my children: to leave them a world not teetering on the brink of environmental collapse, plundered by extraction for the profit of the few, ravaged by the insatiable drive for war in the quest for greater accumulation of wealth; but instead, one that promotes healthy communities, production for what people actually need to live their lives governed by rational planning, the end of all forms of discrimination, and real, science-based education and life-long learning for all.
This may sound like a mere idealist fantasy, but these goals are all scientifically realizable through the advance of technology, collective action and cooperation, and the correct, guiding ideology, stressing the needs of communal liberation, and not those of the individual alone. People have built societies like this in the past, and we can do so again, but only if we study, organize, and fight those oppressing us and our class interests. Only anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism, refined, developed, tried, and tested in the course of the last two centuries, provides a set of tools and an analytical framework to build a better world, and to change the U.S. from a bastion of imperialist destruction on a mass scale to a humane haven for a better future.
As future prospects become ever more grim by the day, with the build-up of the surveillance state, the rise of fascism and its militias on our streets, the expanding demonization of oppressed groups within the working class, the potential for triggering more environmental tipping points, and AI threatening to destroy our livelihoods, amongst many other looming threats to our survival, NOW is the time to act. May 1 is OUR day to learn about the history of our movement and its advances and setbacks, and to commit ourselves to struggling for the overthrow of our capitalist overlords. Let us throw off our chains, unite together in our common class interests, and let the ruling class tremble at the prospect of our revolution!
Marci N. | Oregon–
Seeing the world fall apart in many many different political lenses and never finding the answers in any of them. Communism is the only way forward because it has responded to everything that is wrong with the world. After experiencing capitalism’s symptoms first hand, from living in my car, living outside, and not eating because I simply could not afford food…
Communism fed me, communists educated me, and gave me revolutionary optimism.
There will be a world where the human potential is not burdened by rent, death camps, being able to afford food, medical bills and bombings; communism negates all of this.
I want my revolutionary optimism to grow indefinitely in the bellies of my city, wrap itself up in everything and let everything it touches to flourish infinitely and make the world’s working class come together again & again & again.
The working class will win. Just hold on.
