“I always make sure to work a bit on Labor Day just to spite the commies.”
This statement from a colleague doesn’t just reflect the liberty-loving attitude at my workplace—it also reminds us of a fact we’ve forgotten: the communist and socialist origins of Labor Day.
Labor Day as we know it—the first Monday of September—exists in two countries, the U.S. and Canada. It’s billed as a celebration of the “average worker” and the organized labor movements—labor unions in America—that brought about “workers’ rights” and the eight-hour workday.
Make no mistake, labor unions served an important purpose in securing wins for workers through collective bargaining. One of my great grandfathers was a coal miner in Pennsylvania, where unions helped to improve his working conditions. However, just as often as they secured victories for workers, labor unions found themselves infiltrated, and often run by, actual socialists and communists.
Even though Labor Day is only celebrated in the form we know here in the U.S. and in Canada, a celebration of labor unions and collectivism happens in many—the majority, in fact—countries across the world on a different date. Over a hundred countries celebrate collective labor and the worker on May 1, which is alternatively known as either May Day or the International Workers Day.
When celebrated as May Day or International Workers Day, the communist ties suddenly become more apparent. A quick image search of May Day shows parades in the Red Square showcasing workers. Red is prominent, as are propaganda posters of noble workers holding aloft their hammers, sickles, and other working implements.
Of course, workers were not all that was showcased during the Soviet May Day parade. May Day was also the day to showcase and review Soviet military might: missiles, tanks, and military formations, all products of the “worker’s revolution.” Of course, they were also the threat against the West to respect Soviet power or else.
However, that demand to respect Soviet power or else didn’t just extend to “greedy capitalists,” it was also put on the average citizen of countries behind the Iron Curtain. My grandmother grew up in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, and the events of a fateful May Day are what actually led to her family’s escape from Czecho and eventual immigration to America.
My great grandfather was not well-liked by communist authorities, but he was well regarded in the Czech town of Telč, which granted him a certain level of ability to resist bending the knee to authorities. Not to be deterred, they decided to get to him by going through his oldest daughter, my grandmother. This effort culminated in her being selected to recite a poem glorifying “Papa Stalin” at the head of the Telč May Day parade, something she was naturally excited to do. Her father, who understood the attempted brainwashing going on, chose to “take the family on vacation” in order to get her out of that pernicious influence.
The communists later used this as part of the evidence to indict my great-grandfather as an enemy of the state. Before charges were even made, they had already decided to find him guilty and sentence him to the uranium mines for a short six years—however, the average life expectancy of uranium miners at that time was five years. Hearing of the forthcoming charges, he escaped with his family to Austria, then Australia, and finally, America.
While the U.S. may have moved the date from May to September, Labor Day is not fully free of communist sentiment. There is still an undercurrent of the worker against the greedy corporation in so many Labor Day posts, comments, and speeches. In other words, Labor Day still contains an undercurrent struggle between proletariat against the bourgeoisie, also known as the Marxist dialectic.
This Labor Day, I plan to enjoy my day off, but, like my friend and colleague, I plan to put in a bit of work to spite the communists who latched onto organized labor and have been hard at work—for more than 100 years—turning unions into communist mouthpieces. While the communists haven’t been as successful in this endeavor as they would have liked, it is always vital to keep an eye on them to ensure that they don’t advance their agenda in the guise of Labor Day.