Nearly a century ago in the May Day, 1923, edition of the Weekly Worker, C. E. Ruthenberg wrote: "May Day – the day which inspires fear in the hearts of the capitalists and hope in the workers – the workers the world over – will find the Communist movement this year stronger in the U. S. than at any time in its history.... The road is clear for greater achievements, and in the United States as elsewhere in the world The Future Belongs to Communism.
The world is nearer to Communism today. We are living in a more advanced period now. Capitalism has swung downward and is progressively moving in that direction. In the Soviet Union, the workers will review on May Day the phenomenal achievements of the building of Socialism. In the capitalist countries, May Day will be as always a day of struggle for the immediate political demands of the working class, with the slogans of proletarian dictatorship and the Soviet Republic kept not far in the background.
A century later, neither the world nor the future of people belongs to Communism. It is thrown out by most of the earlier proponents of Communism, the Soviet Republic, China or to a greater extent from Cuba, Brazil. Even more, whatever strengths the movement had created in last six decades in few corners of India have been rejected by the struggling people, as clearly seen now in Bengal, the citadel of the Indian Communists.
May Day, a pointer to the labour class revolution, one mass movement and the resulting celebration that one saw in the last century have overplayed its utility and relevances. The labour forces have become highly mobile, educated and competitive with huge development in their skill, technical education and their ability to find competitive choices in the vast organised market. And it has made the aggressive fighting style through Unions has started losing its chin and often kicking backfire on their employment opportunities.
The political class working for labour in India was dominated by the Marxist or Leftist, and they have not changed their habits with time by switching from bargaining for the organised labour to the pressing need of fighting for the welfare of unorganised sector, which is neither lucrative in monetary terms nor politically rewarding and hence the power hungry Communist lost their relevance.
The means adopted by the Communist in India are regressive, based on their sole modus objective of underhand bargaining with the capitalist class and they never worked for a systematic plan of promoting more welfare scheme for more common and bigger class of labour force, especially the scattered unorganised class among the daily wagers. Yes in Bengal the Red even forced the shut down the business of daily wagers, the small eating house, tea vendors, the roadside hawkers, even objecting on the services of Sulabh Sochalayas in the name of observation of May-Day celebration, their only towering icon of their century-old struggle for labour in the US.