May 1st is predominantly known as a bank holiday – a day on which, for most, you don’t have to reluctantly drag your body to another day of work. Little does the media relay that May 1st is synonymous internationally with the workers struggle against the proprietors of industry for rights, health and dignity. It is the date that commemorates Chicago’s Haymarket massacre of 1886, and the resulting death of four men blamed for the incident by the US government, killed for speaking against the exploitative nature of work innate in the system of capital. May 1st remains  a threat to right wing fascistic governments, as demonstrated by its abolition at one time or another in Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy, and also by the British government proposing plans in 2011 to cancel the May day bank holiday in favor of an alternative nationalist celebration. Their recommendation was to exchange May Day for  St Georges day in April or a move to an October holiday called ‘Britain Day’ which would mark military victories under the guise of a lengthened tourist season.

The fight for the eight hour day was not the end goal of those that fought in Chicago, but part of the ultimate aim – to destroy the cause of enslavement, the system of capital and state.

Our birth under capitalism constitutes to our being combatants, on one side or another, of this continuing social war today.

At a time when recent council figures show there are nearly  20,000 people unemployed in Bristol, the states solution to its self- induced financial and employment crisis is to make the welfare system ever more redundant for those that suffer the consequence.

The Department of Work and Pensions ‘Jobless Work Experience Scheme’ saw 34,000 people in 2011 employed by a plethora of corporations for between 25 and 30 hours a week , unpaid, in order to continue receiving a benefit of less than £60 per week. Another extension to the benefit system, ‘The Mandatory Work Activity Scheme’, states that anyone on Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) for over three months can now at any point expect to work 30 hours a week UNPAID for six to eight weeks. Job centres are now entitled to refer individuals to the ‘Community Activity Program’ which stipulates any individual unemployed for over a period of two years can be assigned to 30 hours work a week, UNPAID, for SIX MONTHS. It is a mandatory scheme. Failure to participate in this scheme leads to a sanction on benefit payments for up to 26 weeks.

The promise of health, retirement and benefit security is disintegrating as a result of taxes spent on resuscitating the banks that should have been left to drown in their avarice.

Instead the welfare state is dying, and with it, the illusion of a state that cares for its people. This is not a lament for a lack of jobs, or benefits that act as temporary opiate and disguise a truth. The unemployment statistics and introduction of work programmes reveal the reality that the intention of the authority is not to create paid employment, but to create a free work force. A new insidious form of slavery.

We surrender the hours of our lives, our mental, creative and physical energy in order that someone else reaps the rewards.

We fill the pockets of the oligarchs (dominant class) with monetary values we cannot fathom. We receive nominal compensation, that barely provides a means to exist in an ever more financially demanding climate. We are allowed no indulgence into the luxury items flaunted on billboards promised as the rewards for our labour. We will never afford these items and  we will become indebted in order to attain them.  We are obliged to pay for our shelter and denied the right to land and resources that would allow us to sustain our own lives without waged work.

We are slaves by another name. We are employees, forced to give up our time in order to pay rent to the landlords, buy food from the corporations, and pay taxes to the councils and state. We are exhausted through work so that the dominant order may maintain that our movements be restricted, opportunities stolen, dreams forgotten, and freedom denied,  all to ensure a workforce for capital. All enabled because WE capitulate to the rule of capital.

If you question the purpose of your life at work, the answer is to conserve the comfort and control of the rich.