As we look toward the 130th May Day in world history,* let’s dedicate this May Day Marxist IQ to essential principles of Marxism and their application to working-class struggles.

1. According to Marxist theory, capitalists maximize their profits by

a. forcing workers to work more hours for the same pay rates.
b. replacing workers with machines and compelling unemployed and employed workers to “compete” with each other for jobs.
c. forming trusts, holding companies, and other monopolistic entities to protect themselves by destroying competition while they resist unions, social legislation, and other policies to protect workers in the name of defending competition.
d. All of the above

2. According to Lenin’s theory of imperialism,

a. imperialism means an end to the class struggle.
b. imperialism both globalizes and makes interdependent the class struggle.
c. imperialism makes the masses of people in colonies the revolutionary vanguard.
d. imperialism successfully ends the general crisis of capitalism.

3. Communist parties have formed united front alliances with social democratic and other political parties to advance democratic struggles and defeat reaction and fascism in many countries for nearly a century. Which one of these was not an example of such a united front alliance?

a. French Communists’ alliance with Leon Blum’s Socialist Party in France to form a Popular Front government in 1936.
b. Italian Communists’ alliance with Pietro Nenni’s Socialist Party in Italian elections in 1948, which went down to defeat due to extensive intervention by the U.S. CIA.
c. U.S. Communists’ support for New Deal president Franklin Roosevelt’s re-election  in 1944 on an Economic Bill of Rights Postwar Peace program.
d. British Communists’ support for Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party in 1945 because of Churchill’s positive wartime leadership.

4. As the world’s first socialist state, the USSR

a. established the first full-employment economy in its constitution as a matter of human rights—a first for any nation in history.
b. established the first completely free system of public education open to all citizens in its constitution.
c. defined housing and health care in its constitution and in practice as a matter of human rights for the first time for any nation in history.
d. All of the above.

5. Marxist socialists have since the 19th century differentiated themselves from both anarchists and non-Marxist socialists by

a. their commitment to building working-class political power to establish a socialist state that will abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism.
b. their commitment to destroying all state power by revolution and organizing society through voluntary collectives.
c. their commitment to working exclusively within the existing political party system to advance reforms in the interests of workers as the road to socialism.
d. their support for big corporations and overseas imperialism as the best way to advance the interests of the working class by concentrating and globalizing production.

6. The global pandemic and the response to it shows the following:

a. The great success of neoliberal “free market” capitalism in providing necessary supplies throughout the world
b. The achievements of the MAGA Trump administration in protecting both the people and the U.S. national economy from COVID-19
c. The disastrous failure of “free market” capitalism as against China, Cuba, and other socialist countries in responding to COVID-19
d. The role of the “lamestream” mass media in manufacturing the “fake news” crisis to defeat Trump

With the hope that Trump does not sue us for using “lamestream” and “fake news,” which many see as his intellectual property, let us work to make this May Day a step forward for socialism, democracy, and peace.

Answers  here.

*May Day History

On May 1, 1886, thousands of workers across the country went on strike and launched marches and demonstrations for the eight-hour day. Days later, a bomb was thrown at Chicago police, who were breaking up a protest rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Police then shot and killed four protesters. The organizers of the demonstration were arrested, tried, convicted, and a number executed for the ensuing police riot massacre.

In 1889, a conference of socialist parties, workers’ movements, and trade union organizations met in Paris on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the French Revolution. They decided to hold demonstrations for the enactment of eight-hour day laws in the countries they represented on May 1, 1890, in solidarity with the American workers who marched in 1886. This was the first International May Day.

The May 1, 1890, demonstrations would mark the most widely celebrated day in human history. In the U.S., the eight-hour day, along with the first minimum wage federal law, was enacted in 1938, 54 years after the first U.S. demonstrations and 48 years after the first International May Day demonstrations.

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