Marxist IQ: May Days past and Marxism today

 
BY:Communist Party USA| April 28, 2023
Marxist IQ: May Days past and Marxism today

 

1. The first May Day demonstrations by labor and socialist organizations were scheduled for May 1, 1890 to

a. call for the abolition of capitalism.
b. defend free trade and laissez-faire capitalism.
c. call for demonstrations throughout the world demanding legislation for an eight-hour day and workers’ rights.
d. call for world peace.

 

2. The inspiration for the first May Day demonstrations came from

a. the French Revolution’s Tennis Court Oath.
b. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
c. the May 1, 1886 U.S. demonstrations by workers in Chicago which resulted in the Haymarket Massacre.
d. the Paris Commune.

 

3. Karl Marx, looking at the world this May Day, would say that

a. the U.S. today, in the name of “free markets and democracy,” had created the greatest empire in history, just as Britain had done in his lifetime in the name of “progress and civilization.”
b. the working class was increasingly becoming middle class.
c. Russia remained the “gendarme,” or policeman, of Europe and the greatest threat to the working class.
d. capitalism had reformed itself to the point of advancing both peace and social justice.

 

4. Lenin, looking at the world today, would see

a. the imperialist powers using nationalist and separatist groups as pawns in imperialist wars.
b. further evidence that he was right in that imperialism was capitalism’s final stage, leading both to global militarism and world war to redivide the world, and to socialist revolutions to save and advance civilization.
c. the increased importance of revolutionary vanguard parties (Communist parties) to organize and educate the working class to address the multifaceted global crisis.
d. All of the above

 

5. Marxists, looking at the world this May Day, would argue that

a. worldwide socialist revolution is imminent.
b. capitalist “globalization” is the basis of a deepening global economic crisis — not a solution to this crisis — that functions as capitalism’s “gravedigger.”
c. the fascist danger is so great that uncritical support for parties like the British Labor Party and governments like the Biden administration in the U.S. are necessary now and for the foreseeable future.
d. the class struggle is now no longer relevant to understanding the forces shaping social development.

 

Answers here.

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