The year 1890 saw the first International May — demonstrations for the eight-hour day in many nations — and calls for workers’ organizations to combine economic rights with political rights. The day was chosen in honor of the 1886 U.S. demonstrations for the eight-hour day, the Haymarket riot which followed in Chicago, and the four Haymarket demonstration’s leaders who were hung. From 1890 on, May Day demonstrations spread throughout the world and became identified with the socialist and later communist movements. May Day was first and foremost a day to educate working people and teach them the power that they have through their numbers when they act with class consciousness.
1. Marxists and Communists see the capitalist state as
a. standing above social classes.
b. the protector of democracy.
c. a state controlled in the last analysis by the capitalist class.
d. a dictatorship which must be smashed.
2. On the issue of rights and freedoms, Karl Marx distinguished between which of the following?
a. Property rights and human rights
b. Formal/paper rights and freedoms and effective/implemented rights and freedoms
c. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion
d. Rights and responsibilities
3. The May Day demonstrations from the beginning were aimed at having workers
a. participate in and advance the struggles for effective democracy.
b. prepare for armed revolution.
c. support existing capitalist political parties if they promised to enact reforms.
d. have parties and celebrations.
4. After the civil war, Marx believed that the U.S. was one of the nations most likely to see the rise of a mass socialist workers’ movement because
a. the U.S. had no large feudal classes and institutions in its history.
b. the defeat of the slaveholders and the abolition of slavery removed the greatest obstacle to working-class unity.
c. the U.S. had more advanced democratic institutions than any other nation at the time.
d. All of the above
5. Since the rise of mass parties for socialism in the years that followed the first May Day demonstrations, Marxist socialists have since the 19th century differentiated themselves from both anarchists and non-Marxist socialists by which of the following?
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 within the existing political system to advance reforms in the interests of workers
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
Answers here.
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