The Bosses Want to Destroy Us

This May Day, let's vow to destroy them instead.

May Day in Madrid, 1978. (Alex Bowie/Getty)

Today is May Day, the day for workers to celebrate themselves and each other, commemorate the sacrifices and struggles of the workers of the past, and renew the neverending battle for a better world.

As members of a site that is literally run by and for its workers, we here at Discourse Blog have a particular appreciation for May Day and what it represents. It is one of the most resonant symbols we have for the power that everyday people can wield when they stand up to the bosses who run this planet. And there is no doubt that the bosses are currently running this planet, and the people who actually make it function, right into the ground.

We are living through an era of acute social warfare waged by the people at the top. Here in New York City, I can walk out of my apartment building on any given day and see cops milling around my block. They are everywhere you turn. The other day I was on the subway and there was a seemingly homeless guy sleeping across from me. When we got to the next station, two cops came into the car, woke him up, and pulled him off the train. “We’re gonna help you,” I heard one of them say as they led him to who knows where. I had my doubts about this.

You would think that a police department flush enough to send its officers down into the trains to target individual people sleeping—and to blow past its already-fat overtime budget by $100 million—wouldn’t need any more cash. Instead, Mayor Eric Adams signed a sweet new deal with the cops that will cost the city at least $700 million more. At the same time, other city agencies were asked to find a total of $1 billion in savings. (Adams dubiously blamed the austerity drive on an influx of asylum seekers.) The city’s libraries had to launch a public shaming campaign just to fend off an especially deep cut to their budgets. In other words, money that could be bolstering some of our most cherished democratic institutions—what better example of civic humanism do we have than the library?—is being funneled directly to the racist shock troops of the ruling class. That is an act of war against the people.

The city’s rent regulator has floated as much as a 16 percent rise for two-year leases. At the state level, lawmakers working on the 2023 budget agreed to gut New York’s bail reform laws (again) despite virtually no evidence that they are causing any harm, but ditched plans to implement tenant protections that would curb the power of landlords. The carceral state gets a leg up while people’s ability to live in their homes gets pushed aside. Another act of war.

Nationally, the Biden administration wants nearly $900 billion for the Pentagon to do god knows what with. At the same time, 14 million people are getting kicked off of Medicaid because the government doesn’t want to cover them anymore now that COVID is supposedly over. Endless deadly empire? Yes please! The right to healthcare? Are you nuts? War.

By the way, everything I just mentioned is being carried out by Democrats. Never forget that the war gets waged by both parties.

I could go on. The attacks on trans people, the attacks on abortion, the attacks on education—it’s all part of the same assault on the right of everyday people to live in peace and dignity. The bosses want us constantly hustling and grasping, with no time to contemplate any kind of better society. They want us to live in fear of each other, to see each other as little more than competitors for the rapidly dwindling slice of the pie that they deign to throw on the ground. They want us miserable and exhausted and defeated while they carry on partying.

This is all very depressing, I know. But today is May 1, so let us remind ourselves that the power of the people is real, that the mighty can be brought low, and that the masses can succeed. The bosses want us miserable and exhausted and defeated, so let’s not give them what they want. We are not doomed to this way of living, and they are not guaranteed perpetual supremacy. Ordinary people have changed the world many, many times before, and they can, and will, change it again. The bosses want to destroy us, but this May Day, let’s vow to destroy them instead.