As we celebrate the first May Day of the new century, the glaring inequalities, injustices and contradictions of global capitalism appear more acute than ever. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Every day on our TV screens, images of obscene wealth and disgusting luxury and waste contrast with pictures of starving populations. Can those bourgeois apologists still claim that capitalism is the best of all possible worlds?

As we celebrate the first May Day of the new century, the glaring inequalities and injustices and contradictions of global capitalism appear more acute than ever. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Images of obscene wealth and disgusting luxury and waste contrast with pictures of starving populations on our nightly TV screens.

As we reflect on the tumultuous twentieth century – “wars, revolutions, crises and constant technological change – we have to reaffirm that socialism, now more than ever, is necessary for the future development of humanity. In fact, it’s necessary for preventing society’s collapse into barbarism and the ecological destruction of the planet. Marxism not only has continuing relevance; it’s more applicable than ever. Society continues to be divided into economically opposed classes. Capitalism expropriates the wealth created by working people through their labour.

May Day, the day commemorated for more than a century as the international workers’ day, began as the fight for the 8-hour day in the USA in 1886. But our socialist celebration of May Day is more than just an assertion of economic and social rights for the working class within the framework of capitalism. It’s a challenge to the rotten profit system itself. It’s an affirmation that history will not end with this racist, brutal society and that a better world is indeed in birth.

There’s an air of unreality and fakery about this election:

• The stage-managed walks through malls;
• The packaged releases of TV bites for the evening news;
• The refusal of [Kim] Beasley to really fight on the GST;
• The incompetence and repellent characters of all the main players.

Resistance, the socialist youth organisation in political solidarity with the Democratic Socialist Party, was the organiser of the impressive high-school walkouts and protests against racism and One Nation that were held around the country in July.

Hansonism – that’s now a synonym for racism and bigotry – and it has burst onto Australia’s political stage with a vengeance. It’s shameful – for us as Australians, as workers, as socialists, as human beings. We can take some cold comfort – the biggest parliamentary victims in the Queensland elections were its creators and nurturers, the Nationals and Liberals. But 23% was 23% too much!

The Communist Manifesto ushered in a new epoch in human history. It described and projected the process of change from capitalism to socialism, the coming to power of the working class. That’s a process still taking place. So it’s a thoroughly modern document.

It’s undoubtedly the most influential political document, not just of the last 150 years, but of all time. While the Magna Carta and the US Declaration of Independence marked important political victories for advancing sections of society, the Manifesto both marked a stage and projected the course for the working class and for the future of humanity as a whole.

The memorable year 1968 – a momentous year for the left and the newly radicalising young people of the time, and an almost historical, legendary year for the young rebels of today. A popular slogan was coined at the time: “We are the people our parents warned us about!” Well, they’re still the people your parents are warning you about, except for those parents who themselves were part of it at the time, who radicalised then, and kept their ideals and fire and hopes alive.

Perhaps around the Xmas dinner table this year, being quizzed by parents you haven’t seen for many months, or an aunt you haven’t seen for years, comrades have been met by a familiar refrain:

You’re a socialist? How could you be a socialist today?