Sisters and brothers, comrades and friends:

You*ve heard of the Star Wars movie "The Empire Strikes Back". Get ready for the sequel: The People Strike Back. You*ve already seen the preview. Thirty million people protesting imperialist war around the world on February 15 and March 20. The biggest ever anti-war movement in human history. The anti-war movement will not disappear. It will have more to say about the US conquest and occupation of Iraq. It will have much more to say about the Palestin-ization of all the Arab peoples. As will the peoples of the Middle East. "From Iraq to Palestine, Occupation is a crime." Their rebellion cannot be suppressed forever by smart bombs, or not-so-smart presidents.

On the surface, the situation across the Canadian state, North America and around the world is grim. We see rampant militarism and imperialism, corrupt mainstream politics, civil liberties under attack, and the naked fist of business class rule. Endless hot air about a "New Economy" that delivers the high-tech goods is just that. It has done nothing to alter the logic of a system based on exploitation, waste and corruption. Unemployment is rising, exports are falling, inter-imperialist rivalries are brewing. But the rulers can't get off the hook by blaming everything on SARS or Osama Bin Ladin. The problem is capitalism. The world capitalist system is characterized by overcapacity, overproduction of useless things, and a mountain of debt. That's what is sinking the so-called economic recovery. Capitalist governments that disavow Keynesian economics, pump billions into war production and into so-called anti-terrorist military interventions from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine to Colombia. Canada is spending $1.2 billion to upgrade CF-18 fighter bombers -- hardly for "defensive" purposes -- to say nothing of Canadian warships in the Gulf, troops to Afghanistan, or police to Iraq. But for social housing, health, education, welfare and environmental protection there is only a miserable, shrinking pie.

The Chretien government spent more on hosting the G8 summit in Alberta last June ($500 million) than it pledged in aid to Africa where millions are dying of AIDS, West Nile Virus and Malaria.

But as we celebrate International Workers' Day, along with millions of workers around the globe, we should bear in mind that there is another side to the story promoted by the media moguls of global capitalism. It*s the story of worldwide resistence and a growing fight back.

In the first place, there is the heroic struggle of the Palestinian people. Israeli missiles, tanks, bulldozers, assassination squads, even the recent massacres in Gaza, will not kill the quest for self-determination of the Palestinian people. More than ever their fight embodies the fight against imperialist domination of the Arab and Muslim world. Israel's savage aggression, largely funded by the US, has impaled Washington on the horns of a dilemma. Most Palestinians realize that Bush's "road map to peace" is a journey to a bantustan-like graveyard, and it will not work any better than the road to Oslo.

Afghanistan too is turning into a nightmare for King Bush II as resistence to U.S. occupation, from a variety of factions fostered by the US in the 1980s, flares up. Of course the resistence in occupied Iraq will be much more significant over time. So would the response to an invasion of Iran or Syria. The strategy of the main imperialist rulers is "permanent war". They know, and fear, that the antidote is permanent revolution.

Our anti-war movement should demand that Canada break with the US war machine which has targeted Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and other countries. Being the soft cop or a powder monkey for Bechtel construction, Haliburton oil, and the US Empire is not worth one mercenary contract, let alone one drop of blood.

Consider Latin America. Argentina is in turmoil after following the neo-liberal prescription. Workers and the poor are in revolt, organizing grassroots councils and occupying factories. The repression and eviction of the Brukman textile workers shows the magnitude of the situation and the fear the grips bosses at the prospect of workers’ control.

In Colombia, civil war rages. In Venezuela, two attempts to overthrow Hugo Chavez by typical "Made in USA" coups, were reversed by mass mobilizations in support of the populist regime. It was a major blow to W. Bush. The election of Lula in Brazil and Gutierriz in Ecuador, heightens the tension for Washington. A U.S. invasion of socialist Cuba would set off continental insurgency. On the other side of the globe, armed revolts continue in the Philippines, Nepal, parts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Huge protests against capitalist globalization continue, notwithstanding the Pentagon's war of intimidation and lies. Massive gatherings at Social Forums in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, in addition to those in Porto Alegre, Brazil, have denounced capitalist neo-liberalism.

Here in Canada, the social temperature is rising too. Anti-war protests were gigantic, especially in Montreal. Major campaigns are underway to defend targeted immigrants and asylum seekers. The NDP, CUPE and CEP waged a successful campaign to stop privatization of Hydro One and force a capping of electricity rates. Police efforts to illegalize protest are being countered. And while police harassment and brutalization of demonstrators is now commonplace, it is not stopping anti-poverty activists who seem to be among the cops* favourite targets.

All of these examples of a growing fight back serve to illustrate an important point. When shown some leadership, workers and other social forces are more than willing to move into struggle. Despite unfavourable conditions, workers and our allies are more than willing to challenge the powers that be.

But leadership is the nub of the problem facing our class. The leadership we*re getting is better suited to the bosses than it is to workers. Unfortunately, since the CLC led the Quebec City march to nowhere, away from the wall of shame--there*s been an abundance of examples of mis-leadership.

OPSEU valiantly fought the Tory agenda, but it fought virtually alone, when what is urgently needed is a revival of the Ontario Days of Action.

Teachers are negotiating with school boards and appointed government "supervisors", but not as part of broad common fronts of unions and the community.

The CAW is confronting the concession demands of Air Canada and Bombardier, but largely on its own.

Roy Romanow’s Royal Commission on Medicare called for an infusion of major federal funding to rescue a disintegrating health care system. Dr. Mordechi Rozanski called for major re-investment in public education in Ontario. But federal and Ontario governments respond with empty rhetoric and a schedule of payments equal to the pace of Chinese water torture.

The NDP and labour leaders criticize the establishment, but often insist that the NDP steer a middle course, avoid controversy, and adapt to global market forces. This really means subordinating Labour to the depredations of Capital. It*s Tony Blair*s infamous Third Way. We*ve seen where that leads in foreign as well as domestic affairs.

The Parti Quebecois suffered a defeat at the hands of its own supporters, who protested PQ cutbacks by staying home on election day. There was no shift to Jean Charest*s Liberals, whose vote declined by 200,000, or to Mario Dumont*s ADQ, which grew only a bit. More interesting is the fact that an anti-capitalist and nationalist coalition called the UFP attracted over 40,000 votes. The UFP, which had some local union endorsements, ran in only 73 of 121 ridings, operating on a shoe-string budget. This indicates the way forward; that workers will rally to an organized, progressive alternative.

The fight for freedom and for decent living conditions for all working people is a fight that knows no borders. Capital is organized globally, and so must we be.

We are dealing with a global bosses’ agenda. That agenda aims to dismantle all the past gains of the class struggle. It aims to rachet up private profits at the expense of workers’ wages, job security, living conditions and the environment. The bosses are obliged to do this, not just out of greed, but to sustain their anarchic, crisis-wracked capitalist system. We, however, are not obliged to accept it. We are not obliged to accept their secret treaties which make public ownership a crime, and make Capital a god. We are not obliged to accept homelessness, poverty, disease, ignorance and strike breaking as inevitable features of human nature and human society.

That is why OCAP is absolutely correct to target the Tory government, and to call for mass action and economic disruption to remove that government. Now is not the time to look for excuses, but to take to the streets.

Now is also the time to link militancy to a political strategy for fundamental change. Activism is inspiring. Activism in energizing. But activism is not a strategy. If we can bring down the bosses' governments, anywhere, it will make conditions much more favourable for the working class.

But a change of government will not necessarily put in place a political agenda that serves the interests of the majority. One has only to contemplate Dalton McGuinty replacing Ernie Eves to know what I say is true. Activism will not replace the bosses’ government with a workers’ government. And nothing less than a workers* government will stop exploitation and oppression, and save this planet from the polluters and war makers.

In strategic terms, the working class is the decisive social force. Politically class conscious workers can unite the many against the few. But the political advance of the working class requires at least two things: (1) the majority of the working class must break from the parties of big business, and (2) large sections of the class must come together into a political organization that fights for a Workers’ Agenda.

The obstacles to workers’ unity on a Workers’ Agenda are many. One big obstacle is the conservative, self-seeking bureaucracy that dominates our unions and the NDP. The bureaucrats* embrace of capitalism prevents them from fighting to abolish the FTAA. Their commitment to class peace causes them to stifle protest, to kill the Ontario Days of Action and the 1997 teachers' strike, and to prop up an NDP leadership on the road to oblivion.

Union bureaucrats often prefer to crush dissent inside the unions, to remove elected officers and to seize control of dissident local bargaining units. They’d rather do that than fight the bosses, for fear of losing power to the rank and file. Toronto Substitute Teachers are presently suffering the tyranny of Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation leaders. OSSTF leaders have put our 1500 member unit in trusteeship after seizing control of our funds, seizing control of our local contract bargaining, and removing me from the local presidency on the basis of vague, frivolous and vexatious charges; and this was after members re-elected me last June. We are fighting the OSSTF bureaucrats in court, but they have much deeper pockets than us (especially after they seized our funds) and they hope to paralyse our efforts. For that reason, our local unit is appealing to all friends of union democracy for donations to fund the ongoing legal battle.

Under these distressing circumstances it is easy for activists to make a very big error. That error is to confuse the present leadership with the mass membership of the workers' organizations. That error is to confuse the union brass and NDP tops with the thousands of union and NDP members who walk picket lines and march in anti-war demonstrations. That error is to think that a new class struggle workers' movement is going to develop and emerge entirely, or even largely, outside the existing workers* organizations. Surely the workers' organizations include the unions, with over two and a half million members (not including their families). And it includes the NDP in English Canada with its 82,000 members and over 300,000 union member affiliates, and over 1 million voters in the last federal election.

Yes, rebuilding the left is the task at hand. But what does that mean if not building a class struggle left wing inside the unions and the NDP? Socialism without the working class is impossible. The socialist left which is outside the unions and the NDP is not a decisive force. It can give tactical leadership on specific issues, but it is separated from the massive forces it needs to become a majority, to become capable of transforming capitalist society.

Fighting to become a majority does not mean adopting the views or catering to the prejudices of the prevailing opinion. But it does mean working within the rank and file, setting a militant example in the mainstream organizations, and advancing the ideas that can help working people to emancipate ourselves.

The Socialist Caucus of the NDP stands on a class struggle programme * the Manifesto for a Socialist Canada -- and it intervenes in a mass labour-based party. The Socialist Caucus believes that the NDP belongs to the workers and farmers who launched the CCF in the 1930s, and built the NDP in the 1960s as a political movement independent of the Liberals and Tories, independent of the banks, big business, and their media mongrels. The NDP belongs to the millions who built this country, whose toil and intelligence make this country run. It is not a private club for the current leaders, but a political party of the class that must come to terms with the anachronism known as capitalist rule.

That is how we must approach the problem, the problem of power. Capitalism must go. But it won*t go quietly. We must force the issue, or we'll continue to live like slaves. To free ourselves and humanity, we must break the majority from ideological slavery to the system and the big business political parties.

The NDP represents a partial break, an organizational break from the parties of Capital. The next step is to deepen that break politically, and to build it on the basis of a programme for working class emancipation. This is the direction that the Socialist Caucus proposes. Hundreds of NDP members voted for our candidate for federal Leader, Bev Meslo, who ran on a clear, anti-capitalist platform. Scores of NDP activists joined the Socialist Caucus during our campaign. They did so because they want to fight for a Workers' Agenda, for a Workers' Government, and they know that the place to start is inside the only existing mass labour-based party in North America.

That's the direction we urged the New Politics Initiative to take in 2001. The NPI's call for grass roots democracy was good. It*s call for a new party was good. But those two calls constituted neither a programme nor a mass base, much less the socialist alternative necessary to replace capitalism, which is why the NPI, and another project called Re-Building the Left, stalled. A socialist programme and a working class base must be forged through organized struggle inside the unions and the NDP. Unfortunately, there*s no short cut to emancipation.

On May Day 2003 we still find ourselves in the very early stages of a new working class radicalization. Once again, youth are leading the way. As this movement manifests itself inside the mainstream workers' organizations, we will see its significance. We will see that this movement can win.

Socialist Action strives to forge a leadership, a socialist cadre, which can make an indispensable contribution to this process. That contribution will be the living memory of our class, the vision of a socialist future, and a strategy to get there from here. That contribution will be unbending loyalty to workers* interests, and unyielding opposition to capitalist rule. That contribution will be for socialist democracy, for women*s and gay/lesbian liberation, for ecology, political pluralism, internationalism, and the construction of a cooperative commonwealth.

If you share those goals, and those principles, you should join SA tonight.

Together we can fulfill the promise of May Day. We can create a future worthy of humanity. For that we need a revolutionary workers' organization. Join us. There is nothing to lose and a world to win.

Long live international workers' day!

Long live the struggle for freedom, social justice, and workers power!

(presented by Barry Weisleder)