Another Mayday has come, and with it the time to remember, in struggle, our comrades – five anarchist workers who died in a war between classes that we are still fighting today. They were murdered by the State because they didn't accept without resistance that they had bosses who lived off of their labour, because they didn't accept that the State and the Capital had power over their lives.

But it is not only those five anarchists – let us remember all those countless workers, syndicalists, anarchists, libertarians, proud human beings who died, because they didn't accept the idea of one human being exploiting another. All of them survive in the 1st of May as the international day of working class struggle.

It is with their noble ideas in our hearts and with our unions in the streets that we have to defend our rights and lives against the ferocious attacks of neo-liberal capitalism and fight for a free world. Today, just like more than hundred years ago.

In the EU, workers suffer from the break down of the welfare state and the massive growth of precarious work. The treason of social democracy, the incapacity of bureaucratic unions and three right wing governments in central Europe will still worsen the situation.

In Latin America the poor still struggle against the yoke of multinational enterprises plundering the whole continent, the destruction of the environment and a life in utmost misery. But also Africa remains nothing but a toy in the hands of post-colonial imperialists who fan the flames of war between the poor, let whole populations starve and die from diseases in order to rob a whole continent of it’s natural resources.

The world is reshaped with the sword by US, Chinese, European and Russian imperialism. In endless wars the poor and the working class is slaughtered to secure the interests of military industries, private mercenaries and the power of ruling cliques over the resources.

In this situation of economic crises, wars and increasing misery the International Workers' Association calls for a Mayday of struggle against exploitation of the working class. It calls for a Mayday of solidarity and mutual aid against racist divisions of the poor. It calls for a Mayday of resistance to capitalist wars and it calls for the working class to regain their dignity, to take their fate in their own hands, and to emancipate itself from the interests of bureaucrats, capitalists and politicians.

The emancipation of the working class can only be done by the workers themselves.
For libertarian communism and social revolution.

Belgrade, First of May 2008
IWA Secretariat