September 04, 2005
In Honor of Labor Day
A few lessons from Eric Hobsbawn's Uncommon People (from which we also learn that shoemakers have a tradition of being radical leftists!).
First, on the origin of May Day:
...few have shown much interest in this occassion [May Day], not even in those socialist parties which are the lineal descendants of those which, at the inaugural congresses of what became the Second International, in 1889 called for a simultaneous international workers' demonstration in favour of a law to limit the working day to eight horus to be held on 1 May 1890.
Then, this:
Those who, before the European Community, went furthest in co-opting May Day were on the extreme right, not the left. Hitler's government was the first after the USSR to make the First of May into an official National Day of Labour. Marshal Petain's Vichy government declared the First of May a Festival of Labour and Concord and is said to have been inspired to do so by the Phalangist May Day of Franco's Spain, where the Marshal had been an admiring ambassador.
I learn the opposite lesson from this: even more evidence that the National Socialists were, well, socialists.
Posted by Morgan at 05:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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