May Day address from Sósíalistaflokkur Íslands: The future is yours

Honorable working class and all common people!

We address you on the day of the workers' struggle, on a beautiful spring day when the oppressed look up from their toil and allow themselves to look forward to better times. May Day is a day of hope that oppression will end. May Day is a day of the masses' will to take power from the few. And May Day is a day of certainty that with the solidarity of the common people, winter is behind us and ahead lies spring, summer, and the harvest of our labor. Spring is the promise of the future land, and the future is yours.

Over a hundred years ago, the people of the country went through a deep crisis, one that is referred to when describing the depth and destructive power of the collapse we now face. But within that crisis, a turning point occurred in the struggle of the common people for a more just society. In the first year of the crisis, women and propertyless men gained the right to elect representatives to Alþingi after a long struggle. Alþýðusamband Íslands was founded the same year, and with it Alþýðuflokkurinn, the political arm of the labor movement. Towards the end of the year, Framsóknarflokkurinn was founded, the political arm of the cooperative movement, another mass movement that fought for equality and increased public power.

By meeting the crisis of capital with the renewal of the democratic arena and the organized work of the masses, the public succeeded in transforming society, breaking down the power of bourgeois forces, and pushing for and implementing many reforms for the public. If one were to list all the improvements in conditions and rights that can be traced back to this beginning, the list would be long. We can shorten it to the following statement: Everything of great importance in the organized society of the people of this country today can be traced back to this beginning. What is good can be attributed to the power of solidarity and the active political participation of the common people.

What, however, overshadows the sun of justice can be traced to the forces of oppression, the power of money which is the opposite of democracy and always works against the interests of the masses. It achieves its goals when the common people relax and when small cliques manage to seize their tools of struggle.

And just as it is a fact that all good in our organized society can be traced to the solidarity of the common people and the active participation of the masses; it is also a fact that the power of money gained the upper hand in its struggle against public interests when the common people's tools of struggle had been damaged and impaired. The decay of the common people's movements and their political parties was a prerequisite for the victory of the money power, the major offensive of capital that has been called neoliberalism and which has systematically, in recent decades, dismantled the gains of the masses' struggle for rights and freedom, which can be traced back to the common people's response to the crisis that struck over a hundred years ago.

At the beginning of a new crisis, the labor movement is going through a period of rebuilding. But it is not certain whether those entrusted with leading this movement will succeed in mobilizing the masses for participation and demanding that the labor movement, the tool of struggle and shield of the common people, shape society's response to the coming crisis. That is the historical role of the movement. The future of society depends on the movement's leadership understanding its role, correctly analyzing the situation, reigniting the common people's fighting spirit, and pushing for justice, equality, and actions based on empathy and human dignity.

There is no solution to be found in the political arena, which is still mortally ill from the ideology of neoliberalism. After decades of dismantling the democratic arena, the power of the masses against the power of money, political parties are merely small cliques of powerful individuals who have broken down all grassroots work and use the parties only to secure their status and livelihood. And they have bent the former tools of struggle of the common people to the demands of capital to transfer ever more power from the democratic arena, where each person has one vote, to the so-called market, where each króna has its vote and the richest person has the most say. When the leadership of political parties has lost touch with the reality that ordinary people live in, it has nothing to sell but itself. Thus, the distortion of demagogic politics is a legitimate offspring of neoliberalism, a relentless propaganda that people who have clawed their way to influence within clique-ridden parties are not only messengers of the solution but the solution itself. This applies no less to the leadership in Icelandic politics than to populist leaders in other countries.

Socialism is the opposite of these politics. Socialism is a people-centric ideology that knows that democracy and the active participation of the masses in shaping the structure of society is the key to a good society. Socialism demands that the masses take power for themselves, reclaim it from the few rich and powerful, and shape society based on the interests and needs of the common people, guided by their desire for justice, security, peace, humanity, and respect. Socialism places its trust in the wisdom and fairness of the whole, knowing that only through the democratic struggle of the common people will it be possible to build a society that serves the entire whole. Socialism does not send prayer letters or wish lists to capital or the political elite. Socialism stands for the awakening of the masses, organizes them for work, and takes power from the oppressors of the common people.

Socialism is the common people's answer to the oppression of capitalism. And Sósíalistaflokkur Íslands is the answer to the decline of the common people's tools of struggle. Just as workers rise up on May Day and renew their vow of active participation for the transformation of society, so too do members of Sósíalistaflokkurinn awaken on May Day and commemorate the founding meeting three years ago, where socialists from all sectors of society came together and decided to change politics in order to change society.

And now is the time. Faced with the coming crisis, it is revealed that only with full respect for the common people and society as a whole can we meet the coming onslaught. It is primarily the state, which derives its power from the democratic arena, that has the strength to respond, a strength it draws from our common funds. These funds are the property of all citizens equally, not funds that the few, rich, and powerful can draw upon. The future of society is built on the just utilization of the resources owned by the public – energy, nature, and fishing grounds – resources that are a prerequisite for a good society to emerge here after the crisis. If anyone wants to call for funds, they are primarily in the ownership of the pension funds of wage earners.

Thus, it is the common people who, in reality, possess the power, the strength, and the ability to face the crisis. And the crisis has revealed precisely this: that the power of the few is based on the inaction of the common people against the usurpation of power by their oppressors. Capitalists own nothing that the common people have not given them. As soon as the common people rise up, they will take power over their own society and throw capital out the door, along with those who have betrayed their mandate to the public and always sided with the few.

Honorable working class and all common people! May this May Day mark the beginning of the common people's power over their own society. Long live the revolution, long live socialism, and long live the struggle of the oppressed for justice.

This address was presented and approved at a meeting of the executive committee of Sósíalistaflokkur Íslands on May 1, 2020.