Messages, appeals and statements of Comintern (SH)

Message of the Comintern (SH) on occasion of comrade Lenin's 154th anniversary

Message of the Comintern (SH)

on occasion of comrade Lenin's 154th anniversary

22 April, 1870 – 22 April, 2024

[ At the same time valid as the official Comintern (SH) May call for the year 2024 ]

Today we celebrate the 154th birthday of Lenin.

We greet the Leninists all over the world.

As part of our centenary campaign, it is clear that on this day we are placing Lenin's teachings on 1 May at the centre of this greeting address:

What does Lenin teach us about today's 1 May ?

In 1919 Lenin shouted at the May Day demonstration:

Long live the international Soviet republic !

Long live communism!

This is also the May Day call of the Comintern (SH) in 2024 - 105 years later!

Engels fought for the establishment of 1 May and Lenin crowned 1 May with the victory of the first socialist state in the world.

During Engels' lifetime, the II. International was guided by Marxism. Engels was faced with the most important task of securing the international unity of the proletariat on the basis of scientific communism, and he fought for the victory of Marxist forces on a world scale. He was the founding father of the First World Congress in 1889, which directed the international labour movement towards the struggle against militarism and war, and towards the formation and strengthening of political parties and mass trade union organisations in all countries.

It is particularly thanks to Engels that at this congress, 1 May was adopted as a day of struggle for the international proletariat in general and for the eight-hour day in particular. The decision to celebrate May Day for the mobilisation of the masses and the strengthening of international proletarian solidarity was of world-historical significance, has remained so to this day and will continue to be so in the future when it comes to the world socialist revolution.

Today, after 135 years, the struggle for the 8-hour day has still not been victorious for most workers worldwide. In some countries, the 35-hour week and in some cases already the 30-hour week have been demanded for many years. Only in a few cases has this become a reality. Whatever the future working time demands may look like in concrete terms, the struggle to reduce working hours will remain of the utmost importance for the road to world communism even after 135 years.

At the very first May Day demonstration in 1890, Engels called on the international proletariat to turn the annual May Day into a traditional parade of the growing proletarian world army. The slogan

"Proletarians of all countries-unite!"

, as it was first put forward in the Communist Party Manifesto in 1848, was carried onto the streets by the masses of workers worldwide on 1 May 1890.

And today, on 1 May 2024, when the world proletariat has already been welded together as a class and is developing into a globalised world army, the Comintern's (SH) slogan must be carried onto the streets of all countries en masse, namely:

"World proletariat - unite all countries in the struggle for the world socialist revolution !"

Engels recognised early enough the danger that the desire of the workers to unite internationally would be abused by opportunists striving for their leading role at the head of the international labour movement. And if we disregard 1 May in Lenin's and Stalin's Soviet Union and Enver Hoxha's Albania, on a global scale it was above all the reformists and revisionists who had a grip on 1 May and continue to do so until today's 1 May 2024. We Stalinist-Hoxhaists know that this will only change fundamentally with the world socialist revolution. If we look at the international development of 1 May today, we have to realise that open world fascism has gained increasing influence on 1 May and continues to gain influence with every new 1 May. What Stalin teaches us about the two twins of fascism and social fascism can also be applied to 1 May on a world scale. We remember both the social fascism of social democracy and Hitler's fascism, where the one as well as the other had banned the revolutionary 1st of May, suffocated it in blood, as on Bloody May 1929 75 years ago, and finally turned it together into a fascist holiday.