Likely from the pen of Louis C. Fraina, this ‘Revolutionary Age’ editorial from the fateful May Day of 1919–which saw more workers’ dead.

‘May Day–and the Workers’ Dead’ from Revolutionary Age. Vol. 1 No. 29. May 3, 1919.

MAY Day is the symbol of new life of the germinal sap of Spring preparing to fructify in all the glory of the summer of joy and happiness. There is a new life symbolized on Socialist May Day–the new life that is coming when the proletariat conquers Capitalism.

Our May Day is a day of life. But it is equally a day of death. The conscious rebel thinks on this day of the workers’ dead, of the dead in the shops, mills and mines, of the dead in the social struggle against Capitalism. On more than one May Day have the armed forces of Capitalism meted out death to demonstrating workers.

On this May Day, the thought of our dead is emphatic and bitter, made so by our comrade-workers who are at this moment meeting death in Europe and Asia, death imposed by Capitalism in its fierce determination to retain supremacy.

In Russia, scores of thousands of our worker-comrades–men, women and children–have met death in the struggle against the exploiters, in the determination to make the world finer for those who are to come after them. They died in the struggle against Czarism, that putrid excrescence of centuries; they died in the struggle against the compromiser Kerensky and the compromising “Socialists;” they died in the great revolution of November 7, and after in the struggle against the counter-revolution; they died in the struggle against German Imperialism; and they died in the struggle against the invaders that Allied Imperialism sent into Russia. And they are dying today, in the struggle against counter-revolution organized and financed by the Allies; more, they are starving, a starvation deliberately imposed upon Soviet Russia by the brutal blockade of the Allies.

But the Russian workers and peasants, who have seen the light of the glory of the new society of communist labor and fraternity, are patiently enduring death and starvation, in the flaming resolve to assure the world revolution against Capitalism.

At this moment, our worker-comrades in Germany are dying in the streets, to overthrow Capitalism and affiliate with Soviet Russia. They, too, are starving; many have not yet seen the glory; but the Spartacans–“the Socialist conscience of the Revolution”–are determinedly waging the revolutionary struggle. In spite of death, and all!

In Bavaria and in Hungary, our worker-comrades are dying to assure the supremacy of the Soviet Republic.

Workers are meeting death in Italy, France, Great Britain, everywhere, in the preliminary action that will soon flare up in the final revolutionary struggle against Capitalism.

Death in the workers’ cause is not death, but life. In agony and in tears, in the shadow of the Valley of Death, the proletariat struggles onward to a finer world of life and love and liberty.

Death is the maker of life. Death is not death when used in the service of life. Life is not life when used in the service of death.

Capitalism threw our worker-comrades into a reactionary war, to meet starvation, death and mangling.

It used life in the service of death–the death-in-life that is Capitalism. It used life against life, death for death.

Our worker-comrades in Europe are using death against death, life for life. They know the price, and they are paying the price.

But there is a world to conquer! There is life and love and liberty to gain!

It is a flaming, glorious death, this death secured in the inspiring struggle against the exploiters. It is a death that uplifts, that assures life.

In this struggle, Capitalism is doing its last killing.

There is protest against making death in the great social struggle. But it is Capitalism that makes the dead in the revolutionary struggle. And think of the dead that Capitalism makes in the piping days of peace. In the days of peace, our worker-comrades meet death in the shops, mills and mines. They are mangled by the machines; they are killed by industrial diseases; they die from over-work and under-nourishment; they die by the scores of thousands from industrial accidents. Our worker-comrades in the mills, shops and mines die slowly and they die quickly; but they die. And their wives and their children die from too much. work, from starvation, from that evil thing which is Capitalism.

These dead are dead in the service of Capitalism. They die to make profits for the capitalists, to assure the supremacy of Capitalism. It is a miserable, tragic death.

Capitalism is terror: Capitalism is death.

Not satisfied with the dead it makes in industry, Capitalism plunges the world into war and accelerates the process of killing the men and women of the proletariat.

There is revolt against Capitalism. And there is death. But it is the death glorious. It is a flaming death, not the tortured death of the slave who accepts his slavery.

On May Day, we think of our dead. Our souls flame out in joy and glory at the thought of our dead in the revolutionary struggle against Capitalism. Theirs’ is the death supreme. We think of our other dead, who met death in industry and in the holes. that are the homes of the poor. And our hearts droop in sorrow–momentarily; for our hearts on May Day cannot harbor sorrow, but determination and inspiration to end Capitalism that makes death necessary in order to attain life.

On this May Day, let us resolve to devote all to the revolutionary struggle of the international proletariat, to conquer finally that for which the workers’ dead have died.

The Revolutionary Age (not to be confused with the 1930s Lovestone group paper of the same name) was a weekly first for the Socialist Party’s Boston Local begun in November, 1918. Under the editorship of early US Communist Louis C. Fraina, and writers like Scott Nearing and John Reed, the paper became the national organ of the SP’s Left Wing Section, embracing the Bolshevik Revolution and a new International. In June 1919, the paper moved to New York City and became the most important publication of the developing communist movement. In August, 1919, it changed its name to ‘The Communist’ (one of a dozen or more so-named papers at the time) as a paper of the newly formed Communist Party of America and ran until 1921.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/revolutionaryage/v1n29-may-03-1919.pdf