On May Day, the world’s working classes once again stepped into the streets, not merely to commemorate their past struggles and wallow in nostalgia, but to confront the deepening contradictions of the present. From Santiago to Istanbul, from Paris to Manila, the red banners rose against a horizon darkened by war, inflation, and the tightening grip of capital over life. May Day did not unfold as ritual but erupted as necessity.

Across continents, workers marched under familiar yet urgent demands: higher wages, of course, but more clearly job security and better working conditions as well as dignity and peace. In North America and Europe, the core of imperialism, unions warned that workers should not bear the cost of wars imposed on the world by their governments. The ongoing war against Iran continues to keep energy prices high and erodes already fragile household economies. In Africa and Asia, protests drew attention to inflation and anxiety, while in Latin America demonstrations linked economic distress with state repression. The streets spoke a common language: the crisis is global, the crisis is shaped by capitalism, and the crisis must be met by working-class struggles.

Haymarket’s Continent

May Day is named for the violent repression of a workers’ demonstration in Haymarket Square (Chicago, USA) in 1886. To break the link between that event and US workers, the US state created a Labor Day for US workers in September. This was part of the anti-Communist mood in the US to destroy the roots of working-class culture in the country. But, this May Day, Shawn Fain, President of the United Auto Workers, linked back to the day’s origins and looked forward to new struggles: ‘We are laying the groundwork today to reclaim May Day. To make it a day when the working class stands tall and fights back. To use our collective power to win not just better contracts, but a better future. So let the billionaire class be afraid. Let the union-busters and the pundits and the politicians who serve the wealthy try to stop us. We’ve seen this before. We know their playbook. But this time, we’re writing our own’. The May Day Strong mobilisation attempted something audacious, which was a rehearsal for a General Strike. Thousands participated in a coordinated ‘no work, no school, no shopping’ action that staged an economic blackout in more than 3,500 events. This was not yet a strike in the classical sense, but it signalled a growing awareness among workers that their power lies not only in protest, but in withdrawal: the refusal to reproduce the system that exploits them.

Forms of class struggle varied across the world, but their content converged. In India, workers condemned the extension of the working day to 12 hours, a regression that would have been familiar to the labour militants of the 19^th century. In Turkey, the state responded to May Day with repression, deploying tear gas and arrests to prevent workers from occupying symbolic spaces such as Taksim Square. In France, tens of thousands mobilised against labour reforms, defending hard-won protections against a relentless neoliberal assault.  In Argentina, Octavio Argüello (leader of the General Confederation of Labour) told crowds through the beating of drums, ‘We want to say to this government, enough is enough. Our patience has run out, Mr President’. A worker in Nairobi, Kenya, said, ‘The price of bread rises every month, but our pay does not. This is not an economy for workers but an economy against us’.

General Crisis

As the working class moved to action, the scale of the crisis became undeniable. We are living through what might be called a generalised crisis of social reproduction. The cost of living rises faster than wages; housing, healthcare, and education drift beyond reach; and the climate crisis intensifies the precarity of daily life. The International Union of Food workers described this moment not as a series of isolated crises, but as a ‘convergence of forces’ reshaping the balance between labour and capital. At the centre of this convergence lies the reorganisation of global capitalism. Supply chains stretch across continents, but rights do not. Capital moves freely; labour is confined. Technology promises efficiency, yet delivers insecurity, fragmenting work into precarious gigs while concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. The result is a paradox: unprecedented productivity alongside deepening inequality.

Inequality is not abstract. It is lived in the shrinking purchasing power of workers, in the exhaustion of longer working hours, and in the quiet despair of those who cannot imagine a future beyond debt and instability. But history does not move only through suffering. It moves through struggle. The year 2026 has already seen a wide range of labour actions that illuminate the emerging contours of resistance. Nurses in New York walked out over unsafe conditions and inadequate pay, forcing a confrontation with the commodification of healthcare. Teachers in San Francisco struck for the first time in decades, reminding us that public education remains a terrain of class struggle. In Norway, hospitality workers launched strikes over wages and sick pay, while in Gabon, teachers continued a long fight against wage stagnation.

Beyond traditional labour disputes, new forms of protest have emerged. Here are a few examples:

1.     Ireland. Due to rising energy costs, drivers across the small European country set up road blockades and depot pickets as well as drive-slow movements to target key logistical networks and roadways.

2.     South Korea. Subway workers used partial compliance and slowdowns rather than full strikes to pressure authorities for better urban infrastructure and for higher wages without losing public support.

3.     Brazil. Delivery workers continued working but collectively refused certain routes or high-demand zones, thereby disrupting platform efficiency while avoiding total income loss. These ‘invisibility strikes’ revealed new hybrid forms of resistance emerging under precarious, app-mediated labour conditions.

4.     India. Platform workers coordinated mass log-offs from ride-hailing and delivery apps, effectively shutting down services without traditional picket lines. This tactic exposed both the vulnerability and the latent power within algorithmically managed labour systems.

5.     Nigeria. Transport unions and informal sector workers staged coordinated stoppages and street blockades in response to rising fuel prices and currency pressures, effectively slowing movement in major cities such as Abuja and Lagos.

These struggles are not yet unified. They appear as fragments: sectoral, national, often defensive. But beneath their diversity lies a shared recognition: that the existing order cannot sustain the lives of those who labour within it. What is absent, however, is a coherent political project capable of knitting these fragments into a force. The old institutions of the working class, such as trade unions, remain, but they often struggle to match the scale and speed of contemporary capitalism. In many places, they have been weakened by decades of neoliberal restructuring, their capacities eroded, their horizons narrowed. And yet, the memory of collective power persists.

May Day itself is a testament to that memory. Born in the struggle for the eight-hour day, it reminds us that every gain of the working class has been wrested from capital through organisation and sacrifice. The question that confronts us in 2026 is whether this memory can be transformed into a strategy adequate to our time. The signs are contradictory but not without hope. The call for a general strike in the United States in 2028 suggests a willingness to think beyond isolated actions toward coordinated disruption (India has had an annual General Strike right though our liberalisation period). The persistence of strikes across sectors and regions indicates that workers are not passive victims, but active agents, probing the limits of their power. To move forward, however, requires more than spontaneity. It requires internationalism; not as a slogan, but as a practice. The crises faced by workers in Santiago, Paris, and Manila are interconnected, rooted in a global system that must be confronted on a global scale. It also requires a rethinking of politics itself. The struggle is not only for better wages or conditions, but for a transformation of the structures that produce exploitation. Without such a transformation, each victory remains partial, vulnerable to reversal.

On this May Day, the working class did not merely protest. It revealed itself as a force fragmented yet potential, wounded yet defiant, uncertain yet indispensable. The future, as always, will depend on whether that force can become conscious of itself.