Manifesto for the launch of the project
Everything was ready, the first issue wrapped up, the manifesto revised and polished. We were about to go to press and found ourselves—like all of Italy, like half the world—in the midst of the Covid-19 emergency, with all its health, economic, social, and cultural consequences. For the first issue, small tweaks and a few adjustments were necessary. The project's goals and methods, however, seemed even more necessary.
Capitalist labor, contract labor in its many forms, is still the fundamental social relationship, the basis of inequality. One cannot discuss society today without considering the imbalance between those who sell their labor power and those who buy it, without grasping the myriad forms of exploitation, self-exploitation, and inequality in the interstices of production and social reproduction. Hence the need to overcome this imbalance by resorting to viable forms of conflict with multiple types of coalitions.
May Day Workshop It is a partisan political-cultural project, consciously aimed at exploring the conditions that make conflict possible, understood as the capacity for action on the part of those directly involved in the processes of production, distribution, settlement, etc. While we recognize that some of the ways in which social conflict was expressed under Fordism have become obsolete, we remain convinced that much remains to be done and experimented in the field of labor, taking into account not only the conflict that unfolds but also the tacit, intrinsic, and latent conflict, and its potential for expression in the digital universe. The question we will attempt to answer from time to time is: how and where can conflict be generated today, particularly in labor relations and in technical-intellectual services?
This question cannot be answered individually and solely theoretically. Anyone who claims to change the world before them must engage in a complex set of activities, all necessary and none self-sufficient. For these reasons, this manifesto is intended as an invitation to participate, addressed to organizations and individuals who agree on these points and wish to unite to create a space for critical discussion by actively participating in the creation of theMay Day WorkshopWe know it will be a long process: reality must be analyzed and ideas must be developed, simultaneously with cultural mediation, which is necessary to prevent analysis and concepts from becoming self-referential. And mediation must interact with political and social actions, which in turn must reshape and direct the analyses; doing and knowing either proceed together or are reduced to mere pastimes, which already fill the world. These phases (analysis, mediation, action) are all necessary and continually question each other; without one of them, the rest is either useless or fails.
May Day Workshop It aims to be a place for discussion and dialogue as a political-cultural operation, starting from concrete experiences of social action: beyond the individual's knowledge and their social role, only collective discussion allows for a process of thought purification and constant verification. The editorial staff, but also the diverse range of authors we will be able to activate, aims to be a true workshop where people interact, bringing with them the experiences and ideas of other diverse subjects, thus becoming connectors of a network. The declaration of wanting to network is obvious and overused; it must be put into practice. We must create a space for participation, but also have the humility to participate, without expecting the network to form around us. Without a network—spread and rooted (even physically) across territories—the assertion that theory and practice must proceed together would be merely a statement; just as without a network, the material foundations on which to build solidarity and organize conflict are lacking.
We met for the first time in Milan on Saturday, February 9, 2019: the group is made up of people of different ages, backgrounds, geographical, cultural, and political backgrounds. We gathered around the idea of collectively rethinking the legacy of the magazine's experience. May Day, which ceased publication in 1989. Numerous signs pointed to this direction, especially since the journal had published a special issue in 2018 to assess its progress and discuss its results. During the meeting, we had to ask ourselves what the true purpose of our coming together was. The initial idea of continuing that editorial project was quickly abandoned. It turned out that we didn't need to relaunch the historic journal. May Day, its intentions and presuppositions. Rather, we want to try to understand what is happening today, both through the still relevant elements of that formidable theoretical-political development and through the development of new categories, a new way of addressing the changing reality. This is necessary to break out of the impasse to which most attempts at critical understanding of our present seem doomed—not to mention the attempts at political organization frequently associated with them—either because of their stubborn attachment to outworn frameworks, methods, and slogans, or, conversely, because of their total and unreflective abandonment.
Obviously, it's not a question of criticizing that experience as such, but of acknowledging the landslide we've experienced in recent decades; therefore, of clearing our gaze of the encrustations that weigh upon it, to enable it to grasp what we actually experience. It's essentially a matter of bringing our intelligence and our categories to the level of the conflict that is forced upon us daily.
For this reason too, the idea of reviving a magazine that was dissolved three decades ago has been shelved: such an act would produce nothing more than a common label to be applied to disparate and only superficially aggregated materials. Priority must be given to the creation of a workshop of radical critical thought capable of fostering collective debate. We understand dialogue as a process of purifying thought, which should also translate into editorial work; only in this way can a relevant political-cultural project emerge. What follows will be the tool with which the group—open and in the process of being formed—will decide to pursue its objectives. In short, it is a matter of composing a core of theoretical development that is in mutual exchange with the political practice of the left and existing or potential social movements. May Day We want to gather and relaunch the ability to present itself as a zone of open discussion, because it is politically aligned without being the megaphone of a particular political subject. May Day We want to recall his analytical ability, his systematic, innovative, and counter-current theory-building, yet without academicism, his ability to engage in politics and take a strong stand without, however, falling into agitation or propaganda.
But why today? Is there a temporal conjuncture that makes it necessary and urgent to attempt such a political-cultural operation? It seems so if we consider that we are on the eve of a new technological leap in the capitalist system, the one that goes by the name of digitizationWe will therefore work on the present starting from an approach that is articulated on both sides of the same proverbial coin. Starting from a concrete analysis of reality and from real experiences of conflict so as not to remain simple observers – and here of May Day the vocation for investigation is useful to us; to move away in time, following the oblique gaze that May Day It was capable of bringing current events to bear by drawing on other times and places, with a focus on history and memory that goes by the name of militant history. Inquiry, co-research, and militant research are the cornerstones we place at the center of transforming the seeds of current conflicts into real strategy.
To get in touch with May Day Workshop To be included in the mailing list and receive the newsletter, you can write to the editorial staff: info@officinaprimomaggio.eu
The OPM website will soon be available with the digital edition of the first issue of the magazine