There Can Be No Volksgemeinschaft Without the Workers — The Volk!
A May Day message
May Day arrives once more — not as a quiet commemoration, but as a sharp reminder. Across cities and countryside alike, workers continue to face rising costs, stagnant wages, and eroded protections, even as they are praised as the so-called “backbone of the nation.” But this contradiction exposes a deeper truth: there can be no genuine Volksgemeinschaft — no true people’s community — without placing the worker at its very core.
“The working class is either revolutionary or it is nothing.”
— Karl Marx
Too often, the idea of a united Volk is invoked by those who have never set foot in a factory, never stood behind a market stall, never worked a double shift in a hospital or classroom. The concept of Volksgemeinschaft has, in some historical periods, been twisted into a tool of exclusion and authoritarian conformity. But if the term is to have any democratic or ethical meaning today, it must begin and end with the working class.
“Only he who has participated in the work of production can control the fruits of production.”
— V.I. Lenin
Workers labor hard, enduring long hours, paying debts and loans, pinching pennies to and fro — and still, the wages are not enough to suffice the problem. Threats are imposed by exploiters to justify their oppression: from layoffs and dismissals to imprisonment and even death. The rise of automation is used not to ease the burden of labor, but to hold it hostage — keeping workers in a state of fear and enforced contentment, maintained through low wages and unjust working conditions.
And to hear the status quo praise workers for their “resilience,” for enduring such forced contentment, is more than hypocrisy — it is a slap on their faces and a kick in their stomachs.
Karl Otto Paetel, a radical thinker who rejected both fascist dictatorship and liberal complacency, called for a Volkssozialismus — a people’s socialism grounded in justice and democratic self-determination. He warned against substituting national identity for class consciousness. Ernst Niekisch, another voice of resistance, once wrote:
“To love the Volk is to stand with the worker; to deny the worker is to betray the Volk.”
These words hold renewed urgency in the present moment.
Today, gig workers live with no safety net while being labeled “entrepreneurs.” Migrant workers prop up entire sectors yet are treated as disposable. Educators and health workers are honored in speeches and abandoned in budgets. The rhetoric of unity is used to suppress labor unrest, while the wealth produced by the many is hoarded by the few.
A Volksgemeinschaft that excludes the worker is not a community — it is a lie. A nation that calls for sacrifice from its most vulnerable while insulating its wealthiest from accountability is not united — it is fractured. True unity is forged not through submission but through solidarity. Not through silence, but through struggle.
“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
— Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto
This May Day, the call is clear:
To build a real people’s community, society must return power to the hands that build it.
To honour the Volk, it must stand with the worker.
Let no one speak of unity while ignoring injustice.
Let no one speak of the nation while exploiting those who keep it alive.
Long live the workers. Long live solidarity. Long live May Day.