Noam Chomsky has just published a compelling essay about the dangerously precarious plight of workers. He discusses the increasing organized international assaults upon labor unions and the working class, as well as the long history of government efforts to undermine labor in the United States.

Chomsky explains how in most of the world the first of May is celebrated as a holiday for workers, but in this nation in 1958, like some kind of sick twisted ironic joke, instead of being celebrated as International Workers’ Day, May first was declared to be “Loyalty Day”, in which we all proclaim our undivided devotion to the state:

“The rest of the world may associate May 1 to the struggle of American workers for basic rights but in the U.S. that solidarity is suppressed in favor of a jingoist holiday. May 1 is ‘Loyalty Day,’ designated by Congress in 1958 for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.”