Workers across the globe will celebrate and demonstrate today. But May Day will, alas, go relatively unnoticed in the United States.

Internationally, millions use the day to recognize and honor the thousands of dedicated fighters who gave their very lives to ensure better worlds for generations to come. Here, it is some arbitrary day whose celebration contains some tentative link to flowers.

It is, of course, a day to mark the gains and sacrifices of organized labor. First celebrated nearly 150 years ago, the holiday is now associated largely with the Haymarket Martyrs -- vilified Chicago protesters working to secure the 8-hour day.

It is ironic that the day's most visible touchstone is the U.S. labor movement, while the United States is one of the countries with the least commitment to its commemoration.

May Day has taken a back seat to the positively flaccid Labor Day in the United States. The reasons for this are certainly many, but we might note one particular reason: to recognize May Day is to acknowledge the very real role that socialists, anarchists and communists played in securing weekends, labor safety laws, minimum wages and a host of other concessions from a brutal and brutalizing labor market.

May Day commemorates the role that political radicals played in developing an active working class movement that continues to make life more bearable for the overwhelming majority of citizens.

It is not merely lamentable that May Day goes unacknowledged in the United States. It is symptomatic of a deeper problem: A culture that chooses to ignore history when it reveals the mythic quality of the political and economic dogmas that we allow to organize our lives.