In memory of John Kenneth Galbraith, I suggest that everyone wear black on May 1, May Day, International Worker's Day.

If you want to hold ribbons and dance around a maypole too I suppose that's okay, but try to look dour while doing it, all right? And make them black ribbons, grosgrain if you have it, something matte. I'm really feeling the matte. And maybe you could sing something from the Bruce Cockburn songbook? "they call it democracy" would be perfect!

Here are the lyrics, ideal for happy, full-mourning maypole dancing on International Worker's Day, to commemorate the death of John Kenneth Galbraith:

Padded with power here they come
International loan sharks backed by the guns
Of market hungry military profiteers
Whose word is a swamp and whose brow is smeared
With the blood of the poorWho rob life of its quality
Who render rage a necessity
By turning countries into labour camps
Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom

Sinister cynical instrument
Who makes the gun into a sacrament —
The only response to the deification
Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'
Idolatry of ideology

North South East West
Kill the best and buy the rest
It's just spend a buck to make a buck
You don't really give a flying fuck
About the people in misery

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt

See the paid-off local bottom feeders
Passing themselves off as leaders
Kiss the ladies shake hands with the fellows
Open for business like a cheap bordello

And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy
And they call it democracy

See the loaded eyes of the children too
Trying to make the best of it the way kids do
One day you're going to rise from your habitual feast
To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast
They call the revolution

IMF dirty MF
Takes away everything it can get
Always making certain that there's one thing left
Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt