Another socialist blog

Public commons or corporate tollway? Nigel McFarlane writes that the new browser war is Microsoft versus the Web.

Make no mistake: Microsoft really hates the web. The new browser war may appear to be about the emergence of Mozilla and friends with their polished eye-candy interfaces, but it’s really about Microsoft versus the W3C. Internet Explorer is Microsoft’s blocking tactic: never to be properly web-compliant, never to give the W3C a day in the sun, and Longhorn technology is the big-stick alternative being built. One of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it.

The web is used to provide a variety of services and communities. Part of the Longhorn strategy is to extract from the web all of the services with any profit model at all: web magazines, auction sites, news, online retailers, and so on. When Microsoft tempts these organizations and communities to Longhorn, the web suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Over here will be the standards-based web, with a gradually shrinking set of web sites. Over there will be the future Longhorn-based proprietary global infrastructurea global version of the early Novell NetWare, a sort of stock market/CNN fusion for content delivery. For Microsoft, the best possible outcome is for the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few others will want to go there; so every day there will be fewer traditional websites, every day less relevance.

sys·tem·at·ic
Function: adjective
Etymology: Late Latin systematicus, from Greek systEmatikos, from systEmat-, systEma
1 : relating to or consisting of a system
2 : presented or formulated as a coherent body of ideas or principles <systematic thought>
3 a : methodical in procedure or plan <a systematic approach> <a systematic scholar> b : marked by thoroughness and regularity <systematic efforts>

It’s been reported that American soldiers and the officers who commanded them attempted to hide the systematic abuse of Iraqi inmates from the Red Cross. And this allegation isn’t from some anti-war peace politician, but from no less than Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the former head of US military prisons in Iraq, who has nothing to gain by exaggerating the crimes committed under her command.

That word “systematic” is the interesting part of this story. Gen. Karpinski describes not isolated instances, but “patterns of abuse.” While the White House insists that abuses of prisoners “will not be tolerated,” and “do not reflect the nature of the American people or American troops in Iraq,” it’s painfully clear that were tolerated and do reflect the nature of the American troops in Iraq, as evidenced by the fact that the abuses were widespread and involved officers.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, U.S. policy will be changed to “do not abuse the prisoners.”

International Workers Day, or May Day, is a day of celebration, remembrance and solidarity. On the first of May, workers throughout the world demonstrate for better working conditions, socio-economic equality, universal healthcare and education, and the right to unionize and strike. But, to best understand why workers in America should celebrate May Day, we need to know its history.

The 19th century witnessed some of the worst acts of barbarity in the workplace. Women, children and immigrants were used as a source of cheap and obedient labor, working conditions were outrageous, unions were small and brutally repressed, and workers spent 10, 12 or 14 hours a day making profit for the bosses. It was capitalism at its best.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) passed a resolution demanding the eight-hour workday, starting from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike; by April 1886, over 250,000 Americans had heeded the call. The eight-hour movement was growing rapidly and radically, especially in Chicago.

On May 3, 1886, following some successes, strikers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory in Chicago faced police batons and bullets. Four workers were killed and many injured. Immediately afterwards, a local group of anarchists organized an anti-police brutality rally in Haymarket Square. On May 4, thousands came out for the evening rally without incident.

As the last speaker took to the platform the rally had dwindled down to a couple hundred, and nearly 200 police officers moved in to disperse the crowd. In the shuffle, a bomb was thrown among the police, killing one and injuring dozens, resulting in police gunfire, which killed or injured an unknown number of workers.

This event became known as the Haymarket Tragedy (or "Haymarket Riot"), and saw a sharp increase in police repression of anarchists, socialists and unionists.

Eight prominent Chicago anarchists — August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, Louis Lingg and Oscar Neebe — were arrested, tried and convicted of conspiracy in the Haymarket bombing by a rigged jury and biased judge, with little evidence and even though only one was actually at the rally (and he was a speaker on the platform).

Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887; Louis Lingg committed suicide the day before his execution on November 10, 1887; Illinois Governor Altgeld pardoned Fielden, Schwab and Neebe on June 26, 1893.

In 1889, the founding congress of the Second (Socialist) International met in Paris, France, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, and called for a worldwide demonstration for the eight-hour day.

May 1, 1890, saw mass demonstrations throughout Europe and the Americas. Frederick Engels, who attended the first May Day demonstration in London on May 3, wrote: "As I write these lines, the proletariat of Europe and America is holding a review of its forces; it is mobilized for the first time as one army, under one flag, and fighting for one immediate aim: an eight-hour working day."
In 1904, the Second (Socialist) International declared May 1 an annual day of demonstration "for the legal establishment of the eight-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat and for universal peace."

Unfortunately, May Day began to lose importance in the United States, its place of origin. In 1894, the U.S. government declared the first Monday in September as Labor Day, with the aim of pulling the labor movement away from the radical nature of May Day. The American Federation of Labor (successor to the FOTLU) was becoming one of the largest unions in America and, by 1905, had gone with the government in supporting Labor Day and disavowing May Day altogether.

To add insult to injury, the American Bar Association declared May 1 a celebration of the principles and practices of capitalist law and order — Law Day. Then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower established Law Day by proclamation in 1958. It’s especially ironic that May 1 would be used to celebrate the power of law, which is exactly what was used to murder Parsons, Spies, Fischer and Engel.

Today, International Workers’ Day is celebrated throughout the world and is recognized as the official workers’ holiday in almost every country, except the United States. Each year, millions of workers demonstrate, wave flags and carry banners, sing and dance, educate, organize and agitate for a better, peaceful tomorrow.

As workers of the world, it is our duty to remember our past and to use that strength to carry our class into the future. As the great socialist and unionist Eugene V. Debs said in 1907, "This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the revolution."