In the opening words of "The Communist Manifesto," Karl Marx and Frederick Engles describe the "specter haunting Europe_ the specter of communism." Since those words were written in 1848, this specter_the conscious organization of the working class into a revolutionary force_has haunted the exploiting classes in every corner of the world.

Before the working class seized state power in the Soviet Union, apologists for the bosses and bankers ridiculed communism as utopian and terroristic. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the defenders of capitalist rule tried to use defects in the Soviet Union as proof that communism couldn't work. And after the collapse of the USSR, communism was once again deemed a hopeless utopia.

All of these "refutations" of communism are born from the utmost fear of the working class. Revolutions around the world_in Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and others_ have shown that capitalist rule is not secure. The workers can win.

Every year, the ruling classes around the world are again reminded of their vulnerability and of the power of their gravedig-gers. On May 1, the world working class displays its strength in demonstrations and strikes. May Day_ International Workers' Day_is a reminder to the ruling classes that their days are numbered.

How did May 1 become a day recognized around the world as a working class holiday, a day of solidarity between workers of all nationalities? Why do the captains of finance and industry still fear the celebration of May Day?

May Day was born from the struggle for the eight-hour day. That struggle, in turn, emerged as part and parcel of the working class itself.

Working classes have existed since the development of agriculture, about ten thousand years ago. Serfs, slaves, tradespeople and others were forced to turn over the fruits of their labor to an exploiting class.

But the modern working class_the class of "free labor," whose exploitation is hidden by the wage system_is only several hundred years old. Although its exploitation is masked, it is no less brutal. Men, women and children are forced to work long hours in miserable conditions just to eke out a bare subsistence.

EXPLOITATION BREEDS RESISTANCE
These conditions gave rise to demands for limitations on the working day. Marx noted in 1867 that "the creation of a normal [fixed] working day is the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working class."

Utopian socialist Robert Owen of England had raised the demand for a ten-hour day as early as 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark. For the rest of the English workers, progress was slower. Women and children were granted the ten-hour day in 1847. French workers won the 12-hour day after the February revolution of 1848.

In the United States, where May Day was born, Philadelphia carpenters struck in 1791 for the ten-hour day. By the 1830s, this had become a general demand. In 1835, workers in Philadelphia organized a general strike, led by Irish coal heavers. Their banners read, "From 6 to 6, ten hours work and two hours for meals."

The ten-hours movement had a real impact on workers' lives. >From 1830 to 1860, the average work day had dropped from 12 hours to 11 hours.

Already in this period, the demand for an eight-hour day was being raised. In 1836, after winning the ten-hour day in Philadelphia, the National Laborer declared: "We have no desire to perpetuate the ten-hour system, for we believe that eight hours' daily labor is more than enough for any man to perform." At the 1863 convention of the Machinists' and Blacksmiths' Union, the eight-hour day was put as a top priority.

CIVIL WAR FUELS EIGHT-HOUR DAY DEMAND
This agitation was carried out against the backdrop of the Civil War, which broke the back of southern slavocracy_ abolishing slavery and opening the Southern states to free- labor capitalism. Following the Civil War, Reconstruction lifted the aspirations of thousands of former slaves.

This was accompanied by the widespread growth of the eight- hour movement. Marx noted that "out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first real fruit of the Civil War was the eight-hours' agitation, that ran with the seven- leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California."

As evidence, Marx quotes a declaration from the 1866 General Congress of Labor in Baltimore: "The first and great necessity of the present, to free this country from capitalist slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working day in all States of the American Union."

Six years later, in 1872, a hundred thousand workers in New York City struck and won the eight-hour day, mostly for building trades workers. It was in this rising ferment for the eight-hour day that May Day was born.

The movement for the eight-hour day was wedded to the date of May 1 at an 1884 convention of the three-year-old Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada_the forerunner of the American Federation of Labor. George Edmonston, founder of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, introduced a resolution designed to crystallize labor's support for the eight-hour day:

"Resolved ... that eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labor organizations throughout this district that they so direct their laws so as to conform to this resolution by the time named."