The Concept of Holidays and Vacation
A
friend lamented that “ people in America have also forgotten why the
labor movement in this country fought for time off and established the
concept of weekend off and holidays.”
They have forgotten
and no one remembers that in the 19th century when workers were being
made to work 16-20 hours. What replaced it was an 8-hour labor law that
gives workers 2 days off to rest and recuperate.
Unfortunately,
corporate media and the government has shaped the weekend to be simply
about sports and beer and shopping (especially at the malls). No
politics of course and no serious stuff, just entertainment.
People used
the time to go on vacation, to Vegas or any casinos, go on a cruise, to
Europe or to their home countries.
Men need to feel like
they are "potent" even as they are seriously at risk for obesity and
cardiac arrest. Because it's supposed to be a time to rest (in peace?!).
Women used the time to mall. Go on a shopping spree and buy all that
will fill their vanities.
What a concept of the good life!
For those who lack or have no money, they just stay at home, watch TV or rest to recuperate for the next working days. They can really savor these holidays as rest days.
Sadly
this is the concept of holidays and vacation that people have in mind
today. That what ultimately became the ...8-hour day was originally so
that workers could not only have time for themselves and their families
but also time to study and participate in meaningful social and
political activities to advance their class and their community.
In
socialist countries this was the way of life. Family and country are one
and the same.
In America and elsewhere, that's how
capitalism prevents people from questioning if it is in the interest of
any working person let alone of his community or his/her class. In the
thrall of consumerism, people are by and large content to be zombies.
This is why the US working class is the most successfully repressed in
the world.
The monopoly capitalist bourgeoisie controls
the mass media. Thus it has the people successfully glued to the TV and
the internet to be mindlessly entertained and lobotomized.They create
demand by advertising . They suit the taste of the people thorough
their tastes and caprices that eventually they became the masses.
They
have the immigrants as scapegoat or the liberals as their bogeyman.
They have all the fundamentalist televangelist haranguing everyone on
cable and TV or radio lanes. And the worse, they have the labor unions
who they owe these holidays and vacation as another whipping boy to
blame for all the problems of society as “interest groups.”
One
in a while, they bring out the SWAT teams and riot police when people
act "crazy" and out of line, but that's still the exception. It is in
this context that the monopoly bourgeoisie is promoting the rise of
fascism in society.
They give rise and supported druglords
in Latin America and warlords in Asia like the Ampatuans in Mindanao
and use them to stamp out popular movements. As they worship the mob in
order to create gangs and criminals to stamp them out later and foster
law and order in the country.
I hope that today on the
26th holiday, we remember Martin Luther King Jr. who in the last year of
his life condemned the US government for its imperialist foreign policy
and as the "greatest purveyor of violence in the world."
I
also hope more and more people realize that his dream for a better
world is the antithesis of the capitalist reality we have today.
