Fifty years ago
Holidays with Pay
IT IS INDISPUTABLE that, since the war, an increasing number of people
have annual holidays, but before we applaud this happy fact, let us
examine the reasons. Twenty-five years ago few people enjoyed a regular
break from their employment, except, of course, the idleness enforced
by unemployment. To-day, however, an annual fortnight’s holiday is an
accepted feature of their job. This is mainly due to recognition by the
capitalist class that a refreshed working class makes for greater
efficiency and higher productivity (e.g., contented cows yield more
milk) and also organised working-class activity (i.e., shortage of
labour-power giving the workers stronger bargaining powers).
Accompanying the development of capitalism we find machine production
ever more complex, a higher division of labour and hence a growth of
monotonous repetitive operations. The effect on employees of these
factors is boredom, nervous strain and physical disorders, making a
break from this drab existence imperative. Having tightened nuts,
hammered rivets, checked invoices, and swept floors innumerable times,
fifty weeks a year, the remaining two weeks must be spent forgetting
nuts, rivets, invoices and floors. The working class, generally
speaking, regard a holiday as a period in which to flee from the rut of
normal existence. In other words, not to do those things one usually
has to do, to do all those things one cannot normally do, and where
either of these cannot be carried out, then to do them under more
congenial surroundings and conditions.
Therefore, the manner in which various individuals spend their
restricted release is determined largely by their particular job of
work. Of course, the style of the holiday is conditioned by the
financial resources, indeed, whether they have a holiday at all is
dependent upon that factor [. . .]
(From front page article by “DE NORM”,
Socialist Standard, July 1954)
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