Wish we weren't here
Of course it may have been a trick by the more miserly elements in the Confederation of British Industries but some recent research has thrown doubt on the benefits, hitherto taken for granted, of a holiday. Casting a cold eye on what actually happens to people who are trying to convince themselves that they are having a marvellous time, getting away from it all, has revealed that, such are the stresses involved, they might have been better to stay at home.
In this year of delays in air transport, which condemned thousands of bored, weary, sweaty package tourists to pass hours, even days, of their holiday in airport lounges, nobody will argue about the strains of getting yourself from rain-soaked Britain to a sunbaked paradise across the sea. Those who stayed at home could also face transport difficulties. For them there were many huge, fuming motorway tailbacks, in each vehicle a driver praying that the engine would not overheat in the inch-by-inch crawl towards their holiday idyll.
Before the journey there is the stress of organisation — booking the holiday, buying the tickets, insuring yourself, making sure that things are up to date at work before you go. worrying about whether you can afford it. And many holidays, under an unrelenting pressure to enjoy yourself according to the writ of the organisers, are little better than exercises in self-abuse — excessive drinking, eating, sun-bathing. . . This behaviour is regarded by many holiday-makers as a release, because it is in direct contrast to what they are allowed to do in the everyday routine of wage-slavery. Two weeks with the 18-30 Club Ibiza is a world away from the factory bench, the supermarket checkout, the typing pool stools. It is a fortnight of unrelieved fantasy with an unpleasant reality waiting at the end.
But perhaps even more damaging is the stress which can be observed on many a crowded beach or cafe or coach. One result of a holiday is to take people, who for the other fifty weeks of the year are kept in only distant contact through being at work or school and forces them to spend a lot more time close together for days on end. It starts out being a happy change but then minor irritations become focussed into major provocations; differences in tastes which usually don't matter because lack of contact allows everyone to do their own thing become impassable obstacles. What usually operates as a manageable tolerance for each other changes into active dislike. It is a relief for everyone to go back home, where they don't have to see as much of each other.
Only one social group, however, experiences stresses. People who have to work for their living cannot employ a load of secretaries. maids and valets to smooth their way onto a holiday. The tensions they are under during their brief spell at what is called leisure reflect those which dominate their working lives. It says a lot about working class life, that many of them might well be better off not taking a holiday. Getting Away From It All is. for them, impossible.
Living on tick
One of the iron principles said to have been drilled into the young Margaret Thatcher by her legendary father was never, ever to get into debt.
Like most of Thatcher s professed standards of behaviour, that one has little relevance to what actually happens in the world. To begin with, a great deal of capitalism's commerce would need to be drastically remodelled if every company adopted the principle of never owing any money to any other firm.
That is besides the working class, whose access to things like furniture, household equipment and houses relies on their being able to borrow money. Of course in the long run it is cheaper to buy, say. a house out of your own pocket rather than go cap-in-hand to a building society. But to save that sort of money would need such stringently miserly living standards over so many years that by the time you moved into your newly-purchased home you would be an emaciated, nervous wreck.
In this time of so-called boom (Thatcher says it's a boom. Lawson says so. . .) workers widely use the quick-loan facilities of credit cards or the "personal" loans which are so enticingly offered by the banks. Running up a bill with Access can work reasonably well for a worker who wants some of the more expensive bits of wealth produced by their class provided there is no tendency to have nightmares about descending bailiffs, but not so well for those suffering from doubt- wracked insomnia. Then what about the sense of guilt induced by our being told that our high living on all this credit is bringing the British economy to its knees. While before a "weak" pound and high interest rates were crippling problems which all true English folk should do their utmost to solve, with the help of a clever Chancellor of the Exchequer like Nigel Lawson, now the threat comes from a "strong" pound and low interest rates. Law- son's apparent solution to this is to say that he will implement the measures which were so recently themselves the main problem. . .
The most cursory acquaintance with these affairs — these blunders, these U-turns, these false assurances — points to the conclusion that all the Chancellors and all their experts really don't have the slightest idea of what is going on in the world. What is obvious is that none of them have the exact, delicate control over the economy and the market which they claim to have. Any confidence they may display in their proposals for juggling endlessly with the symptoms of capitalism's real sickness springs from the very few occasions when their luck has been in — when events which are out of their control have changed in such a way and at such a time as to suggest that they control them. It is on that kind of luck that Lawson's reputation has so far been based; what will happen to him. now that his luck seems to have run out?
Workers who are struggling to survive under capitalism should pay no heed to the superficial aspects of the system. Every time they pay the mortgage, every time they sign a credit sales slip, they are attesting to the fact that this is a society which denies them access to almost everything except pompous harangues from politicians.
Hunting Quayle
If Senator Dan Quayle s prudent membership of the National Guard rather than take his chances on being conscripted to fight in Vietnam was hypocrisy. how do we describe the exultant indignation which it provoked in the media?
Quayle is a member of the capitalist class — born into that minority who live off the labour of the rest of us and so do not need to be employed for a living. Their income — a lot more substantial than that of the majority — comes from their investment in the exploitation of the other class — the working class. This class — the majority in society — do all the useful work. They conceive, design, produce, transport all the wealth and services. They do the clean work like sitting behind a desk and the dirty work like fighting in a war. Society could not operate without them. In contrast, there is no social need for the capitalist class; in terms of producing and distributing useful things they are redundant.
So it is perfectly reasonable for Quayle to expect that other people — from the other class — should fight in the wars in the same way as he expects them to cook his food, clean his floors, write and print his newspapers which his family own. It is also perfectly reasonable for him to use his class privileges, which confer so many advantages on him. to avoid unpleasant experiences — and what could be more unpleasant than a spell in battle in Vietnam?
Many rich youngsters took refuge from Vietnam in the National Guard, pulling the strings of privileges as they did so. The sons of George Bush and Lloyd Bentsen were among them. In the rush to escape Vietnam the National Guard became over-subscribed.
So Quayle and all those other cosseted young capitalists were only doing what come naturally in a class divided society. They were behaving in accordance with the wealth of their class and with the advantages which that wealth brings. It went with their sumptuous homes, their servants, their private aeroplanes and yachts, their ability always to choose how they spend their lives.
The media stand foursquare in favour of this social system. They eulogise the ruling class as people of unusual abilities, the most trivial of whose life must be lovingly related to us. However they may complain about some of the system's symptoms they never question capitalism in its essentials — the division into classes, the existence of rich and poor, the need of one class to be employed by the other, the principle of political leadership. . .
What Dan Quayle did. as another example of what it means to have access to class privileges, was utterly predictable and. from his point of view, utterly sensible. Of course he is a hypocrite — a hawk who wants other people to do the fighting for him. which makes him especially despicable. But the only people who can fairly condemn him for this are those who oppose the system in which his privilege and hypocrisy are rooted.
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