OPINION:
Today’s holiday is the 122nd anniversary of the first national Labor Day, a date that in 1894 union workers thought would long be a rallying time for blue-collar labor against management — much in the fashion of the May Day associated with Marxism.
Ironically, however, Labor Day, like May 1 abroad, has not only lost the sting of its anti-management origins but is really testimony to the strength of capitalist dogma. It is also testimony to the errors of Marxism, which maintained that workers would ultimately fight against and prevail over their capitalist bosses.
For today American labor unions are on the ropes, and the once-communist countries of eastern Europe and much of Asia are immersed in capitalist planning. Instead of working classes coming together on Labor Day, as Marxist strategists predicted, their counterparts (corporate workers, small business employees, self-employed consultants, professional people in general or what Marxism would dub the bourgeoisie) are coming together throughout the world. And not just today, but on any given day of the year. Even on this holiday many will be in hotel rooms or airplanes preparing for meetings in countries that don’t honor the first Monday in September as special.
These individuals don’t consider themselves workers so much as they do professionals. They are formally educated as well as schooled in the nuances of their field. Their most frequent place of meeting is likely to be in airport lounges, at gates waiting to board or even in airplane seats. They exchange business cards as a minimum sort of rite-of-passage and sometimes follow up with an email, text or phone call.
In place of the raucous cries of blue-collar workers on strike or protest, their conversation is polite, rarely heated or finger-pointing, often punctuated by humor or small talk. Their reading materials are technical periodicals, their flags or ornaments of identification are briefcases and the latest models of mobile devices. These working people in and of the world rarely unite — as the proletariats in Marxist society were supposed to. They’re strongly individualistic, hoping to get ahead of their colleagues, but their folkways belie any struggle, although the current National Labor Relations Board, dominated by Democratic appointees, is attempting desperately to define them in blue-collar terms so as to effect unionization.
To be sure, these individuals appear to be getting ready for battle. At hotels from Portland, Oregon to Hong Kong, they huff and puff in fitness rooms or by swimming laps and jogging. Their body armor is measured in abs. Increasingly, they shun alcohol, even in the first-class airplane seats where it is free. And they recognize as well that smoking is not only a health hazard but can be a definite impediment to their upward mobility.
If the proletariat of Marxism looked forward to a heavenly city of classlessness and more power, this new breed of world travelers has a much more limited vision, focused mostly on time and predictability. Namely, the hope is that airline schedules will be kept, meetings attended or negotiations begun and effected as scheduled.
These new workers of the world hope for a clean and quiet hotel room, a good night’s sleep, pleasant receptionists, flight attendants, waiters and waitresses and cab drivers who not only know the shortest way to the airport but know when to converse and not to. Instead of criticizing the machine age that was the bane of the proletariat who feared it would hurt or replace them, they praise the mobile devices that have made their work and life instantaneous and seamless.
And they are religious in a sense. As they plan to venture from one spot in the globe or nation to another, their prayers are silent and modest, namely, that nobody will be sitting next to them on the next day’s flight.
• Thomas V. DiBacco is professor emeritus at American University.
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