The most obvious place to start is that this holiday is at the beginning of September. So what, you say. Well, there has been a much more longstanding holiday honoring the working man that has been celebrated the world over for some time now, and that would be May Day, May the first. Now why doesn't America celebrate its workers holiday on that day like everyone else? After all, many of these same societies have Christmas on the same day as we do, and all of them have New Year's Day on the same date as America. The answer to that question is very simple. When the Soviet Communists took over Russia and launched the USSR, they declared it a "worker's paradise", where the working man was king and the bosses were there for them, not the other way around. They took May Day and made it their central holiday, and as they exported Soviet Commie shit around the world, they exported that holiday as well, making it a Commie festival in the eyes of all that opposed the Commies, and that would be America, first and foremost. So there was no way that the USA would honor its workers on May !st like everyone else, that would be Commie shit, they said. So, we got a holiday honoring the working man put at the start of September, before it gets cold anywhere in the country, that would not only signify the working man, but the end of the summer season as well. Hence, we have American Labor Day on the first Monday in September, and the Communists had May Day on May 1st.
The American government seized on this difference and said that it signified not repugnance to do anything that the Communists did, but it showed the difference between the treatment of workers under Communism and the American system. Americans were told that the workers paradise of Communism was nothing but a lie. Story after story came out about the horrible inefficiencies of the Commie way, and the harsh life that the workers really led. No, they did not have palatial estates, but they lived in run-down flats (apartments) with little there with them. Possessions were meager at best. People wore the same clothes for years and years at a time, until they just gave out. Some citizens had to resort to having shit like goats and chickens living in the flat with them so that they could have eggs and milk, for there was no other way to afford them. They had to grow pretty much all their own vegetables in a garden themselves, for they couldn't afford vegetables any other way. Store shelves were generally barren, and when something did come in, there were fights that broke out over the workers trying to get it for themselves first. All this as the Communist Party bosses lived royally, with all the goods and services that they desired. They were the ones that reaped the true benefits of the "workers paradise" , not the workers, as they lived in abject conditions, with no hope for improvement in the future. Alcoholism ran rampant amongst the workers, as did hopelessness, depression, suicide, spousal abuse, etc. These were not mere fabrications by the Americans. All this shit was true and that was the way it really was in the Commie societies. The difference in the dates of the working man's holiday was used as an example of how different things were for the American worker, for he didn't have to live like that, things were so much different here, for America was truly the worker's paradise, not the USSR. The problem is that is not exactly the truth.
One of the things brought up against the Commie system is the way that they use their Pigs to harass and subjugate the workers when they deem it necessary. Shit like the gulags and the prisons and the psychiatric hospitals of their system and the usage of the Pigs by the leaders to forcibly put countless numbers of the workers in these various places was always brought up. It is very true that there were many visits to many people's homes in the middle of the night where the visitors weren't paying a social call. They were there to forcibly repatriate someone somewhere at the behest of the Party bosses. You can go anywhere in America and meet people that are immigrants from these type of places where this went on, and they'll tell you horrible stories of countless people's lives, families, possessions, pride, dignity, etc. Being destroyed by the Commies for political reasons. The key word there is political. The Commies weren't so fuckin' filled with hatred and malice that they just went and had the workers busted at random just because they were workers. Some of the immigrants will tell you that they got busted over there because of something that had to do with their job, but that virtually never had to do with the job itself, but rather with something that individual did or said that was taken badly in a politically oriented context by somebody. The USSR was a society that was based on paranoia, as all closed societies are, so many of these reasons were indeed trivial ones, but in a paranoid totalitarian political sense, they were all valid. So the repression in those societies was based on politics alone, not on anything that had to do with any work at all. America's sanctimonius attitude about this is bullshit, however. America has used its Pigs against its workers many times. There are many instances of the Pigs being called in to break a strike in some way. Many of these take place in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Peaceful demonstrations were busted by the Pigs, with many injuries and deaths resulting. Union meetings were infiltrated by them, leaders were harassed, the whole shot.The Pigs just didn't do this at random either. They were requested each and every time by the bosses that were being protested against. In some cases, they went to the politicians that they had paid off in some way or another, and request the Pigs or the Army or whatever to quell the strike. In many of these cases, these were peaceful strikes conducted by workers that had legitimate grievances against the bosses. No illegal activities were being done, but that didn't matter. The Pigs always obeyed the bosses and went in and made a peaceful situation into a disaster. If the bosses didn't have the clout to get the real Pigs, they used their own private ones, and that always led to some serious fuckin' ham-handedness by them that brought the real Pigs into things again to restore order. In all of these cases, the introduction of the Pigs only made the situations worse, never better. Where did all these busted workers go to? They went to jail, and in some cases prison, just like in the USSR. Their families were totalled, and so were their lives. Many of these prison systems put their inmates to work as free labor, which made them the same as the gulags of the USSR. A gulag is nothing more than a prison camp that is centered around hard labor by the inmates. About the only thing that wasn't done was forcibly putting people in mental hospitals, as the USSR did. Wow. One difference. Big fuckin' deal.
Why did the American bosses do this? For political reasons, my friend. The bosses had the ears and souls of the various politicians and wanted them to work for them, not for the common folks. Many of the labor leaders were of a different political persuasion than the bosses were, some of the were even (gasp!) Communists. If the political climate shifted any, that meant that the bosses profits would shift accordingly, and they didn't want that, for they were doing fine as it was. The American bosses were using shit like child labor and not paying any of their workers shit. So many people worked in appalling conditions, where there was no regard for their safety, which became more and more of an issue as society got industrialized. Al that fancy machinery that was being used was dangerous shit, and many workers found that out the hard way through severe accidents. People worked 12 to 16 hours 6 days a week a day routinely. The pay scale was minuscule. The bosses only paid out enough so that the workers could barely subsist for the few hours that they weren't in his employ every week. These workers lived in shitty places that were no better than the places that the USSR workers lived in, and they had about as many possessions, and had to pull many of the same tricks to get by.Entire families, children and all had to work these hours under these conditions. All this while the bosses lived high on the hog and got what they wanted and lived like they wanted, as the working man went nowhere. The workers did shit like strikes and all that to protest this and try to make things better for themselves, which they were told was the American way of life. For this they got the Pigs in their faces and got busted and imprisoned and killed, just like the Soviet workers were. All of this was done in the name of politics and money, just as the Soviets did. I don't see much of a difference here.
Those days are over, Americans are told. The USSR is no more, it died from its treatment of its people and things are better than ever for the American worker. This is the credo as we start the 21st Century. But when you look at American society, it seems that not much has changed. Workers in 2001 are working much longer hours than workers of decades gone by in the late 20th Century. Not only are their hours longer, but their tasks are increasingly more complex. All over America, people are just getting by financially. They stand in line for hours just to get a small chance with a lottery ticket. Bankruptcies are at record levels, and American workers are in debt more than any other people on earth. The prisons are stuffed to capacity with people mostly charged with political or money- related crimes. Workers are living better, but they are paying a higher price for it. Many have no lives outside of work, and they still are getting nowhere fast. The bosses are getting rich, and they are still living way high on the hog, and the working man continues to struggle. There seems to be no parity, and the gap between the workers and the bosses has not shrunk at all, only shifted. Politics is still ruling the boss/employee relationship.All the worker seems to be getting is this shitty holiday that's always ruined by Jerry Lewis and his bullshit anyway.This holiday seems to be nothing more than a sham, for the American worker doesn't seem to be too honored of a person to me any more than they ever were in the past.