Draft 28 Amendment for right to a job

boddhisatva kbevans at panix.com
Sun Dec 13 22:04:02 PST 1998


To whom...,

Universal employment is not only desirable, it's almost the definition of a civilized society. That being said, the "right to a job" idea is silly. It's like the "right to health care". Fine, from whom? Are we to enslave doctors? Do some citizens have a right to the money of other citizens for doctor bills and prescriptions? Will we force people to put up factories and office buildings at gun point? It is not the case that the jobs and health care are out there and being taken away. They're not out there and that's the problem. After all, the Republicans are the ones who claim that everyone could have a job who wants it. Marxists know better. The system is broke and needs fixing, not wishing away.

A right is a negative obligation on the state and citizens, not a positive obligation. To give citizens a "right" (currently the single most abused word in the English language) to facilities, we must first create them as a common and even then we clearly we cannot give one group of people a "right" to the labor of another group of people. We can regulate the way that people do business, but that does not give anyone a "right" since we cannot force people to do business. Adopting resolutions is fine, but they should be thought out a little first.

peace



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list