upcoming talk

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Sun Mar 12 10:40:40 PST 2000


In a message dated 00-03-12 12:02:48 EST, you write:

1. Employment as a right, fully on a par with other civil rights such

a the right to free speech.

I may be being excessively legalistic here, but if employment were a constitutional right, that would normally just mean that the government could not act to deprive you of it. What I presume you mean, though, is taht we need a legislative commitment to full emplyment that would either operate against private employers or would commit the government to act as employer of last resort or something like that.

> 2. Work as meaningful, with a maximum integration, in every job, of

our uniquely human capability to conceptualize and carry out

work tasks, and a sharing of society's more onerous tasks. A democratic

union will naturally turn its attention to the workplace, and the

hierarchies found there will be no more tolerable than those in the

union. Workplace hierarchies are based, in part, upon an inhuman

division of labor, which divides up our jobs and doles them out to us in

little mechanical pieces, unfit for truly human labor. From democratic

unions to democratic workplaces seems a natural progression.

This is pretty vague and mealy-mouthered when you are talking about what amounts to the end of capitalist control of the workplace. Is that vagueness and waffling deliberate?

> 4. Maximum democratic control of production, whether by workers

or communities or both. As democratic

control spreads from our unions to our workplaces, it will ultimately

know no bounds.

Difference from above?

> 7. No discrimination of any kind. An injury to one must be an injury

to all, no matter who the one is, that is, irrespective of any person's

race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. And we cannot

say, as many have, that we will attack discrimination after we take

power, because such a view really means that we will never do it. We

must make the fight for democracy in our unions a fight for equal rights

for all.

What about affirmative action?

> 8. Equality, and not just some sham equality of opportunity, seen as a

good in itself. When we think about it, it is very difficult to justify

any significant differences in reward among human beings. Why should

anyone make a great deal more money than another or have more wealth

than another? Inequality is the great underminer of democracy.

You start off saying that equality is good in itself and end up justifying it interms of democracy.

--jks



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