Michael Yates
JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> 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