>But official employment statistics are notoriously
>unreliable due to the fact that people who are
>actually Hartz IV beneficiaries are still counted as
>"employed" if they have been shoveled into ABMs or
>1-Euro jobs.
>What the Hartz reforms have actually effected is a
>massive army of underemployed working poor who no
>longer enjoy the same rights and civil liberties as
>normal citizens as beneficiaries of social transfer
>payments, and have a legal status not very far from
>serfdom.
>The whole game played with employment/unemployment
>statistics in this country is a sick fucking joke. A
>Zizek could have a field day with the bizarre
>psychopathology involved.
Sorry, all the lamenting about the official unemployment figures is an unhonest and inapporpriate reaction of helpless leftist on the sidelines: So long as the unemployment fgures went up, everybody citeted them, even when a big jump upwards was only result of a changing aof definitions in January 2005:
Not every time the changing of definition resultet in less "official" unemployed. That time it was just the other way round, taking the figure up from 4,3 Million in the last quarter 2004 to 5,2 Million in the first quarter 2005.
And out of the german unemployment statistics it is easy to learn all the corrections you are interested in (in english: http://www.pub.arbeitsagentur.de/hst/services/statistik/000000/html/start/monat/Arbeitsmarktbericht-engl/index.shtml ): Neither the number of those in 1-Euro-jobs or in other forms of subsidized labour, nore the number of those in some form of training and so on and on - is a state secrete. On the contrrary, all the critiques themselve base their critque on the official statistics. Of course we could in included a few hundred thousand more into the official figures, but that would not change the trend at all. Compared to the US-method of phne surveys the german statistics are quite reliable.
Yes, in 2005 the "welfare refom" was in broad parts of the population was seen as a scandal and unjust. But up to now the majority became used to it. The number of directly affected went back. They learned, that every job may bee better than this kind of welfare. So they are looking for one. And this is already the answer to the other post:
DRR wrote:
>This should be a golden moment for Left organizing, though - US
>neoliberalism is committing world-historical suicide, and the Eurolibs
who
>claimed Europe couldn't afford welfare states are suddenly clamoring
for a
>bailout. I don't expect anything from the shambling political corpse of
>the SPD, but it might be possible to push the Greens and Left parties
in a
>progressive direction.
The greens - not only in Germany - are a hard core liberal party, divided from the traditional liberals more by culture then by politics. No chance.
And the big new leftist part y in Germany was the first, wich together with the social democrats in a state government, here in Berlin, that stepped out in January 2003 of the bargained treaties on wages in the public sector to safe public money.
Speaking about "social justice"? - Yes! But no more. Two years ago we tried to challenge them on the state level in Berlin. We had the problem, that that the majority of our activist came out of the western parts of Berlin, out of a broad and unstable coalition
from anticommunist social-liberals to hard core trotzkyist, whereas the majority of our potential voters living in the easter, former "Capital of the GDR" districts. In average we took 2,9 percent. In my district - the political heart of the old PDS, Lichtenberg, about 250 000 inhabitants - we had 10 militants in the election campaign and got beetwen 4,x ond more then 7 percent (depending on the list voted for, there where 3 different ones).
So with the "Left" party you may try to defend the welfare state - the same way, social democrats did all the time: Taking into account the
necessities of capitalizm and so selling the lesser evil. It was Aneluy Novus, who saw the deposit insurance as social democratic politics. I do not.
But we should not continue german debates in a US-Forum.
Sebastian
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