If you're interested, we had a similar discussion a few months back:
> http://jacobinmag.com/blog/?p=540
Interesting, and not without merit. But a few immediate concerns spring to mind (and more may follow later):
"For the fact is that the working class is never more obsessed with jobs than in a period of joblessness, and neverless obsessed with jobs than in a time of full employment. The only viable route to a mass politics of post-productivism is a permanent plenitude of paid, alienated work."
But what if such a plenitude never returns, certainly on a permanent basis? While I'm not a deep economic thinker like some of you, I gather that this is far from the most unrealistic possibility. Could it be that "[t]he only viable route" isn't viable at all? What then?
Also, while I understand the space limitations SA mentions, it would have been interesting to see how the paradox he proposes "is borne out by history." Perhaps he could explain this further?
In any event, this strikes me as an unfortunate approach to left politics. The way to build a demand is to build it - to agitate, organize, and mobilize. Waiting for the right circumstances to arise (because, let's face it, we won't win full employment any time soon regardless) before we begin a final push for what we've REALLY wanted all along is a recipe for impotence and irrelevance. Conditions should certainly factor into our planning - but so should their likelihood.
"Even if we could immediately impose a tax raising 20% of GDP and distribute it per capita as a universal basic income, it would only amount to $9000 per person. This would not come close to replacing the lost full-time income of a single unemployed worker.
Right. So why couldn't I say the same thing, with equal validity, about salaries? Money's money, whether you have to leap for a brass ring to get it or not.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."