[lbo-talk] OWS Demands working group: jobs for all!

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Thu Oct 20 16:33:39 PDT 2011


On 10/20/2011 7:23 PM, Mike Beggs wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 5:46 AM, Eric Beck<ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Okay, let me ask explicitly: what's wrong with being against full
>> employment as a demand? Jobs (little "j") fucking suck and cause as
>> much misery, stress, and death as lack of jobs. Why demand that? Talk
>> about desiring your own repression.
> I don't see what's so difficult about it. In conditions of full
> employment we have something more than bravado with which to resist
> the shittiness of jobs, because you're not tied to any one in
> particular - it's easier to move around and firms are more desperate
> for your labour, so wages tend to rise faster, so you can spend less
> time working if you like. Full employment conditions make us freer
> from work, in a way that bluster doesn't.
>
> For these reasons, I don't think full employment is sustainable for
> capitalism in the long run, which is why an awful lot of macro-policy
> effort goes into cooling things off should the economy threaten to get
> there. But it's a worthwhile radical political aim nonetheless,
> because getting there and staying there would push the system beyond
> capitalism.

Thank you! This should be printed, framed, and hung on the wall of every leftist.

SA



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