> Eric - please think about this. What you're saying is that we're better
> off in (a) a situation where everybody needs a job to live but millions
> of people can't find jobs; than in (b) a situation where everyone needs
> a job to live and everyone who wants a job can easily get one.
>
> This is not a false binary. This *is* the choice that the question full
> employment poses.
But Eric's claim is that this *isn't* what full employment can possibly mean; that global full employment is impossible, and the only thing "full employment" can mean is full employment for men, and mainly white men, in the the core capitalist countries. I'm not sure where I stand on the idea that the only way to have full employment is to return to something like the post-war economic structure; I'd be interested to hear people's suggestions as to what full employment would look like given today's economic conditions.
> As for your claim that the powers that be "aren't willing" to allow it -
> does that mean you're only in favor of demands that the authorities will
> willingly grant???
I think by "the forces that made it possible," Eric means women and people in the third world who were shut out of employment in the post-war economic system.
One thing that I think would make the demand for full employment a more clear challenge to wage labour would be to add to it a demand for shorter working hours; Selma James's "right to work less," on which see a recent article by Nina Power: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/29/right-to-work-recession-women-at-work .
After all, it's not like demands for full employment haven't been raised before; but there were many people in the 70s (when something like full employment was a living memory) who thought that full employment was a problematic demand, and it makes sense to consider why they thought this and whether their criticisms still apply.
--
"I had never understood why Socialism need imply the arraying
of oneself in a green curtain or a terra-cotta rug, or the
cultivation of flowing locks, blue shirts, and a peculiar cut
of clothes." -- Isabel Meredith, _A Girl Among the Anarchists_ Voyou Desoeuvre <http://blog.voyou.org/>