> 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 don't know where you're getting this stuff. Full employment means everyone who wants a job can get one. In other words: if "we" demanded a full employment policy from the U.S. govt, and "our" demand were implemented, the result would be that within the U.S., everyone who wants a job could find one. I don't know why this is so hard to understand.
I sense that your objections come from some sort of theory that says full employment in one place can only come about through the immiseration of some other place. If that's the theory, please explain; it sounds like total nonsense to me. Sweden, the pioneer of full employment policy, where unemployment was negligible for the most of the 1950-1990 period, was also a pioneer in women's labor force participation and a pioneer in household work sharing.
> 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.
What do you mean "what would it look like"? Visually? Sonically? Who would make the trains run on time? What sort of details are you after? I don't know what the post-war economic structure means.
>> 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.
See above.
> 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 .
Good lord, I'm all for shorter hours and the right to work less. But can you explain how to generate support for the demand "Less Work!" at a time when the vast majority of workers see job scarcity - too few hours - as the greatest threat to their well-being? The best way to challenge wage labor is to make workers less dependent on their bosses, and the only plausible way to do that is to arrange things so that you can tell your boss fuck you and know some other job will be out there. Why is it so hard to make this clear? UNEMPLOYMENT = MORE DEPENDENCE ON BOSS. FULL EMPLOYMENT = LESS DEPENDENCE ON BOSS.
> 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,
Can you be more specific? Who are you talking about and can you point toward some texts, preferably online?
SA