> 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.
How did this 'make full employment possible'? What do you guys think was the functional relationship here?
If people were for some reason interpreting a call for full employment as a call for getting women back into the kitchen, segregating the school system and sending military advisers to South Vietnam, I'd be the first to block consensus.
> 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 I've said, I don't think capitalism could sustain full employment - except in exceptional conditions beyond the power of policymakers to create. It's a demand that pushes beyond capitalism or fails. It was possible for a few years (a couple of decades in some places like Australia) because of rapid productivity growth, which made rapid real wage growth compatible with high profitability. In the absence of those conditions, demand management is unable to generate full employment without hitting an inflation barrier. So if a political movement was able to prevent macro-policy restraint, it would then need to politicise price and wage-setting - distribution. If this were not to mean wage restraint, it would need to politicise investment and ultimately control of the means of production itself. So as I see it, the demand for full employment is not merely 'administrative' but a serious challenge, and yet one that could be truly popular.
> 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 .
I'm a Nina Power fan and I like the Selma James line. I would fully support adding a demand for shorter work hours for those who want it. It's a misunderstanding that full employment means 'everybody must work full time'. It's a labour market condition in which anybody who wants a job can get one. Such conditions would increase people's freedom from any particular job, and increase worker power over conditions, hours, etc. Anything that helps spell that out increases the appeal of the demand - great.
Mike