> I'm sympathetic to Eric's position, but I'm not sure I can fully defend
> it. The basic argument, which strikes me as at least plausible, is that
> full employment looked like a plausible demand during a period when
> Keynesian policies seemed to be working. The move away from Keynesian
> policies was a fairly conscious strategy by (some) capitalists, but this
> strategy was, I think, predicated on, or required by, a) technical
> changes that made things like global supply chains more successful and
> b) political action from groups who had been excluded from the benefits
> of these policies, which made the particular way the policies had been
> implemented up to that point politically impossible to maintain.
I don't have a narrative for my position, which I also can't fully defend, but, Free Network Movement-style, bullet points!
*Huge amounts of unpaid domestic labor. *Spectacular returns on investment from foreign-invested capital on a level that can't be replicated today. In other words, massive exploitation (SA always forgets this one when he sings the praises of Fordism). *SA also likes to point out the huge gains made by blacks during the 20+ years after the war. And that's true, but it needs to be seriously qualified: Nearly all of the income and poverty gains made by blacks were in the '65-'68 period. They were incredible, but they were limited to the last few years of a more than-two-decade era, so they hardly argue for the overall egalitarian nature of that era. *A bargain that tied wages to productivity increases. That in itself doesn't require the exclusion of elements of society, but it did mean that when the (inevitable) downturns happened, certain workers were insulated from wage cuts, as happened in the mid- and late 50s recessions. The pain was felt in certain segments, not by the Fordist worker. *These productivity rates were enforced by mediated governing structures, i.e., unions. Unless you envision 20 million union jobs dropping from the sky, I don't see how what SA is asking for can be replicated. You might as well be asking for immediate communism.
There's probably more, but I gotta run.