> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 14:31, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'll get at why I don't agree and why I think full employment is a bad
>> strategy to pursue.
>
> Demanding "full employment" is like demanding happiness. Full
> employment is a consequence, a result, of applying the right economic
> policies, not a policy per se.
There's quite a difference between a strategy and a policy, and neither term sounds right to me in this context. I would have thought it makes more sense to think of FE as either a goal or a demand, and the practical consequences of the distinction seem pretty significant. Demands are usually best seen as tactical, and you can have a goal that is either more or less ambitious than the demands you're making. Much more in this case, I would hope.
But if we get a revolution, doesn't the "problem of FE" kind of go away (replaced by lots of very real practical problems, sure - but not the "problem" of full employment)? And isn't that the goal? So then isn't FE relegated to a tactical role as a demand - an intermediate objective to be achieved, on the way to, and in service of, the goal of driving the system to its revolutionary rebirth?