Actually Carrol, I think in Melvin's theory the "technically" unemployed and under employed play a significant role in revolution. It was really fascinating, you should read it if you have not already.
LS on 10/10/2002 7:34 PM, Carrol Cox at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > >> "Devine, James" wrote: >> >> Thiago writes: >>> there also is an issue here about what it means to be unemployed >>> these days. It doesn't necessarily mean one is not working: [clip] >> >> I think it's useful to keep unemployment _per se_ (as with the >> official definitions) separate from these near-unemployments. > > I haven't followed this thread at all yet but have merely shuffled the > posts off into a separate Netscape folder for reading some other day. > But the fact that it has aroused passions is, in itself, an exhibition > of either bad political thinking or simply apolitical thinking. (As > almost every single post I have read on energy or ecology for the past > three years has been apolitical -- i.e., utterly detached from any > conception whatever of how the information provided could be embodied in > an actual mass working-class movement.) > > Unemployment figures prove nothing politically whatsoever, nor can it > make any political difference if those figures are correct or incorrect. > Endless agonizing and polemics over the correctness or incorrectness of > unemployment figures could only come (as Michael Hoover suggested) from > those who have been cut off (or never connected to) concrete political > practice. The result is that politics shrinks to the petty proportions > of winning or losing a rhetorical battle on a maillist. > > Carrol >
