Anthony Giddens, "Third Way" guru to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and director of the London School of Economics, has an "open and public dialogue" about globalization on the LSE website. I've sent in the following contribution. Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you feel would be interested. The "lump-of-labour fallacy" referred to in the message has been a stock rejoinder to proposals for shorter work time. It is a bogus claim. In their recent report to the Council of Europe, Boeri, Layard and Nickell use it to disparage any approach to full employment other than their favoured supply-side panacea. Their policy advice is not only fundamentally flawed, it is intellectually dishonest and anti-democratic. It relies on a hoary rhetorical strategem to obscure the issues and stifle debate. Tom Walker Sandwichman and Deconsultant Message sent to the "Runaway World Debate" on "Democracy and Third Way Politics" According to the background summary for this debate, a keynote of the new social contract is 'no rights without responsibilities' (see http://www.lse.ac.uk/Giddens/RWDdemocracyandthirdway.htm). Not surprisingly, the same theme of complementary rights and responsibilities was central to the report to Prime Ministers Blair and D'Alema, "Welfare to Work", prepared by Tito Boeri and LSE experts Richard Layard and Stephen Nickell for the March 2000 meeting in Lisbon of the European Council. (see: http://www.palazzochigi.it/esteri/lisbona/dalema_blair/inglese.html). The issue that concerns me is what responsibilities do the experts have to ensure that their advice is balanced and credible? Boeri, Layard, Nickell disparage what they refer to as the 'lump-of-labour fallacy' behind policies, such as early retirement, which may reduce labour supply. Aside from the straw-man argument that such policies have labour supply reduction as their *only* or *predominant* aim, the lump-of-labour label itself is highly objectionable. As I have documented ("The 'lump of labor' case against work-sharing: populist fallacy or marginalist throwback" in Lonnie Golden and Deborah Figart, eds., _Working Time: International Trends, Theory and Policy Perspectives_, Routledge, forthcoming 2001), the claim of a so-called lump-of-labour fallacy has a dubious status in the history of economic thought. Its use by contemporary economists is characteristically inconsistent and incoherent. Furthermore, the dubious claim played a prominant role in anti-trade union and anti-democratic politics in the U.S. and Britain in the early 20th century. In short, Boeri, Layard and Nickell have trotted out a demonstrably bogus piece of right-wing propaganda to shore up their case for restricting benefits to the unemployed. I assume they are unaware of the background of their phraseology. Where is the responsibility complementary to their 'expert' right to disparage popular wisdom and thus close off, rather than open up, informed democratic debate?
