Stimulating the economy -- whether through monetary or fiscal policy or both --
has the very unfortunate result of aligning the aspirations of workers with
those of capitalists. Both now aspire to endless growth. That is not good.
Marv Gandall, I agree that the work-sharing schemes advanced now by many are
placing the burden on workers to take lower pay in exchange for working fewer
hours -- for the reasons you spell out. I think Dean Baker and most recently
Julietter Schor are advocating a bad idea.
But your history of working hours misses the 1930s and contemporary
France, where the battle over shorter hours seems to be perennial.
At the same time, the left needs to be careful about embracing the stimulus as
a way out of the current economic/unemployment crisis. The US is on its
treadmill for jobs rather than stuff. Yes, we like the stuff, but we are
really shopping to keep each other working. The stimulus is simply the
government buying stuff or giving money to others to buy stuff so still others
will have the income to buy stuff. Our problem isn’t cyclical. It is chronic.
A stimulus jolt won’t repair a dysfunctional economy. A different approach is
required.
A fatal problem with a Keynesian stimulus is that it makes workers’ aspirations
aligned with those of the capitalists. Workers aspirations for stuff, or for
“a better life for my children” now depend on and require growth. Growth means
more jobs, promotions, higher incomes for workers. What’s not to like? The
problem is that growth does not deliver the end to worries over unemployment,
nor does it end poverty.
By aligning workers aspirations for the future with capitalism’s requirement of
growth, a Keynesian stimulus plan heads off the conflict between workers and
owners that could result in a sharp change in income distribution and a real
solution for the problem of climate change.
This is not to say that at the moment a stimulus is not required. Rather it is
welcome, for people are suffering. Nevertheless the left ought to be
advocating a sharp cut in working time as the real solution to unemployment,
and wishing for an early end to the need for the stimulus.
Gene Coyle
On Aug 8, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
>
> On 2010-08-08, at 11:54 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>> ...shorter hours is
>> probably the ONLY demand that can fuel a revolutionary struggle (whether
>> one sees "revolution" as requiring an insurrction or as achievable by
>> "constitutional" means.
>
> =======================
>
> The demand for shorter hours can fuel militant - though not always
> revolutionary - struggles when they are initiated by class conscious workers
> in an expanding economy, as the great battles for the 8 hour day in the
> heyday of the labour and socialist movement in the 19th and early 20th
> centuries demonstrated.
>
> But the demand loses its potency and is drained of its original meaning when
> workers are lacking in class consciousness and on the defensive in a stagnant
> or contracting economy. It's tempting to say they are easily bamboozled by
> employers who inevitably conflate reduced hours with reduced pay, but when
> confronted by the prospect of losing their job or a portion of their pay,
> fearful and desperate workers will almost always, however reluctantly, accept
> whatever reduced hours and pay their employers offer.
>
> I suppose that's why I can't offhand think of any contemporary workplace
> struggles in the advanced capitalist countries where workers have been
> fighting for shorter hours at no loss in pay. They've been instead asking
> their employers to cushion the effect of threatened layoffs through early
> retirement, sweetened severance packages, job cuts by attrition, and pay and
> benefit concessions. Some states provide tax relief to compensate employers
> who reduce hours but maintain pay levels, but that is not the same thing as
> making employers, many of whom are cash-rich and highly profitable, foot the
> extra costs rather than the public. Dean Baker is a prominent proponent of
> these work reduction schemes.
>
> But the battle seems to be joined over the urgent need for more and better
> programs aimed at job creation, pitting liberal economists like Krugman,
> Reich and others against the Obama administration's policies to date. Here is
> Robert Shiller making the case for a New Deal type stimulus aimed at
> creating labor-intensive service jobs in education, public health and safety,
> urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation,
> arts and letters, and scientific research:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/business/01view.html
>
> The debate over further stimulus is the one which trade unionists, the
> unemployed, and the insecure working masses are being most exposed to, and
> I'm partial to focusing on, and intervening where possible, in battles which
> are actually joined, not ones we wish were being joined.
>
> (As an aside, I can't think of an historical instance where a ruling class
> has been overthrown, ie. had its property and power wrested away from it, by
> constitutional means.)
>
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