KEITH Sinclair's review of Anne Grey's pamphlet "The Rights of the Unemployed" touches on the validiy of the demand for full employment.
It is time for the left to reassess the validity of this demand, both as a means of envisioning an alternative society and as a tool for mobilising unemployed and employed in a common struggle against poverty and social exclusion.
Firstly, the call for full employment ignores the quality and purpose of work. It will hardly inspire those who have only experienced dead-end, low-paid work.
Secondly, it attaches a positive connotation to work which is at odds with most people's experience under capitalism.
Thirdly, it is sometimes taken to imply an element of conscription. Fourthly, it implies a definition of employment which excludes unpaid domestic work and constructive social activity outside the labour market.
Work offers two things under