Full employment seems to be a mystery to many and a fantasy for others. Did we ever have full employment in the United Kingdom and will we ever see this again ?
In todays Britain we currently have 2.6 million unemployed people at present with over a million of those being
16-24 without a job. or in any form of training
But has there ever been full employment? That depends, like a lot of economics, on one's definition of the term.
"Full employment never meant zero unemployment," says Christopher Pissarides, professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
As long as most people were in work it was seen by the majority of people that it didn't matter if rather a lot of other people, albeit a minority, were not. So unemployment lost its profile as an issue”
End Quote
Historian David Kynaston
Instead there is what the free market capitalist economist Milton Friedman termed a "natural rate" of unemployment, where nobody stays out of work for long, unemployment fluctuates between 5% and 6% with jobless workers quickly being hired in growth sectors of the economy.
Other economists argue this is too high. William Beveridge, the man who inspired Britain's post-war welfare state, said full employment meant a figure of under 3%.
Before the world became industrialised, nearly everyone outside the ruling rich elite would have had to work to survive, usually in the fields. After industrialisation all that changed. Mechanisation offered people work in the factories but also brought huge spikes in employment and an intensification of economic boom and bust which is built into capitalism like night and day. Due to its various contradictions which i have detailed in the past on this blog.
Pissarides argues that full employment was a reality in the US in the 1990s under Bill Clinton and from 1997-2007 in Britain, and in modern day China.
Other economists say it's not fair to compare democracies with autocratic societies. Children learn in history lessons about the mass mobilisation of men in Hitler's Germany for armaments production and public works programmes. "Conscripting people over the barrel of the gun in totalitarian societies is not full employment as economists understand the term," says economic historian Tim Leunig.
In 1955 unemployment was very low indeed So has genuine full employment ever been achieved in the post industrial world? "Of course we've had it," says the economist Lord Skidelsky. "Between 1950 and 1973 unemployment averaged 2% and was always well under one million."
This was the golden age for jobs in Britain. Also the biggest period of growth for capitalism ever. The high point came in July 1955 - shortly after Anthony Eden had taken over from Winston Churchill as prime minister - when unemployment reached a post-war low of 215,800, a mere 1% unthinkable today.
So what happened to full employment? Ian Brinkley, director of think tank the Work Foundation, says the term went out of fashion in the 1970s as unemployment passed one million.
This is the period which the ruling class gave up on the idea of full employment and focused far more on growth and making profits in other ways.
In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher pursued a different approach, which economists characterised as the prioritising of tackling inflation. The concept of full employment was dead, says Brinkley.
Unemployment climbed above the symbolically important three million figure, and stayed relatively high even still today.
So will full employment ever be achieved again ?
I dont think so under capitalism this will ever happen. As Karl Marx wonderfully explained the ruling class in their desire to divide and rule discovered the idea of keeping a army of reserve workers as Marx put it which enabled the ruling class and the boss's to hold wages down with the threat of unemployed workers coming in to do their job for the same or for less if a worker demanded more wages.
Today this is one of the capitalists most powerful weapons the threat of unemployment hangs over many of us still today as the ruling class looks to make the workers pay for the mistakes of a ecnomic system they have no say in running.
The only way i feel we will see full employment again allowing for the debate if it ever was will be a socialist ordering of society. Where the blind drive for profit will have gone and people can and will i'm sure want to work for society. Working for the needs of society and for others will bring out workers full potential. For many people this will be the first time they may enjoy work when they are not having to work for their boss's profits but for their own society, based on human needs.
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Showing posts with label army of reserve workers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label army of reserve workers. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
Friday, 30 December 2011
The bankrupcy of economic prosperity
As capitalism lurch's from one crisis to the next we are left wondering is this system the best that we can use for all ?
Fact that capitalism has periodic and systemic faults built into it with many contradictions deep rooted that it finds hard and often cannot solve itself in my view renders capitalism a bankrupt system. A system based on exploitation and greed by the few over the many. It simply cannot provide for all of society. What Marx called the army of reserve workers is a tactic created by the capitalists to keep a hold on workers wages by pitting workers in work to those out of work with the statement if you dont want to take a pay cut to keep your job we have hundreds and thousands waiting in reserve who will be willing to work for less than you do. This is a threat and the threat of the doll queue keeps the working class's wages down so the profits of the rich continue to rise as their crisis deepens.
Built into capitalism as i said are periodic booms and busts as they are known to many. Upturns and downturns. These can be caused by various contradictions in the modes of production and so on. But within each boom therea re the seeds sown for the next bust and vice versa. This is the nature of capitalism the circumstances for the next crash are already there when production begins to pick up again. Its a continuous cycle of deepening crisis's in capitalism.
Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.
I. Mediaeval Society — Individual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either of the producer himself or his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large.
II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production — a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.
A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in the production as a whole.
C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange.
D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.
III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.
extracts from socialism utopian and scientific chapter 3 history of materialism by Frederic Engels
Fact that capitalism has periodic and systemic faults built into it with many contradictions deep rooted that it finds hard and often cannot solve itself in my view renders capitalism a bankrupt system. A system based on exploitation and greed by the few over the many. It simply cannot provide for all of society. What Marx called the army of reserve workers is a tactic created by the capitalists to keep a hold on workers wages by pitting workers in work to those out of work with the statement if you dont want to take a pay cut to keep your job we have hundreds and thousands waiting in reserve who will be willing to work for less than you do. This is a threat and the threat of the doll queue keeps the working class's wages down so the profits of the rich continue to rise as their crisis deepens.
Built into capitalism as i said are periodic booms and busts as they are known to many. Upturns and downturns. These can be caused by various contradictions in the modes of production and so on. But within each boom therea re the seeds sown for the next bust and vice versa. This is the nature of capitalism the circumstances for the next crash are already there when production begins to pick up again. Its a continuous cycle of deepening crisis's in capitalism.
Let us briefly sum up our sketch of historical evolution.
I. Mediaeval Society — Individual production on a small scale. Means of production adapted for individual use; hence primitive, ungainly, petty, dwarfed in action. Production for immediate consumption, either of the producer himself or his feudal lord. Only where an excess of production over this consumption occurs is such excess offered for sale, enters into exchange. Production of commodities, therefore, only in its infancy. But already it contains within itself, in embryo, anarchy in the production of society at large.
II. Capitalist Revolution — transformation of industry, at first be means of simple cooperation and manufacture. Concentration of the means of production, hitherto scattered, into great workshops. As a consequence, their transformation from individual to social means of production — a transformation which does not, on the whole, affect the form of exchange. The old forms of appropriation remain in force. The capitalist appears. In his capacity as owner of the means of production, he also appropriates the products and turns them into commodities. Production has become a social act. Exchange and appropriation continue to be individual acts, the acts of individuals. The social product is appropriated by the individual capitalist. Fundamental contradiction, whence arise all the contradictions in which our present-day society moves, and which modern industry brings to light.
A. Severance of the producer from the means of production. Condemnation of the worker to wage-labor for life. Antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
B. Growing predominance and increasing effectiveness of the laws governing the production of commodities. Unbridled competition. Contradiction between socialized organization in the individual factory and social anarchy in the production as a whole.
C. On the one hand, perfecting of machinery, made by competition compulsory for each individual manufacturer, and complemented by a constantly growing displacement of laborers. Industrial reserve-army. On the other hand, unlimited extension of production, also compulsory under competition, for every manufacturer. On both sides, unheard-of development of productive forces, excess of supply over demand, over-production and products — excess there, of laborers, without employment and without means of existence. But these two levers of production and of social well-being are unable to work together, because the capitalist form of production prevents the productive forces from working and the products from circulating, unless they are first turned into capital — which their very superabundance prevents. The contradiction has grown into an absurdity. The mode of production rises in rebellion against the form of exchange.
D. Partial recognition of the social character of the productive forces forced upon the capitalists themselves. Taking over of the great institutions for production and communication, first by joint-stock companies, later in by trusts, then by the State. The bourgeoisie demonstrated to be a superfluous class. All its social functions are now performed by salaried employees.
III. Proletarian Revolution — Solution of the contradictions. The proletariat seizes the public power, and by means of this transforms the socialized means of production, slipping from the hands of the bourgeoisie, into public property. By this act, the proletariat frees the means of production from the character of capital they have thus far borne, and gives their socialized character complete freedom to work itself out. Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master — free.
extracts from socialism utopian and scientific chapter 3 history of materialism by Frederic Engels
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