Critical reflections on the job guarantee proposal

Abstract

This article assesses the job guarantee (JG) from two angles. First, by tracing some of the JG’s intellectual origins in the inflationary crises of the 1970s, it questions contemporary claims about the JG’s potential to increase workers’ bargaining power. Second, it critiques antiwelfare thinking among JG advocates by showing how their normative claims about the dignity of employment both obscure the centrality of unpaid social reproductive labour to capitalism and could potentially reinforce social welfare cuts and workfare.