More on the Responsibility of the Left; Media Double Standards; God Bless The Revolution!; One World System or Two?

Abstract

After reading Prudence Posner's letter in the May 1984 issue of MR, I wanted to add a few thoughts I have had on the subject. Like Posner, I am a supporter of MR's position on full employment. I like the distinction she makes between anticapitalist and anticorporatist theory leading respectively either to full-employment-type movements or democracy-in-workplace-type movements. I think that one additional point that could be made is that these two kinds of movements also differ in that fun employment promises to build a large movement that could bridge economic, racial, sexual, and other divisions that exist among North American working people today. Certainly it would take a massive rainbow-type coalition to force the federal government to enact a true full-employment program. On the other hand, workplace democracy movements appear to me to lead pretty quickly to small groups of working people seeking and (maybe) obtaining good situations for themselves without being able to build the kind of mass base that could defend even those small gains. I've thought of a few things a Full Employment Movement (FEM) might lead to that generally come under the heading of unintended consequences, or "Oh God! We didn't mean for that to happen." I'd like to share them with you.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.