Social Pressures Stability and Full Employment*

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TODAY IT IS POINTLESS to prolong the discussion whether full employment is the 'dangerous experiment of the socialist planners' or the 'hypothetical position to which impersonal market forces tend to push our economy' for today, full employment is a continuing reality. This is not to imply, however, that full employment as the sole object of government policy has been as yet squarely put to the test of public opinion. We have enjoyed this condition not because it was politically expedient or socially desirable, but rather because it has been militarily necessary. And as long as international tension exists, as long as our foreign policy is oriented to our determination to negotiate from a 'position of strength', as long as we are determined to fill the vacuum of power created by post-war disarmament, full employment will very likely (however inadvertently) be the by product of these policies.' But even in the absence of world tension, the continuing experience of full employment has undoubtedly created a climate in which governments could anticipate a favorable mass conditioned-reflex to measures designed to maintain jobs-for-all. The full employment of the last decade has not been, however, an unmixed blessing. The greatest single problem coexistent with full employment has been the instability of the general price level-an instability largely generated by the income drives of consolidated pressure groups in our society, income drives made more effective by the existence of full employment itself. But price level instability, many reason, results simply from the imbalance between money demand and physical supply, and the former may be readily controlled through budgetary, tax and credit policies. This argument, offering solutions to the problem of instability seemingly beautiful in their simplicity, largely ignores the social setting into which the above 'solutions' must be projected. The purpose of this paper is to examine the socio-psychological pressures which greatly com-