Marx
suggests in his articles for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
collected as Class Struggles in France, 1848-1850 that the
first order of business for the working class is to secure jobs, “but
behind the right to work stands the power over capital; behind the
power over capital, the appropriation of the means of production,
their subjection to the associated working class and, therefore, the
abolition of wage labour, of capital and of their mutual relations."
It is through the struggle for a place in the capitalist system--
however lowly-- that the means for survival are won and the
conditions are met for further challenges to the dominance of capital
and even the very system of capitalism. But in a system of private
appropriation and with labor as a commodity, life for those without
capital begins with securing employment.
Because
labor is a commodity, because labor must be a commodity in
order for an economic formation to be capitalist, the right to a job
cannot be enshrined in a capitalist constitution. Only socialist
countries have or can endow everyone with the right to a job. That is
why the right to a job is not included in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. A weak “right to work” (participate in
the labor market), a right to “free choice of employment”
(compete in the labor market), and a right “to protection
against unemployment” (vague, nonspecific prophylaxes or
amelioration) are there instead (Article 23). Without recognizing the
right to a job, the Universal Declaration effectively turns a blind
eye to the ravages of unemployment and the indignities and injustices
of the buying and selling of human productive effort.
That
is one reason that the USSR and other socialist countries abstained
from ratifying the Declaration in 1948.
Without
unemployment, the capitalist system would suffer persistent pressure
on the rate of profit. When the commodity-- labor power-- becomes
scarce, capitalists must pay more to secure it, as they would for any
other commodity. And since labor remains the largest cost component
of most productive capitalist enterprises, labor-cost inflation
erodes capitalist profits. Capitalism and the system's beneficiaries
will not, therefore, tolerate full employment. This is the nasty
little truth that apologists and media windbags dare not speak.
Economists
hide this truth by euphemistically coining terms like “marginal”
or “frictional” unemployment or inventing obscurantist concepts
like the “Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment” that
set an increasingly low standard for “full” employment. By
linguistic sleight-of-hand, the economics establishment offers cover
for capitalist accumulation by ordaining an “acceptable” level of
unemployment.
At
the same time, this same establishment understands that unemployment
is the greatest challenge to the stability of the capitalist system.
The frequent sharp rises in unemployment brought on by dislocations,
the business cycle, or systemic crisis dramatically increase the
levels of social discontent and raise voices that question the
system. For those who hold the reins of power, for those whose job is
to contain dissatisfaction with capitalism, managing unemployment is
essential.
From
that perspective, the unemployment rate is arguably the best
barometer of the health and viability of the capitalist system.
Consequently reports of unemployment rates and trends are politically
charged and subject to great differences in interpretation.
“The
official unemployment rate... amounts to a Big Lie.”
Recently,
the political manipulation of the unemployment rate came under attack
from an unlikely source. Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, the
polling organization, challenged the notion that the “official”
rate of unemployment bore any relation to the realities of
unemployment. Indeed, he called the rate a “Big Lie.” It's worth
examining his argument closely:
None
of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is
unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you
are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the
past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as
unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can
possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not
counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently
5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of
work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them
aren't throwing parties to toast "falling" unemployment.
There's
another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an
out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or
retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a
week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their
lawn -- you're not officially counted as unemployed in the
much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
Yet
another figure of importance that doesn't get much press: those
working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in
chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is
all you can find -- in other words, you are severely underemployed --
the government doesn't count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know
this.
There's
no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which
cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often
permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed,
amounts to a Big Lie.
Though
Clifton invokes the always suspect “Great American Dream” in his
polemic, he fully appreciates the challenge unemployment mounts to
the system's legitimacy:
And
it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is
to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to
deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A
good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth,
their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their
friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job
that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are
failing the great American dream.
We
owe Clifton a thanks for speaking a rare and uncomfortable truth. And
we must admire his bitter remonstrations against those who hide,
distort, or slant capitalism's bad performance:
When
the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start
reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs
that are full time and real
--
then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't "feeling"
something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives.
Capitalism's
Report Card
Many
liberal economists would agree with Clifton that the official rate
understates unemployment. Like Clifton, some will concede that those
marginally attached to the work force or discouraged from the work
force should be counted along with those who have looked for work in
the four weeks prior to the survey. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) extends the survey period to the prior twelve months to capture
those unemployment figures. Using those numbers and the numbers of
those working part-time for economic reasons, the unemployment rate
rises to over 11%.
But
it is worth questioning how the BLS defines the labor force. They
simply count those as employed who work at some time in their survey
period and count as unemployed those who show in their records as
looking for work. They add the two up to constitute the labor force.
They make no effort in this survey to determine the relationship to
employment of the tens of millions of people in the US population not
counted as in the labor force because they are neither somewhat
employed nor present in the unemployment roles.
Have
those left aside given up looking because they could find no job in
the years prior to the last twelve months? Are they forced out
because they can no longer afford child care or must care for
relatives? Does neglected health due to lack of insurance preclude
working? Are they victims of racial, gender, or age discrimination?
BLS
does not ask and we do not know.
We
do know, however, that the labor participation rate, relatively
stable for two decades, has dropped precipitously since the 2007-2008
crisis. Roughly five to six million fewer people now count as engaged
in the work force at any given time today than did eight years ago.
Such a sharp drop in such a short time cannot be explained simply by
changes in retirement patterns or work-force entry. Thus, it is not
unreasonable to view this shift away from gainful employment
negatively in our score card for capitalism.
If
we were to count this loss in the labor force with the other sources
of unemployment, US unemployment (and underemployment) would move to
the vicinity of 15%.
But
we can take a longer, deeper view. We can ask pointed questions about
those engaged in certain categories of socially useless, even
destructive forms of employment as well as those completely isolated
from the conventional labor force.
For
example, the million-and-a-half military personnel and the
three-quarters of a million Defense Department employees constitute
unproductive workers whose absorption would present a hurdle to the
private sector. High youth unemployment and the expense of education
have driven thousands of less advantaged youth to the military as an
alternative to unemployment, thus serving as a safety valve to the
social volatility of idleness.
Homeland
Security and other security agencies have enjoyed bursts of
employment thanks to the bogus war on terror. These agencies, too,
constitute unneeded public-sector job creation that masks potential
unemployment.
And
of course there is the weapons industry, a massive
private-profit-generating behemoth that engorges itself on public
funds, stands apart from market forces and risks, and belches
death-dealing instruments. Spawned by a desperate, but post-war fear
of economic depression, US ruling elites embraced this perverse form
of public-sector Keynesian demand-creation as a companion to Cold War
hysteria. Military production drives and is driven by US jingoism. US
imperialism and the military-industrial complex constitute a
dialectical unity. While millions are employed by this juggernaut,
capitalism would struggle to find work for them in a peace-friendly
economy.
Undoubtedly
the most insidious technique of hiding unemployment is the
unfettered, soulless operation of the criminal justice system.
Even the English workhouse answer to unemployment in the early eighteenth century was arguably more humane than the US judicial-penal complex, complex. Inmates in state and federal punitive facilities (not including
county and local jails) grew from 329,821 to 1,406,519 from 1980 to
2001! In the same period, the crime rate was relatively stable or
declining. In 2010 the number of adults warehoused in so-called
correctional facilities totaled almost 2,300,000.
The
2013 incarceration rate was six times the rate of 1925. Given the
absence of virtually any social services or welfare, the high
incidence of poverty, and the squalor of US urban areas in 1925, it
is difficult to explain the explosion of incarceration in our era of
relatively tame criminality without searching for political
expediencies.
Half
a million guards and administrators shepherd this population; another
half a million churn the gears of questionable justice; and a million
police harvest the inmates from the streets. Like the
military-industrial complex, the police-judicial-prison industry
removes millions from productive activity and warehouses hundreds of
thousands of those potentially counted as unemployed. Whether the
inmates turn to crime because they have no jobs or not, they
effectively are dropped from the labor force. Moreover, nearly
5,000,000 US citizens are on parole or probation, a circumstance that
lowers the prospect for employment dramatically. Certainly thousands,
if not millions, of these people fall into that statistically ignored
area beyond the BLS labor-force boundary. They, too, must be counted
as part of the hidden unemployed.
Understanding
that unemployment is the Achilles’s heel of the capitalist system,
it is not surprising that the official rate is so highly politicized.
But it is misleading to accept the official rate or even the useful
corrections without also exposing the concealed institutional places
where employment is linked to destructive, anti-social activities or
where potential workers are forcibly excluded from the work force.
When
carefully studied, capitalism's score on providing jobs is abysmal.
Reformers who envision a capitalism divorced from militarism and its
institutions, but robust with useful jobs, are naïve. The struggle
against militarism, in the end, must take the road of a struggle
against imperialism and its parent, capitalism --- a revolutionary
and not reformist path. Only with socialism will alternative jobs be
guaranteed.
Similarly,
caging those who have been ill-equipped to fit into a savagely
competitive employment scramble only foretells a similar fate for
those who pose other challenges to the system. Liberals and reformers
miss this point entirely. Nor do they have a plan to incorporate
those warehoused by the judicial-penal system into the private
capitalist economy.
As
Marx anticipated, the quest for a decent job marks the first step in
the journey to socialism.
Zoltan
Zigedy
