Doug Henwood wrote:
>Well, the class war is an aggregate of sorts, and central bankers
>like Greenspan are very aware of the balance of class forces. A 3.9%
>unemployment rate disturbs their sleep.
Speaking strategically of the class war as aggregate, the advantage goes
to the side who can best discern its composition and articulate from it a
compelling vision of universality. Only from the perspective of the ruling
class slogan of "non-inflationary growth" can a 3.9% _official_
unemployment rate be considered as in any way approaching full employment.
That there is no official 'index of employment coercion' is due less to
the methodological difficulty of compiling the data than to the plain fact
that capitalism is every bit as much a system of domination as it is one
of accumulation. From a working class perspective, the principle
underlying NAIRU -- for example -- could be more accurately called the
"non-advancing emancipation rate of coercion" (NAERC). In the absence of
such a number, it is nevertheless feasible to re-interpret the official
statistics and challenge the hegemonic discourse about the meaning of
those statistics.
Tom Walker
