On Fri, 12 May 1995, Robert Peter Burns wrote: > Last summer I published a short article called "Global > Thatcherism in the Light of the British Experience" . . . > Rather, global Thatcherism is an ideological reflex of the global > restructuring of class relations, the effect of which is to homogenise > those relations along an international dimension. . . . . I found out how true this is when doing research in NZ on the Employment Contracts Act 1991, Thatcherism / Reagonomics / Rogernomics personified. I suppose I had assumed that those who were promoting the ECA and parallel legislation were doing so for instrumental reasons: to lower wages, increase employer hegemony, and the like. This assumption that all ECA supporters felt this way was brought up short when I interviewed a very high ranking official in the New Zealand Employers Federation. When I asked her if the ECA ws performing as hoped for by its proponents, she answered emphatically yes. When I asked was it improving unemployment (one of the goals advanced for the ECA before its enactment) and the economy in general, she responded that these were not proper measures of the ECA. She said that the ECA must be measured solely on the grounds that it brings freedom. This was all said in a tone of religious fervour (not trying to bash religions here), but it's the only analogy I can find. I think this realisation -- and one reflected in Burns' excerpt -- is important to bear in mind when discussing these programs and their acolytes. Some of them see this freedom as an absolute, not an instrumental value. Ellen Ellen J. Dannin California Western School of Law 225 Cedar Street San Diego, CA 92101 Phone: 619-525-1449 Fax: 619-696-9999
[PEN-L:5045] Re: Brits > Thatcherism
Ellen Dannin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fri, 12 May 1995 08:12:53 -0700