IV. Party Government and Employment Policy

Extract

The prediction that full employment will have a great political future is based on the fact that economic policies of this kind reach large segments of the public not previously accustomed to political action or only recently made aware of the potentialities of politics. Only the war itself has served to remind these relatively non-political people as urgently of the new importance of the government to every one as they are likely to be reminded by the establishment of the principle that public authority and public resources ought to be used to promote or produce sixty million jobs. What people do about the government depends on what they think the government is able to do. Therefore, the idea that the government is now able to protect people against the most dreaded of the manifestations of economic instability is almost certain to have a great impact on the political behavior of millions of people, many of whom have never before been drawn into the orbit of politics.

Moreover, unless the millenium is here, it seems probable that a prolonged and disturbing controversy over employment policies is in the making. In fact, a major political conflict over these policies can probably be avoided only by the abandonment of the whole project, i.e., by conceding the argument that full employment is none of the business of the government. The friends of the new policies are, therefore, in the position of having to pray for stormy weather.