AN AGENDA FOR WASRINGTON
Steinfels, Peter
i Suite 617 at 853 Broadway, just off of Ne~v York's Union Square, is hardly your well-appointed corporate or foundation office. With its strictly no-nonsense, hand-me-down desks and filing...
...The conference is backed by the heads of the United Auto Workers, the Machinists' union, the Clothing and Textile Workers, the State, County and Municipal Employees...
...That may explain why the people working so hard at Suite 617 are democratic socialists like Michael Harrington...
...But why didn't we go that route in the first place...
...Social policy in America has run along three different, though not necessarily exclusive, lines: a job strategy (full employment...
...Hundreds will attend--but millions will be represented...
...talents will be wasted as the lack of opportunity kills ambition...
...With its strictly no-nonsense, hand-me-down desks and filing cabinets, it may even beat out Commonweal's office as an example of "less is more" carried to the point of foolhardiness...
...All who write to Suite 617 or show up at the Mayflower Hotel on Friday or Saturday will be welcomed...
...28 October 1977:686...
...In short, doing anything as basic as full employment "would disrupt a II vast array of entrenched social arrangements, changing not only the distribution of wealth, but probably also the distribution of power...
...In short, we come round to the jobs strategy...
...At worst, it could give full-employment policy a bad name by its likely failure--and that would be a sorry memorial to Hubert Humphrey...
...There will be a busy schedule of workshops dealing with inflation, economic planning, international economics, energy, city problems, and tax reform...
...by feminists and religious leaders...
...polarization between groups will increase as women and minorities see their hard-won employment gains Oslipping away...
...The first item on the Democratic Agenda is full-employment, the password that every Democratic candidate, including Jimmy Carter, remembered on the march toward the White House but curiously forgot once the inner sanctum was reached...
...Thus the November conference...
...Though Americans are often confused - - a n d sometimes purposely misled-about the work status of most welfare recipients, their view (also the view of welfare recipients themselves) expresses a sound instinct, a belief in work as a way of shaping one's life and a mark of responsible adulthood...
...At the moment those solutions include the Humphrey-Hawkins fullemployment bill, which Congress and the administration may revive partly out of sentiment for the ailing Humphrey, partly as a response to black criticism...
...a service strategy (compensatory education, social work, guidance) ; and income strategy (straightforward income transfers like the negative income tax or family assistance...
...environmental protection is sure to be pitted against the scarcity of jobs...
...Obviously, what is needed is a combination of political pressure and new ideas...
...Those urging full employment will themselves be fully employed...
...Unfortunately, as the fate of welfare reform has shown, the public didn't buy the income strategy either...
...Ten years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, with characteristic acumen, pointed out the concomitants of a full employment economy...
...For some years the proponents of an income strategy criticized the old service approach...
...Americans believe that checkwriting ought to take place in conjunction with some honest labor...
...full employment, after all, has long been a goal of humane liberalism as much as democratic socialism...
...First, American business would have to give up its present, near-absolute freedom to operate at whatever level of economic activity it chooses . . . . Few other sizable business communities in the 'world have this freedom: in general, in the industrial democracies, social decisions about the level of employment have priority over private decisions . . . . " Trade unions in fields like construction would have to loosen their control on jobs...
...by Congressmen from the Black Caucus...
...Full emp!oyment is critical to the millions who are without jobs, and whose lack of work often takes a toll on self-esteem and family life going far beyond the drop in income...
...The work being done in Suite 617 is not only first-class, it is crucial: the organization of a coalition for a "Democratic Agenda," which will meet in Washington on November 11-13...
...But there is a law of organizational as well as intellectual activity--second-class furnishings often go with first-class work...
...But the bill, long weakened by compromise, may be ailing as much as its brave sponsor and the administration insists on weakening it further...
...they were not always fair, but they had a point--the government was far better AN AGENDA FOR WASHINGTON PETER STEINFELS at writing checks than at delivering services...
...the government would have to trim its foreign ventures to fit a tighter balance of payments situation...
...At best, the bill might be one of those "first steps...
...But full employment is also critical to the rest of us: without it, innercities and whole regions are doomed to decay...
...But to attack it afresh will certainly require going beyond the standard liberal solutions...
...investors would have to cope with inflation...
...and "those parts of the nation that persist in providing the least education and job-related training would be forced to submit to national minimum standards...
...The Democratic Agenda is not a specifically socialist proiect...
...But they should expect something different from a mass political rally...
Vol. 104 • October 1977 • No. 22
