Return to Coronet Books main pageJoint Action for Jobs
A New Internationalism
Edited By Ken Coates
1986
Spokesman
ISBN: 0-85124-428-9 (paper)
ISBN: 0-85124-427-0(hardcover)
232 p.
$28.50 Paper
$42.50 Hardcover
Unemployment is laying Europe waste. With twenty million people out of work, the number of direct victims has become intolerable: a common scandal. But there is every reason to believe that this number is growing steadily, whilst the direct sufferers already include whole populations. Yet there is no reason to believe that unemployment is unavoidable or fore-ordained. A mere fraction of the ingenuity which has transformed our technical capacities could re-arrange our social rules in a way which would guarantee a useful role for all our people.
Of course, action by Governments can improve or worsen this condition. If all or even some of the European Governments were willing to act together in order to reject mass unemployment, there is no doubt that conditions could be radically improved. But this is not a problem which can be left to governments. Because it concerns everybody, it needs action by all of us. The work which is necessary requires us to find ways of joining needs to resources, of restructuring institutions to regain the democratic initiative in the global economy. We must find ways to replace the policies of 'beggar my neighbour' by those which seek instead to 'better my neighbour'.
Sociology