The plan is “a revolutionary reform which opens up space for further struggle.”
Stevenson and Helker-Nygren, 23—master’s candidate at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Master’s of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Ottawa (Charles and Ellen, “A Coherent Monetary Theory is a Threat to the Capitalist State,” https://degrowth.info/en/blog/a-coherent-monetary-theory-is-a-threat-to-the-capitalist-state, dml)
A State with high economic agency need not rely on companies either to create enough jobs, nor to fund its spending. It could pass a public Job Guarantee so as to offer everyone a good job paid at a living wage in low-carbon work to prepare our societies for the challenges before us. A Job Guarantee could chart a course towards social-ecological transition by revitalising sectors like renewable energy, nature conservation, public transport, care, affordable housing, health and education. For example, the current energy crisis provides a great opportunity for States to shift societies away from car dependency by investing in public transportation. States could fund good jobs in the transportation sector, including the work of electrifying the public transit fleet. Simultaneously, a shift away from cars could be encouraged by making public transportation free at the point of use. The 9-euro ticket with which Germany experimented over the summer proved an extraordinary success for both people and planet, with 52 million tickets sold in a country of 83 million people, at least 1.8 million tons of CO2 saved, and roughly one car trip in ten replaced with public transit. States with high economic agency need not wait for private investment to fund transformations like these, but instead can crowd it in by leading the way.
Moreover, a Job Guarantee has the potential for a major power shift from capital to workers. The policy would create a de-facto minimum wage with which the private sector would have to compete. The Job Guarantee would also remove the reserve army of labour—the group of unemployed and underemployed workers in society that capital depends upon to discipline workers into accepting exploitative working conditions. While the policy would be funded by State spending, the jobs on offer and the conditions under which they are performed could be decided from the bottom up, thus serving to democratise the work sphere and to reduce the alienation of workers. Combined, these features of the Job Guarantee represent huge shifts in bargaining power from capital to labour. In this way, the policy constitutes a revolutionary reform which opens up space for further struggle.