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The emphases of Halabi and of Marshall on stepping up international coordination among unions and parties to achieve full employment at livable wages was welcome.

In the U.S., we can turn the slogans popularized by anti-Union and anti-Social ideologues on their head. Calling for a Real Right to Work for the Real Right to Life is a call for guaranteeing every citizen who wants to work 20 hours of work a week or 1000 a year for a livable wage based on the purchasing price of necessities. Campaigns for a living wage have advanced our understanding of purchasing price parity. Federal agencies use estimates to set dollar amounts for unemployment insurance and family welfare support.

In most parts of the U.S. a 20 hour week for a livable wage is approximately the median pay out from unemployment insurance and also approximates the grant of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families of one adult and one child. It would automatically raise the minimum wage to $10.00/hour. On the face of it, it does not cost more in the US nor probably Europe than current costs supported on humanitarian bases, which are losing the support of those who supported “the welfare state” as an alternative to socializing capital (aka living labor democratically dictating the allocation of monetized dead labor)

Guaranteeing every citizen who wants to work 20 hours of work a week at a livable wage tackles the denigration of “being on the dole” and rationalizations popular even among many Democrats, for opposing campaigns for jobs “or income now.” It also requires organizers to ground ourselves in fundamental understanding of Marx’s fundamental analysis of Capital in the era of global electronic exchanges of monetized world average labor time – the productivity of which develops over time inevitably and inevitably unevenly. 

It is very timely to discuss this and to insist on the standardization and transparency of productivity data which will force a modest effort to re-understand the relation, if any, between world average labor time and reserve currency.

Beyond the US, or perhaps prior to within the US, it makes all the sense in the world to pursue guaranteed hours of work at a livable wage in all manner of international bodies from the UN to friendship exchanges. If the Indian parliament can pass a law to this effect, certainly Americans committed to radical ideas and real politics in the traditions of Marxist economics and Communist politics can put it on the table for discussion at this point in time. How would you discuss this with a Chinese comrade? with a Bolivian? with an Egyptian?

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