NEW RADICALISM
349
ment potential. The threat it poses to labor becomes more and more
serious with the passage of time as the large corporations channel
their investment funds into plant modernization and more sophisticated
equipment in partial response to the consistently upward bias of
union wages. The solution, of course,
is
not to reduce wages but to
undertake the proper corrective policies on a governmental level to
keep the economy in a dynamic equilibrium at full employment.
It
should be pointed out, however, that there is no necessary connection
between the level of employment and the growth rate of the economy.
It
is
just as possible to have full employment at a zero growth rate
as it is to have large scale unemployment at a high growth rate. Public
policy, given the will, can achieve full employment at any growth
rate. And with the economy kept at full employment levels, tech–
nological change becomes a boon and not the evil radicals of Hentoff's
stripe tend to see in it. Our failure, so far, to undertake the necessary
corrective policies is again a
political
problem and has nothing to do
with "abundance," technological change, or our failure to divorce
income from work.
Starting with the misconceptions inherited from others and link–
ing them directly to the problem of technological change, Hentoff
calls
for a "break between work (as presently defined) and income."
Uncritically, he embraces the guaranteed annual income proposal of
Robert Theobald without recognizing its middle-class conservative
bias. I find it strange that Hentoff (who earlier rejects fiscal policy
and job retraining as "not radical enough") should choose to include
an economic conservative in his roster of "new" radicals. The very
title of Theobald's book,
Free Men and Free Markets,
is a dead
giveaway. " It is the goal of all Western societies," Theobald tells
us, "to ensure that each individual has the maximum of freedom in
his
choice of action compatible with the needs of society." Yet, in
Theobald's view, "No attempt should ... be made to provide the
required resources through government control of the market mechan–
ism, for not only will such an attempt fail but it will also prevent
the original goal: it will restrict individual freedom rather than
advance
it."
Since, according to Theobald, income should be divorced
from work in the abundant society, he proposes that, as a matter of
right,
each individual receive a basic income regardless of whether
he produces or not. Obviously, this basic income will come from the
