Abstract

In recent years the stable and biunivocal coupling of the production of commodities and the employment of living human labour has changed. It is still true that if production declines, employment falls, but the opposite, if production recovers then employment also recovers, is no longer true. This stylised fact demands an answer to three questions: "What are its causes? How can the existing employment be maintained?" and "What should be done with the unemployed?" This paper presents some "heretical" proposals which have been recently put forward as partial remedies for unemployment: the basic income, the reorganisation of working time and the socially useful jobs. All three may be combined in a global project whose basic fourth element is a real industrial policy. The heresy lies in the well founded principle that the causes of unemployment, and then its remedies, must be sought not only in the labour market but in the economic and social system on the whole.