The right to work

With millions of Americans losing their jobs in 2009, we keep hearing more and more questions about the role our government should play in the labor market. From the day he was elected to serve us as president, Barack Obama has been constantly compared and judged against the FDR standard. A significant cause for disillusionment within the leftist electorate is the unwillingness of the White House to go far enough in embracing the "social-democratic" spirit of the New Deal.

With each consecutive month of job losses, the "progressive" electorate grows more and more restless. Is the "stimulus" money enough? How can we get a bigger bang out of spending our children's inheritance? Doesn't it make more sense within the resurrected Keynesian model if, instead of subsidizing the private sector to create new jobs, the government assumes direct responsibility for connecting the unemployed workers with the underutilized capital?

In 1848, Tocqueville gave a speech on a proposed amendment to the Constitution of the Second French Republic. It was dealing with the social obligations of the state. Had the amendment been adopted, it would have given every unemployed citizen a legal claim to the resources of the state, i.e., an entitlement to his hardworking neighbor's property. It would have turned the French government into a principal and eventually a sole employer. Tocqueville removed the veil of noble intentions to "regularize public charity" and helped his fellow representatives reverse a "fatal tendency." He saw grave danger in instituting the state's responsibility for guaranteeing the "right to work."

In the midst of economic hardships, there is an understandable temptation for us to draw our own government into providing work. Unfortunately it would have the same unintended consequences as a "public option" in healthcare. A "right to work" law would mean that the state would not be able to refuse employment. Such an employer creates perverse incentives and "imposes the least work." Our government would become the master of our industry and our lives, "accumulating all individual capital . . . the sole owner of all property."

"Well that," as Tocqueville put it for the sake of preserving the ideals of liberty of the French Revolution, "is communism." And we should take heed if we want to preserve our own republic.