Abstract

The struggle of the part-time theater and audiovisual workers is the response to the right-wing challenge to the third pillar of social benefits, namely, unemployment insurance, following the attacks upon the retirement system and health insurance. But since the Left has not chosen to focus squarely on the social construction of full employment of the resources of intelligence and invention, it remains unable to suggest a form of social protection appropriate to the requirements of « cognitive capitalism. » Instead of speaking of unemployment and the right to work, we should be speaking of the productive life-span for self-creation, and the right to the usage of one’s intelligence, with a view to increasing collective wealth, which would then strengthen the right to,, lifelong training » and to unconditional income. The crisis of the Unedic unemployment fund is twofold, involving those « recalculated » under the general regimen and the « intermittents »; however, rather than seeking to finance its deficit and that of social benefits in general, by increased recourse to « social taxation », the author suggests the creation of a new tax on the wealth which circulates in financial transactions.