All things precariat: a new class?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The Basic Income agitator Guy Standing just wrote a book called The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. He claims that the "precariat" is a new class, based on his particular class take on elites, salariat, proficians ("proficient" :lol: ), old core, global precariat, and the lumpen (http://ec.europa.eu/italia/documents/news/ue_e_societa_civile/forum_poverta_napoli_-_guy_standing.pdf). He emphasizes both the liberal definition of "class" and employment security.

So, what do you make of the precariat?

[Q]

It's funny how the ICC, normally so strict on theoretical concepts, assimilated the "precariat" into their texts recently.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think his view of class is excessively liberal and Eurocentric. I also wonder how much of this analysis is based on impressionistic and superficial looks at socio-politico-economic transformation with a few interesting real facts as random mooring points. In short, I am skeptical this is more Das Kapital and less Malcolm Gladwell's Latest Coffee Table Pop Social Science Book. I think an understanding of class should start with old-fashioned leftist historicized analysis: i.e., we look at a general trajectory or vector of changing relations of production and characteristics of production and the changing contentn of social groups and strata relative to that. I think one should remain grounded in looking at the changes in world labor and production from World War II forward to now. I think it all still essentially occurs within traditional relations, but with new complexities. The precariat is a modern sociological substratum of the proletariat; it is not a unique class in itself. It does not have a discrete relationship dynamic with production as a discrete group. Also, I suspect it is a particular transitionary class form; this is a substratum of that priorly relatively privileged sector of the proletariat, now being forced downward in its social security and privilege and position. I believe that is what defines it.

[9]

Also, I suspect it is a particular transitionary class form; this is a substratum of that priorly relatively privileged sector of the proletariat, now being forced downward in its social security and privilege and position. I believe that is what defines it.

...Precarious workers are overwhelmingly women and are some of the lowest paid, most poorly-treated workers around (and without benefits).....so unless you can provide something to back this up, based on my own experience (lots of single mothers working three jobs, for example), I think you're totally, totally off claiming precarious workers are privileged. I think in the overwhelming majority of cases, exactly the opposite is true.

[Jose Gracchus]

What? Did you pick up on the thread? The precariat is described as an emergent phenomena, that's nothing new in the sense you're describing. What's interesting is the sliding state of workers where there was previously industrial proletarian employment. Now the service sector comes with no benefits, no unions, no pension, and waves of lay-offs with every economic shuttering. I think we're describing something more broad than waitress-maid-etc. type of employment alone.

[crashcourse]

Silvia Federici wrote a good criticism of the idea of precarity, it's online some place. I think Jacques Ranciere makes a succinct criticism of the idea, he says "precarity is the fundamental condition of the proletariat," something like that. The anomaly is that occasionally parts of the working class have managed to get relatively less precarious access to means of subsistence. The erosion of that has made some people in the areas (and in the social strata) where that deal was particularly strong start to think there's some incredibly important new social shift underway. For those people and those areas, there definitely is, but to call this a new class is silly.

I also want to say - industrial workers lives were profoundly precarious prior to around the 1940s, at least in the US, and globally for many they never stopped being so. There's not really a strong connection between the labor process and precarity except for historical factors making it so, as the result of past struggles.

[Niccolò Rossi]

It's funny how the ICC, normally so strict on theoretical concepts, assimilated the "precariat" into their texts recently.

I'd never noticed it before. A search of the website brings up a few results though. It should be noted though that the term is put in inverted commas.

I've heard the term used before, and it's meaning is pretty clear and captures the reality quite well I think. I have no idea about it's origins though and would be pretty dubious about any type of sociological theory that uses it as a serious category of analysis. I imagine DNZ would have the opposite opinion...

Nic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What? Did you pick up on the thread? The precariat is described as an emergent phenomena, that's nothing new in the sense you're describing. What's interesting is the sliding state of workers where there was previously industrial proletarian employment. Now the service sector comes with no benefits, no unions, no pension, and waves of lay-offs with every economic shuttering. I think we're describing something more broad than waitress-maid-etc. type of employment alone.

And don't forget supposedly higher-paid workers who can only work part of the week or even one week every few weeks.

[bricolage]

But I mean is it really a 'new class'? Go back in time and dockers were working just as precarious lives as temp service workers are now.

[crashcourse]

It's definitely not a new class.

As for the term's origins, I believe the term came into political prominence in Italy, Spain, and France in the late 90s or early 00s. I don't read French and my Italian is crap so I can't say where it started. I know I've seen references to it in Spanish writings from the 90s. Anyway, it got taken up and spread pretty far by some sections of the Italian social movement left during the anti-globalization summit period in the early 00s, that cycle of struggles, and it spread a bit around Europe. That's probably why the ICC's Spanish section decided to write in response to it. The precarity stuff was basically a response to neoliberal policies which were making European welfare and labor policies a bit more like the US ("precaritization" in Europe is basically Americanization when it comes to welfare policy and workers rights). The precarity mobilizations were in my view basically militant social democratic in character and not particular radical. They did have some innovative tactics and cultural activism, though - groups like the Chainworkers from Italy (focused on employees at chain retail stores, but more about mobilizing around legislation than workplace organizing), the Precarias a la Deriva in Spain (focused on women workers and immigrants), and Yo Mango in Spain (an art collective that did a weird combination of fashion shows and theft-as-political-theater). They also had some interesting movement cultural activism like San Precario -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precarity_(Euromayday)#San_Precario which I think is partly the product of all of this have roots in the Italian and Spanish "occupied social centers" (basically squatted community centers and political spaces).

[Die Neue Zeit]

I've heard the term used before, and it's meaning is pretty clear and captures the reality quite well I think. I have no idea about it's origins though and would be pretty dubious about any type of sociological theory that uses it as a serious category of analysis. I imagine DNZ would have the opposite opinion...


But I mean is it really a 'new class'? Go back in time and dockers were working just as precarious lives as temp service workers are now.

It's a serious category of analysis, but not enough to warrant a new social class. Basically it's on the same level as the "intelligentsia" and the "labour aristocracy."

[Jose Gracchus]

It is, for a class analyst, an explicitly class social phenomena. Just because it is not a class proper, does not mean that we should not pay attention to historical changes in the sociological make-up of the classes-with-respect-to-production.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The precariat has its fair share of manual workers, clerical workers, and even professional workers (higher-paid workers who can only work part of the week or even a week or two every few or several weeks).

[Rocky Rococo]

I think the key is to recognize that in large parts of the world, that while the ownership of the means of production has remained constant, the organization of the means of production and the relationship of workers to each other has undergone dramatic change. Does the precariat, emerging from this transformation away from large centralizing centers of production where workers working full time their entire lives would be socialized into recognition of their shared experience and common interests, toward dispersed, downsized, temporary and contingent conditions of labor, rise to the level of a new class or simply a caste within the proletariat? That's an interesting question, but we're in the worst possible position to evaluate it--right in the middle of that change. An even bigger question that emerges in our time is does a class exist in any meaningful terms if the majority of members don't recognize the existence of their class, or believe they aren't part of the class they actually belong to? Is collective class consciousness a necessary element for a class to exist in any effective sense?

[blake 3:17]

I think we're describing something more broad than waitress-maid-etc. type of employment alone. uhh, there are women who work in industrial manufacturing. Gender equity gains made through collective bargaining have generally slid, while abstract "human rights" and "diversity" language in platitudes has grown.


I also want to say - industrial workers lives were profoundly precarious prior to around the 1940s, at least in the US, and globally for many they never stopped being so. There's not really a strong connection between the labor process and precarity except for historical factors making it so, as the result of past struggles.

The rise of precarious work is due to the broad defeats for the labour and socialist movements.

[Jose Gracchus]

Alright, while I agree working women are a heavily under-organized group, I thought the specific significance of the "new precarious employed" is the collapse of the old pension-and-contract union jobs, and the precariat is not necessary identical with "the precarious employed." Maybe I misunderstood.

[blake 3:17]

The dangerousness of the 'precariat' is the one described in Langston Hughes' poem, A Dream Deferred.


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?





Alright, while I agree working women are a heavily under-organized group, I thought the specific significance of the "new precarious employed" is the collapse of the old pension-and-contract union jobs, and the precariat is not necessary identical with "the precarious employed." Maybe I misunderstood.

It's messy because life is messy. Massive social changes occur nobody realizes it til well after the fact.

With changes in production, in education, in gender relations, etc etc we are on a different field than 19th or 20th century what the Left has dealt with over the past 220 years.

In many parts of the world we have large numbers of very highly educated people unable to find steady work. We also have certain "privileged" workers who thought their jobs were for life and that their pensions would be there, and they're gone!

[Die Neue Zeit]

There are so many directions to take any analysis and conclusions on the "precariat" upon, and sorry for this being in note form:

1) Class vs. strata
- Always there? Revisiting "Ricardian" labour theory of price to describe unequal exchange and labour reproduction under-compensation? [Cockshott said Marx was "generous" in his LTV re. equal exchange and labour reproduction compensation before asserting that exploitation still exists.]
- Working poor only? Working-class students and pensioners? Unproductive work paid below living wage levels?
- Across classes? Back to "working classes" re. less differentiation from some poorer self-employed elements, such as freelancers?

EDIT: Tied to the first point is the question, "Iron Law of Precarity?"

2) "Organic links"
- Positive lessons of Labourism: some "organic links"? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/positive-lessons-labourism-t146759/index.html) Precariat unions affiliating a la Labour's unions?
- Japanese Communist Party's rising support among working-class youth as connection to precariat?

3) Immediate program
- “Sliding Scale of Wages”: Cost of Living Adjustments and Living Wages (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sliding-scale-wages-t98609/index.html)
- Private-Sector Collective Bargaining Representation as a Free Legal Service (http://www.revleft.com/vb/private-sector-collective-t124043/index.html)
- Public Employer of Last Resort for Consumer Services (http://www.revleft.com/vb/public-employer-last-t124658/index.html)
- Nationalizing temp/casual labour agencies? (http://www.rabble.ca/babble/labour-and-consumption/nationalizing-tempcasual-labour-agencies) (no formal commentary yet)
- National-Democratization, Health-Industrial Complexes, and Workers Insurance (http://www.revleft.com/vb/national-democratization-health-t144740/index.html)
- Educational Training Income Beyond Zero Tuitions (http://www.revleft.com/vb/educational-training-income-t139568/index.html)
- Full Belly Thesis and "Identity Politics" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/full-belly-thesis-t141396/index.html) (no formal commentary yet)

[crashcourse]

I think it's striking that in this thread several folk are basically like "there are specific strata who used to have a higher chance of relatively decent lives under capitalism than those strata are now likely to have under capitalism." I think that analysis is true. But it's also striking that this suddenly requires the invention of a new term that refers primarily to those strata who are being downwardly restructured. I don't see why any of that should be a frame of reference for revolutionaries. Yes, it's a significant historical phenomenon. Here's another significant historical phenomenon: the continuing 'precarity' of huge chunks of the global population under capitalism. I think revolutionaries should pause before making the loss of past labor aristocracy status too much at the center of their understanding of the world, that colors analysis in questionable ways.

To put it another way:
While in the US and some other places there's been a long-term move away from large facilities, in some parts of the world (like in China) there's a rise in large production facilities. In a lot of these places, and in the US before the 30s and to an increasing extent today (to the degree that these facilities exist in the US), large production facilities generally used contingent labor, because there wasn't much that made employers take workers as anything beyond a factor of production to used like any other resource. (I worked briefly at a motorola plant where almost everyone but management was employed via a temp agency for about 8 bucks an hour, they used "permanent employee" status as a carrot, but almost no one every really got.) I want to point out that there are at least two changes here in what I just mentioned: the physical and spatial aspect of work (size of plant, etc, which is definitely politically important) and a range of aspects of work that are somewhere in the realm of employment law (whether in law, collective bargaining agreements, or custom). That is - there's the actual labor process and there's the terms of the contract for the sale and use of labor power. The relationship between these is highly mediated. There's also a host of things about the reproduction of labor power outside the job (housing, healthcare, etc) and to some limited extent the care of people's lives aside from their labor market participation (welfare, pensions, etc, though at least for working class people these tend to be heavily influenced by past labor market participation, ie, tied to wages earned). Precaritization is largely a matter of changes in the terms of the sale of labor power and in social reproduction, it's not primarily a matter of how work is done. The 1930s is a sloppy but easy period marker for this in the US - there were some important improvements in the terms of sale of labor power and in social reproduction, and not really tied in a direct way to changes in how work was done (in terms of size of plants etc).

Anyway -- the changes that some populations are experiencing now are important, but how important is hard to judge. They look like bigger world-historical changes for those of us affected by them. Like those of us who grew up and became adults in the era of declining probable outcomes, like the whole talk in the US in the 90s about "generation x" being the first generation for a long time who would likely end up with less than their parents did - my dad was a union construction worker and my mom was a housewife and full-time mom, I'm in my 30s now and my wife and I both work and we've not got anything like what my family had when my dad was my age and it's unlikely that we'll ever get to that level of income and stability. For my wife and I, these are important changes, they feel like a big deal, and most of our friends are similar - grew up in those parts of the working class in the US who for a few decades saw rising expectations and outcomes. But even though these are a big deal for us -- actually, because these are a big deal for us -- it's really easy to overestimate their importance as changes in the history of capitalism. Lots of people never saw standards get as high as they did in the US. For them, changes like precaritization aren't changes at all.

And non-precarity (ie, security) in the US never got anywhere like European levels, either in terms of how extensive the guarantees were or in terms of the numbers of people covered. Like I said before, precaritization in Europe is basically Americanization of labor standards and welfare, for a ton of people. That's an important change, for Europeans affected. I don't know that those changes in Europe are particular important in the US such that they should define some huge new shifts in capitalism.

I'm pretty sure that the rhetoric of novelty around all of this is largely just a matter of rhetorical gestures, the political traditions that this precarity talk came out of have a history of declaring epochal changes in capitalism as part of political rhetoric, and as part of trying to find a new class fraction or stratum who could become hegemonic over the whole working class in order to unite it politically. I'm not opposed to that per se, but if the complaint is precarity I am skeptical. Because precaritization is basically becoming like the majority of the working class. If the grievance protested is "some of us are at risk of ending up like the great many of them over there", well, then that doesn't seem to me like a particularly universal grievance shared by the whole working class. It's like when tradesmen protest that they're starting to have to deal with conditions non-unionized workers face. That's real and I'm sympathetic, but the problem is less changes in tradesmen's conditions and more the conditions that most workers have to face (the floor, not the ceiling)

[blake 3:17]

I'm currently unemployed, after having jumped all the hoops. The last real job interview I had, the manager told me I was over qualified and should look elsewhere. Where's the elsewhere?

I know quite a lot of people in similar situations. Reading accounts of the demonstrations in Egypt, I can't help to think of the Langston Hughes poem I quoted above. Around the world there are people hoping to find decent jobs that provide the necessities of life, but we are cut out of the system. It makes people feel crazy, upset and frustrated. To keep millions of people excluded from stable employment may be good for capitalists in the short term, it isn't good for them in the long term.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Here's to things getting better for you soon. :(

[RED DAVE]

The Basic Income agitator Guy Standing just wrote a book called The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. He claims that the "precariat" is a new class, based on his particular class take on elites, salariat, proficians ("proficient" :lol: ), old core, global precariat, and the lumpen (http://ec.europa.eu/italia/documents/news/ue_e_societa_civile/forum_poverta_napoli_-_guy_standing.pdf). He emphasizes both the liberal definition of "class" and employment security.

So, what do you make of the precariat?His whole schema is bullshit. It;s one more attempt to supplant Marxism. Massive and/or chronic underemployment or unemployment among the proletariat is nothing new.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

When I reposted one of my recent RevLeft posts as a comment in his blog:

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/workfare_ed_milibands_defining_challenge/


I wonder why Guy Standing prefers a universal basic income scheme over more comprehensive structural reforms and even more.

Universal basic income fails to address:

1) Structural and cyclical unemployment (Hyman Minsky)
2) Desire to work and avoid the stigma of not doing something
3) Inevitable downward pressure on wages as a result of implementation (Paul Cockshott)
4) Privatization of the social wage, with welfare being substituted (Milton Friedman)
5) Class origins of political advocacy and beneficiaries (working-class vs. lumpen)

He replied:


As for Jacob Richter’s claims, nobody says that one policy solves all problems. Chapters 9 and 10 of my book presents the structural reforms that must accompany the phasing in of a basic income. There would be no ‘inevitable downward pressure on wages’, since people with basic security are in a stronger position to combat oppressive and exploitative labour. All the claims made by Jacob Richter are addressed in the book. Rather than talking in terms of a social wage (which does not make much sense, in that a wage is something paid for labour), the book refers to the ongoing restructuring of social income.

All five claims?

[Kotze]

There would be no ‘inevitable downward pressure on wages’, since people with basic security are in a stronger position to combat oppressive and exploitative labour.Let me tell a little story.

A guy named Standing walks down a lone street with some cash, 100 quid in his wallet, a rustle and a jump out of nowhere and a huge man stands in front of him, a man who is clearly stronger than him and also armed with a knife, holding it right at Standing's throat. The victim doesn't dare to do anything, and the attacker takes the wallet and runs away.

Back home, Standing shivers — but it's not fear, he is angry at himself. "If only I had carried 200 quid!"

Maybe I'm a bit unfair; after all, power has a lot to do with differences in the amount of money people have. But money isn't needed for exploitation to happen. I'm reminded of progressive income taxation. Differences in ability, your position in the social hierarchy, and dumb luck lead to vastly different incomes. When you try to reduce the inequality via progressive taxation of monetary income, this works only partially, because the income differences are not the same as the listed differences, the listed differences can carry as a consequence an expression in money or other things (access to company cars and other stuff about your work environment), hindering the monetary expression will result in people trying to route around this. I don't want to sound too fatalistic, I'm not against progressive income taxation, I'm not saying that routing around it works without friction and I do see money not only as an outcome of power differences but also as a cause, but...

You know what, let me tell another story.

Imagine a society without money and where only a few different goods are produced. Land is owned and inherited by a special caste that also regulates who is allowed to own weapons (guess who), the others are free to choose whether they want to work on the land and give a part of the harvest to the land-owning caste or whether they prefer to die.

One day, the land-owning caste introduces a token system. From now on, you can either pay them with a part of the harvest or some of these tokens they put into circulation. The tokens are made in a special way to prevent counterfeiting, some people are very fascinated by the material the tokens are made of, but it's neither edible nor can it be put to any other use. Does the relationship between the land-owning caste and the others change in a fundamental way if the land-owning caste then starts giving everybody a guaranteed minimum amount of tokens at regular intervals?

My answer is no.

[blake 3:17]

I tend to think his approach is BS, but that's due to a basic commitment to society as it is. I think he identifies us as dangerous as our numbers grow.

In US & Canada the first adult decisions people make is which KIND of debt they're getting into -- school v car v house v ??? All this makes people fed up and angry.

Edited to add: v children

[Die Neue Zeit]

"As dangerous" sounds like liberal intellectual elitism to me.

Meanwhile, I added another point to Post #18 on a possible Iron Law of Precarity.

[Die Neue Zeit]

* Bump *

To paraphrase Marx:

Considering, that against this combined power of the elite classes the primary producers or precariat cannot unite and act for itself except by constituting itself into a mass party-movement, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties and movements, that this constitution of the precariat into a mass party-movement is indispensable in order to ensure the emancipation of its labour power,

That such labour power can be emancipated only when, at minimum, the precariat is in collective possession of all means of societal production, all commons, etc., that there are only two forms under which all means of societal production, all commons, etc. can belong to them or return to community:

1) The individual form which has never existed in a general state and which is increasingly eliminated by industrial progress;
2) The collective form the material and intellectual elements of which are constituted by the very development of capitalist society;

Considering,

That again this collective re-appropriation, or political and economic expropriation of the elite classes, can arise only from the direct action of the primary producers or precariat, organized in a distinct mass party-movement;

Such permanent organization must be pursued by all the means the precariat has at its disposal.