"Precariat" popularized by the British media?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Just this week, based on these findings:

http://soc.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/12/0038038513481128.full.pdf+html

The word "precariat" was popularized, and then by the British media:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/0/21970879


This is the most deprived class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital. The everyday lives of members of this class are precarious.

http://www.channel4.com/news/middle-class-social-class-working-class-what-class-are-you


Just 6 per cent of the population belong in the "elite" class at the top of society, the researchers found.

Professor Mike Savage of the London School of Economics, said: "It is striking that we have been able to discern a distinctive elite, whose sheer economic advantage sets it apart from other classes.

"At the opposite extreme, we have discerned the existence of a sizeable group - 15 per cent of the population - which is marked by the lack of any significant amount of economic, cultural or social capital.

"The recognition of the existence of this group, along with the elite, is a powerful reminder that our conventional approaches to class have hindered our recognition of these two extremes, which occupy a very distinctive place in British society."

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/389002/Elite-or-Precariat-Britain-now-has-seven-social-classes-so-which-do-you-fit-into


At the opposite end of the spectrum – representing 15 per cent of the population – the "precariat" earn just £8,000 annually after tax, have average savings of £800, with fewer than one in 30 gaining a university education.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/05/solidarity-question-social-class


Having argued in a book, The Precariat, that society should be divided into seven groups around a growing precariat, I should be pleased at this week's proposals. However, the precariat should be defined as having insecure labour relations, insecure social income (without non-wage benefits or community support), and insecure occupational identity. It consists of denizens, lacking cultural, civil, social, political and economic rights of full citizenship.

Whereas the proletariat was habituated to stable labour, with labour-based entitlements, the precariat is being habituated to unstable labour and living, without secure entitlements, exploited outside labour as well as in it. The precariat is not the bottom of society – if it were, it would not be the class that will generate a new progressive politics. An underclass is omitted from the schema: the long-term unemployed, the disabled and people with social problems are blending in a burgeoning underclass.

The proposals also mix socio-economic groups with classes. That somebody has more income than somebody else is not a way to define class, nor is lifestyle or access to so-called social capital. Classes exist in tension with others. The salariat (with employment security) and proficians (project-oriented types), in gaining an increasing share of their income from capital, are in tension with the proletariat, which relied on social insurance benefits and public services, and the precariat, which relies on money earnings, charity and means-tested assistance shielded by behaviour tests tricking them out of benefts. The precariat is growing fast, and is getting angry.

[I disagree with Standing's new class stuff; he too mixes socioeconomic strata with functional classes, but to a much lesser degree than the academic study.]

[Jimmie Higgins]

I honestly don't understand this concept. Hasn't the position of the proletariet historically been precarious? Aren't they just misinterpreting the effects of neoliberalism and the weaking of the post-war labor-capital social agreements for some kind of wierd qualitative change into a new class?

[Blake's Baby]

Come on. The 'precariat' has been around quite a while - the ICC's section in Spain was writing leaflets about the precariat 10 years ago (which is where I first came across the term in English - checking their website I see other references from France especially from around 2004-5). And I remember reading about 'the underclass' 20 years or so ago, in the Big Issue, sitting in a laundrette when I was a student (so, early 1990s). So I really don't think this a new thing. Perhaps there's a 10-20-year lag before these concepts get university funding, big projects and coverage in the Guardian.

I agree that the '7-class analysis' essentially takes a sociological approach to class however.

[blake 3:17]

@DNZ -- you were one who introduced me to the concept & to Standing's work.

It is nonsense to try to deny the level of stratification and stupid chaos caused by contemporary capitalism and 19th century Marxist models just don't stand up. To avoid interrogation of the complexities of our 'class in itself' is to fall into the worst voluntarism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Blakes (both of you), I defined class relations differently from Standing and stereotypical "19th-century Marxist models."

[Astarte]

The 'precariat' seems to be a fairly legitimate concept to me in light of a historical understanding of the rise and fall of "Social Democracy" and the "Welfare state". After WWII in Western Europe, the USA and the rest of the so called "Developed World" the proletariat largely came to expect things like guaranteed healthcare, guaranteed vacation time, not having to work more than 40 hours a week to support a household and other benefits the "Developed World" was forced to concede to the proletariat in order to stave off the appeal of and seem "better" than the Soviet Union and "Socialist bloc" (whatever mode you believe they were operating under). The problem is that since the early 1970s the world has been swinging more and more to the right - it began pretty much in tandem with the start of the wane of the USSR as a super power and stagnation under Brezhnev - the "coup d'grace" of this push was, of course, the fall of the USSR and with it came a relentless onslaught of the dissolution of such "guarantees" as mentioned above and in turn the "precariat" has grown larger and larger - more and more people have to work several part time jobs, upwards of 60 to 80 hours a week without benefits or even any sort of job unionized security whatsoever - its like the "8 hour work day" laws never even happened. So, essentially gains and concessions made during the Cold War epoch, and really since the advent of Marxian socialism are being peeled back. So... really, in light of the historical experience and events of "Social Democracy" and "the Welfare state" and the fact that there are still many proletarians who do retain much more in terms of benefits of the Cold War period than others (usually younger workers), the precariat is an apt descriptor of that layer which is in a much more "precarious" situation than their parents even though in orthodox Marxian reckoning of class they are both officially "proletarian" - they are essentially feeling the brunt of the "peel back" that began in the 1970s great than other layers of the proletariat

My perspective of the results of the destruction of "Social Democracy" and "The Welfare state" is not so much though that there will be a great leveling of the proletariat back to the kind of conditions proletarians lived in as in say 1830s England but more of a "neo-feudal" multi-tiered structure developing within the proletariat if or as "libertarian" tea-party type austerity policy and mass privatization becomes hegemonic - this will reach its climax when the central federal apparatus is too "broke" to even pay to maintain basic infrastructure and large tracts of public roads and other public facilities like the Post Office are either destroyed by financial smothering and or sold off to private entities. Of course this perspective applies mostly if not completely to the situation in the USA rather than Europe - if I had to guess I would say that the "precariat" is not as prevalent in Western Europe than it is in the USA.

[blake 3:17]

Blakes (both of you), I defined class relations differently from Standing and stereotypical "19th-century Marxist models."


???? :confused:

I did the survey & the description was very accurate. : "Emergent Service Workers: This new class has low economic capital but has high levels of 'emerging' cultural capital and high social capital. This group are young and often found in urban areas."

[bricolage]

pretty much everyone who isn't well off and has any kind of interest in anything comes out as emergent service worker, it's a pretty skewed survey.

[RedBaltico]

I also did the survey, and it seems to have an accurate description of my class position, but one thing bothers me, the experiment it self. I do agree on some folks here, that there is some sort of tendency to forget the origins of the basic classes. I think it is not so important on what name you will have, as long as it sounds according to the origins of first written social-class structure. What is important, that what are the benefits of every person, or every social-class. We clearly know that a high class difference causes a lot of depression in the society, and so we need to know who has more or less benefits and opportunities in life, according to the social-class they are in.

I was watching one TED talk, on 'How economic inequality harms societies' by Richard Wilkinson. I recommend others to watch it as well. It would be good to start with realizing the problems caused by the economic inequality.

[Die Neue Zeit]

???? :confused:

I did the survey & the description was very accurate. : "Emergent Service Workers: This new class has low economic capital but has high levels of 'emerging' cultural capital and high social capital. This group are young and often found in urban areas."

It is the "emergent service workers" that Guy Standing calls the "precariat," not this British Sociology mix-up of this and the underclass.


pretty much everyone who isn't well off and has any kind of interest in anything comes out as emergent service worker, it's a pretty skewed survey.

Again, I don't know how British Sociology dropped the ball here by mis-defining "precariat" and by extension "precarious work."

[RHIZOMES]

I honestly don't understand this concept. Hasn't the position of the proletariet historically been precarious?

No... you can be middle-class and be a member of the proletariat. If you're selling your labour to create surplus value for a capitalists private property, you're proletarian. Doesn't matter how comfortable you are, if you're engaged in that particular relation of production, you're proletarian.

However to have a strong/stable proletarian middle-class requires quite a bit of state intervention to actually happen - thats why the need to 'strengthen the middle-class' is such a big talking point in bourgeois political discourse right now.

The precariat is just going to get bigger and bigger, and the middle-class smaller and smaller, as neoliberal austerity continues to trot along.

EDIT: Okay I see Astarte provided a much more detailed explanation of what I basically just said.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It is the "emergent service workers" that Guy Standing calls the "precariat," not this British Sociology mix-up of this and the underclass.


That's funny, I thought you were a 'workers only' kind of party person?

Pretty much every 'emergent service worker' i've found on facebook, for example, has been a student with no job! ;)

[Die Neue Zeit]

I am, Boss. Make no mistake about it. Even after my criticisms of Standing (lumping precarious employed labour together with freelance activity, and the notion that the former is distinct from basic class interests of non-management labour), British Sociology screwed things up here even by his standards.

A workers-only political organizing policy would give the middle finger to definitions of "worker" that are not within Marxist and Marxian conventions.