Professor Guy Standing on "Precariat And Peasant"

[Die Neue Zeit]

Interesting inaugural professorial speech by Guy Standing earlier this month: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTudjB4T7Xw

Standing argues for reconceptualizing work so that caring for fellow relatives is respected the same way economically as making tea for one's boss. Despite my continued skepticism to basic income and his approach to class analysis, he makes some very good points, particularly about the ratio of "work to labour" to labour (applying for jobs, for instance).

[Die Neue Zeit]

While he rightly criticized the Labourite compulsory work scheme at minimum (not living) wage, at least he didn't fire critical salvos at Minsky's ELR model. I think Standing has it both right and wrong with regards to redefining "work" in the social sense. I'm even very sympathetic to his argument on including "work to labour" as something to be recognized, respected, and even compensated. How is a trickier question.

However, the scope of domestic household work has diminished over the past century. He titled his presentation "precariat and peasant," and here I am thinking his argument for basic income might have made sense only for the pre-industrial era, when there was a lot more domestic household work. Mechanization has reduced a lot of this, like washing and drying clothes, but the availability of substitutes in the consumer services market, like child care, has also reduced a lot of this as well.