Guy Standing’s A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens

[Die Neue Zeit]

Agree or disagree, labour economist Guy Standing has released a "precariat charter" worth looking into:

Article 1: Redefine work as productive and reproductive activity.

Article 2: Reform labour statistics.

Article 3: Make recruitment practices brief encounters.

Article 4: Regulate flexible labour.

Article 5: Promote associational freedom.

Articles 6-10: Reconstruct occupational communities.

Articles 11-15: Stop class-based migration policy.

Article 16: Ensure due process for all.

Article 17: Remove poverty traps and precarity traps.

Article 18: Make a bonfire of benefit assessment tests.

Article 19: Stop demonizing the disabled.

Article 20: Stop workfare now!

Article 21: Regulate payday loans and student loans.

Article 22: Institute a right to financial knowledge and advice.

Article 23: Decommodify education.

Article 24: Make a bonfire of subsidies.

Article 25: Move towards a universal basic income.

Article 26: Share capital via sovereign wealth funds.

Article 27: Revive the Commons.

Article 28: Revive deliberative democracy.

Article 29: Re-marginalize charities.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comments:

Article 1: Lots of work remains unpaid for the purposes of compensation.

Article 2: I wouldn't say "reform" since that's cheapening the word.

Article 5: Duh.

Article 21: Not radical enough. Even for reforms, payday loans and student loans shouldn't be necessary.

Article 22: Guy Standing's "right to financial knowledge and advice" could have been worded better. Financial literacy is a big issue even in more developed countries.

Article 23: Why is decommodification of education separate from Article 21? Why were payday loans and student loans paired together?

Article 26: Sovereign wealth funds are a good thing.

Article 27: I believe this refers to the environmental commons.

[blake 3:17]

I've finally got to reading the book properly -- it's brilliant.

Regarding the Commons, Standing is referring to public spaces.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Blake, I stand corrected. What are your own thoughts on each of the articles / planks?

[blake 3:17]

The only one I might object to is the Sovereign Wealth Fund -- I should get the book.

We are gonna be an increasingly dangerous class. What can they take from us -- our debt? Welcome to it.

[blake 3:17]

The biggest thing I've found is exactly what Standing talks about -- anomie. The folks I see who are getting destroyed right now have become super alienated and isolated. Folks who actively participate in "alternative" (I dislike the word) communities are staying relatively sane.

[ckaihatsu]

The biggest thing I've found is exactly what Standing talks about -- anomie. The folks I see who are getting destroyed right now have become super alienated and isolated. Folks who actively participate in "alternative" (I dislike the word) communities are staying relatively sane.


I'd think this is because there's nothing but uncertainty going-forward for the global economy and its default mainstream, including those who identify with it -- the monolithic corporate mass culture is quickly eroding (and has been since the shift from nationalism-based consumer culture, to an *international*-based culture, from the late '70s / early '80s, onward, I would argue).

[blake 3:17]

What's to identify with? We jump through their hoops and still got nothing.

I'm unsure of us precarious workers becoming any unified class but there's a lot of us with a lot of skills, ideas and anger. We're raisins in the sun.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm unsure of us precarious workers becoming any unified class but there's a lot of us with a lot of skills, ideas and anger. We're raisins in the sun.


Yes.





What's to identify with? We jump through their hoops and still got nothing.


I'm sorry -- my meaning wasn't clear. Allow me to rephrase:

I mean to say that there are 'mainstream' type of people -- if you will -- who *do* identify their very existence with the status quo, meaning that they would see a capitalist global economy as a "necessity" for the world to work "correctly".

It's *this* (hypothesized) grouping that would be *vulnerable* to downgrades of the U.S. empire, in whatever (ongoing) forms -- including as a result of the continuing stagnation in the larger world economy.

So, by all of this I just mean to *resonate* with your 'anomie' thesis. (And then right here is where your 'sane alternative communities' kicks-in.)

[Hit The North]

What's to identify with? We jump through their hoops and still got nothing.

I'm unsure of us precarious workers becoming any unified class but there's a lot of us with a lot of skills, ideas and anger. We're raisins in the sun.

Obviously the condition of precarity itself makes unity very difficult. It weakens our bargaining position against the capitalist and pits us in competition with other workers. In my experience, precarious workers are less likely to join a trade union and less likely to take militant action (as we are too easy to fire). I'm not holding my breath that the precariat are going to be our salvation any time soon.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The only one I might object to is the Sovereign Wealth Fund -- I should get the book.

We are gonna be an increasingly dangerous class. What can they take from us -- our debt? Welcome to it.


The biggest thing I've found is exactly what Standing talks about -- anomie. The folks I see who are getting destroyed right now have become super alienated and isolated. Folks who actively participate in "alternative" (I dislike the word) communities are staying relatively sane.

You object to sovereign wealth funds? That's one of Jesse Myerson's Five Economic Reforms which he raised. :confused:

[Die Neue Zeit]

Obviously the condition of precarity itself makes unity very difficult. It weakens our bargaining position against the capitalist and pits us in competition with other workers. In my experience, precarious workers are less likely to join a trade union and less likely to take militant action (as we are too easy to fire). I'm not holding my breath that the precariat are going to be our salvation any time soon.

If anything else, Guy Standing is arguing that the condition of precarity increases the likelihood of engaging in political action. Sure it may weakening the bargaining position and discourage trade union "militancy," but political action tends to happen outside mere labour disputes.

Heck, even within the framework of mere labour disputes, the condition of precarity increases the likelihood of engaging in adversarial action. Just compare and contrast interns who sue or pursue litigation lawsuits vs. the trade union folks who pursue mere negotiation or mediation in their sacred collective bargaining process.

[blake 3:17]

Heck, even within the framework of mere labour disputes, the condition of precarity increases the likelihood of engaging in adversarial action.

It tends more to be "fuck off asshole" rather than a legal thing -- but yes.

[blake 3:17]

I'm not holding my breath that the precariat are going to be our salvation any time soon.

Has there been a previous class which has been such a saviour? Gotta roll with what you got.

[Hit The North]

If anything else, Guy Standing is arguing that the condition of precarity increases the likelihood of engaging in political action. Sure it may weakening the bargaining position and discourage trade union "militancy," but political action tends to happen outside mere labour disputes.

Heck, even within the framework of mere labour disputes, the condition of precarity increases the likelihood of engaging in adversarial action. Just compare and contrast interns who sue or pursue litigation lawsuits vs. the trade union folks who pursue mere negotiation or mediation in their sacred collective bargaining process.

I appreciate that politics happen outside the workplace as well as in the workplace but I have yet to see the evidence that precarity results in greater political engagement or activism in political campaigns or that the zero-hour-contracted are more politically radical. What is Standing's evidence for such an assertion?

As for your assertion re. the greater potential of the precariously employed to fight the bosses, this is pure fantasy. If you're on a zero hour contract these fuckers don't even have to sack you for stepping out of line, they just stop giving you work. Without the possible protection of a union you're doubly fucked. And if you honestly think that the interests of workers - whether precariously employed or otherwise - can be forwarded better through recourse to litigation than collective trade union struggle it merely indicates the poverty of your mere politics.

By the way, if you believe that precarity really radicalises the working class, you should be calling for more of it. I'd like to see how that would play among those who already suffer the deprivations of casualisation and the bemusement of more securely employed workers when you argue they should embrace greater insecurity. In the end, you'd be asking workers to embrace their greater exploitation by capital. You'd be doing the bosses work for them.

[Hit The North]

Has there been a previous class which has been such a saviour? Gotta roll with what you got.

A) The precariously employed are not a new class, neither do they constitute a class separate and distinct from the proletariat. We're in hell of a mess if we think otherwise.

B) Yes, let's roll with what we've got and that would include, of course, millions of workers in relatively secure employment and organised in trade unions.

[blake 3:17]

@HtN -- Totally with you. Nothing to romanticize about precarity. It sucks. I've been doing stuff at work in support of the union, but am excluded by the collective agreement.

I think Standing's contribution to examine the class-in-itself is extremely important. He's an important update on Harry Braverman.

Edited to add: I work three zero hour contract jobs, two of which are in unionized workplaces.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It tends more to be "fuck off asshole" rather than a legal thing -- but yes.

No, seriously: There's a trend right now that is shifting to a more litigious culture.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I appreciate that politics happen outside the workplace as well as in the workplace

It doesn't happen much in the workplace to begin with.


As for your assertion re. the greater potential of the precariously employed to fight the bosses, this is pure fantasy. If you're on a zero hour contract these fuckers don't even have to sack you for stepping out of line, they just stop giving you work. Without the possible protection of a union you're doubly fucked.

More interns are suing, perhaps? They work under similar if not the same conditions.


And if you honestly think that the interests of workers - whether precariously employed or otherwise - can be forwarded better through recourse to litigation than collective trade union struggle it merely indicates the poverty of your mere politics.

That is exactly what I am arguing, but I would word the latter as collective bargaining or collective negotiation. Just think about the untapped potential for class-action lawsuits or group lawsuits, and also for punitive damages!


By the way, if you believe that precarity really radicalises the working class, you should be calling for more of it.

Does the Five Star Movement ring a bell?

[blake 3:17]

No, seriously: There's a trend right now that is shifting to a more litigious culture.

That has mixed blessings but in terms of consciousness & results more effective. But yeah got fight on the terrain of the state & (bluck) the shop floor. Our shop floor is a crazy kaleidoscope, quicksand quicksand all around.

[Hit The North]

It doesn't happen much in the workplace to begin with.


My workplace is probably the most politicised arena that I move in.


More interns are suing, perhaps? They work under similar if not the same conditions.

Suing for what exactly? And what kind of interns can pursue litigation and sustain its costs if they're not backed by a trade union or the bank of mum and dad?


That is exactly what I am arguing, but I would word the latter as collective bargaining or collective negotiation. Just think about the untapped potential for class-action lawsuits or group lawsuits, and also for punitive damages!


You cannot pursue the class struggle through the bourgeois courts. The whole process is confined to bourgeois legalism and has far less potential to burst through those confines than a form of collective political protest.

As I argue elsewhere, the only beneficiaries of your strategy will be the legal profession and the bourgeois state which can turn around and say, "You see, we do protect the workers from exploitation by capital!".


Does the Five Star Movement ring a bell?

Yeah, a left-opportunist, populist, political movement which has absolutely zero interest in promoting class struggle. But what does it have to do with the question at hand?

[Die Neue Zeit]

My workplace is probably the most politicised arena that I move in.

As more workers move from workplace to workplace, it's harder to politicize on the basis of the workplace. Politicizing on the basis of geography is much better, and is something the trade union movement has failed at.


Suing for what exactly? And what kind of interns can pursue litigation and sustain its costs if they're not backed by a trade union or the bank of mum and dad?

Compensation, perhaps? As for costs, that's why there are law firms that don't charge upfront, but charge their cut on the back end. That's why they decide to accept and reject clients based on the probability of success.


You cannot pursue the class struggle through the bourgeois courts. The whole process is confined to bourgeois legalism and has far less potential to burst through those confines than a form of collective political protest.

I never said anything about pursuing class-based public policymaking struggle through the bourgeois courts. Please don't put words in my mouth. Pardon that, I did forget that you held an economistic definition of "class struggle."

As for mere labour disputes per se, whether they are resolved at the bargaining table or in court, I believe favourable outcomes can be achieved by pressure protests nearby.


As I argue elsewhere, the only beneficiaries of your strategy will be the legal profession and the bourgeois state which can turn around and say, "You see, we do protect the workers from exploitation by capital!".

Not if there are cooperative equivalents to law firms that specialize in labour litigation and labour law counselling.


Yeah, a left-opportunist, populist, political movement which has absolutely zero interest in promoting class struggle. But what does it have to do with the question at hand?

Actual political struggle (i.e., public policymaking struggle) has to begin somewhere.

[blake 3:17]

And it's not like there aren't radical lawyers who'll take cases on pro bono. And some of the unions will fund law suits.

At work today, there were a zillion complaints from the full timers about getting time off. Where a tricky devil like me comes in is to start a ball rolling about getting some guaranteed hours and better wages for casual/supply staff and that's good for them, good for us, and actually good for the employer in the long term.

I getting fucking fed up with getting no hours for months, getting shifts cancelled, and then getting messed with when I dare to say I can't come in for a particular day.

I'd see the single biggest thing in this struggle is to lose the anomie, and build it right. It seems very striking and very dangerous how atomized workers are in so many unionized work places. But mostly you get out of that by just talking to people, not with an agenda, but just getting to know people and their family and friends.

Christ almighty, if there were a strike there I'd be so proud to be on the line and happily announce I'd had to go on benefits because of all the hours the manager had cut.

What I find disturbing on our side, is the flight from very broad class struggle democratic and socialist perspectives, and getting super hung up on authoritarian types of identity politics or bizarro world sectarian politics. And by the latter, I include the NDP and some union formations, as well as the 17 thousand types of anarchists and marxists.

Funnily enough, one of the things that got me really pissed off about in the last Left labour thing I was a part of was that my proposal to do a short informal reading group on The Precariat was rejected.

[Hit The North]

As more workers move from workplace to workplace, it's harder to politicize on the basis of the workplace. Politicizing on the basis of geography is much better, and is something the trade union movement has failed at.


But according to you, the workers most at risk of constantly moving from workplace to workplace, that is, the "precariat", are also the most politically radical. Are you suggesting that they (whose precarity is essentially a workplace issue) leave their politics at the door when they enter work?

Organising in the community (or geography, as you would have it) is obviously important but, in the UK at least, many trade unionists are the backbone of working class community politics as well.


Compensation, perhaps? As for costs, that's why there are law firms that don't charge upfront, but charge their cut on the back end. That's why they decide to accept and reject clients based on the probability of success.
Yes, I'm familiar with how these small-claim law firms operate, I've seen them advertise on daytime TV. I've yet to see them push litigation on the basis of some poor shmuck being under-employed and the reason is obvious. It is not yet a civil or criminal act to use zero-hour or short-term contracts.


I never said anything about pursuing class-based public policymaking struggle through the bourgeois courts. Please don't put words in my mouth.

Well, buddy, I didn't accuse you of arguing "anything about pursuing class-based public policymaking struggle through the bourgeois courts." I said you cannot prosecute the class struggle (public policymaking or otherwise) through the bourgeois courts. So, quite humorously, you are putting words in your own mouth.


Pardon that, I did forget that you held an economistic definition of "class struggle."I have a Marxist definition of class struggle where the over-turning of the relations of production is central and where it is carried out by the workers, using organisations that belong to them, not to the bourgeois state.


Not if there are cooperative equivalents to law firms that specialize in labour litigation and labour law counselling.Yeah, man. Well, are there such cooperative equivalents or has the proletarianisation of the legal profession still a way to go? But the real point is that no matter how the firm is constituted, it can only operate within the confines of bourgeois law.


Actual political struggle (i.e., public policymaking struggle) has to begin somewhere.Same old, same old. Policy-making under conditions of bourgeois rule leads to mere reformism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

But according to you, the workers most at risk of constantly moving from workplace to workplace, that is, the "precariat", are also the most politically radical. Are you suggesting that they (whose precarity is essentially a workplace issue) leave their politics at the door when they enter work?

Not at all. What you don't seem to understand is that I'm all for the political spilling into the economic, and that this has happened time and again. What I'm against is the illusion of the economic spilling into the political.

[Hit The North]

Not at all. What you don't seem to understand is that I'm all for the political spilling into the economic, and that this has happened time and again. What I'm against is the illusion of the economic spilling into the political.

What does that even mean?

[Thirsty Crow]

What does that even mean?
That effectively means that proles can't even begin to widen labor disputes (pay close attention here as this is an important piece in DNZ-mythology, connected with rewriting the concept of economism) and steer them in a more militant direction without a reformist or populist political organization doing what it does - and never mind that idea about immediate workplace struggles linking up and serving as the basis for class politicization.

[Die Neue Zeit]

That effectively means that proles can't even begin to widen labor disputes (pay close attention here as this is an important piece in DNZ-mythology, connected with rewriting the concept of economism) and steer them in a more militant direction without a reformist or populist political organization doing what it does - and never mind that idea about immediate workplace struggles linking up and serving as the basis for class politicization.

I'm not making myths out of anything. I'm not rewriting or redefining the term "economism," either.

Meanwhile, while some of us are obsessing about the trans-Atlantic precariat, why did the Japanese freeters and Freeters General Union not show a blip on the radar?

[blake 3:17]

Any reports on trans-pacific action is excellent! I'm really thrilled by how well the DPAC tour in Ontario went:


A successful campaign in the United Kingdom is being used here in Ontario as an example of how to fight back and win against government cuts.

Ellen Clifford, part of the UK's Disabled People Against the Cuts campaign, is lending her experience to the Ontario anti-poverty movement by sharing the story of how her group was able to push back against program cuts for unemployed and disabled people.

“If you fight, you can win,” said Clifford, in North Bay Tuesday with members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty to speak about the UK campaign and how it relates to what’s happening in Ontario.

In the UK, Clifford said the government instituted social services cuts which included the outsourcing of "work capability assessments" to a private firm called Atos. She suggested the so-called assessments were designed to get sick and disabled people off benefits. And, in one case, Clifford said a man in a coma was declared fit for employment.

She said disabled people mobilized to fight back, teaming up with community organizations and unions, eventually forcing Atos to back away from its contract with the government due to public and political support.

http://www.nugget.ca/2014/05/07/campaign-fights-program-cuts

[blake 3:17]

Any reports on trans-pacific action is excellent! I'm really thrilled by how well the DPAC tour in Ontario went:


A successful campaign in the United Kingdom is being used here in Ontario as an example of how to fight back and win against government cuts.

Ellen Clifford, part of the UK's Disabled People Against the Cuts campaign, is lending her experience to the Ontario anti-poverty movement by sharing the story of how her group was able to push back against program cuts for unemployed and disabled people.

“If you fight, you can win,” said Clifford, in North Bay Tuesday with members of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty to speak about the UK campaign and how it relates to what’s happening in Ontario.

In the UK, Clifford said the government instituted social services cuts which included the outsourcing of "work capability assessments" to a private firm called Atos. She suggested the so-called assessments were designed to get sick and disabled people off benefits. And, in one case, Clifford said a man in a coma was declared fit for employment.

She said disabled people mobilized to fight back, teaming up with community organizations and unions, eventually forcing Atos to back away from its contract with the government due to public and political support.

http://www.nugget.ca/2014/05/07/campaign-fights-program-cuts

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Not at all. What you don't seem to understand is that I'm all for the political spilling into the economic, and that this has happened time and again. What I'm against is the illusion of the economic spilling into the political.

So, workers can't become conscious themselves through their own experiences of labour disputes and struggle? They have to wait for some leading light such as yourself to come and wade in to mere economic struggles.

Brilliant, the future's not what it used to be is it?

[Die Neue Zeit]

So, workers can't become conscious themselves through their own experiences of labour disputes and struggle? They have to wait for some leading light such as yourself to come and wade in to mere economic struggles.

Brilliant, the future's not what it used to be is it?

That's wrong on more counts than one. A concrete form of the political spilling into the economic is a wave of mass protests sparking sympathy strike activity. It isn't really related to competent political education forming the basis of competent political agitation, to having more of the clearer heads and less of the headless chickens, nor is it really related to labour litigation lawyers (of which I'm not) elevating the bread-and-butter terrain but strictly within the labour disputes framework.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

That's wrong on more counts than one. A concrete form of the political spilling into the economic is a wave of mass protests sparking sympathy strike activity. It isn't really related to competent political education forming the basis of competent political agitation, to having more of the clearer heads and less of the headless chickens, nor is it really related to labour litigation lawyers (of which I'm not) elevating the bread-and-butter terrain but strictly within the labour disputes framework.

Why can't you talk in a way that I can understand with a bit more ease? That would ease your 'political to the economic' somewhat - people engaged in economic struggles (and political struggles, mind) use slogans because they are easy to understand; jargon-filled prose is not. And if you can say the same thing in a simple way, why would you choose the complicated way?

I mean, it's really just difficult to engage with the content of your post because i'm not entirely sure what the content is, because you've used so many specific pieces of un-defined jargon that i'd just be guessing if I did interpret your post, and that wouldn't be fair to you.

[Thirsty Crow]

I mean, it's really just difficult to engage with the content of your post because i'm not entirely sure what the content is, because you've used so many specific pieces of un-defined jargon that i'd just be guessing if I did interpret your post, and that wouldn't be fair to you.
But comrade this is the way politicos will make the political spill into the economic, don't you forget that.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

ah fuck all this shit

[blake 3:17]

So, workers can't become conscious themselves through their own experiences of labour disputes and struggle? They have to wait for some leading light such as yourself to come and wade in to mere economic struggles.

Brilliant, the future's not what it used to be is it?

Let's start with an anecdote from work today. My co-worker and I were talking and she was telling me about how she was telling her had to relax about the time she had been taking off work, to attend medical appointments with him, because she could use vacation and sick days. Now, good communist I am, I'm all "Great! Use those sick days, right on!" and supporting her because she's doing good. On another level, I'm thinking "Fuck you! I don't get no sick days I don't get vacation, I don't get enough hours, I can't make rent" -- this is working class reality. It's foolishness to deny these basic contradictions.



One of the things I admire about Guy Standings book The Precariat which can be read for free here: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/The-Precariat/book-ba-9781849664554.xml is that he examines the class in itself -- this is why I'd consider it the most the important update since Braverman. This is serious. Some version of the working class according to Marx or Goldman or Trotsky or Mandel doesn't cut it. It's 2014.

[Hit The North]

Let's start with an anecdote from work today. My co-worker and I were talking and she was telling me about how she was telling her had to relax about the time she had been taking off work, to attend medical appointments with him, because she could use vacation and sick days. Now, good communist I am, I'm all "Great! Use those sick days, right on!" and supporting her because she's doing good. On another level, I'm thinking "Fuck you! I don't get no sick days I don't get vacation, I don't get enough hours, I can't make rent" -- this is working class reality. It's foolishness to deny these basic contradictions.


So, you are experiencing dislocation, fragmentation and other forms of social division that capitalism has always excelled in creating. What is your wider point?


One of the things I admire about Guy Standings book The Precariat which can be read for free here: http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/The-Precariat/book-ba-9781849664554.xml is that he examines the class in itself -- this is why I'd consider it the most the important update since Braverman. This is serious. Some version of the working class according to Marx or Goldman or Trotsky or Mandel doesn't cut it. It's 2014.No one is denying that the composition of the working class is in a constant state of being revolutionised by capitalism - that is the ABC of Marxism - and perhaps Standing's analysis has a lot of merit, although when his Preface begins by announcing that "This book is about a new group in the world, a class-in-the-making." you have to wonder how much his analysis is tailored to the demands of marketing. Precarity has been an abiding feature of life under capitalism for most of its history. It is the stable job-for-life economy (partly real, partly ideological myth) that has been a transitory feature of capitalism, existing for about 30 to 40 years in the 20th Century - and then only in those parts of developed capitalism where a class-collaborationist welfare state settlement had been achieved, resulting in strong unions, closed-shop agreements and collective-bargaining, etc.

Before you write off Marx (who never systematically attempted to map out the composition of the proletariat, anyway), it is worth noting that it is the tendency toward crisis in capitalism, that Marx painstakingly addressed, that has always ensured that life for the proletariat is one of precariousness. This is one of the basic contradictions you mention. It's not new and it certainly doesn't represent a new, emerging class-in-itself, as Standing argues.

[Thirsty Crow]

No one is denying that the composition of the working class is in a constant state of being revolutionised by capitalism - that is the ABC of Marxism - and perhaps Standing's analysis has a lot of merit, although when his Preface begins by announcing that "This book is about a new group in the world, a class-in-the-making." you have to wonder how much his analysis is tailored to the demands of marketing.
The way I see it is that what you call the ABC of Marxism is often verbally exercised (in statements about changes in class composition) but I think more often than not there isn't even a wider impression of the kind of changes we're talking about, much less a rigorous analysis which can serve as a platform for thinking about organizational strategy.

On the other hand, unfortunately the people who did grapple with such kind of an analysis, as faulty as it may be (e.g. Negri and Hardt), are politically bankrupt as any bourgeois current out there. It's hard to tell which came first - the old chicken and the egg dilemma - faulty analysis or disastrous politics. But credit where credit is due - at least some analytical work here is done and I don't think it's impossible for radicals to build off from it (mainly in terms of empirical investigations; this is the analytical bread and butter of pro-revolutionary politics).

In all of this, the particular problem of finding new revolutionary subjectivity is prominent; it isn't hard to see how the decade and some more of class struggle in advanced capitalist zones brought with it new problems but also new defeats and demoralization which is the "public secret" of such approaches. But one can distinguish two underlying sub-approaches here:

1) locating a new working class vanguard - the specific strata of the class which is expected to become the most advanced proletarian shock troops in a new cycle of struggle (nihilist communism with its idea of the essential proletariat; and the recently founded Libertarian Communist Initiative with its focus on working class communities on the very edge of social inclusion into regular capitalist reproduction - that of the GB riots in 2011).

2) finding a new revolutionary subjectivity while getting rid of any notion of class and capital

I'm not really disagreeing with anything you wrote here, just some thoughts off the top of my head.

EDIT: just to clarify, this decade an some more of struggle I referred to is the historical period from the struggles at the end of the 60s to early to mid 80s.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Why can't you talk in a way that I can understand with a bit more ease? That would ease your 'political to the economic' somewhat - people engaged in economic struggles (and political struggles, mind) use slogans because they are easy to understand; jargon-filled prose is not. And if you can say the same thing in a simple way, why would you choose the complicated way?

Let me make my example by shifting to a language that even you should understand.

Pro-test act-ion: Some Occupy protest in the San Francisco Bay Area, and even other Occupy protests elsewhere

Sym-pa-thy strike act-i-vi-ty: An Occupy-related sympathy strike in that same area

That's an example of the political spilling into the economic. That's an example of growing political awareness that we should support. Hard.

Class-based political awareness as evidenced by demand-making by those with Occupy experience (including but obviously not limited to Jesse Myerson's "Five Economic Reforms") is also something we should promote. Harder.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Can you give specific examples of which occupy actions you are talking about?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Can you give specific examples of which occupy actions you are talking about?

I just gave you a f****** example! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Oakland_general_strike)

[blake 3:17]

and perhaps Standing's analysis has a lot of merit, although when his Preface begins by announcing that "This book is about a new group in the world, a class-in-the-making." you have to wonder how much his analysis is tailored to the demands of marketing.

From Standing's The Precariat:


However one defines it, the precariat is far from being homogeneous. The teenager who flits in and out of the internet café while surviving on fleeting jobs is not the same as the migrant who uses his wits to survive, networking feverishly while worrying about the police. Neither is similar to the single mother fretting where the money for next week's food bill is coming from or the man in his 60s who takes casual jobs to help pay medical bills. But they all share a sense that their labour is instrumental (to live), opportunistic (taking what comes) and precarious (insecure).

One way of depicting the precariat is as ‘denizens’. A denizen is someone who, for one reason or another, has a more limited range of rights than citizens do. The idea of the denizen, which can be traced back to Roman times, has usually been applied to foreigners given residency rights and rights to ply their trade, but not full citizenship rights.

http://www.bloomsburyacademic.com/view/The-Precariat/chapter-ba-9781849664554-chapter-001.xml

There's a reason we identify with the Palestinians. No future but the ones we create.

[Zukunftsmusik]

And...? You're not engaging with any of HtN's central points at all.


There's a reason we identify with the Palestinians. No future but the ones we create.

What's this even supposed to mean.

[blake 3:17]

Can you give specific examples of which occupy actions you are talking about?


At Occupy Toronto there was a great deal of labour solidarity. The group I was in, the Greater Toronto Workers Assembly put on a series of events that brought workers in struggle against bosses and the state together at well attended events at Occupy and solidarity rallies where numbers were drawn for Occupy participants were quite high.

It was like people were class conscious. Oh wait they were.

[blake 3:17]

And...? You're not engaging with any of HtN's central points at all.

I'm a Marxist and a worker who has been active in many several unions and labour solidarity campaigns over the past twenty years. All he's arguing is that Marxism and trade unionism are sufficient for the present.




What's this even supposed to mean.

To paraphrase Louis Armstrong and KRS One -- If you have to ask, I doubt you'll ever know.

[Zukunftsmusik]

I'm a Marxist and a worker who has been active in many several unions and labour solidarity campaigns over the past twenty years. All he's arguing is that Marxism and trade unionism are sufficient for the present.

That wasn't HtN's point. What HtN was saying, was that while Standing's book might hold merit as an investigation of precarity, it doesn't make sense to talk of the precariat as a new "class-in-the-making". It distorts class with class (re)composition. If anything, the quote you posted merely proved his point in this regard: it showed precisely how precarity has spread to former "secure" jobs such as teaching, ie. how this is a general and widening tendency of capital in this period. This - that precarity is something that is common for both teachers, migrant workers and single mothers (wenever was it not for the latter two?) in this period - actually contradicts Standing's formulation in the foreword: precariat as a class of its own. On the contrary, if both teachers and migrant workers live and work precariously, this can't be anything but a general tendency within the class.


To paraphrase Louis Armstrong and KRS One -- If you have to ask, I doubt you'll ever know.

Well, that's less than enlightening.

[blake 3:17]

It distorts class with class (re)composition.

I don't have time for these verbal games.

Edited to add: I've little patience for the intellectual laziness on display here -- rather than debate me on some pointless issue, try reading Standing and take him on. At least you'd learn something and you might make a contribution to the class struggle.

[synthesis]

I don't have time for these verbal games.

Edited to add: I've little patience for the intellectual laziness on display here -- rather than debate me on some pointless issue, try reading Standing and take him on. At least you'd learn something and you might make a contribution to the class struggle.

Yes or no, do you believe that the precariat is a different class than the proletariat?

[Zukunftsmusik]

I don't have time for these verbal games.

For someone who's lapping up DNZ neologisms, this seems like a weird accusation. Especially because, you know, in contrast to DNZ and you, it's not a verbal game.


I've little patience for the intellectual laziness on display here

That makes us two.

[Thirsty Crow]

I don't have time for these verbal games.

I assume this is a verbal game to you only because you're not at all familiar with the notion of class (re)composition, as elaborated within Italian autonomist Marxism.

This Standing's position about the precariat as a class in the making stands in complete opposition to what I mentioned above, but also to the whole of the Marxist class analysis.

[blake 3:17]

Not the least bit familiar. What does it mean?

[blake 3:17]

I'd meant to apologize for last night's snarkiness. If an expectation of recognition of autonomist jargon is to be had, surely there should be respect for the sources of the OP and concrete political demands.

[blake 3:17]

Yes or no, do you believe that the precariat is a different class than the proletariat?

Precarians are overwhelmingly part of the proletariat, though they have have non-waged and non-inherited incomes or survival strategies. I'm sure some of you have them.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Any reports on trans-pacific action is excellent!

Try this blog:

Throw Out Your Books: Japanese radicalism & counterculture (http://throwoutyourbooks.wordpress.com/)