Standing Precariat (4)

Guy Standing says that historically we are at a fascinating point. Karl Polanyi wrote a book called the Great Transformation in 1944. There was a period dominated by financial capital in the nineteenth century. Inequalities and insecurities multiply until there was a crisis, which can do go two ways. Society can lurch towards Nazism and Fascism, or a new progressive movement can emerge to change the patterns of distribution and freedom. He thinks that we are at that crisis point now, so it is exciting to see what might emerge.

Polanyi was analysing the emergence of the national market economy. What we have now is the emergence of a global market economy. The great transformation needed a proletariat: a stable, disciplined, full-time labour supply to work in factories. The global market economy needs an unstable labour supply that will accept an unstable lifestyle.

The young educated precariat are looking for new forms of freedom and association. The Occupy movement was a build up of primitive energy. 2012 was the lull before the storm. Standing hopes that the next two years will see the emergence of new progressive vision.

The precariat was the inevitable consequence of government policies. A Faustian bargain was made in the 1980s. All parties appealed to the middle class, and ignored the precariat. They knew when they liberalised their economies that wages and benefits would have to fall in the rich industrialised countries. The politicians knew that opening up to China and India would produce downward pressure on wages, but they did not say this publicly, because they needed to be re-elected. To compensate for lower wages, they allowed cheap credit and an orgy of consumption, knowing that they would have moved on before the crisis hit. The world has now gone into austerity and inequality is continuing to grow.

Standing went on to propose some solutions, but they did not seem to be relevant to a modern society. However, the problem that he has identified is a serious threat to the peace of society. If something is not done, it could blow society apart. Christians should be thinking about how they can bring a solution to this problem. Jesus was comfortable dealing with the precariat of his time. To be taken seriously, we will need to bring practical solutions, not just pass judgment.

I describe one alternative here.

Standing Precariat (3)

Guy Standing says that the precariat must be understood as an emerging class. There are three varieties of precariat.

• People falling out of the working class are the first group. Their parents had stable full time work, so they know what they want, but they do not have it... This group is dangerous, because they are relatively uneducated, very desperate, very angry, and very easily mislead by populists of the far right. Many neo-nazi groups are appealing to them because it seems like migrants are taking their job. Populists play on their fears, and say they are afraid, because of “them”. These groups are often part of the precariat, so the precariat is at war with itself.

• Denizens are migrants and ethnic minorities, who do not belong anywhere. They have less rights than other people in their society, often because they are taken away from them by the government. They often lose social rights, because they may have fallen foul of the law. They do not have citizens rights in any country. This group keeps their heads down and concentrates on surviving. They are politically detached. This is dangerous, because they could be dragged into the wrong trends.

• Young educated people with status frustration are the third group. They have spent a huge amount of money on their education in expectation of employment, careers, identity and status. Millions have been told to invest in the future, they have taken on debt and have found that they have been sold a lottery ticket that costs less and less and more and more. The debt bubble is going to look small compared with the education bubble. Universities have been turned in human capital factories that no longer encourage curiosity, a sense of history and the ability think. The market for graduates is over supplied.

The first part of the precariat is vulnerable to demagogues, but the third part is more progressive in its orientation, and is a rapidly growing in proportion. Thirty percent unemployment rates indicate a huge pool of disaffected youth. Most people have children and relatives in the precariat. The third group are green, they are furious about the fact that they cannot use their education.

The third group is rejecting old style politics of centre left and centre right. The old laborist traditions of social democracy do not appeal to them.

Standing Precariat (2)

Guy Standing identifies four A’s that have influenced the emerging precariat. When combined together he says that they make a perfect storm.

• Anxiety. More and more people a faced with anxiety and a sense of insecurity in their lives. This is not insurance based insecurity due to the probability of debilitating events. This is anxiety based on chronic uncertainty in many aspects of life.

• Alienation. The precariat no longer feel that they are doing what they would like to do. They are forced to be part of this insecure work force. They often feel underemployed, yet feel over-employed in that they are pressed to do things that they do not want to do. Governments are telling people that they must be flexible, adaptable and mobile, but are not offering a model where people can have a sense of security in their career.

• Anomy is a sociological concept that comes from Emil Durkheim and refers to a sense of despair of escape. It sense of passivity induced by a feeling that whatever I do I cannot get out of this mess. This sense of anomy permeates many millions of people and many communities in the Western world.

• Anger is the result of the other three. There is an incredible sense of anger out there. The Occupy movement comes out of this.

Standing describes a precariatised mind. The precariatised mind arises from the loss of industrialised time. We dealt with life in blocks. People got up in the morning and went to work. They had family time in the evening. There were blocks of time in life for schooling, work, then retirement. We now have tertiary time where we flit between activities due to external pressures. We never know what we should be doing. People have lost the ability to reflect and concentrate. We have lost a sense of control as time has been commodified.

Standing Precariat (1)

Earlier this year I heard and interview with Guy Standing. His message was one of the most important that I have heard for a while. His solution is mostly wrong, but he has diagnosed a problem in modern society that everyone who cares about the future should think about. The fact that his solutions will not work, does not make the problem he has identified go away.

Standing says that globalisation has opened up the world economy. This has encouraged free markets, competiveness, capital flows and commodification. The nature of the state has changed and the institutions of social solidarity have been dismantled. The workforce of the world has trebled shifting the balance of power between labour and capital.

Standing says that a class fragmentation has taken place, that makes old-style Marxist categories redundant and antiquated. New classes are emerging.

• The plutocracy is at the top. They are much less than one percent. These billionaires are often on the edge of criminality.

• The salariat still have long-term employment security. They get the benefits of pensions, sick leave and annual leave.

• The proficians are self-entrepreneurs, independent minded, educated. They are very busy selling their services, but they are on the edge of exhaustion.

• The core is the old working class. They used to have stable long-time employment in full-time jobs. This group is shrinking fast.

• The precariat are taking shape at the bottom. This is a class in the making, so they are not fully aware of what is happening. They have insecure employment, insecure incomes, insecure jobs. Increasingly, they are employed in indirect forms of labour. They are people who do not have an occupation narrative that gives a sense of obligation and meaning to their lives. The cannot define themselves in occupational terms. They have to get a huge amount of work for labour that does not get paid, eg training and travel between jobs.

Guy Standing's book is called The Precariat: The New Danger of Class
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