In
sociology and
economics, the
precariat is a
social class formed by people suffering from
precarity, which is a condition of
existence without
predictability or
security, affecting material or
psychological welfare as well as being a member of a
Proletariat
class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and
hence sell their labour to live. Specifically, it is applied to the
condition of lack of
job security, in other words intermittent employment or
underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.
By
Guy Standing, The Guardian
Next year is the
800th anniversary of
one of the greatest political documents of all time. The Magna Carta
was the first class-based charter, enforced on the monarchy by the
rising class. Today’s political establishment seems to have forgotten
both it and the emancipatory, ecological
Charter of the Forest of 1217. The rising mass class of today, which
I call the precariat, will not let them forget for much longer.
Today we need a precariat charter, a consolidated declaration that
will respect the Magna Carta’s 63 articles by encapsulating the needs
and aspirations of the precariat, which consists of millions of people
living insecurely, without occupational identity, doing a vast amount of
work that is not counted, relying on volatile wages without benefits,
being supplicants, dependent on charity, and denizens not citizens, in
losing all forms of rights.
The precariat is today’s mass class, which is both dangerous, in
rejecting old political party agendas, and transformative, in wanting to
become strong enough to be able to abolish itself, to abolish the
conditions of insecurity and inequality that define it. A precariat
charter is a way of rescuing the future.
Every charter has been a class-based set of demands that
constitute a progressive agenda or vision of a good society. The whole
is greater than the sum of the parts. A radical charter restructures,
being both emancipatory, in demanding a fresh enhancement of rights as
freedoms, and egalitarian, in showing how to reduce the vital
inequalities of the time. Since the crash of 2008 and during the
neoliberal retrenchment known as austerity, many commentators have
muttered that the left is dead, watching social democrats in their
timidity lose elections and respond by becoming ever more timid and
neoliberal.
They deserve their defeats.
As long as they orient their
posturing to the “squeezed middle”, appealing to their perception of a
middle class while placating the elite, they will depend on the mistakes
of the right for occasional victories, giving them office but not
power.
This retreat of the laborist left does not mean progressive politics is dying.
Costas Lapavitsas and Alex Politaki, who wrote for
this site earlier this month asking why Europe’s young are not rioting
now, are too pessimistic. Appearances deceive. The reason for the lack
of conventional political activity reflects a lack of vision from the
left.
This is changing, and quickly by historical standards. Let us not
forget that the objectives and policies that emerged in the great
forward march a century ago were not defined in advance but took shape
during and because of social struggles.
I have been fortunate to witness the phenomenal energies within the
precariat while traveling in 30 countries over the past two years. But a
transformative movement takes time to crystallize. It was ever thus.
To make sense of what is happening, one must appreciate that we are
in the middle of a global transformation. The disembedded phase
dominated by the neoliberal Washington consensus led to the crisis of
2008 – fiscal, existential, ecological and distributional crises rolled
into one. By then, the precariat had taken shape. Its growth has
accelerated since.
What Jeremiahs overlook is that a new forward march towards a revival
of a future with more emancipation and equality rests on three
principles that help define a new progressive agenda.
The first principle is that every forward march is inspired by the
emerging mass class, with progress defined in terms of its insecurities
and aspirations. Today that class is the precariat, with its distinctive
relations of production, relations of distribution and relations to the
state. Its consciousness is a mix of deprivation, insecurity,
frustration and anxiety. But most in it do not yearn for a retreat to
the past. It says to the old left: “My dreams are not in your ballot
box.”
The second principle is that a forward march requires new forms of
collective action. Quietly, these are taking shape all over the world.
No progressive moves can succeed without forms of collective voice, and
the new forms will include a synthesis of unions and the guilds that for
two millennia promoted occupational citizenship.
The third principle is that every forward march involves three
overlapping struggles, which take time to spring into effective life.
The first struggle is for recognition. Here, contrary to the Jeremiahs
on the left, there has been fantastic progress since 2008.
Recognition has been forged in networks boosted by a string of
collective sparks, through the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, the
indignados, the upheavals in the squares of great cities, the London
riots of 2011, the spontaneous actions in Istanbul and across dozens of
Brazilian cities in 2013, the sudden rise of
Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy’s elections last year, the riots around Stockholm, the
brave, prolonged occupation of the streets in Sofia, Bulgaria, until usurped by an oligarch’s thugs, and the even braver outrage of the
precariat in Kiev in
recent months. These events are messy, loosely linked at best. But the
energy out there is vivid, if one wants to see and feel it.
What has been achieved is a collective sense of recognition, by
millions of people – and not just young people. A growing part of the
precariat perceives a common predicament, realising that this is a
collective experience due to structural features of the economic and
political system. We see others in the mirror in the morning, not just
our failing selves. The precariat is becoming a class for itself,
whether one uses that word or another to describe a common humanity.
There is a far greater sense of recognition than in 2008.
That was necessary before the next struggle could evolve into a
unifying call for solidarity. That is a struggle for representation,
inside every element of the state. It is just beginning, as the
precariat realises that anti-politics is the wrong answer. Again, there
are encouraging signs that the energy is being channelled into action.
We demand to be subjects, not objects to be nudged and sanctioned,
fleeced and ignored in turn.
The precariat must be involved in regulating flexible labour, social
security institutions, unions and so on. The disabled, unemployed,
homeless, migrants, ethnic minorities – all are denizens stirring with
anger and collective identity. We are many, they are few. The years of
slumber are over.
The third struggle is for redistribution. Here, too, there is
progress. The social democratic, lukewarm left has no clothes, and
neither does the atavistic left harrying at its heels with empty
threats, wanting to turn the clock back to some illusionary golden age.
They would not understand the subversive piece of precariat graffiti:
“The worst thing would be to return to the old normal.”
Unstable labor will persist; flexibility will increase; wages will
stagnate. Now what? The struggle for redistribution is in its infancy,
but it has evolved into an understanding of class fragmentation, of how
the plutocracy seduces the salariat and placates the proletariat. The
struggle will show that with globalization a new distribution system
must be constructed, far more radical than that offered by a living
wage, however desirable that might be.
A precariat charter should revive a rights-based path towards
redistribution of the key assets denied to the precariat, including
security, control over time, a reinvigorated commons, assets essential
for its reproduction and eventual abolition. This vision is taking
shape, messily but perceptibly.
In 1215, the class of barons forced a powerful monarchy to concede to
demands for recognition, representation and redistribution. Throughout
history, emerging classes have done much the same, from the French
Revolution with its radical Enlightenment and the wonderful achievements
of Thomas Paine and others to the Chartists of the 19th century and the
spate of human rights charters after the second world war. The
progressives of the era have always reinvented the future. They are
doing it now. Cheer up.
