Given our recent conversation about societal asymmetries and the older, recurrent, discussion of postmodernism, I thought this article might be interesting to a few of us. I think it speaks well to the problem in complexity we had been talking about, in particular, the inadequacy of our notions of "merit" and "compensation". To me, it speaks against the perspective that these issues can be handled by idealistic or overly simplistic models (like Steve's (1) and (2)). And that's true regardless of whether you agree with the content or not, I think.
A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens – review http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/09/precariat-charter-denizens-citizens-review
Over time, these people will find a voice – and, as Standing sees it, the "labourist" political left will then have to radically alter its views not just of political economy, but of what it is to live. "Twentieth century spheres of labour protection … were constructed around the image of the firm, fixed workplaces, and fixed working days and work-weeks that apply only to a minority in today's tertiary online society," he points out. "While proletarian consciousness is linked to long-term security in a firm, mine, factory or office, the precariat's consciousness is linked to a search for security outside the workplace." This is fundamental: it shreds such sepia-tinted ideas as the "dignity of labour", and the notion – shared by both the old left and its reformist successors – that to toil is to express one's essential humanity. As Standing puts it: "The precariat can accept jobs and labour as instrumental … not as what defines or gives meaning to life. That is so hard for
labourists to understand." It certainly is.
It is members of the precariat who pinball in and out of the benefits system thanks to short-term working arrangements, and who now form a large part of the demand for food banks. In response, the Westminster consensus insists that they should be subject to regimes that are not just cruel, but dysfunctional. In other words, it doesn't actually matter if so-called welfare-to-work programmes actually help people, or just screw them up: the point is that they visibly punish them in pursuit of a political dividend. In that sense, the precariat is not only at the cutting edge of the economy, but at the receiving end of a postmodern politics that values the manipulation of appearances much more highly than reality.
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