Guy Standing on Anxiety, Anger and Alienation: an Interview About “The Pecariat”

On March 19, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

“The primary antagonist of the traditional proletarian was the boss. The primary antagonistic of the precariat is the state. A precariat revolt (hopefully peaceful) will lead to a new distinctive distribution system,”

– Guy Standing, March 2019

In the U. S., Guy Standing, 71-years-old, and a professor at the University of London, has never received the recognition he deserves as a scholar and a writer. In part, that’s because he hasn’t expressed himself in terms of sound bytes. Moreover, in the U.S. he hasn’t effectively publicized himself, his books, and his trenchant ideas about what he calls “the precariat,” which he defines as a new, global social class that he views as the political and economic key to a future that would beneficially all humanity.  The mass media hasn’t wanted to give Standing and his work their due lest they stir up the populace; some traditional Marxists have also scoffed at his words and concepts.

The term “precariat” is so new and so little used, at least in the U.S., that every time it shows up on my screen, my computer underlines it in red as though to say it’s not a real word and that I’ve misspelled it. I have not done so.

In fact, Standing’s breakthrough book, The Precariat, which was first published in English in 2011, has been translated into 23 languages around the world and has jumpstarted conversations about work, wages, rents and global economic insecurity.  I first heard the word precariat and its cousin, ”precarity” from two men who live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, where women, children and men live lives that are increasingly precarious economically, socially and psychologically.

Keith Hennessy is a dancer; Stephen Clarke is a schoolteacher. They both used the word “precariat” on the same day, though not at the same time. I was interviewing them for an exhibit about punk, protest and performance art in the 1980s when their lives were a lot from precarious than they are now. Clarke belonged to a rock band. Hennessey performed in the streets. Both figured out how to survive in a stressful time and place, though they are still members of the precariat, which is growing by leaps and bounds in the San Francisco Bay Area where the tech industry and a new generation of millionaires, along with corporate greed and an avaricious class of landlords has pushed rents higher and higher and forced working class families to leave the city.

Once I read the word “precariat” on the lips of Clarke and Hennessey I went online and found Professor Guy Standing the author of several books including Work After Globalization (2009), The Precariat (2011) and Plunder the Commons, out later this year.  I emailed him a series of questions. He provided candid, comprehensive and lengthy answers, which I have edited in the interests of compression. Welcome to the world of the precariat, which has begun to flex its muscle and to clamor for reform if not revolution.

Q: Has the term “precariat” tipped?

A: Undoubtedly it has. Every day I receive emails from people around the world who say that they belong to the precariat. I have talked about the subject in 40 different countries. I have just returned from India where I gave two lectures about the precariat. In January I spoke before an audience of 3,000 people in The Hague, in the Netherlands and 6,000 people in Leipzig in Germany. I have delivered my talk at Davos for the past three years. In June I’ll be in Winnipeg, Canada to spread the word.

Q: In what places is there a deep understanding of the concept?

A: In Scotland they really get it, also in Italy, Spain, Japan and Korea. In the U.S., where the precariat is growing, leftist voices are still stuck with the term “working class,” which I think obscures what is happening. The U.S. media has been mute.

Q: Do you mean to overturn traditional Marxist terms or embellish them and bring them up to date?

A: When The Precariat was first published I was attacked rather viciously by old style Marxists who accused me of “dividing the working class.”

I believe that concepts, which might be suitable for one era—Marx was writing at a time of rising capitalism—may cease to be suitable for later eras. The old proletariat, male dominated, laboring full time in factories and mines is profoundly different from the emerging precariat, conceptually and politically.

But please note that I have drawn on Marxian concepts in defining the precariat: distinctive relations of production, distribution as well as relations to the state. I also add consciousness, which makes today’s precariat the new dangerous class.  The Italian translation of The Precariat was Precari: La Nuova Clase Explosiva, which made me angry.

Q: Where and when did your study of the precariat begin?

A: In the 1980s I wrote and co-wrote a series of monographs about the growth of labor market flexibility in eight European countries, including Sweden and Finland—then extolled by Social Democrats as close to Nirvana—and concluded that their models were unsustainable. I was convinced that the neo-liberal economic policies, pursued by Thatcher and Reagan, would produce class fragmentation and more intensified inequalities.

With funding from the International Labor Organization (ILO) under the umbrella of the UN, I gathered data from 80,000 firms, and 68,000 workers in 20 counties. I personally interviewed hundreds of factory managers, along with thousands of workers. My colleagues and I produced a comprehensive 500-page report, Economic Security for a Better World (2004), for the ILO. Representatives of the U.S. on the ILO governing board immediately attacked it. The ILO director withdrew the report. Shortly thereafter I resigned and got to work on the precariat.

Q: You write about the four related As: anger, anomie, anxiety and alienation, which are shared widely across class lines in the U.S. and France: hence Trump and his supporters here and les gilles jeunes there. The concepts are not new are they?

A: True, there has always been anger, anxiety, alienation and anomie. What’s distinctive now is that members of the precariat tend to suffer acutely from all four at the same time. Anomie stems from a low probability of upward mobility. Alienation stems from having to do a lot of activities that one doesn’t want to do, but is capable of doing. Anxiety stems from chronic economic uncertainty, and insecurity, and anger stems largely from a feeling that no political party or politicians in the mainstream articulate an agenda geared to the precariat.

Q: Is the precariat a homogenous group.

A: No, it’s divided into three factions: atavists who look back and want to revive a lost past and who tend to vote neo-fascist and populist; nostalgics are mainly immigrants and non-citizens who feel they have no home anywhere in the world and keep their heads down politically, except on rare days when they express their rage; and the progressives who go to college and university and graduate with debts and a bits-and-pieces existence.

As the numbers of progressives grow so too does their political re-engagement. They are not just victims. They have been infiltrating moribund social democrat parties and are setting up new parties and movements of their own. Many of them are campaigning for a basic income, a policy I have advocated for 30 years.

Q: What’s your book The Corruption of Capitalism (2017) about?

A: I argue that we’re in an era of rentier capitalism and do not have a free market economy. In the conclusion of that book, I write that only a precariat revolt (hopefully peaceful) will lead to a new distinctive distribution system. I also say that the primary antagonist of the traditional proletarian was the boss, the capitalist and that the primary antagonistic of the precariat is the state itself.

Q; I have known and still know people who are in precarious economic and social circumstances. Do you?

A: They are everywhere and they’re all wondering where, if anywhere, they’re going.

Macron tried to solve the French crisis through debates. Yellow Vests say it didn't work.

On March 19, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s two-month political Tour de France came to a close Friday. Since mid-January, Macron has made surprise appearances in dozens of towns around the country, urging the French to engage in an initiative he called the Grand National Debate.

These staged, hours-long debates emerged as Macron’s response to the Yellow Vests protests, which have threatened to derail his presidency and remain strong four months after they started. The movement is comprised of mostly working-class French, who are distrustful of the political class and feel shunned by the elites.

Through 10,000 locally organized debates, 16,000 grievance books, and 1.5 million online questionnaires, the French people have voiced their discontent on the four central themes of Macron’s national debate: democracy and citizenship, taxes and public spending, green energy, and public services. Third-party research companies, hired with the help of a 10-to-15 million–euro budget, are swinging into high gear to crunch all the data by April, when Macron plans to announce his first proposals.

But it’s far from clear if Macron’s stunt has paid off, and Yellow Vests remain highly skeptical of it. Indeed, despite a series of concessions in early December — most notably a commitment to increase the monthly minimum wage by 100 euros, and dropping the fuel tax, which was the impetus for the Yellow Vests — Macron still has a woeful approval rating of just 28 percent.

In the post-industrial town of Revin, in the northern region of Ardennes bordering Belgium, Chabane Sehel, an unemployment counselor and early adopter of the movement, took up Macron on his call for conversation. After some hesitation, he organized a town hall meeting.

“Right now, France is a pressure cooker,” said Sehel, born and raised in Revin, where one in four residents is out of work. “And so, before it explodes, for Macron and for his government, it’s best that they hear us out, at a minimum.”

While organizers like Sehel saw an opportunity to take the demands from the streets to paper, many Yellow Vests boycotted the Grand Debates, which they viewed as a PR campaign orchestrated by Macron’s party to persuade voters ahead of the European parliamentary elections in May.

At a supermarket blockade in Charleville-Mézières, the largest town in Ardennes, VICE News asked one protester what he thought of Macron’s crusade to solve the French crisis.

“I don’t think much of the Grand Debate,” said Thierry Genin, 67. “It’s all smoke and mirrors to go around and meet with mayors from all over.”

He added, “I don’t belong to a political party, neither to the far right nor to the far left, nor to a labor union. I am simply a guy, who is tired of busting his ass to earn crumbs, like many French people right now.”

On Saturday, 10,000 protesters converged in the capital for the four-month mark of protests, to voice their ongoing frustration with the government. But the crowd was infiltrated by some 1,500 ultra-violent activists, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, and things quickly went south.

Rioters swarmed down the Champs Élysées, attacking luxury stores in their way and setting fire to Fouquet’s, a famed brasserie and UNESCO world heritage site. Members of the Yellow Vest movement condemned the violence, but the damage was significant: In total, 91 businesses were impacted by the riots.

Macron cut short a ski trip to call an emergency meeting in Paris, where he recognized that law enforcement had failed to contain rioting. Monday, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced increased security measures and banned protests on the Champs-Élysées, and in popular public spaces in other cities.

“We have organized the largest debate this country has ever known,” Philippe tweeted Monday, “It is not a coincidence that vandals are mobilizing again, while the debate was a success. These people don’t want discussion. Their only demand is violence.”

This segment originally aired March 14, 2019 on VICE News Tonight on HBO.

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: She’s (Also) Running

On March 19, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Monday, March 18.

‣ Historic floods are engulfing midwestern states, including Nebraska, Iowa, and Missouri, after a bomb cyclone and high levels of melting snow and ice caused rivers to overflow their banks.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

On the Campaign Trail: At Beto O’Rourke’s latest events, the candidate’s celebrity status seemed to make up for his inability to answer attendees’ specific policy questions, Edward-Isaac Dovere reports from Iowa, where he has been chasing around the many 2020 presidential-primary candidates. (O’Rourke hauled in $6.1 million in donations within the first 24 hours of his announcement, his campaign said today.) Meanwhile, on Sunday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand officially launched her presidential campaign, although to many it might have felt like she’s been running for months.

Here’s the full cheat sheet on who else is in the race.

All the Wrong Nuclear Options: Since his candidacy, one of President Donald Trump’s primary foreign-policy planks has been dismantling the Iran nuclear deal. And when he withdrew the United States from the deal last year, he seemed to have succeeded. But with State Department officials fighting among themselves over how strictly to sanction Iranian oil, the Trump administration might be sabotaging itself: Its attempts to undermine the Iran deal might end up preserving it in the long run. And as the administration tries to avoid saving the nuclear deal it wants to kill, it’s also losing a handle on the nuclear negotiations it hoped would be successful. North Korea is threatening to completely withdraw from denuclearization negotiations with the U.S.

Formative Moments: “Young Muslims are scared and grieving over what happened in New Zealand. But they’re also ready to get political,” writes Emma Green. Green attended Friday prayers with students at the Islamic Center at New York University after the white-supremacist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Many of these students were born after 9/11, or are too young to remember it—“their formative moment is happening now, in the shadow of ascendant white nationalism.”

— Olivia Paschal and Madeleine Carlisle

Snapshot

An interfaith gathering is held in Philadelphia on March 16, 2019, to mourn the Muslim worshippers killed during the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand. (Jacqueline Larma / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

A Racial Pattern So Obvious, Even the Supreme Court Might See It (Garrett Epps)
“Even amid law’s cratered landscape, sometimes a specific case presents facts simply beyond belief; sometimes the ‘system’ stands revealed as nothing more than one human being tormenting another because he can. For me, such a case is Flowers v. Mississippi, a death-penalty appeal to be argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.”→ Read on.

Trump’s Continuing Attacks on John McCain Reveal a Worrisome State of Mind (Peter Wehner)
“These grotesque attacks once again force us to grapple with a perennial question of the Trump era: How much attention should we pay to his tweets; and what exactly do they reveal about America’s 45th president?”→ Read on.

How Hate Groups’ Secret Sound System Works (Joan Donovan)
“The extra attention that these ideas gain in the aftermath of a violent attack isn’t just an unfortunate side effect of news coverage. It’s the sound system by which extremist movements transmit their ideas to a broader public, and they are using it with more and more skill.”→ Read on.

It Could Happen in the U.S. (Talal Ansari)
“The president seems incapable of denouncing violence against Muslims with energy or sincerity. In this way, he is profoundly American. Muslims here are regularly dehumanized. Even their religion is delegitimized as not a religion, and some have gone so far as to state that adherence to the Muslim faith may be incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.” → Read on.

Bernie Sanders Thinks He Can Vanquish Health Insurers. He’s Wrong. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel)
“At least four different approaches to health reform could truthfully carry the Medicare for all label. Sanders’s plan is the best known, but it’s also the most politically impractical. It ignores the brutal history of repeated defeats for all Democratic health reform proposals that try to abolish private health insurers.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ ‘Middle-Class Joe’ Rakes in Millions (Holly Otterbein and Marc Caputo, Politico)
‣ Flawed Analysis, Failed Oversight: How Boeing, FAA Certified the Suspect 737 Max Flight Control System (Dominic Gates, Seattle Times) (? Paywall)
‣ Ta-Nehisi Coates Is an Optimist Now (Eric Levitz, New York) (? Paywall)
‣ A DNA Test Might Help Exonerate This Man. A Judge Won’t Allow It. (Joseph Neff, The Marshall Project)
‣ Schools Do a Terrible Job Teaching About Slavery (Arika Herron, Indianapolis Star) (? Paywall)

And One More Thing …

Space Bud: What would it be like for dogs to go to Mars? New art from NASA imagines astronauts and their best friends standing atop the planet’s red dunes. Marina Koren explores what sending a dog into space might look like—and it’s probably not what you think.

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