Session 4: Precarious labour and production in global value chains
Guy Standing,
Understanding the precariat through labour and work. Development and Change,
2014.
Anne Allison,
Ordinary refugees: Social precarity and soul in 21st century Japan. Anthropological
Quarterly 85 (2): 345-370, 2012.
Anna Tsing, Supply
chains and the human condition. Rethinking Marxism , 21(2): 148-176,
2009.
“The service
precariat is to the industrial proletariat what informationalism is to Fordism”
-ChainWorkers Crew, 2001
The nature of precarity- What is at stake for
this new ‘dangerous’ class?
Post 90s, one has
observed a proliferation of various figures. The existentialist apolitical
Slacker in popular Culture, Hacker in The Hacker Manifesto (Wark 2004) along with Precariat (Standing
2011) are the few that come to mind. These figures have helped bring to the
fore different aspects of the changing nature of capitalism post 90s-call it neoliberalism,
postfordsm, information society, knowledge economy etc. Of these three the ‘Precariat’ has emerged in
the last two decade as a force to reckon with and had named itself in various
anti-globalization movements and EuroMayDay protests.
Guy Standing
furthers the existence of the figure of the precariat by formalizing it into a
new dangerous class. The process of formalizing a new class is opened up first
by negating the old dualisms of ‘capital’ versus ‘labour’ and ‘formal sector’
vs ‘informal sector’ and grounding the formalization upon the conceptual
distinctions between work and labour, and Labour and Labour power. The older working-class
was necessarily defined by the relations of production in which it enters into
in order to survive. The precariat, on the other hand, is denied the privilege
of the secure relations of production. Precariat has insecure labour…without
long-term employment contracts, no narrative of identity, and experiences skill-labour imbalance
(Standing 7). Along with that, precariat also suffers from distinctive relations of distribution i.e. depending
solely upon fluctuating money income, with no enterprise/state/community
benefits. Additionally, the Precariat has distinctive relations to the State with the erosion of: civil, cultural,
political, social and economic rights. Percariat is thus, a denizen (outsiders
in a state with no rights) and not a citizen (Standing 9). Finally, the revolutionary consciousness
inherent in the Precariat is the Status
of Frustration. However, the precariat in itself cannot be defined in terms
of having homogenous anti-thetical relation with global capital because precariat
itself is divided into atavists (populists and neo-facists), nostalgics
(apolitical), and progressives (that have latent revolutionary potential who
demand liberation from labour) [Standing 10].
Revolutionary Program
for Standing then is to revive occupational citizenship that articulates the right to practise which allows more
people to work on their enthusiasm, talents and capabilities, to rescue leisure
from mass consumption. Is one to believe that they are already innocently latent in human nature only waiting to erupt? Rights, according
to Standing, are required for what we do rather than who we do it for. Progressive strategy then is articulated in terms of full labor
commodification, full labor power decommodicifcation (i.e. delinking non wage
benefits from wage labour status).
It should be noted,
however, the term ‘precarious’ was always used, even by Marx and Engles
themselves, to define the mode of being of the working class (Communist
Manifesto 1848 ) . Marx was describing a working class that has yet to struggle for
its rights and entitlement. Standing, on the other hand, in opposition to a working class, is formalizaing a new class that is losing previously
gained set of rights and entitlement.
Struggle for Rights and entitlements, however, was only a partial
struggle for Marx. Standings’ Precariat, on the other hand, is not interested in struggling for control over means of
production (Standing 14). Thus, struggle/organizing for ‘Impossible’ inherent
in Marx’s Manifesto does not find a place in Standing’s formalization. There is
no attempt by Standing to redefine the ‘impossible’ based on this new formalization. Instead, the ‘impossible’ is
modestly given up for challenges like choosing work over labour, for control over tertiary
time, Universal Basic Income, and access to public space.
However, one wonders the
necessity for political struggle, spontaneous or called by the vanguard- when
one finds that the demands of this new ‘dangerous’ class ironically aligns itself nicely with the Silicon Valley Ideology[1]. Why struggle when what you want is similar to what market-
capitalist, neoliberal etc. - wants you to want?
Tsing(2009), and Allison(2012) on the other
hand are more humble in their approach. As modest ethnographers their aim is to
map the ‘role of difference in the mobilization of capital, labor and
resources’ (Tsing 2009) and “Social precarity” in post post-war Japan (Allison
2012). Allsion’s focus on Social Precarity delinks precarity with precarious
labour. Precarity then is insecurity in life: Material, Existential, and
Social. Allison figures hikikomori- off
lately identified as a mental health epidemic in Japan and gaining much media and government attention- as “the
soul on Strike that Strikes through affect” (Allison 5). What is at stake for Allisons’ precariat then
is life itself which has latent potential for “social change, new forms of
collective-coming together, even political revolution”.
Tsing
(2009) concerns itself less with question of change and more with imagining
the scale of Global Capitalism i.e. “how can we imagine the “bigness” of global
Capitalism without abandoning attention to its heterogeneity?” (Tsing 150). For her, it is the material reality of Supply
chains that figures both global integration and diverse niches. What these
diverse niches give way to is new figures of labor and
labor power that
redefine “making a living as management (store manager as servant leader ),
consumption, entrepreneurship” (sweatshop workers as entrepreneurs) (Tsing
171). Standing’s demand for what we do rather than what we do it for seems to
have already ironically materialized in the working of supply chain, where workers,
even working at the periphery of supply chain, have already rejected earlier
histories of wage labor- but neither do they become Standing’s precariat or Alison’s
hikikomori- nor do they imagine themselves as working for anyone else” (Tsing
169). It is then not only the precariat who rejects or is not interested in old
labor movements and their histories of work, but also the workers themselves
but only to articulate their identity using different figures of labor and labor power produced
and managed by the market itself.
-C.A
***
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