Excerpts from an article in New Statesman, March 5, 1999.
GOODBYE TO ALL THAT WAGE SLAVERY
--------------------------------
Democracy can benefit from the end
of full employment, argues Ulrich Beck
. . .
Rising unemployment in Europe can no longer be ascribed to cyclical
economic crises; it is a consequence of the success of a technologically
advanced capitalism. We have to change our economic language. Economic
growth, for example, is no longer a valid indicator of job creation,
just as job creation is no longer a valid indicator of employment and
employment is no longer an indicator of income levels and secure status.
Even the life of the affluent is becoming insecure and today's success
is no guarantee against tomorrow's fall. The job miracle in the US hides
the political economy of uncertainty: the US is the only advanced
society in which productivity has been steadily rising over the past two
decades while the income of the majority -- eight out often -- has
stagnated or fallen. This has happened in no other advanced democracy.
Endemic insecurity will in future characterise the lives, and the
foundations of the lives, of the majority of the population -- even in
the apparently affluent centre of society.
If this diagnosis is basically right then we face two political options.
First, there is the "nevertheless" policy, which enforces full
employment after the end of normal full employment. This new Labour
policy believes that only work guarantees order and the inclusive
society. In this view, waged work has the monopoly of inclusiveness. The
second option is to rethink and redefine work as we have done with
respect to the family. But this also implies rethinking how we deal with
the risks of fragile work.
Has work always had the monopoly of inclusiveness? No; in ancient Greek
democracy work was a stigma, the main symbol of exclusion. Those who
were forced to work -- women and slaves -- were not members of society.
If the ancient Greeks could listen to our debates about the
anthropological need to work in order not only to be an honourable
member of society but a fully valued human being, they would laugh. The
value system that proclaims the centrality of work and only work in
building and controlling an inclusive society is a modern invention of
capitalism and the welfare state.
We need to see that there is a life beyond the alternatives of
unemployment and stress at work. We need to see that the lack of waged
work can give us a new affluence of time. We need also to see that the
welfare state must be rebuilt so that the risks of fragile work are
socialised rather than being borne increasingly by the individual.
We must, in short, turn the new precarious forms of employment into a
right to discontinuous waged work and a right to disposable time. It
must be made possible for every human being autonomously to shape his or
her life and create a balance between family, paid employment, leisure
and political commitment. And I truly believe that this is the only way
of forming a policy that will create more employment for everybody.
I would argue for a citizen's (or basic) income. The decoupling of
income entitlements from paid work and from the labour market would, in
Zygmunt Bauman's words, remove "the awesome fly of insecurity from the
sweet ointment of freedom".
I am not arguing for citizen income in order to lift the poor out of
their poverty, important though that is. My argument is, I believe,
stronger: we need a new alternative centre of inclusion -- citizen work
combined with citizen income as conditio sine qua non for a political
republic of individuals who create a sense of compassion and cohesion
through public commitment.
. . .
Does the idea of citizen work derive from a middle-class idyll? And will
it perhaps even be counter-productive because it establishes a cheap
wage sector, which contributes to the elimination of regular waged work?
Citizen work must not lead to a new class division between those in
waged employment and those in unwaged work. Then citizen work would
become a ghetto for the poor. Nor must it contribute to women being
pushed out of waged work, thus cementing their double burdens to work
outside and inside the family. Hence the stimulation of citizen work
democracy is tied to the following model:
1. A reduction of working time for all in full-time waged work.
2. Each and every person, woman and man, should have one foot in waged
work if they so wish.
3. Parenting -- work with children -- will be acknowledged by society,
along with artistic, cultural and citizen work so that all guarantee
rights to, for example, pensions and sickness insurance.
So the end of full employment need not be a catastrophe. It can allow
every person to become a member of a cosmopolitan civil society in
Europe -- what Immanuel Kant called "the most sublime idea a man can
have of his destination". Through what I call "citizen work", European
democracy could find its soul.
Copyright of New Statesman is the property of New Statesman Ltd. and
its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's
express written permission except for the print or download
capabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This
content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Source: New Statesman, 03/05/99, Vol. 129 Issue 4426, p25, 3p, 1c.
Item Number: 1730312
regards,
Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/worksite.htm
