[Peace-discuss] The Precariat

[Ron Szoke]

A NEW DANGEROUS CLASS:  The Precariat

From:  World Wide Words,  Issue 744,   Saturday 9 July 2011
By Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG> 

3. Turns of Phrase: Precariat
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This socio-economic term has become more visible in recent months 
as a result of a book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, by 
Guy Standing, Professor of Economic Security at the University of 
Bath.

He describes the precariat as a newly emerging social class, in 
part created by trends towards creating a flexible workforce, which 
has access only to poorly paid short-term or part-time jobs, with 
no security of employment, support of a trade union or protection 
by legislation. Wages are often so little better than social 
security and marginal tax rates so penal that there's little 
motivation to look for work. People in this situation see no 
prospect of change for the better and are becoming dispirited and 
disaffected. This is leading, he argues, to a group open to 
exploitation by far-right political parties.

The term is a blend of "precarious" and "proletariat". The press 
attention given to Professor Standing's book may have given the 
impression that he coined it. Reports in recent years have linked 
it with the rise of a similar class in Japan and suggested it was 
invented there. It has in fact been a term of left-wing writers in 
English at least since its appearance in the January-March 1990 
issue of Socialist Review. But it was actually coined in French in 
the 1980s (as "précariat"). The abstract noun "precarity" for the 
concept is also on record; Noam Chomsky wrote in an article in the 
June 2011 issue of In These Times that it was coined in the 1990s 
by Italian labour activists.

    Part of the precariat, the youthful educated part, is 
    looking for what the book calls a politics of paradise. 
    It is beginning to identify it in the squares of major 
    cities, as the book did predict. Listen to the precariat 
    in Athens, Madrid and in various parts of the Middle 
    East.
    [Financial Times, 25 Jun. 2011.]
    
    In Britain, as elsewhere, labour market flexibility 
    led to a fall in 'unskilled' wages and a proliferation of 
    temporary and part-time labour. This expanded the ranks 
    of the precariat - the emerging class of people who 
    experience multiple forms of insecurity and see little 
    prospect of escape.
    [Soundings, 1 Apr. 2011.]

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