[Peace-discuss] "The Unnecessariat"

[Brussel, Morton K]

Buy Mcchesney's and Nichols’  powerful, I would say essential,  book “People Get Ready’. It elaborates in a intensive  and researched manner on the theme of the “precariat” and our future.

—mkb


On May 15, 2016, at 9:04 PM, Stuart Levy via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net<mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> wrote:


This is the article I'd mentioned on Saturday and today - "The Unnecessariat".    It's a rich article in several directions, worth reading in full, as are many of the comments that follow it.   Thanks to Naked Capitalism<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.nakedcapitalism.com_&d=CwMDaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=9eBn2xukb4K19JC8Bn8zUQ&m=cHTr5lRQUtPcJ47lUeiRlLHWEnnoMKkbIGbJG0mrBHQ&s=UbLD1kkj8axIj63SB9dXFDkwt4XlLSao6z567q1Fivc&e=> for the pointer.

I remember reading a related theme in some book by Jeremy Rifkin, where he was writing about the migration of Black people from the South as agriculture became increasingly mechanized - 'they went from being exploited to being useless labor'.

<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__morecrows.wordpress.com_2016_05_10_unnecessariat_&d=CwMDaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=9eBn2xukb4K19JC8Bn8zUQ&m=cHTr5lRQUtPcJ47lUeiRlLHWEnnoMKkbIGbJG0mrBHQ&s=b54PbLxChM_cX23AhPpRki7zRkaxi7WlFTk5hD4acjM&e=>https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__morecrows.wordpress.com_2016_05_10_unnecessariat_&d=CwMDaQ&c=8hUWFZcy2Z-Za5rBPlktOQ&r=9eBn2xukb4K19JC8Bn8zUQ&m=cHTr5lRQUtPcJ47lUeiRlLHWEnnoMKkbIGbJG0mrBHQ&s=b54PbLxChM_cX23AhPpRki7zRkaxi7WlFTk5hD4acjM&e=>

Some quotes are below ...


"The word “community” is much abused now, used in journo-speak to mean “a group of people with one salient characteristic in common” like “banking community” or “jet-ski riding community” but the gay community at the time [of the AIDS epidemic] was the real deal: a dense network of reciprocal social and personal obligations and friendships, with second- and even third-degree connections given substantial heft. If you want a quick shorthand, your community is the set of people you could plausibly ask to watch your cat for a week, and the people they would in turn ask to come by and change the litterbox on the day they had to work late. There’s nothing like that for addicts, nor suicides, not now and not in the past, and in fact that’s part of the phenomenon I want to talk about here. This is a despair that sticks when there’s no-one around who cares about you."

...

"In 2011, economist Guy Standing coined the term “precariat” to refer to workers whose jobs were insecure, underpaid, and mobile, [...] Looking back from 2016, one pertinent characteristic seems obvious: no matter how tenuous, the precariat had jobs. The new dying Americans, the ones killing themselves on purpose or with drugs, don’t.  Don’t, won’t, and know it.

Here’s the thing: from where I live, the world has drifted away. We aren’t precarious, we’re unnecessary. The money has gone to the top. The wages have gone to the top. The recovery has gone to the top. And what’s worst of all, everybody who matters seems basically pretty okay with that."

...

[during the AIDS epidemic] The gay community didn’t just roll over and ask nicely for recognition, they had their shit together enough that they could fight their way, literally, into the studios of one of the top news shows in America, into the US capitol, the UK parliament, into the streets of every major city at rush hour. AIDS galvanized them, but it was their mutual recognition as friends, allies, comrades-in-arms from years of fighting for urban space to hook up in that made that galvanic surge possible.

...

So far, the quiet misery of the unnecessariat has yet to spark its own characteristic explosion, but is it so hard to see the germ of it in Trump’s rallies? In the Lavoy Finicum memorials?

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