Precariat: narrow definition, discourse and reality

Abstract

The discourse initiated by Guy Standing, on the ‘Precariat’, a few years back, was embedded in economic debates on ‘class’. He, in the preface of his book ‘The Precariate: The new Dangerous Class’, wrote that Precariat is a class in making (Standing G, 2011). He uses the word ‘Class’ in the Marxian sense. He suggests that the neoliberalism agenda embraced by almost all countries, to a greater or lesser extent, deliberately shifted the burden of ‘risk’ and ‘insecurity’ on to the ‘working class and their families’. As a result millions of workers were pushed into the brutal market without ‘an anchor of stability’. Standing goes on to, dramatically, warn politicians and civil society that ‘There is a danger that, unless the precariat is understood, its emergence could lead society towards a politics of inferno.’ He further adds that this class is global, angry and anxious, and ‘prone to listen to ugly voices, and use their vote and money to give those voices a political platform of increasing influence’.Marxist scholars reacted sharply. For example Eric Olin Wright, presented ‘a Marxist critique of this reconceptualization on two principle grounds: first, that the material interests of people in the precariat and in the working class are not sufficiently opposed to each other for these to constitute two distinct classes; and second, that across the various segments of the precariat the optimal strategies for securing a livelihood are not sufficiently unified for the precariat as a whole to constitute a class. ----In the case of the precariat, the different segments identified by Standing have sharply different strategies of survival and advancement.’ And thus, he concluded, there is no separate class, which can be categorized as ‘Precariate’. Those who have faced the burden of recent global economic disasters, and were pushed towards the base of a pecuniary pyramid can be designated as ‘proletariat class’, at the best, depending upon their class consciousness and interest. The debate plunged into a terrain which focused on whether there is an emerging class, that too global in nature, which has common interest and enough cementing factors to represent common and universal class interest and consciousness, or not. Though the debate is yet to resolve major issues hovering around economic categories and their relationship with social and cultural factors, it cannot be denied that manmade and natural disasters often put sections of humanity into ‘precarious’ condition. Citizens, collectively and individually respond to a given ‘precarity’ in varied ways.This paper, while scanning the debate on ‘precariat’ attempts to develop a broad framework for examining the causes and nature of precarity, enlarges its definition, discusses sources, target populations, modes of operation through which precarity is introduced in any society and levels at which precarity operates. The article aims to scrutinize as to how, when the power balance is disturbed in society, ruling classes use physical force as an instrument of spreading fear among the agents of change. The article also makes an attempt to reflect on how the intellectuals, scientists, science communicators and journalist under the shadow of ‘fascistic regimes’ are pushed to the realm of ‘precarity’ and freedom of expression is threatened. The last section of the article gives some concrete examples of how ‘precariat’ responds to situations of precarity and tries to build broad alliances to resist the causal forces