Who will be a voice for the emerging precariat?

[Hopeless Romantic]

Progressives need to find ways to speak to the new global, insecure classes before the far right does

For the first time, the mainstream left in Britain and Europe has no progressive agenda. It has forgotten a basic principle. Every progressive movement has been built on the anger, needs and aspirations of the emerging major class. Today that is the precariat.

The protests spreading across the world are manifestations of the precariat taking shape, the latest example being in Spain – where the indignados reject mainstream political parties, while demanding what appears as a discordant bag of changes. Recently, in many European cities as well as Japan, the precariat mingled in EuroMayDay parades; in Milan, more than 30,000 participated. In the Middle East, the upheavals can be seen as the first precariat-led revolutions, when educated frustrated youth demanded a more secure and occupationally rewarding future. Greece is following, with its den plirono actions and prolonged mass protests. Today it is Spain that is the inspiration. Soon it may be London.

The global precariat is not yet a class in the Marxian sense, being internally divided and only united in fears and insecurities. But it is a class in the making, approaching a consciousness of common vulnerability. It consists not just of everybody in insecure jobs – though many are temps, part-timers, in call centres or in outsourced arrangements. The precariat consists of those who feel their lives and identities are made up of disjointed bits, in which they cannot construct a desirable narrative or build a career, combining forms of work and labour, play and leisure in a sustainable way

more http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/voice-for-emerging-precariat

[LeftishBrit]

1. Interesting

I agree that the loss of job security in many areas has created a 'precariat'. And that job security is treated by Thatcher and the post-Thatcherites as a bad thing, a threat to 'ambition' and entrepreneurship in the middle class, and worse, a way of protecting working-class (and some middle class) people from those Top People plus 'ambitious entrepreneurs' who want to crack the whip on them. I have heard it defended as a necessary means of creating a 'culture of success' and remove a 'culture of mediocrity', though there is no evidence for this and quite a lot for the opposite.

And now other forms of security are also being threatened, e.g. council house tenure.

Truly, we have become a fear-based society.

A move back to liberty, equality and fraternity certainly wouldn't be a bad idea!