I understand precarity to be a matter of the working class, defined as all those who sell their labor power as a commodity, with the important note that ’sell’ does not limit the working class to those who earn wages but includes nonmonetary or nonwage transaction in exchanges for means of meeting needs as well.
This means precarity is very old. I’ve talked about this to some degree before, prior to setting up this blog. Precarity is not a simply unchanging condition, though. It varies - across history, across geography, across social stratifications, across individuals, and so on. It’s also important to view precarity in a dynamic mode, as an ensemble of processes of precaritization and conflicts within and against those processes (these roughly divide into what we could call the objective and subjective condition, for lack of better terms).
The link between precarity and labor power is useful. There are a few essential moments at the very general level with regard to labor power. There is the production of labor power as a commodity initially. There is the continual reproduction of labor power as a commodity in the present. Both of these fall under the name enclosure or primitive accumulation, the production and reproduction of the commodity status of labor power, of people being compelled to make their labor power present in the market for sale. The second moment is after the purchase of labor power by the bosses. This is the capitalist use of labor power as productive of surplus value. The capitalist uses labor power, which is to say, the capitalist imposes work upon workers. The two registers are of course linked, and precaritization operates across both. Precaritization of access to means of meeting needs increases the urgency behind the appearance of labor power in the market. This precarity is essentially what the condition of the working class is: access to means of meeting needs is largely contingent upon the exchange with the bosses, and thus upon balances of power ranging from several levels (local to the shop, in the industry, on up the balance of power between classes). Precaritization within the workplace is essentially bound up with the ability of the capitalist to use labor power purchased as a commodity, that is, to impose work.
The two reinforce each other. Precariousness outside the workplace (precarity of means of meeting needs) places more weight on what occurs inside the workplace in that it means that boss can cut off access to even more means of meeting needs by cutting off access to the wage. In many cases, those who own the workplaces, the bosses, advocate for and push forward precarity outside the workplace as well as getting rid of obstacles to precarity in the workplace, because they understand the connection between the two.
It seems to me that with regard to precartization we can identify conditions for it and engines for it. These are not absolutely discrete, of course. A condition for precarity is something that makes it more likely or possible. An engine for precarity is something that generates precarity, or, put better, which pushes for precarity and for changes in conditions to make precarity more likely. These map partially onto the old marxist distinction of base and superstructure, though that model is problematic. Regimes of law and enforcement of law are conditions of precarity. Precarity may be restricted by law but still occur if the law is not upheld. Precarity may be sanctioned by law but not occur for various reasons, chief among them the organized power of groups of workers. One engine of precarity is just-in-time production.
The composition of the working class can be a condition of precarity - decomposition allows the bosses to precaritize with greater impunity, subjective orientation toward precarity (sometimes there are perks to so-called nonstandard hours, for example) can make aspects of precarity desirable to some workers - and in some instances it can be an engine of at least some aspects of precarity. For example, the German group Wildcat describe their roots in the phenomenon of ‘jobbing’:
"In the beginning of the 1980s the cycle of factory worker struggles was over, but for many young people it was inconceivable to adjust to wage labour and to work away at a job until reaching pension age. Additionally, we ourselves refused to strive individually through a professional career for a better place in the capitalist hierarchy. Out of this grew the practice of jobbing: to do any old shitty job for a short time, in order then to have time for ourselves, for political struggle and for pleasure. In formal terms, we worked under conditions that would later be characterised by the sociologists as ‘precarious’ in the sense of being vulnerable to one-sided measures by capital. But it was even easier then to use the regulations of labour law and the welfare state for our own needs."
The role of the subjectivity and organization of the working class in bringing about precarity is important to remember. It is also something to inquire into, and recognize differences within. It is not the case that the class as a whole chose precarity, nor that the class as a whole got precaritized. The class is a multiplicity with a variety of positions and activities within it. The class facing precarity is also internally differentiated, different sections respond differently to and in some cases compose different processes of precaritization.
Precarity is a matter of class composition, with technico-political processes that aim to (de)compose the class and with political processes of self-(re)composition.
On precarity generally, this is how I understand the term:
“Precarity is currently the subject of growing debate and political mobilization in Europe at the time of this writing, partly in response to changes in the regimes of labor and welfare policy as well as labor practices. Precarity has several related meanings. With regard to work, precarity refers to a variety of so-called ‘nonstandard’ work arrangements: times of work (night and weekend work), quantities of work time (flexible or variable hours, part-time work, demands for overtime), and durations of work assignments (temporary work, non-contract work, freelance work). Precarity also refers to the legal status of work: whether work is legal or illegal, and which customary labor rights do and do not apply to which workers. Precarity also refers to instability of income, linked to precarious work arrangements, and to access to needed services such as healthcare and housing. All of these meanings of precarity indicate a general unpredictability of access to needed goods and services whether via a welfare state or private sector and a lack of control of work which in turn imposes less control over the rest of one’s life. In this sense precarity has historically been the general condition of the proletariat globally with moments of relatively less precarity being exceptions resulting from a number of political factors.” (From a list of term definitions here.)"
The qualities mentioned here in and out of work are worth inquiring after. But there is a crucial determination missing from this definition: the subjective experience, composition and organization of the precariat, and of the non- or less-precaritized who are facing precaritization. Without that, any analysis will remain external to the class, in the third person, and be of limited use or value. Also missing is anything but a vague gesture toward axes of the historical, geographic, and social distributions of precarity. This is something to inquire after further.
In an email exchange with a friend, I wrote the following, which is a statement of some of what I want to work through here:
"In some of what I’ve read there’s a narrative at work that’s similar to what I take to be
problematic in Negri: precarity is a new condition bound up with a new era of capitalism. I’m fine with that if the assertion is made with a foregrounding of "-for-us", but opposed when it’s made as new-as-such. Ranciere remarks, before the precarity stuff took off but the points takes on new resonance nowadays, that precarity is in many respects the condition of the proletariat qua proletariat. The welfare state is the anomaly, not the absence or end of the welfare state.
One of the other problems at least for me - I don’t have a social science background and don’t know how to do this stuff or where to look - is that it’s really hard to get information comparing labor practices and labor law across countries. My impression is that in recent times in Europe there is a growth or a recognition of growth in temporary, part-time, flexible/variable time, and "non-standard" worktimes as opposed full time day time work. This is, I think, also the case in the US. But in Europe there’s also changes operating in two other registers - changes in the welfare state and changes in labor law. These operate as ensemble and impact each other (companies wanting a certain labor practice advocate a certain labor law, a certain labor law makes a certain labor practice easier, etc). I think precarity or precaritazation is at least in part a conjunction of those, and the anti-precarity discourse and mobilization is bound up
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