Showing papers in "New Labor Forum in 2013"

The Precariat: A Class or a Condition?

Abstract: The claim that work has become more precarious in recent decades has an intuitive appeal, at least among a layer of young people and activists. The concept of the “precariat,” playing on the old description of the working class as a “proletariat,” attempts to give empirical and sociological content to this intuition. The term has been widely disseminated by U.K. sociologist Guy Standing, whose book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class summarizes a long career of investigation into the changing nature of waged work. As a proposed concept, the precariat raises three questions. First, has work around the world in fact become more precarious in the past few decades, in some empirically definable way? If so, do those who perform precarious labor constitute a “class,” in the sense of being a group that has a distinct structural position in modern capitalism and that could potentially be unified under a single political banner? And, finally, what implications does increasing precarity have for the demands and strategies of workers and their organizations? To the first question, I offer a qualified yes— qualified, because Standing’s definition of the precariat encompasses a multitude of forms of “precarity,” some more empirically verifiable than others. But the precariat is problematic as a class category, because it attempts to draw together too many different heterogeneous strata of the population and because it too strongly excludes segments of what Standing defines (too narrowly) as the working class, which still enjoys relatively stable and protected employment situations. I answer the final question with a caution. Standing raises important points about the subjective basis of progressive and pro-worker politics in the twenty-first century; while the precariat may not be the answer to the issues raised, we should not pretend that anyone else has an obvious answer either. Advocates and critics alike often reduce the definition of the “precariat” to decreasing job tenure—people increasingly move from employer to employer. There has been a robust debate about the degree to which this form of instability has increased. Kevin Doogan’s New Capitalism, for example, argues that such claims are overstated. But most researchers acknowledge that the long-term attachment between workers and employers, upon which the structures of the welfare state and much of the labor movement were constructed, has diminished. Henry Farber of Princeton University reports, based on a detailed empirical study of the United States, that “the structure of jobs in the private sector has moved away from long-term relationships” and “recent cohorts of workers are less likely than their parents to have a career characterized by a ‘life-time’ job with a single employer.” Standing’s definition is more complex than this, however, encompassing seven different dimensions of “labor security,” which he claims the precariat lacks. These include not only one’s security in employment but also the security of job descriptions and career paths, the safety and regularity of working conditions, the ability to gain and employ new skills, the security of income over the life course, and “representation 482888 NLFXXX10.1177/1095796013482888New Labor ForumFrase research-article2013

Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism:

Abstract: A Marxist perspective can be most helpful for understanding race and racism insofar as it perceives capitalism dialectically, as a social totality that includes modes of production, relations of production, and the pragmatically evolving ensemble of institutions and ideologies that lubricate and propel its reproduction. From this perspective, Marxism’s most important contribution to making sense of race and racism in the United States may be demystification. A historical materialist perspective should stress that “race”—which includes “racism,” as one is unthinkable without the other—is a historically specific ideology that emerged, took shape, and has evolved as a constitutive element within a definite set of social relations anchored to a particular system of production.

Neoliberalism and the Law: How Historical Materialism Can Illuminate Recent Governmental and Judicial Decision Making

Abstract: Neoliberalism can be understood as the deregulation of the economy from political control by deliberate action or inaction of the state. As such it is both constituted by the law and deeply affects it. I show how the methods of historical materialism can illuminate this phenomenon in all three branches of the the U.S. government. Considering the example the global financial crisis of 2007-08 that began with the housing bubble developing from trade in unregulated and overvalued mortgage backed securities, I show how the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between commercial and investment banking, allowed this speculative bubble to nearly bring down the world economy by promoting the creation of too-big-too-fail banks engaged in reckless and possibly criminal trading in exotic securities based on these subprime mortgages. When things collapsed, the government's decision to bail out the culprits who caused the crisis, but not its victims, and not to investigate or prosecute the banks responsible illustrate the way neoliberalism operates at the executive and agency level. It also vindicates historical materialist theory about the role of the legislature and executive in a market society where productive assets are privately owned. I then turn to the way the judiciary have treated corporations in the area of free speech, particularly in the case of the Citizens United v. FEC (2010) case, by treating huge corporations with vast assets but which are nonetheless artificial entities as "persons" for the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, as equivalent to nature individual humans, and thus entitled to First Amendment protections. These include campaign expenditures (core political "speech"), restricted by statute up through Citizens United. But that case put aside the Supreme Court's previous worries about the risks of corruption or corrosion of democracy, despite clear empirical evidence to the contrary, and allowed these "persons" unlimited "speech" in the form of campaign expenditures. This illustrates both the historical materialist concepts of ideology, belief distorted by economic interest, as well as the further submissiveness of the judiciary to powerful economic interests, while showing, through the Court's early hestitations about this radical result, that the government, including the courts, have a logic and direction partly independent of economic power.

The Politics of Debt: How Labor Should Think About the Debt Question

Abstract: From the explosive worker uprisings of the 1870s through the dismal days of the 1930s, Americans wrestled with a dire dilemma. How could democratic principles be reconciled with the inequities of industrial corporate capitalism? This “labor question” inspired social movements like the Knights of Labor, the Farmers’ Alliance, and the Populists, as well as such radical groups as socialists, communists, and Henry George’s single-taxers. Their varied schemes all sought to reconstruct capitalism to sustain the “producing classes.” The labor movement, meanwhile, demanded the right to organize so that workers might bargain collectively for workplace rights, often defined quite expansively. After World War II, the “labor question” seemed settled. The CIO and corporate employers agreed upon the institutionalization of collective bargaining, the recognition of workers’ entitlement to an “American Standard of Living” (including retirement security), and a prominent position for labor within the Democratic Party. In a booming mid-century economy in which the benefits of growth were distributed relatively broadly, Americans welcomed consumer debt into their lives. But the “grand bargain” between labor and capital soon fell apart. Beginning in the 1970s, capital took flight and unions lost members. Income gains stalled for everyone except the wealthiest. Americans grew dependent upon borrowed money to meet many of the social needs that rising wages had previously satisfied. The “debt question” in its manifold forms— the glut of subprime debt, state bailouts of insanely leveraged banks, underwater mortgages, crushing student loans, and, of course, the federal fiscal cliff—now presents itself as the central dilemma of economic citizenship in the United States. Assumed by individuals and households in pursuit of social mobility and economic security, consumer debt has stripped working people of their wealth and contributed to ever-widening inequality. In 2010, total consumer debt reached nearly $45,000 per person in the United States. Debt collectors now hound one in seven households. Student debt continues to rise dramatically, despite the diminishing employment prospects of young workers with bachelor’s degrees.

Marxism and Right-Wing Populism: The Case of the Tea Party

Abstract: A right-wing grassroots movement? Or a retooled, corporate-controlled vehicle for the same old Republican right? That question has surrounded the Tea Party phenomenon since its emergence in the winter of 2009. The Republican losses in the 2012 elections—due in no small part to the unpopularity of Tea Party Senate candidates—have brought that debate into the heart of the Republican Party itself.

Mortgaging the Future: Student Debt in the Age of Austerity

Abstract: In the course of industrialization, the conflict over wages commands the stage. In societies like ours, which are heavily financialized, the struggle over debt is increasingly the frontline conflict—not because wage conflict is over (it never will be) but because debts, for most people, are the wages of the future. If or when a debtors’ movement comes into being, the student debt crisis will prove to have been a key trigger. Even in the immediate prerecessionary years, when debt was regarded as a good consumer asset and decent employment was still a plausible prospect, it was easy to see that the mounting burden of student loans was blocking smooth passage of the college-educated into the middle strata of economic life. When the aggregate student debt burden surpassed consumer debt in the spring of 2011, and then reached the $1 trillion threshold a year later, public dismay about the dimensions of the problem began to surface. Talk about the imminent collapse of the so-called student debt bubble became a regular feature in the business media.

Obamacare Confronts a Fiscal Crisis: Why the Affordable Care Act Doesn’t Add Up

Abstract: This article was written shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and reflects my view of the situation at that time. As it turned out, Obamacar...

The Politics of Debt Resistance

Abstract: Like others who committed themselves to the fledgling debtors’ movement, I have experienced the major occupational hazard of single-issue activists—we tend to see our issue everywhere. Oftentimes, it is the only thing we see, and our more ecumenical allies have to find ways to remind us, either gently or more rudely, that issues and struggles are always connected. That said, debt really is everywhere right now. No one can ignore how prominently it is featuring in the public politics of our time or how sharply etched it is on the daily economic landscape of almost every household. Democracies—and not just those in the Southern Eurozone—are failing because the claims of creditors are prioritized over the needs and rights of citizens. More and more individual debtors are sliding into the emotional netherworld of mass default, and many are being packed off to the newly resurgent debtors’ prisons all across the United States. National economic managers are hard-pressed to figure out how to sustain a consumer society when there are still mountains of toxic debt left over from the housing crash, and when the steadily rising burden of student debt is blocking the access of a generation of graduates to the standard components of the American Dream—homeownership, children, and middle-class status.

Austerity Economics Is Bad Economics

Abstract: Amid the wreckage of the 2008-2009 Wall Street collapse and Great Recession, orthodox economists and political elites in both the United States and Western Europe have strongly pushed the idea that the only way out of the mess is to deliberately make life worse for almost everybody. Details aside, this is the basic idea behind the austerity agenda that has become the conventional wisdom in both the United States and Europe, regardless of which political parties happen to hold office. Thus, despite Barack Obama’s reelection in November, the inside-the-beltway Democrats, including Obama, appear committed to reaching common ground with Republicans over a bipartisan austerity agenda that would entail significant cuts in Medicare, Social Security, and public spending on education and public services. To be sure, the Obama austerity agenda is softer than the hard-right approach advanced by defeated Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. But Ryan and his Congressional followers will continue to frame the DC debate around his proposals to gut Medicare, Social Security, and public schools. The situation is still worse throughout Europe, where the dominant elite view is that the European welfare state is no longer affordable. Public employment, health care budgets, and pensions are being slashed, while poverty is rising dramatically. For example, The New York Times reported that 22 percent of Spanish households are living in poverty and that 600,000 have no income whatsoever. As the Times noted, “For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.” But such human suffering aside, could the austerity hawks be correct that there is simply no alternative to forcing this bitter medicine down people’s throats now? The basis for the austerity hawks’ claim is that both the U.S. and European economies are being consumed by out-of-control levels of public indebtedness. Public spending must therefore be slashed before total economic collapse becomes a real possibility. In fact, however, austerity hawks’ claims are wrong across the board: the public debt burden in the United States is actually at a historically low level, not a high one; in Europe, where government debt burdens are severe, there are still clear alternatives for managing the problem that do not entail a crushing austerity agenda; and finally, the austerity agenda actually solves nothing.

Building Global Worker Power in a Time of Crisis

Abstract: After almost five years of a continuous global economic and jobs crisis, workers face an urgent challenge to develop global strategies that build their collective power and create greater economic and social justice. Govern­ ments and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have used the crisis to implement an anti­ worker policy agenda that includes labor market flexibilization and efforts to destroy what remains of unions’ power to protect their workers.

Fighting for Wall Street Regulation: Who Said It Was Easy?

Abstract: At least one lesson was blindingly obvious in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 Wall Street crash: capitalist economies, and the contemporary U.S. economy in particular, cannot be allowed to operate without strong financial regulations. The fact that the U.S. Congress passed the Dodd–Frank financial regulatory act in July 2010—the most ambitious measure aimed at regulating financial markets since the Glass–Steagall system—was the most important indication of just how evident this lesson had become. Dodd–Frank is a massive, 2,300-page tome of legalese. Nevertheless, it provides only a broad framework for implementing a new regulatory system, leaving large numbers of critical details to be hashed out at the various regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, Treasury, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). This was because the big-time Wall Street players calculated that they could dominate the rule-writing process once their lawyers and lobbyists could caucus quietly with the day-to-day regulators after the public’s attention had drifted elsewhere. Wall Street’s ultimate aim here was simple: to prevent Dodd–Frank from creating any significant obstacles to its ability to continue churning out fortunes through the operations of casino capitalism. This fundamental problem with Dodd–Frank was widely recognized when it first became law. Two years ago, I wrote in these pages that, through progressive political mobilization, Dodd–Frank could still succeed in creating a viable system of financial regulations—that is, a regulatory system that promotes stability and the channeling of the economy’s enormous financial resources toward productive investments and job creation. This includes, for example, getting affordable credit back into the hands of small businesses, which have been almost completely frozen out of credit markets since the 2008-2009 Wall Street crash, even though they had nothing to do with creating the crash. It also means creating major incentives for investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy, since building the green economy without further delay is the only way we can stop playing Russian roulette with the environment.