Precariat versus precarious societies An essay by Peter HERRMANN

 Precariat versus precarious societies

An essay by Peter HERRMANN1

In recent years, it has become commonplace to speak of precarity and even of the precariat, whether in popular political discourse or in the social sciences. People living under precarious conditions, especially those who are negatively affected in terms of employment, are by some even seen as new social class. The present contribution aims to refocus the debate. It is proposed to speak of precarious societies; what is usually understood as precarious employment or living conditions is seen as consequence or side effect of a problem that goes far beyond the widely accepted understanding of

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It may sound cynical, but in some ways the current labour market situation can be seen as less dramatic than it is usually portrayed. Looking at the situation in Germany in particular - although the same is broadly true for many other Western European countries - after the roaring years of the “economic miracle” there has been an increasingly dramatic state of affairs with regard to employment. Two overlapping secular developments in particular deserve our attention:

• One can be characterised by the divergence between the supply of and demand for living labour. What appears to be a more or less trivial divergence is in fact a highly complicated and complex issue. We are dealing with absolute numbers of workers and production – in fact, the available labour force (traditionally categorised as blue collar workers) is growing in numbers, while the living labour is becoming more skilled; on the other hand, the production/demand for durable consumer goods (e.g. household appliances, etc.) is slowing down in many countries, after the extremely high demand for specific goods following the legacy of the Second World War: destroyed lives, destroyed regions, destroyed cities and destroyed households – metaphorically speaking, the late spring and early summer, after the hell of a harsh winter, calmed the initial mushrooming of the economy in the early spring. It is worth noting that for many of the most devastated regions, especially those that had been supported by contributions from the United States of America, there was even a kind of advantage, namely a new start with the most advanced means and methods of production and a real boost to consumption, as almost “everyone needed everything at the same time”. This last factor is particularly important in the current context, as it means that the relative demand for living labour has not kept pace with the increase in productivity. In other words, productivity growth did not depend on the expansion of living labour. While the West, and in particular the Federal Republic of Germany, was able to maintain a stable bulwark position, the economic foundations of the countries of Eastern

1 Research Fellow at the Human Rights Center. Law School at the Central South University, Changsha, PRC. Affil.: IASQ (The Netherlands); CU (Hungary); IPE (Germany); LU-MSU (Russia); MPISoc.Law (Germany); NUI-M (Ireland); UEF (Finland); Website (blog): www.esosc.eu; Email: herrmann@esosc.eu;
Dr. phil (Bremen, Germany). Studies in Sociology (Bielefeld, Germany), Economics (Hamburg), Political Science (Berlin) and Social Policy and Philosophy (Bremen). Had been teaching at several Third Level Institutions across the EU; currently correspondent to the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Social Law (Munich, Germany), senior advisor to the European Foundation on Social Quality (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Director of the Independent Research Institute European Social, Organisational and Science Consultancy (Aghabullogue, Ireland) and senior research fellow at the University College of Cork, Department of Applied Social Studies, (Cork, Ireland)

In different contexts and positions he was involved in research projects dealing with areas as for instance occupational health and safety in public services, agriculture and others, development of indicators on social quality, social service provision, social benefit systems, Human Rights and others.
He worked as well actively in the voluntary organisations nationally and on the supranational level. From here he has a close insight into institutional settings of the EU and as well in issues currently on the social policy agenda. More recently he became especially engaged in economics and philosophy of law, working towards an integrative approach, bringing different arrays of social science together. This marks his activities at the Human Rights Centre in Changsha, where he engages in strengthening international cooperation and his engagement in the European Academy of Science and Arts.

2See in this context e.g. Birch, Kean, 2017: A Research Agenda For Neoliberalism; Cheltenham/Northampton: Edward Elgar

precarity that emerges from a so-called neoliberal policy context.

Introduction

Europe slowly but surely began to crumble under the weight of more severe destruction and the need to pay reparations. Later, in the early/mid 1970s, the looming figure of 1,000,000 unemployed was seen as a kind of threshold in economic, social and political terms: crossing it was seen as a Rubicon

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towardsdangerousdestabilisation. Soon,however,therewasachangeofattitude–evenmuchhigher

figures were accepted:

(Hinrichs, Jutta/Giebel-Felten, Elvira, 2002: Die Entwicklung des Arbeitsmarktes 1962-2001; Sankt Augustin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung e.V., Juli 2002: 5; Arbeitspapier Nr. 82; https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=21593393-4d59-3806- 114c-17d164465456&groupId=252038; 08/04/2023)

Of course, no one would argue that unemployment, especially high unemployment, is the same as precariousness. But even at that time it was clear that unemployment had a specific character, namely that it was structural. It was a time when new forms of poverty and social exclusion, also the image of a new social question, were entering the stages of various discourses in the social science debate – all this was closely linked to local poverty reporting, which aimed to make visible the structural character and the effects on the entire life course, and also the link to deep socio–economic distortions.

• This brings us to the second aspect, namely the divergence between private wealth and public poverty – in a nutshell, public budgets have been strained by increasing demands as a necessary response to unemployment, poverty, health care and, in particular, old-age pensions/care for the elderly; at the same time, the inequality was already evident: huge amounts of capital or money were concentrated in the hands of a small group of people, not least as result of windfall profits, following from a highly export-oriented economy and low corporate tax rates.

In short, the socio-economic crisis, combined with demographic patterns and technological progress, developed in a way that laid the foundations for today’s precarious employment and living conditions.

As tragic as many individual biographies are, it is essential to arrive at a correct analysis that

avoids focusing on reforms that are in fact a return to the conditions that necessarily caused today’s

problems. In other words, we must fully accept Albert Einstein’s wisdom that we should not try to

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1-Political economy – the pillars on which precarity stands

Since the debate on precarity is usually concerned with issues of (un)employment, it is natural that economic paradigms are used to explain the structure and process of precarisation. In particular, political economy, and more specifically the theory of neoliberalism, is used. A fundamental flaw in the debate, however, is its focus on the micro-level, and specifically on issues such as the

3Of course, all this being part of a complex contradictory situation: protests against the war in Vietnam and the blind allegiance of the western allies, the unveiling of the fascist activities of many members of the “new” ruling class, the armament, the “authoritarian character” characterising the petty bourgeoisie and working class ...
4Supposedly this goes back to Einstein’s emergency call: “Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything safe our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

We scientists who released this immense power have an overwhelming responsibility in this world life-and-death struggle to harness the atom for the benefit of mankind and not for humanity’s destruction. (“Atomic education urged by Einstein. Scientist in plea for $200,000 to promote new type of essential thinking; in: The New York Times. Published: May 25, 1946).

solve problems with the means that led us into the crisis.

individualisation of labour contracts, the undermining of the role of trade unions, the competitiveness of especially large companies that are supposedly too big to fail, and so on and so forth. The question is, however, whether such a focus allows for a sufficient understanding of the actual change. Beyond this neo-liberal turn, in particular the following need to be emphasised when thinking about the structural transformation of capitalism.

First, globalisation is becoming a reality, and with it the boomerang effect (see in this context also: Patel, Raj/Moore, Jason W., 2018: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet; London/New York: Verso):

• the cheap becomes expensive

• the distant becomes close

• the bill is presented

  Secondly, public debt (lack of education, health and prevention problems, public budget constraints...) is becoming acute and is showing up on national and international balance sheets. While the theory of value as presented by Marx seems to be invalidated, we are actually witnessing its proof.

  (i) It is important to recognise that the theory of value is not about an instrument for calculating individual income, at least in the current understanding of income/wage. Rather, it is about the social determination of value and the distribution of social value, which is ultimately limited to the value obtained in connection with commodities.

  (ii) Consequently, three factors are of central importance:

  1. Taking up the theory of economic sectors – proposing a shift from primary to secondary and then tertiary sector activities (Colin Clark, Jean Fourastié, Alan Fisher), later extended for example with the proposal of seven sectors (see Sanguin, André-Louis, 1976: Une nouvelle distinction des secteurs d’activité en géographie économique; in: Bulletin de l’Association des Géographes Français; 473-438 : 289-294 ; https://www.persee.fr/doc/bagf_0004- 5322_1976_num_53_437_4927#:~:text=Au%20fil%20des%20ans%2C%20la,à%20la%20consom mation%20et%20à; 04/05/2023), we do not observe a devaluation of the upstream sectors. Instead, we find a quadruple determination:

  (i) higher productivity (historical)
  (ii) replacement of living labour
  (iii) externalisation (e.g. administrative work...)

  2. and last but not least (perhaps the most important in terms of the debate on value)
  (iv) the socialisation of value creation (i.e. the assumption/coverage of costs by the state) affects the upstream sectors in particular; at the same time, we find that the downstream sectors are – apparently – becoming less productive. In fact, this is a false conclusion for four reasons:

o the appropriation is private
o productivity depends to a large extent on unpaid or underpaid inputs from other sectors

and countries, etc. (see the work of Mazzucato, Mariana, e.g. 2013: The entrepreneurial

state. Debunking public versus private sector myths; Anthem Press);
o profit is generated not least on the basis of violent political action, in particular the avoidance of paying taxes and the withdrawal from any kind of social obligation – the entrepreneurial state goes hand in hand with an anarchist state built on the recipes of Ayn

Rand;
o the sectors concerned are largely unproductive, extracting value from other sectors.

2-New economic polities - building a new roof

The last few paragraphs have already shown a shift towards the direct translation of economic power into political power, to the point where the polity itself becomes a quasi-enterprise, ruled by arbitrary will. The traditional separation of powers, which goes back to Montesquieu’s Spirit of Law, is being transcended and new leaders are being established, claiming to be superior through the fusion of traditional and charismatic rule, leaving rationality, at least for the area of political decision-making, aside. As a result, the traditional points of reference – the nation state, globality and the global community, democratic government – lose their central functional role.

We are witnessing a paradox due to the fact, that the role of the political area is becoming stronger, but losing the political rational with the reference of people and replacing this by (i) economic rationales conjured with (ii) “individual profitisation”.

3-A new political air – an intellectual-moral turn

The term ‘intellectual-moral turn’ dates back to the German elections of the early 1980s, when the Christian Democrats argued in their election campaign that only such a turn could reconsolidate the German political economy and society. While the claimed ideological reference was made to the so- called social market economy, the strategy aimed in fact at establishing a re-regulated system from which only export-oriented big business would benefit. It is important to note that the whole enterprise was not aimed at establishing a deregulated formation, but at establishing new forms of regulation by accelerating and initialising the whole political economy towards nationalisation, understood as the promotion of national capital and its global competitiveness. It also meant the establishment of new ways of thinking – in this way we can indeed speak of an intellectual-moral turn: it was about thinking in figures and replacing the narrative in this spirit. As such, it is a matter of moving into and through a cul-de-sac with no turning point at the end. Metaphorically, the whole development can indeed be seen as a movement of large economic entities along this one road with two options, namely (a) to get stranded at the sides or (b) to try to move head-on against and through the wall at the end. Internationally, the unscrupulous behaviour of the big four, the so-called GAFA, the big banks that are considered too big to fail and other major economic players, especially new capital, is evidence of this aggressive strategy.

It is important and difficult to locate this intellectual-moral turn as a process that is rooted in the economic structure, namely the move away from production in the primary sector, and later even in the secondary sector, value-theoretically taken together as abstraction of the whole process. At first glance, we might have the impression that the superstructure is taking over the position historically occupied by the economic base.

In short, the thesis is that alienation – as a social and individual process – defines its expression/transposition into singularity and hyper-individualism:

• to regain power where it is possible, i.e. hic et nunc et ego, commonly observed as shortness of breath and short-sightedness of thought and action,

• to elevate form as the main determinant of communication and the realisation of life, realised today as platform existence, reversing the form-content-dialectic that Hegel characterised by writing:

  Thus the form is content and, in keeping with its developed determinacy, it is the law of the appearance. The negative side of the appearance, what is alterable and not self-sufficient, falls to the form as not reflected in itself – it is the indifferent, external form.

  (Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1817: Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Basic Outline. Part I: Science of Logic; translated and edited by Klaus Brinkmann/Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Boston University; Cambridge, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2010: 200; https://www.pdfdrive.com/georg-wilhelm- friedrich-hegel-encyclopaedia-of-the-philosophical-sciences-in-basic-outline- part-1-logic-e157889432.html; 27/04/2023).

Apparently, the form is now the meaningful part, content becomes random, i.e. situational, pragmatic and spatial, but paradoxically, as such, claims universal applicability (see also Marshall McLuhan’s work in this context).

• Power through design as content of singularity
o exchange of purely situational expressions as a new form of communication (as part

of it the permanent strive for consumption, supposed innovation and claimed

disruption)
o singularity as a fusion of nature and technology.

• This brings us back to the thinking of Ayn Rand and the absolute denial of the role of the state as an organising and structuring entity – the state as the only authority with ultimate power in the form of legitimate physical force, as Max Weber saw it in his 1919 writings on Politics as Vocation. This sovereign command is replaced for Rand by “strong individuals” who can use power arbitrarily and gain legitimacy through personal achievement, not least as bucking the trend in favour of personal advantage. It is interesting to note that the apparently fundamental opposition between the two approaches may be less strict than it appears at first sight: Jean Bodin, in Les Six livres de la Republique, draws a harmonising line between divine law, natural law and power as sovereign command – an argument similar to that of Thomas Hobbes. – In the end, we see a long line from Machiavelli’s ruler to the modern princes of Silicon Valley.

4-Is it the economy, really?

Of course, at the end of the day we are dealing with economic issues – in the tradition of Marxist thought and the interpretation of the base/superstructure dialectic. Nevertheless, it is important to take the dominant role of politics into account, clearly differentiating between polities, politics and policies. If we take this seriously, we arrive at a point that allows and even forces us to rephrase the question and emphasise the necessity to analyse the characterising role of the economy, structuring the political system and its different components.

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As a working hypothesis for the future of the analysis of precarity, it is proposed to refer to

the following “ranking”:

• The reduction of economic action on commodity production as ultimate goal and function and • with this the subsequent detachment of the economic sphere from society • results in the loss of meaning of the political sphere as far as its function of steering socio-political processes is concerned, • leading to precarious societies, characterised by the “streamlining” cohesion along the line of commodities (production and consumption), the latter being reduced on single acts (e.g. production of a car as technical item not production of a part of a complex transport infrastructure6), • thus leading to permanent changes in the process of production • and thus of jobs, in other words: the normalisation of precarity in respect of employment, • translating life into short-termist coping strategies. Taken together, we are dealing with at least six layers:

• precarious economies– characterised by the quasi-separation of use and exchange value (Marx)

• precarious societies – characterised by the quasi-separation of economy and society (Polanyi)

• precarious employment – characterised by the dissolution in time, space and profile of stable (dependent or freelance) work

• precarious socio-economic security – characterised by continuously linking of social security to – now imaginary – standard employment

  5 Here taken in the widest and somewhat casual understanding
  6 Why produce cars that are capable to reach high speed while speed limits are introduced though they are in many cases not erven necessary due to congestion.

• precarious life cycle – characterised by the lack of predictability of work/employment

• precarious life – characterised by the lack of a clear management framework.

  5-Review

  Usually, the analysis of precariousness starts from the evolution of employment: the dissolution of a

  stable framework of work itself and of the social security system developed over time to limit the

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  dictatorial power of corporate interests. We can speak of a kind of concentric circle, starting with

  precarious employment, through socio-economic insecurity and socio-cultural disintegration, to general, not least psychological, disorientation. While such a view rejects any attribution of blame to individuals or specific institutions, we even find the suggestion of the precariat as a class (Standing, Guy, 2011: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class; London et al.: Bloomsbury Publishing), there remains some notion of individualisation or personalisation: while in very broad terms social development is mentioned, and in particular – again in very broad terms – political-economic factors of development are named, using the term neoliberalism, the interpretation suggests that the problem is given by the breaking of the framework of socio-economic security, leaving individuals ‘alone’, depending on their own adaptability. While this is admittedly difficult, the burden is left to those who are challenged to adapt to the changed and changing conditions. The change of conditions itself is not questioned or qualified – though not necessarily tacitly accepted, let alone welcomed, it remains by and large unquestioned. The first part of Fredric Jameson’s suggestion, that

  (i)t seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism (Jameson, Fredric, 1994: The Seeds of time; quoted from:

  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fredric_Jameson; 29/04/2023)

  is widely accepted, but the second part, namely

  perhaps because of a weakness in our imagination

  is rarely considered as a matter to be addressed, although this loss is at the heart of his elaboration, unfolded in his work on Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Jameson, Fredric, 1991: Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; Durham: Duke University Press).

  Indeed, it seems that there are two options: the conservative is about securing the daily lives of those now under pressure from the reactionary aspirations of capitalism, aiming to restore what has often been captured by the term Manchester capitalism, led by a class often quasi-feudal in its claims to rule; the progressive is about accepting change as a matter of accepting the need to break the shackles of the present mode of production. What is easily overlooked is that such a progressive perspective is twofold. One option is to maintain the fundamentals of the still dominant system, namely: • the assessment of wealth by reference to the production of commodities; • with this, the emphasis on individual consumption as the highest form of freedom and consistency of life; • the reference to growth as the ultimate means of maintaining and increasing wealth, • the shaping of social relationships along the lines of contracts, • and, as a consequence of all this, the acceptance of inequality, which leads to a ‘healthy climate of competition’ that allows and forces everyone to perform according to the principle that ‘Man Forges His Own Destiny’– which actually strengthens this principle, since the traditional security mechanisms are largely undermined. Things have certainly changed since the phrase was first coined: Women are in the same situation, depending on their own efforts, showing the ambiguity of the individualisation of socio-economic maintenance. – This approach recalls the statement in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s The Leopard:

  7To be clear, such interest could overlap to some extent and temporarily with the interest of the employee, easily evidenced by the interest of both sides in a healthy, appropriately educated/trained workforce”.

Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi. – If we want things to remain as they are, things must change.

It must be emphasised that the bureaucratic structure and the contractual relationship, based on the principle of formal equality, are in fact reversed and systematically transformed into relationships of inequality by virtue of their embeddedness. Taking Richard Sennett’s work on The Erosion of Character as an example, we can look at employment contracts. Although Sennett is referring to the era in which contracts are being dissolved, the statement can be seen to apply to earlier times as well. And although he is talking about a white-collar freelancer, we can take what he says cum grano salis to apply to blue-collar workers who were contractually bound in an earlier stage of capitalism.

To find work, he has fallen subservient to the schedules of people who are in no way obliged to respond to him. Like other consultants, he wants to work in accordance with contracts setting out just what the consultant will do. But these contracts, he says, a largely fictions. A consultant usually has to take one way and another in response to the changing whims or thoughts of those who pay; Rico has no fixed role that allows him to say to others, ‘This is what I do, this is what I am responsible for.’

(Sennet, Richard, 1998: The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism; New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company: 19)

While this one-sided dependency has certainly increased, it is true that the same inequality applied to workers in earlier times. Particularly in the case of individualisation, each worker was completely dependent on the employer, who could arbitrarily demand the provision of services that were not contractually regulated. While it is true that this was against the law, it is also true that the law is not power-neutral, but allows at least its definition and implementation to be determined by economic power.

The alternative is emerging in the form of a fundamental change, which first of all redefines the understanding of wealth and thus the telos of economic activity. Wealth is seen as a matter of real life in its entirety, where goods are just that: things that are good for improving and facilitating life. As Marx said,

(u)ltimately, all economy is a matter of economy of time. Society must also allocate its time appropriately to achieve a production corresponding to its total needs, just as the individual must allocate his time correctly to acquire knowledge in suitable proportions or to satisfy the various demands on his activity.

(Marx, Karl, 1857-1858: Economic Manuscripts (First Version of Capital); in: Marx&Engels. Collected Works. Volume 29: Marx 1857-61; Lawrence&Wishart. Electric Books, 2010: 109

If, with Frederick Engels, we take as the telos of economic activity the production and reproduction of everyday life, and not the perpetuation of the economic process itself, measured in terms of the quantity of commodities produced, the management of time acquires a dimension that goes far beyond the provision of an operand. Time is perhaps the only factor that is not actually divisible, although the division is permanent and seems elementary: the moment the future becomes present, the moment is already shifting this moment into the past to become past itself, while the new future gains the fluid identity of being past for a moment before it becomes past... – or to use the formulation of Michael Ende’s riddle in the novel The Neverending Story (Ende, Michael, 1979: Die unendliche Geschichte; Thienemann Verlag)

All dwelling in one house are strange brothers three,/ as unlike as any three brothers could be,/ yet try as you may to tell brother from brother,/ you’ll find that

the trio resembles each other./ The first isn’t there, though he’ll come beyond doubt./ The second’s departed, so he’s not about./ The third and the smallest is right on the spot,/ and manage without him the others could not./ Yet the third is a factor with which to be reckoned/ because the first brother turns into the second./ You cannot stand back and observe number three,/ for one of the others is all you will see./ So tell me, my child, are the three, of them one?/ Or are there but two? Or could there be none? / Just name them, and you will at once realize/ that each rules a kingdom, of infinite size./ They rule it together and are it as well./ In that, they’re alike, so where do they dwell?

(taken from: https://www.universalserenity.com/momos-riddle/; 30/04/2023)

The current formation – the reduction of the value of commodity production – involves and even depends on a violent disruption of time, which leads to a synthetic fragmentation: socio-economic, socio-cultural and socio-psychological patterns are formed in this spirit: • while bureaucratic structures – and securities – are being dissolved, • production oriented towards the supply of goods and delivery of services • guided, at least to some extent, by the orientation towards the satisfaction of demands8 - is being replaced by production for the sake of maintaining the profit-driven supply of goods and services, the whole process driven by the need for short capital turnover times, aimed at compensating for the growing organic composition of capital, • reducing character formation on adaptation to short-term demands of ‘fulfilment’. Quoting again from Richard Sennett’s writings on The Erosion of Character, we take a passage that allows a sober understanding of what has happened and is happening before our eyes.

‘People are hungry for (change),’ the management guru James Champy argued, because ‘the market may be “consumer driven” as never before in history.’ The market, in this view, is too dynamic to permit doing things the same way year after year, or doing the same thing. The economist Bennett Harrison believes the source of this hunger for change is “impatient capital”, the desire for rapid return; for instance, the average length of time stocks have been held on British and American exchanges has dropped 60% in the last 15 years. The market believes rapid market return is best generated by rapid institutional change.

(Sennet, Richard, 1998: The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism; New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company: 22 f.; with reference to Champy, James, 1995: Re-engineering Management; New York: HarperBusiness: p. 119; pp. 39-40)

It also highlights the ambiguity, the fact that any assessment depends on the point of departure, in particular the supply- or demand-side driven approach, and with it a paradox: what is generally considered to be the supply side, namely the supply of goods and services, turns out to be a matter of demand: it is the producer who needs buyers, since selling goods is the only purpose of production. On the other hand, the so-called demand side provides a fertile ground for expanding production. In reality we see this in the form of a constant acceleration of supply – new phones, new gadgets, new designs, software and hardware upgrades, new fashions, new equipment..., possibly presented as a response to consumer choice, in reality asking consumers to “want” what they already have, just in a different shape, colour or with slightly different features. The use value is only newness per se, which allows the realisation of exhibiting distinctiveness as the actual use value.

A suitable tool for increasing supply is the sowing of entropy – and under current conditions this is more or less easy, requiring little more than the provision of formal points of contact, suitable for offering short-term ‘solutions’, detached as the problem to which they offer an answer is limited to an isolated question – the most obvious example is probably the doctor who analyses and treats a

8Even if the demands had been always somewhat artificially evoked and promoted, e.g. by aggressive advertisement

peptic ulcer without discussing the patient’s diet and living conditions – easily reversed into an almost

inexhaustible array of diets and behavioural therapies from lay psychology as examples of stimulating

entropy: Everyone is chasing a diet that works as universally as possible, that has an answer for all

cases. – Coherence may be missed subjectively and emotionally by social actors, but it is difficult to

achieve and certainly does not provide a social perspective under the given conditions. On the

contrary, the actors increasingly perceive problems, situations, constellations as personal, as matters

that concern only them – although this is a psychological phenomenon, it is important to recognise it

as a socio-psychological factor and as such an expression of a political-economic constellation that

is based on and thrives on segmentation: while profit is achieved by making always new offerings of

items that require ideally subsequent purchases, all of them – ideally – with a short consumption

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period, the same holds true for the person(ality): the realisation of capital, bound to short-termism,

breaks up chronological time for consumers and citizens:

• strict organisation is bound to the rationality of the product

• thus removed from time and space as meaningful parameters

• disconnected from the actual producer who is made an annex to the process of production;

• thus the producer perceives his/her action as not being meaningful

• as they are decontextualised: vertically being not part of his/her own “real life”, horizontally

  being isolated action within a production line that remains veiled, at most being disclosed by linking it to a brand name (“it’s an apple”, “it’s a Merc”, “it’s a Nike”, “it’s a Ferrero” ...)

  This goes beyond muddling through and piecemeal strategic behaviour, as we are now faced with the loss of even residual cohesive production and products. What is new is not only the orientation towards profitability –Karl Polanyi already noted in 1944 that profit is “raised to the level of a justification of action and behaviour in everyday life”(Polanyi, Karl, 1944: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time; Boston: Beacon Press, 1957: 31); what is new, however, is that the orientation towards profit can no longer be based on long-term strategies tied to security and linear progress: the new pattern and stage behind the falling rate of profit, which goes hand in hand with the productization of calculating the organic composition of capital, i.e. relating it to the individual product. If we accept this as necessary, the way in which Richard Sennett characterises Bill Gates takes on explanatory significance, going beyond mere description. He says

  Gates, for instance, seems free of the obsession to hold on to things. His products are furious in coming forth and is rapid in disappearing, whereas Rockefeller wanted to own oil rigs, buildings, machinery, or railroads for the long term. Lack of long-term attachment seems to mark Gates attitudes to work toward work: he spoke about positioning oneself in a network of possibilities rather than paralyzing oneself in one particular job. By all accounts he is a ruthless competitor, and the evidence of his greed is a matter of public record; he has devoted only a miniscule slice of his billions to charity or to the public good. But the disposition to bend is evinced by his willingness to destroy what he is made, given the demands of the immediate moment – he has the ability to let go, if not to give.

  (Sennet, Richard, 1998: The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences

  of Work in the New Capitalism; New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company: 62)

  This can easily be translated into the feelings and attitudes of workers in such a precarious society:

  What is truly new is that, in the bakery, I caught sight of a terrible paradox. In this high-tech, flexible workplace where everything is user friendly, the worker page personally demeaned by the way they work. In this bakers paradise, that reaction

9 A new model nearly ready while the current model is bought.

to their work is something they do not themselves understand. Operationally, everything is so clear; emotionally, so illegible.
(Sennet, Richard, 1998: The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism; New York/London: W.W. Norton & Company: 67 f.)

Pope Francis, in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, speaks of a throwaway society (see Pope Francis, 2013: Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops, Clergy, consecrated persons and the Lay Faithful on the proclamation of the gospel in today’s world; Città del Vaticano; Libreria Editrice Vaticana), highlighted an important point, but, being caught in a spiritual vision, fell short of distilling the objective factors – greed is a subjective ingredient, but it unfolds only under conditions in which objective values are shifting towards a constellation in which greed is welded into the theory of value (see Herrmann, Peter, 2019: Theory of value – is there still any value in it? Revisiting Value and Valuation in a Globalising Digital World; New York: Nova), which makes the core of greed – namely the positioning of the fragmented performance of the personality above the coherent character – part of the wage.

It is also important to reassess the social average needed for production: Because production in the new setting is of a directly social character, and because the product itself and the process of consumption gain a directly social dimension. In short, this means (a) that the production and reproduction of life must be seen as the production and reproduction of social life – e.g. transport and health. It means (b) that input must also be fully recognised with its social aspects. This goes far beyond the input commonly accepted in policy debates under the term ‘social investment’. Instead, a broader understanding requires a perspective on citizenship as a condition for the unfolding of social personalities, which serves as a functional element, i.e. a processual condition and a constantly changing output, which in turn acts as a condition. Complex interrelationality is both condition and result of the changing socio-institutional system. Trust, devotion, love, commitment, recognition, acceptance ... these are just a few of the issues in question: each of them already exists here and now, but is usually limited by being based on formalities, the maximum extension of which is legitimation by procedure, not least leading to trusting someone or something for the moment –hic et nunc, limitatur ad causam datam, here and now, limited to the given case. Of course, this is not to be condemned from the outset, for it allows flexibility that the ancient system of a status-driven society could not even imagine.

6-Final Account

Taken together, what follows is intended to clarify the shift in the explanation of precarity from starting the analysis at the level of the precariat as a part of the workforce that is specifically affected by changing working10 and employment11 conditions, now looking first at the fundamental role of the precariousness of society.

It is the economy, of course, but it is the economy as a matter of a complex process of formation, understood as a matter of the regime of accumulation, the mode of regulation, the regime of life and the mode of living. Important for the characterisation of the capitalist economy, in the present context, are • the changing organic composition of capital, • the great progress in terms of the available means of production, – a question of miniaturisation, digitalisation and artificial intelligence, and with it • the opening up of new possibilities for the organisation and management of work and the realisation of capital, all of this going hand in hand with • an incredible amount of surplus capital in search of investment opportunities, (i) in the hands of a few, and (ii) easily brought together.

A crucial aspect that marks the new stage is given by a peculiar characteristic of the organic composition of capital. At a general level, we are witnessing a contradictory development: to be profitable, the required investment in constant capital is enormous and the conditions for writing off

10e.g. the wide-spread use of information technology, digitisation, artificial intelligence ...
11 e.g. outsourcing/freelance-isation, projectisation, flat/non-hierarchical management approaches ...

this investment are unfavourable. As bad as this is, we are also witnessing another trend, namely the decline in the organic composition of capital. In concrete terms, this means that short retooling times and a wide range of products for which the equipment can be used result in a somewhat favourable organic composition when assessed at the level of individual products with a high degree of variability, possibly even unique pieces. In other words, the individualisation and customisation of products is another way of counteracting the fall in the rate of profit due to the change in the organic composition of capital.

With this in mind, we must take the changing organic composition as a starting point, since it is a characteristic that more or less defines the whole process, since it determines the need for super- exploitation, which is

as exploitation that depends on so-called noneconomic factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, age, and citizenship status. Superexploitation is exploitation greater than might be expected from general economic principles; the use of these so-called noneconomic factors to determine the rate of exploitation would be one conceivable use of the term. My use of this term does not require worker abjection, but it points to the inability of workers to negotiate the wage in the manner imagined in much of both Marxist and neo- classical economics: that is, as abstract ‘‘labor,’’ without the obstacles of these ‘‘cultural’’ factors. In the definition I use here, all exploitation is probably superexploitation. This does not render the term meaningless: it continues to focus our attention on these so-called noneconomic factors in class formation. Supply chain capitalism, I argue, encourages conflations between superexploitation, in this sense, and self- exploitation. Workers establish their economic performance through performances of the very factors that establish their superexploitation: gender, race, ethnicity, and so forth.

(Tsing, Anna, 2009: Supply Chains and the Human Condition; in: Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 21:2; 148-176; here: 158; DOI:10.1080/08935690902743088; http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935690902743088)

The other factors flank this orientation and provide the means to set the change in motion. The changing organic composition of capital has, up to a certain point in the history of capitalism, been dealt with by rationalisation (and thus further pressure on the rate of profit) and intensification of work, in other words, by the application of traditionally approved means that were suitable under the ‘old conditions’, i.e. compatible with the regulatory mechanisms generally accepted along the lines of the Keynesian Welfare National State Regime (see Jessop, Bob, 2000: From the KWNS to the SWPR; in: Lewis, Gail/Gewirtz, Sharon/Clarke, John (eds.); Rethinking Social Policy; London et al.: Sage; 171-184). However, one of the factors that added to the pressure was globalisation, and with it the synchronisation of economic cycles, and the need to speed up the turnover of capital.

The new means of production made it possible to take up the various challenges, but at a price that must be seen as a deterioration of the system. With the collapse of the socialist countries, there was no longer a “real alternative”, which opened the way to the implementation of a harsh regime; the new instruments allowed and promoted the emergence of an accumulation regime that used various mechanisms of outsourcing – these are particularly suitable for exploiting a maximum of labour with a minimum of responsibility. An important structural part of this development has been the violent break-up of existing entities: the company has lost its character as a receptacle that accommodates a large number of workers; the position of the worker has been redefined, turning him/her into a freelance appendix or someone whose employment conditions have been changed: from a strictly rule-bound employee, confined to a strictly defined position within a hierarchy, to a project worker, from a person with a long-term commitment – exiting in a manageable living space, framed and ordered by chronological time, and working in confined spaces – to someone who has to

endure the changed mode of calculation: the given parameters of space and time have not simply acquired a new meaning, but have been dissolved. As such, this should not be seen as a problem; what makes it challenging is the fact that • the dissolution was violent and • it was unilateral.

Taken together, we arrive at a political-economic constellation that shapes the character in a specific way, marking the precariat not as a specific class, but as a mindset of a precarious society. The following cornerstones can be identified as fields of tension that move within a framework of four corners, as shown in the matrix below:

USE VALUE PROCESSUALITY STRUCTURATION EXCHANGE VALUE

We find two diagonal movements and assume that, in a developed, ‘modern’ society, the point of intersection is, so to speak, an ideal to be aspired to. Different elements relate their inherent tensions to each other in a consistent, balanced way. This applies in particular to the following aspects

• chronological and random time

• living and working space

• product-oriented and market-driven production

• control over the means of production

• control over the “aim” of production

• control over the process of production

  It is possible to interpret these aspects in a certain historical way, looking on the one hand at production of sustenance, i.e. products that are produced for the direct consumption by the producer, ideally with no dependency from others, following the time as it is given by natural conditions, arriving on the other hand at production that is solely commodity oriented, value defined as exchange value and production following the requirements of the highest efficiency/effectiveness of the process of production, transcending, if necessary, rules of time and space – the producer is reduced to functioning as an input among others, deprived of any characteristic of a living being endowed with a will of its own.

  Taking this beyond the individual process of production and looking at the relevant pattern of production at the societal level allows us to understand once again why we speak of precarious societies rather than focusing on employment and related issues. The orientation of the political economy of a country is assessed along two lines: one is the traditional measurement of wealth, clearly defined in the first sentence of the first volume of Marx’s Capital, which states that

  (t)he wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”(.) its unit being a single commodity.’ (Marx, Karl, 1867: Capital, Vol. I; in Karl Marx. Frederick Engels. Collected Works. Volume 35; London: Lawrence&Wishart, 1996: 45)

  The other is concerned with a broader aspect of wealth – without further exploration, the social quality approach deserves special attention (see van der Maesen, Laurent J.G./Walker, Alan (eds.), 2012: Social Quality. From Theory to Indicators; Houndsmills/New York: Palgrave MacMillan; Ka Lin/Herrmann, Peter (eds.), 2015: Social Quality Theory. A New Perspective on Social Development; Oxford/New York: Berghahn); it can be summarised by reversing Marcel’s assessment, presented in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber, with the words “standard of living as meaning of life”; the reversal is exactly what the social quality approach proposes: meaning of life achieved by focusing on socio- economic security, social inclusion, social cohesion and social empowerment, defining social quality together and in their interrelationship.

7-Outlook: Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence

Digitalisation and artificial intelligence have long been seen as fundamental challenges for the development of society. While the subject has been discussed for a long time – Leibniz worked out a “working binary code” as early as 1689, his article Explication de l’Arithmétique Binaire and the monster Frankenstein are from 1818 – the topic has gained importance in recent years. The discussion is dominated by a technical approach, even in economics and sociology. This means, not least, that digitalisation and AI are assessed from the perspective of a traditional view of society and the economy, which sees the traditional way threatened by technology and rarely asks whether society and the economy have actually changed in such a way that the technical means are only a form of “technological expression and perfection” of a renounced change of society and its economy. Armin Nassehi suggests as background a specific constellation of complexity:

Whereas in the old world it was possible to deduce almost all other parameters of life from very little information about a person – place of birth/family, position in the sibling line, gender – this is no longer so easy for modern societies. What appears to us as freedom and individualisation of decision-making situations is above all the confusion of the active forces that interact to create structures and order.

Many consider modernity and modernisation processes to be a loss of order. This is a blatant misunderstanding. Modernisation is by no means the loss of order, but rather the explicit reference to order or the creation of order.
(Nassehi, Armin, 2021: Muster. Theorie der digitalen Gesellschaft; Muenchen: C.H. Beck Verlag: 38; own translation)

In fact, the challenges seem to go far beyond economic rationalisation, bringing together solutionism as a societal strategy to cope with the increasing complexity of an increasing number of challenges – the hope of finding a suitable accommodation, even if it is limited in time. In economic terms, it is the fragmentation of products; paradoxically, on the one hand, we find that individual products, gadgets, services are becoming more relevant as such, in their own right, while on the other hand, exactly the opposite can be observed: the principal pars pro toto is establishing lifestyles, generational identities, etc., defined by brands, and brand names being defined by such lifestyles. Of course, this is not entirely new – modern technology is in some ways little more than a perfection of what happened before, expressed most radically by the suggestion that

[s]culptures and the like (are) nothing else (...) than ancestors of the robot. The primitives tried to annul death by replicating the human body – we by replacing the human body. Technology instead of mysticism!
(Frisch, Max, 1957: Homo Faber. Ein Bericht; Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1977: 77; translation P.H.)

This passage is not taken as a literary illustration; the radically important part of the statement is the apodosis, easily applicable to digitalisation and artificial intelligence: these “instruments” are not problematic because they replace human intelligence or even human beings, as the plot of many dystopias suggests (as suggested, for example, in the 2015 film “Ex Machina”, directed by Alex Garland); the problem is their systematically reduced rationality, defined by (i) dependence on previous input (i. i.e. programming and accessible information) and (ii) being caught in a feedback loop, i.e. being controlled by its previous information and actions. Of course, the same can be said of humans and their intelligence: From the bonds of blind love and trust with parents, learning the first words, falling in love at some point and being able to talk about it (ah, well, chemists, biologists and robots can even explain it) and express (part of) it in words, marriage and over time estrangement from each other, with completely irrational quarrels and accusations, arriving at discussing complicated issues of divorce, complicated financial implications, consequences regarding custody

of children and their future names laid down in a verbose contract... All this and more can be formulated and modelled as feedback loops; in other words, we are also dealing with more or less closed control loops. But the more or less is crucial and often neglected in debates on the subject.

While we find references to the lack of empathy, the impossibility of programming emotions

12

An interesting example is the evolution of the understanding of writing: the very broad understanding of prose, which encompasses various forms of language, which follows a natural flow, which reflects the natural flow of thought, has been and is increasingly being pushed back behind a representation characterised by some specific formalities: an outline that reflects a general form (abstract, introduction, literature review...) instead of developing an original idea or concept by exploring a topic; extensive provision of references..., in many cases the “novelty” of an argument is pushed back in favour of referencing what is already known and documented. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we might say that prose was originally concerned with exploring the “unknown unknowns – the things we don’t know we don’t know”(Rumsfeld, Donald H., 12 February 2002 11:30 AM EDT: D(epartment) o(f) D(efense) News Briefing; https://archive.ph/20180320091111/http://archive .defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2636#selection-401.0-409.30; 05/05/2023), whereas today’s prose is concerned – and still increasingly – with exploring things we know or at most those of which we know exactly what we don’t know ... fully or sufficiently.

To sum up, we can conclude that the problems of digitalisation and artificial intelligence are not primarily the increasing dominance of highly intelligent devices; on the contrary, the real danger lies in the anticipatory limitation of intelligence to what can be easily reproduced by querying and compiling existing knowledge and possible logical regrouping.

In the end, we arrive at the good news and the bad news: first, many mistakes that had been repeated, can now easily be avoided; second, however, the progress that had been made by allowing errors and detours, will remain a privilege of the past. Technology instead of mysticism will turn into mystification of technology instead of technical understanding of and operation with myths.

Paradoxically, it means that societies are becoming more and more precarious when following this pathway, because the suggested flexibility and openness is, in fact, a matter of permanently moving in a cul-de-sac.

and spontaneous reactions, and the necessity or at least rationality of irrational behaviour,
point is too often ignored – it is the development of what we understand as intelligence and rationality. Again, much has been said about bounded rationality and there is no need to repeat it here, although it is important to keep it in mind. It is also important to keep it in mind as a positive impulse for social and societal action: intelligence cannot be reduced to purely mathematical operations, limited to solving “cagequations”, i.e. equations that are limited in their scope. Intelligence itself is increasingly rationalised and limited in scope.

another