How can we a make a network of local struggles?
The lessons to be drawn from the
European March against Unemployment, Precarity and Exclusion
Table 1a Work and means of production
Sub table "work, precarity and social exclusion"
How can an international network develop? By
sharing and then coordinating our local expériences of similar
struggles. Its the only way to get beyond the general statements made
in the first encounters, to really learn from and help each
other.
How can the network develop at the local level? By trying to
involve people and groups from diverse backgrounds in struggles that
make them meet and interact. in Geneva we tried to get beyond the
general appeal against néo-libéralism by implicating
ourselves in the March and trying to bring trades unionists,
squatters, unemployed, etc to see exclusion and the necessity of a
radical reduction in work time as a one problem - their problem, our
problem.
We propose that those who participated in the European March, and
those interested, meet and discuss around this example. Concrete and
precise exchanges of this kind are the only ones that can really
build the network.
I. We should discuss our concrete experiences of this campaign.
For instance, in Geneva: - Our actions (demonstration at the World
Trade Organisation and in the city, texts, etc.) interested many
militants and had some impact. - On the other hand, it proved very
difficult still to involve many people from different sectors who
still perceive unemployment as " the problem of the unemployed ".
Still a lot to do at that level! - And yet we continue to think that
aiming at general, global social problems, in order to create some
unity between people in different specific struggles, is essential,
even if very difficult. (Its also the heart of the Zapatist
proposition.) Can this be a task for a specific group, a group which
promotes contacts between different milieu and abroad, which
circulates ideas and intervenes with a more general point of view in
local struggles? That is a working hypothesis that we would like to
discuss with you, if you would.
II. We should also discuss the strategic perspectives (reducing
work time, garanteed income, third sector, etc.) that should unify
our movement. We need to talk, first of all to see how much agreement
we can really come to. That's not finished. We also need to discuss
how these kinds of ideas can really be put forward through our
action. During the March it seemed as though the stereotype of " the
unemployed that we should help " tended to obscure our real aims,
despite a general agreement among us on what we wanted to really get
over. Reducing work time for example is a demand for everyone, not a
measure to help the unemployed. The network, the movement, will only
develop if we can elaborate and communicate unifying themes. People
in each particular sector have to understand that these themes are
indispensable to their own struggles.
We propose the following outline to structure some of the
important ideas to be discussed in Spain this summer.
Work, unemployment and social project: a contribution to an
urgent debate
In Geneva we participated in the March and in the elaboration of a
local platform largely inspired by the " Appel au débat "
published by 35 french intellectuals, and which proposes a radical
reduction of work time, a garanteed minimum income and the
development of a " third sector " of activities (neither public nor
market) in order to react to the irreversible crisis of salaried
society.
With this text we just want to raise a few points raised by this
appeal that are important to discuss. Some seem to me to be
relatively solid elements with which we can work, others need
clarifying. Apart from the Appeal, we refer a lot to Alain Lipietz's
book " La Société du Sablier ", to " Towards an
Unconditional Minimum Income? " published by the MAUSS collective and
to Jeremy Rifkin's "The End of Work ".
A change of era. It is evident that neither the old receipes of
the left (stimulating growth and defending the rights and jobs that
exist), nor those of the neoliberals (flexibility, the reduction of
taxes and salaries) can really deal with unemployment and the
economic crisis. The combination of the information technology
revolution and new mangement techniques, and of a globalisation that
withdraws from States the Keynesian instruments of control over the
economy and over the redistribution of wealth are hurling us into a
new reality. The studies cited by Rifkin for example forsee new
reductions of 20 to 25 % of the workforce in practically all sectors,
including services (that we were told were going to provide the new
jobs!) The " growth " in the US only reduces unemployment at the cost
of a terrifying increase in inequality and precarity, a social "
dumping " that is in no way a solution. There is less official
unemployment because people have been discouraged from even
registering as unemployed, but the percentage of inactive men between
35 and 44, for example, is the double that of France. Others are at
work, but are poorer than european unemployed. This is the direction
of Workfare and the working poor. Lipietz, on his part, shows with
precise figures that the decline in the profitability of capital
invested in ever more costly machines (Hey old mole! Will Marx have
the last word?) has only been compensated for by the reduction of
salaries, the increase exploitation of living work. Which explains
why in this new mode of capitalist development even growth combines
unemployment and low salaries. And yet many leaders of the left
continue to call for encouragements to " growth ", as though nothing
had changed!
Unemployments nature has changed. It is more and more massive and
longer in duration. The huge increase in " flexible " and precarious
employment has not slowed that. And one must remember that in France
for example one must add the two million people who already have some
kind of work in training or subsidised job to the three and a half
officially unemployed (Lipietz estimates that there are really 5
million). Meanwhile the " German model " is stumbling. Even
Switzerland is beginning to be hit.
With respect to this new situation, the authors of the appeal have
an attitude of " radical reformism ". Considering that it is
impossible to directly attack capitalism in its actual form and
general conditions (free trade, the pressure of foreign competition
and financial markets), they try to define the first steps in the
right direction that are still compatible with the competitivity of a
country's industry at an international level. (Faced with such
cataclysmic perspectives some might ask if capital really has a long
term future, and if it is worth trying to concede anything to its
needs. The answer would no doubt be that the program proposed is also
the best way of preparing post-capitalism.)
The first step would thus be the combination (the
synergétique effect of the three would be essential) of a
radical reduction in work time, a mimimum revenue and the development
of the " third sector ".
Reduction of work time
Working less is a fundamental goal as such, that much more of our
lives won back from capital. Polls in France show that it has become
a demand of the majority since 1993, among other things because now
even the middle classes are feeling the menace of unemployment for
themselves or for their children. (Recently we saw the embarassment
of the unions and the government faced with the demand for retirement
at 55 come up from the grass roots.)
A reduction in work time is also the only way to reduce
unemployment massively (simulations cited by Lipietz show that the 35
hour week would create about 2 million jobs, about 10 times as many
as one could expect from a return to growth or a reduction in
salaries to stimulate exportations.) It is possible to finance such a
measure without menacing the competitivity of enterprises. Lipietz
makes a precise proposal for France: 35 hours (minus 10%), with a
reduction of 3 % in salaries, but which would only affect people
earning more than twice the minimum wage. The reduction in work time
would financed by the spontaneous increases in productivity, by part
of the unused capacities of auto-financing of enterprises, financial
profits (that implies of course a fiscal reform), but also sacrifices
of the higher salaries. That seems justified, especially as they have
greatly increased in the last few years, while low salaries were at
best stagnating and work hours have been frozen (or increased) after
a century of gradual decline. (In France increase in unemployment
corresponds approximately with the suspension over the past twenty
years of cuts in work hours.)
And what about the garanteed minimum income and the " third
sector"?
These demands were advanced during the March, but we think that
there is an important debate to be had between this position and that
of people like Castel, Michel Husson, Petrella and others, who see
dangers in these propositions. Is the real priority finally just
reduction in work time?
A. A garanteed income (and the " third sector ") have appealing
aspects: - To recognise a right to a revenue to all, would that not
be a step towards real communism - to each according to his needs? It
recognises that our current affluence is a common heritage, the
product of a long, common social process that no particular group or
individual can claim as theirs. And in the short term, the idea of a
right to a revenue eliminates the humiliating aspect of public
assistance. - By facilitating the extension of an alternative sector
of activity, these revenues could facilitate answers to social needs
that cannot be answered to by the logic of the market. - This sector
could ideally structure itself in a cooperative and self-managed
fashion, have another relationship between people rendering and
receiving services, in short experiment new social relationships. -
By giving the essential to life, or at least to survival, this
revenue would reinforce decisively salaried people with respect to
capital, since they would no longer be obliged to accept unacceptable
terms. - Ferry for example also considers that such a revenue, by
assuring a minimum, would render tolerable the flexibility and
precarity of employment which seems to become more and more the rule
today.
B. But!
- Critics of garanteed revenues, Husson for example, are precisely
afraid of that - that the minimum income and the third sector will
legitimise the flexiblilisation and dualisation of society. He cites
a french government document that proposes a policy of high salaries
for exportation industries (to encourage the search for productivity
increases), and low salaries (in order to " encourage employment ")
in sectors less exposed to competition. The genevan public services
union observes that the programs of " insertion " and the minimum
revenues tend to create unemployment in the public service rather
than to reduce it, since they tend to replace regular employment with
jobs having a precarious status. Instead of offering every year a
certain number of " temporary " jobs for the unemployed, they would
do better to simply hire them. But it would cost more!
- In fact, the third sector would introduce a fundamental division
between the salaried of the traditional sector (better paid,
qualified, protected, etc.) and those of the third sector, out of the
market, but also less paid and qualified and dependant on
redistribution via the State. Could this sector defend its interests
over the long term against the possible alliance of interests between
the bosses and salaried of the regular sector who would be financing
them through their taxes? A swiss union man remarks with some common
sense that the money invested in a third sector could just as well
finance a reduction of work time that would create jobs for all, and
that it may not be a very healthy situation to have half of society
dependant on the other. It would suppose in any case that a union or
other type of organisation assure a strong link between them, whereas
we observe that unions don't even defend the unemployed of their own
sector very energetically... - More fundamentally, could one assure
social insertion and cohesion by only garanteeing an income, or is
this a " utopia " really typical of the individualistic " consumption
society "? Is leisure time today usually used in a way that favors
social cohesion? Whereas the optimists imagine a great development of
associative activity, pessimists see all these people becoming couch
potatoes in front of their TV... Would the people, who have often
suffered a lot, who will end up with a minimum garanteed income
really be able to develop new and interesting social relations,
relations that many of us have spent 20 years trying -with variable
success - to develop? Is there not a danger that we project now onto
the excluded class (after the working class!) the " historic mission
" of elaborating a new society? - Many fear that the right to an
income replace the right to work, bring people to accept that
everybody can't find a job (at least in the " normal " sector),
although for most people work is still an essential aspect of
identity. In Geneva the authorities cleverly use this argument in
order to justify the obligation to work in return for a garanteed
income. But wouldn't it be more logical then to assure a normal job
for everyone instead of inventing obligatory work in return for a
garanteed revenue? - Basically, what do we gain by encouraging this
logic, when a radical reduction of work hours 1) would avoid these
traps and divisions while assuring a revenue and a social insertion
for all ; 2) would give a lot more free time to all (who could thus
develop associative activity, autonomy, etc. on the basis of
gratuity.) - The garanteed income would reinforce workers with
respect to capital if it was really sufficient to live (and not
survive) on. But the third sector could (does already) exert pressure
on the regular sector in the measure that they come to do the same
work for less. And finally wouldn't a radical reduction in work time
reinforce workers just as much? Is the garanteed income perhaps a way
of avoiding that reduction? of avoiding a social control over the
labor market whose necessity is more obvious than ever? - People make
the argument that we are already going in that direction (40% of
incomes in Europe are already indirect, redistributed via the State
in some form or another), and that a garanteed income would permit a
greater flexibility of workers and a simplification of the Welfare
State. Is this tendency necessarily to be encouraged? By reducing the
function of the State to the distribution of a check would not we be
making State and society even more inhumane and merchandised? Is this
project really in conflict with liberal capitalism? And isn't it an
illusion to think that we could thus evolve without a major conflict
towards a situation that would relativise, reduce more or less, the
tyranny of capital over work? - Now that it is attacked by neo- (or
rather retro-) liberalism, we find ourselves often defending the
State. But less not become too naive. The strategies of a garanteed
income and the third sector aren't they too dependent on the
benevolence of a State that has always been at best ambivalent? And
today it is moreover weakened, and more than ever under the influence
of the economic powers.
C. Some elements of synthesis
Obviously, both sides of this debate admit the totally ambiguous
character of the ideas of garanteed revenues and the third sector,
which present interesting possibilities while remaining fundamentally
(like the NGOs in the third world) the " progressive " version of
social management under neoliberal capitalism. But in fact we are
already up to our necks in it, we must do something with what's
given. It remains however to be clear on priorities, those that we
consider are really parts of a project of liberation.
It seems to us that the reduction of work time is the most
fundamental, unifying and solid demand. With minimum income and the
third sector we are in the domain of pragmatic decisions. If it is
not possible to find normal work for all and to satisfy all needs, it
will no doubt be necessary to try an arrange this social space as
best as possible and take advantage of its better aspects (non-market
logic, etc.). But it may be better to consider it as a transition,
while we lack the means to repair the " social fracture ", rather
than as a positive perspective or goal. Certainly we can all agree
that those who find themselves unemployed are in no way responsible
for the dysfunctionning of the economy. They thus have the right to a
revenu without any condition ( any form of constraint, workfare or
forced labor can only endanger the unemployed and employed alike).
But this does not mean that we should necessarily encourage the
perspective of a minimum revenue or universal allocation. Of course,
for people who finding themselves in or having chosen (squatters,
"alternatives", etc.) a situation on the margins of the economy, a
revenue of this kind could be very useful... Similarly, those who are
excluded from the labor market should be able to associate themselves
in socially useful activities of the "third sector", for they have
the right to an activity, and there are plenty of things that need
doing! But that doesn't mean necessarily that we should encourage
blindly the development of such a sector. The reduction and sharing
of work time and the struggles of the regular sector remain the top
priority. An example: the question of independent workers.
Neoliberalism tends to develop, in parallel huge multinational
holdings and thousands of small, theoretically independent companies
of one to a dozen workers, non-unionised, practising intensive
"auto-exploitation" in order to subcontract to the real bosses
(Sergio Bologna considers that the intensification of work rythms and
longer work hours obtained in this "independent" sector, which is the
dynamo of the new italian economy, is the principal victory of
neoliberalism.) What should be the reaction? People speak in this
context of the necessity, the utility (also for the system!) of a
garanteed income which would smooth the bumps in this chaotic sphere,
but the real challenge will obviously be to organise the
independents, the reconstruction of practices of solidarity and
unity, of which the french truck drivers recently gave us a fine
example.
D. Apart from the question of our positions concerning a garanteed
income and the third sector, we can hopefully agree on some points:
- Stimulating "growth" is no longer an answer. For one thing
technical innovations are such that growth and investment can
eliminate as many jobs as stagnation. (And we don't necessarily want
growth anyway!) Apart from that, the policies imposed world wide by
the IMF, EU, etc., (dogmas of budgetary balance, commercial trade
balance, the taboo on inflation, monetary rigor, etc.) constitute a
recessive policy globally, not one that stimulates growth. And that
doesn't seem ready to change soon. - Training and recycling
unemployed changes nothing, except maybe shuffling a bit the order in
the queue of people waiting for a job. Its the brilliant policy the
french call "Papa, I found a job. Yours!" Obviously such a stupidity
does have a justification, that of stimulating the efforts and
competition of the workforce one against the other, which is very
good for the bosses. - All forms of workfare or forced labor must be
refused, including "active measures" of job search, the reduction of
benefits which are supposed to "incite" unemployed to look harder for
a job, etc. Quite patently, its jobs that are lacking, not job
seekers! This quite Orwellian denial of the facts is simply
psychological warfare aiming to destroy solidarity with the
unemployed. A dirty trick that can work, because people would like to
believe that there's work for all who want to, and thus that they
aren't menaced themselves. The fear of unemployment can stimulate
solidarity, or on the contrary cruel irrationality. The obligation to
work which accompanies minimum income policies in France (RMI) and in
Geneva, could be a first great step back towards the 18th century
workhouses. Unemployment benefits are an insurance, and thus a right,
and must not slip towards being a form of social control and a way of
"punishing the victims". - The creation of subsidised private jobs
must be refused, for they are based on the accentuation of social
injustice. In many countries (we are opposing it in Geneva) there are
scandalous programs such as the french "job cheque", which allows
rich people to buy themselves a servant for free, their (too low)
salary being deductible from taxes. Make them go on paying taxes!
These can then be used to finance much more useful jobs than walking
poodles. (In some countries unemployed who refuse such jobs lose
their benifits!) - Whether it may be in order to finance revenues for
the unemployed, to create useful jobs or finance the reduction of
work time, there is a common necessity: the reduction of the ever
greater inequalities of revenues and salaries, be it by the reform of
taxation or through new work contracts. (From that point of view
Switzerland is one of the most unjust.) And that is where positions
get quite clear: like the charming bourgeois politician who dares to
come to a round table on precarity and say " The objective must be to
create jobs, not equality. The societies that are dynamic today don't
favor equality." Too bad, huh? - And of course, there is that massive
reduction of work time, that so many people seem to agree to, but
which isn't happening. In Switzerland the social-democrats are
proposing a 37 hour work week. Is such a tiny step in the right
direction still a step? - ...Hopefully other points to be discussed
in Spain!
>From here to the time of the Encuentro we hope to produce
other texts (some are already available in french) and above all
receive some from you. Consult the web pages of the Encuentro
(http://www.pangea.org/encuentro)
and of the Berlin zapatistas
(http://www.icf.de/yabasta/neolib.htm).
If you are interested by this discussion table (which doesn't
necessarily have to last the whole encuentro) contact us directly so
that we can prepare it together and exchange us much as possible
before. We saw at the Berlin and Chiapas meetings that this would be
important, essential even, in order to be able to really make
progress during the Encuentro! It would also be very helpful if you
forwarded this text to other addresses that might be interested.
Neoliberation (Neoliberation is a small reflection and action
group with strong links to the Comité Viva Zapata! of Geneva)
Our address: e-mail: red-red@span.ch
Fax/tel (4122) 344 47 31
red-red
c/o I.A.S. 5,
Rue Samuel Constant CH - 1201
Genève
Switzerland