Anti-capitalist Activists and the Workplace: Draft Two
Anti-capitalist Activists and the Workplace
Introduction/Background.
Sennett and Baumann have discussed how the greater sense of fluidity in the western economies has contributed to a “corrosion of character,” the creation of “liquid identities” and an overall sense of existential precarity. Traditional organisations and descriptions of class seem ill fitting in this context and jar ever more with the reality it describes, yet Thompson and others have shown how individual subjectivity in the work place still leads to oppositional subcultures and “misbehavior.” Elsewhere Negri has described how it is the aim of the new work discipline to deny radical transformative social action by dispersing the sites of traditionally contested power and the social actors that can contest it. Where class was once defined by a similarity of experience, it is now defined by difference, absence or plurality.
The post-modernisation of the economy brought with it a by-passing of the state by corporations, the undermining of traditional welfare rights and a mobilised workforce kept on its toes due to the threat of a highly technologically charged capitalism with the ability to skip country at will. Overall this creates a condition of instability for those outside of power, and has undermined organizations like unions that challenged power in the past.
The term precarity, arising first in the mid to late 1990's as a description of the situation facing the increasing numbers of casualised French workers as recently passed into popular usuage among social movements in the past 18 months. Feminist theorists have defined precarity "as a juncture of material and symbolic conditions which determine an uncertainty with respect to the sustained access to the resources essential to the development of one’s life." This living on the margins arises from a restructuring of work and social rights that has taken place under neo-liberalism. This is most acute in the technologically advanced countries of the west where there has been a shift away from traditional industries towards the tertiary sector, with much of the manufacturing industries shifted to the global south as a response to waves of struggles in the 60‘s and ‘70.
Barbara Ehrenreich and others have highlighted in their return to a 19th century investigative journalism mode that explored low paid work; the working class is everywhere and nowhere. The move towards a leisure society has become the colonisation of other areas of our lives by capital. The time we spend in work is increasing, our relative pay is decreasing, and the social and psychological injuries of class are ever more prevalent. The benefits of social democracy (whatever the debates on the dynamics of its origins are) being rolled back, the symbolic victories and institutions of the working class are diminishing and the radical left in the west is ever more impotent on the terrain of work.
The research is also driven by a sharp concern over the apparent closing of spaces for radical social action on a class basis. In academia, post-modernity has rightly decentred the primacy of a class politics that limited the potential for the liberation of “deviant” oppressed minorities. In doing this it also dissolved the potential for the formation of a shared class identity with the power to fundamentally challenge the structure of work along capitalist organizational principles.
Trade unions have traditionally being seen as an expression of class identifaction. But in recent years they have been characterized by a marked decline in union density, as well as an apparent lack of relevancy in some terrains of employment. Sennet has discussed how the lack of a coherent life narrative can contribute to the decline of wider social institutions and group loyalties. But alongside this pessimism there has been an increase in the visibility of and participation in popular social movements that define themselves broadly against the structures of contemporary capitalism and by extension its work discipline.
Aims
As Madeline Bunting has illustrated in her investigation of the British over work culture, work remains a definitive formative experience of people's identities, consuming and organizing large portions of people's time, energy and skills. Despite this collective identities are now more often formed through relationships mediated by consumption than production, bu as Basso has described “working time is the hub of the complex unitary mechanisms of social times.1” Sennett has discussed how a capitalism defined by insecurity and fluidity has undermined loyalty to organisations such as unions. In this piece of writing I will endeavor to explore why loyalties to collective social entities have been transferred away from workplace organizational structures to structures in broader society and if trade unions can learn anything from this process.
Objectives.
This thesis aims to
look at why trade union density has fallen despite the greater visibility and growth of movements based on the construction of collective identities outside the workplace.
Can unions learn anything from the networked form of organization engaged in by social movement activists?
Using interviews with young people who have become radicalized by social movements from the late 1990's onwards, and thus expressing a critique of contemporary capitalism and the work discipline associated with it, this thesis aims to explore why their organizing efforts are focused outside the workplace and what difficulties they envision in trying to engage in workplace based activities aimed at building radicalism in workplaces.
The idea of precarity as a description of modern life provides a parallel analysis of the effects of neo-liberalism on those in the global south, it is the localisation of a globalised understanding. The projects of those activists engaged in social movement work an interesting example of an attempt to summon into being a radical social subject that can challenge the hegemony of neo-liberal rule in western metropolises. This holds out the potential for a transformative, participatory class politics encompassing the plurality of post-modernism but jettisoning its academic inertia in light of a confidence in the ability of people to overcome tremendous social obstacles on the terms of their own definition and self-activity. In that sense the thesis will strongly align itself with a social action approach. In exploring the issues of modern work discipline, trade union decline and social movement practice I will be engaged in a process of critical reflection that could feed quite usefully into movement level debate on these issues.
Methodolgy.
I will review the precarity literature and outline the main themes of the debate within the sphere of social activism as well as in the sociology of the new economies in order to create a co-herant overview of the emergence of precarity as an identity that has been seized upon by social movement activists. This will used to inform a contextualisation of the activities, literature and propaganda of those social movement activists engaged in work on the theme of precarity. I will then explore the views of activists in social movement organizations who are attempting to refine disparate modern identities into a common purpose/identity. Given the resurgence in visibility of social movement organisations some of the methods and organizationally strategies used in these movements may provide lessons that can be adopted by mainstream trade unions.
Disciplinary Balance.
A multi-disciplinary approach will be taken, drawing on elements of theory from the fields of critical management studies, autonomist marxism, feminism, and post-modernism. There will be an alignment with those theoreticians both on a movement and an academic level who place a primary emphasis on self-activity, fluidity and continuity of identity in what may be termed the “working class”.
Limitations
On a social movement level there is the potential for kitting the emperor out in new clothes, the precarity debate when separated from historical situations may simply be a case of various blind men groping different parts of an elephant, coming to diverse conclusions and all the while missing the fact that an elephant is still an elephant.
A minor thesis brings with it limitations of word count which will heavily require rigorous discipline in retaining my focus on the objectives mentioned above.
There has been some academic debate as to the true extent of casualisation in the economy that will require some looking at before continuing with some of my assumptions about the identities being formed in the new economies.
The idea of precarity is not just limited to the technologically advanced west, but is a prevalent form albeit with a different expression in the developing south. This must be realised to avoid accusations of short-sightedness.
Preliminary Chapter Outline
The new sociology on work examined.
The decline of trade Irish trade union density.
Workplace identities that are ill-fitting to traditional union structures.
Why social movement activists have constructed identities outside of the workplace.
Can trade unions learn something from this?
1Basso. Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the 21st Century. (Verso Press) P 20
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