This year has seen the angry upheavals of a new social class. Politicians and commentators are bewildered. Even demonstrators are a little confused.
The emerging class is dangerous in that it does not identify with mainstream politics. But it does know what it is against, the gross inequalities around them and the chronic insecurity in which more and more people are forced to live. Call them the precariat, from the word "precarious."
The precariat consists of millions and millions of people who are finding themselves in a life of insecurity, flitting between low-paying jobs that are leading nowhere.
The precariat has no sense of occupational identify or clear career that it can build. It is increasingly made up of disparate groups, including many young educated people who emerge from college with certificates that offer a false prospectus of a future career, alongside many women trying to combine jobs with other work pressures, millions of migrants, numerous disabled people pushed into low-paying jobs, millions who have been criminalized for a growing range of actions deemed to be illegal, and those trapped in a life of welfare claims.
The precariat, mired in insecurity is also mired in debt, fragile entitlement to homes, living on the edge of falling into an underclass, outside society altogether. But it must be appreciated that its creation is the direct result of economic and social policies conducted by successive American and European governments.
The globalizing market system wants a precariat, seeing it as a flexible labor supply, as a mechanism for economic competitiveness. It is an outcome of an era of free market economics, not something simply due to the economic crisis of 2007-08.
Inequalities of several kinds have grown remorselessly over the past three decades, while avenues for upward social mobility have been choked, falling to the lowest level ever, according to the best available statistics.
As these twin trends have strengthened, the precariat has been moving from a sense of alienation and despair to a mood of seething anger. This is a trend seen in many countries, not just America.
The alienation stems from not being able to do what one's education and background have prepared one to do, and having to do jobs, as well as work outside and for jobs, that they would not wish to do. People feel both underemployed, in not doing what they believe they are capable of doing, and overemployed, in having no time or space in which to develop and apply their competencies.
Ironically, many in the precariat face marginal tax rates that are at least double those faced by those in the "salariat" or in the financial elite. Economists call this the poverty trap. In addition, many trying to claim meager state benefits face the indignifying process of having to justify themselves to intrusive bureaucrats, who treat them as potential fraudsters to be subject to intimidating monitoring and sanctions.
The latest indignity in many states is to require welfare claimants to undergo urine tests, for which they have to pay themselves. Many are too humiliated and fearful; many simply cannot afford the cost. It is a device to cut spending, and is unjust. It and many other behavior tests are like treating people as guilty until they prove themselves innocent, the very opposite of the basic principle of justice. There is no due process.
The global precariat is growing more angry and restless, as more people realize they could easily fall into it or think their children or friends could do so. They are beginning to realize that the increasingly unequal society is neither necessary nor sustainable. This realization helps to explain the EuroMayDay demonstrations that have been building up across European cities in recent years, and the occupations of city squares from Madrid to Athens. The disquiet has finally reached America, with the Occupy movement.
The revolt will grow, taking different forms. It is not just about the top 1 percent of income. It is about the fact that a growing share of our population is being forced to survive a life of constant worry. It is unnecessary.
We need to renew our politics and shift the debate to mechanisms of sharing and mechanisms to reduce economic insecurity for everybody in society. The precariat is the new dangerous class precisely because it is beginning to assert its collective strength. We must beware of the populists who are luring part of the precariat, and those fearing falling into it, into neo-fascism, blaming victims inside the precariat for their own plight. We must defeat that tendency.
To do so, we need to revive the age-old American values of social solidarity, community and universalism. We must tell the politicians, "Yes, we can!"
Guy Standing is professor of economic security at the University of Bath in England. He is presenting his new book, "The Precariat - The New Dangerous Class" at UNC-Chapel Hill's Fedex Global Education Center Room 1005 at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.
