The Precariat
The global rise of the precariat and its meaning
Neoliberal globalization, democracy, and populism
Could the precariat be a “class-for-itself” or an agency
for change? Critique and implication
The Meaning of the Precariat
• Traditional class: capitalists (bourgeoisie) vs. workers (proletariat)
• New “class,” or group, or category A person’s class is established by
their objective position in the
1. Elite production network of
2. Salariat ownership relations.
Low-risk people
3. Proficians Capitalists = the owner of the
4. Manual employees means of production, i.e.,
productive property-owning
5. Precariat
High-risk people class) vs. workers = propertyless
6. Unemployed class
7. Disabled
• Precariat = precarious + proletariat
= propertyless class and HIGH-RISK CATEGORY
Precariat = High-Risk Category
• Those who lack the following labor-related security:
a. labor market security
b. employment security
c. job security
d. work security
e. skill reproduction security
f. income security
g. representation security
• Their life is determined by short-termism.
“They all share a sense that their labor is instrumental (to live),
opportunistic (taking what comes) and precarious (insecure)” (p.14).
• Neoliberal subject suffers from increasing 4 A’s:
Anger, Anomies, Anxiety, and Alienation
Flexible Accumulation and De-politicization
• Neoliberalization = FLEXIBILIZATION:
i. numerical flexibility
“The very success of the neoliberal
ii. functional flexibility agenda has created an incipient
iii. wage system flexibility POLITICAL MONSTER.”
• Market society = “commodification of everything”
• “Entrepreneur of self”: strong sense of individual responsibility,
excessive individual competition, self-promotion, self-help…
• Neoliberal politics: atomization of civil society = de-politicization
and/or populist demagogic politics
Working Class Is a Declining Class.
➔ Rising Populism BECOMING THE PRECARIAT!
The Global Rise of Populism
“Strangers in Their Own Land”
• Why is it rightwing populism,
socially detrimental version due to
its focus on “nativism,” is on the rise
in our time? Why do more and
more Americans feel increasingly
hostile split in their attitudes? Why
increasing polarization? Why
“empathy wall”?
• White working class people feel
increasingly deprived materially and
no longer majority culturally,
making them feel “strangers in their
own land.”
American Democracy
• Two Americas – two worlds within one world
Very few superrich live in global gated communities, go to elite
universities, know one another, very diverse, very cosmopolitan,
very beautiful…
The rest…
• “Skyboxification of American life” (Sandel, 2012)
“Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require
that citizens share in a common life. What matters is that people of
different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another,
and bump up against one another, in the course of everyday life. For
this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences, and how
we come to care for the common good” (Sandel, 2012: 203).
Solution?
• Many argue that we need to reduce inequality and nurture more
“democracy” and “civic nationalism” to fight “populism” and
racism so that we should restore “liberal democracy.”
Critique I
• One can’t bemoan inequality and precarity and at the same
time defend liberal democracy that perpetuates inequality and
precarity. One can’t criticize representative democracy in which
the political elites don’t listen to people and at the same time
lament populism. They are contradictory with one another.
• Can we restore liberal democracy or representative democracy
in which three traditional major parties (socialist, liberal, and
conservative) used to more or less represent people’s voices?
Can we reduce inequality sufficiently by re-instituting a solid
welfare state under which income distribution was more or less
egalitarian? Can we re-establish civic nationalism to end nativist
populism? Can we go back to the good old days?
Recall the fundamental
contradiction (paradox) of
“Sustainable” Democracy democracy. “Sustainable”
means mitigating or concealing
the contradiction.
• Recall our discussion that representative democracy could be
sustainable and appears solid if it could rely on:
1. Democracy must generate MATERIAL outcomes for most citizens,
improving citizens’ substantive well-being.
2. Democracy as popular sovereignty within a territorial boundary is
essentially predicated on the MAGIC of nationalism.
Nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983). It all depends on how
we imagine our community, its scope, and nature: “the boundary problem”
“Populism” = nationalism? “Populism ≠ nationalism? “Populism” ∈ nationalism?
“The liberal secular state lives off presuppositions which it cannot itself guarantee”
(Böckenförde, 1968) – the sustainability of the liberal state needs some sort of pre-
political substance or virtue to ensure people’s belief in a bounded community.
Democracy and Identity Politics
• Recent study asks the rich, middle class, poor, managers,
workers, old, young, men, women, gay, racial and ethnic groups
about social tensions they perceive – all kinds of social tension,
such as racial, religious, gender, ethnic, class, income, urban-rural,
ideological, generational, etc. (Andrew et al., 2014).
• People who have little economic difficulties see no tension.
People who experience income difficulties are more likely to
perceive higher tensions. But what kind of tension do they
perceive?
• All of them! They just don’t know. They’re susceptible to shifting
political maneuvers, and some of them find their demagogues to
cheer. The 21st-century “dangerous class” has become really
“dangerous”! WHY?
As Bertolt Brecht once said, “All
What is “Populism”? power comes from the people. But
where does it go?”
• Müller (2016): At populism’s core is a rejection of pluralism. Populists will
always claim that they and they alone represent the people and their true
interests. Populists will end up creating an authoritarian state that excludes
all those not considered part of the proper "people.
• Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017): Populism is an ideology that divides
society into two antagonistic camps, the "pure people" versus the "corrupt
elite," and that privileges the general will of the people above all else.
Populism is a “thin-centered ideology,” meaning it doesn’t offer a full
political program on its own but can attach to left-wing or right-wing
agendas. Although populism is ultimately part of democracy, populist
movements constitute an increasing challenge to democratic politics.
• Arato and Cohen (2021): Populism is best understood as a political logic or
strategy that claims to represent “the people” as a unified and morally
pure entity in opposition to a corrupt or illegitimate elite. They emphasize
the anti-pluralist and anti-institutional character of populism, especially in
its authoritarian forms.
There is no way to translate from a class-for-itself into
Critique II class-for-others without any vision of future society
• Standing argues that the precariat is a “class-in-the-making.” And
we should make it as class-for-itself to prevent “a politics of
inferno” and promote “a politics of paradise.”
How to translate from a class in-itself into a
• Class formation class for-itself if it is already a class in-itself?
Class-in-itself Class-for-itself Class-for-others
objective condition “class consciousness” humanity consciousness
class solidarity global solidarity
1. Could it be a “class”? Would it be an active agency for
change? What is the source of solidarity and universality
other than their common sufferings? The precariat is the
category that contains all the heterogeneous identities.
2. Precarity + short-termism = they just don’t have time.
3. One cannot separate politics from history [temporality]
“Class” is fundamentally an unstable category.
Universal Basic Income
• Long history and increasingly supported by
various people, even before COVID-19:
Thomas Paine, Gandhi, MLK, Pope Francis,
neoliberal intellectuals (e.g., Milton
Friedman), tech capitalists (e.g., Gates,
Musk, Zuckerberg), the Davos forum, etc.
• Van Parijis & Vanderborght (2017):
“Universal” (unconditional) “basic income”
(minimum cash income, e.g., $1,500-2,000)
in three senses–i) strictly individual, ii)
every citizen, and iii) duty free.
• “For a free society and a sane economy”
“free” society? “sane” economy?
