Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 15:35:29 +1000
From: red-red <red-red-AT-span.ch> (by way of frank <yabasta-AT-contrib.de>)
Subject: Encuentro II and the March against Unemployment,etc.


The following series of reflections from some Swiss comrades touches upon a
number of matters which have been raised on the list to date. Any comments?

Steve

_________


Dear friends,
The attachment with this note is a proposition for a discussion
 connected to the table 1a Work and means of production and
more particularly the sub table "work, precarity and social exclusion".
We would like your comments and participation!

red-red
c/o I.A.S.
5, rue Samuel-Constant
CH - 1201 Geneve

Tel/fax   ++41/22/344.47.31
e-mail     red-red-AT-span.ch




Text proposed as a theme (or subtheme) for a discussion table

How can we a make a network of local struggles?
The lessons to be drawn from the European March against Unemployment,
Precarity and 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-AT-span.ch
=46ax/tel (4122) 344 47 31
red-red
c/o I.A.S.
5, Rue Samuel Constant
CH - 1201 Gen=E8ve
Switzerland



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