Work, Future of Work, Precarity, the Placement Generation

The current labour-market and social-policy structures in Western industrialised societies are in deep crisis. The solutions offered by all these societies' protagonists are directed exclusively at paid work, while paid work appears to be out of date as the basis of society as a whole.

Professor Dr Meinhard Miegel Economic and Social Researcher

Professor Dr Oskar Negt Social Philosopher and Sociologist

Two top-profile social scientists, economic and social researcher Professor Meinhard Miegel and social philosopher and sociologist Professor Oskar Negt, state their positions on the subject.

Professor Miegel, Professor Negt, at the beginning of this year, the ILO (International Labour Organisation) in Geneva brought out its latest report. According to that report, the number of unemployed world-wide reached a new high in 2005, with 191.8 million people out of world in spite of strong economic growth of 4.3 per cent. In your view, is it a fallacy to believe that there is a positive connection between economic productivity and the market?

Miegel: Yes and no. All combinations are to be found in real life: a high level of economic growth with a great effect on employment, such as in the USA, a high level of economic growth with little effect on employment, such as in China, a low level of economic growth with a great effect on employment, such as in Switzerland or a low level of economic growth with little effect on employment, such as in Germany. The reason for these differences is that economic growth is just one of a number of factors affecting employment. What also has to be asked, for example, is whether the economy is growing because more and more capital is being invested or because more and more work is being done? Is it growing because it is more and more knowledge-intensive and efficient?

Negt: The theory that today's profits are tomorrow's investments and the jobs of the day after tomorrow is no longer correct at all. Some of today's profits are tomorrow's unemployed. To that extent, only partial problems of the labour market can be resolved at the level of increased productivity and economic growth. The dependence on market mechanisms remains; the growing army of superfluous people is the real problem of strictly market-based productivity development and the corresponding growth. Social discrepancies and gaps and inequalities do not disappear through mere growth.

When a working society runs out of paid work, does it not make sense to redistribute the work that there is, and why is it that time and again, recourse is taken to increased working hours?

Miegel: Let us begin with the instrument of increasing working time. It serves mainly to reduce labour costs, since it is not intended that there should be any financial compensation for the increase in working time. That means a fall in hourly wages or wage unit costs. As far as wage labour as such is concerned, the situation is more complicated. There are plenty of jobs that go undone, which if they were to be done, would increase individual and collective prosperity. Key words here are cutting asparagus, picking cherries, looking after old people and people in need of nursing care etc. But many people say that in the case of such work, the effort-payment ratio is not acceptable. In plain language: I am not going to lift a finger for € 4.50. That means that if work is to be redistributed, it would have to be all the work - attractive and unattractive jobs alike. But then there are problems of qualification.

Negt: What society has no shortage of is what you could call community work: looking after the environment, caring for urban areas, i.e. activities that basically secure the community's coherence. This need is growing, but will not be met by believing that it can be financed only by the commodity market, and thus huge costs arise at community level. This narrow economic thinking is basically one grand shifting of the costs. If I save on education and health today, then I will pay double or three times the amount in ten years from now in terms of crime and the consequences of people's lack of commitment. Compensatory justice in distributing the jobs producing for the market is necessary, and that can only be achieved by reducing working times.

What do you think of the model of an independent basic income that transforms the historical link between work and security?

Miegel: I believe that this model has a lot to offer. In my view, everyone could receive a basic income financed from tax from the cradle to the grave instead of child benefit, student loans, social welfare, unemployment benefit I and II or a pension. However, anyone receiving the basic income who is fit to work would also have to perform activities of benefit to society. The claim to a basic income of those who did not want to do so would lapse.

Negt: I regard an independent basic income as a very important concept overall and one that is fit to meet the challenges of the future. Basically, society would not contribute much more than it does at the moment for people receiving Hartz IV benefits and various other things. Breaking this link would smash a very old bourgeois principle, and would be a departure from the survival of the fittest, and that seems to be the aspect that is politically difficult for this society that has internalised the Protestant work ethic. People do not want to call the laws of the market into question. If you view the level of productivity that has been achieved as the achievement of society as a whole, then such a model really does have to be based as a matter of course on the principle that everyone is guaranteed an orderly and dignified life.

The call to be heard from many quarters for more initiative and self-reliance is also directed at individuals. Can social problems be resolved by means of this individual approach?

Miegel: If this were the only approach taken, social problems probably could not be resolved. But it does make a considerable difference whether initiative and self-reliance are deeply rooted in a society or whether people depend to a great extent on the state and all sorts of institutions. In Germany and many other countries which became industrialised at an early date, initiative and self-reliance have largely withered away. That makes it more difficult to resolve many social problems.

Negt: The impression arises that problems that are socially produced can be resolved most cheaply by resolving them privately. However, that is a delusion. Seen in the long term, problems that have arisen collectively can be best and most cheaply resolved collectively. The combination of such tendencies towards individualisation and business theories about human beings is an unfortunate one. It is presented as being a pseudo-enlightened interest to do away with the human being who is looked after and to make him into an autonomous adult. That is, of course, an ideological theory that has become reality.

What does a modern meritocracy do with its understanding of itself if performance is no longer worthwhile, that is to say if its decreasing ability to integrate no longer guarantees the conditions for an adequate lifestyle?

Miegel: A society that is no longer able to integrate falls apart, disintegrates. There are many historical examples of this. But we Germans in particular are a long way from such disintegration. Like on so many other things, there are high-level discussions on this question, too, in this country. If one makes an international or historical comparison, there are at most one or two other countries where income differences, for example, are as small as they are in Germany. That should not allow us to fall into a deep slumber. But there is no reason to panic at present.

Negt: I believe that the concept of performance in this society has been eroded completely in many ways. At one level, e.g. the payment of top management, the concept of performance has been completely suspended. It is no longer performance in the sense of productive performance that is evaluated. Rather, shareholder-managers associate performance with practical rationalisation measures and increasing profits, rather than with a company being healthy, stable and rooted in the region, as they used to do under Rhineland capitalism. In spite of people's willingness to make sacrifices and efforts to perform, they are no longer guaranteed anything if the company is in a poor state.

What significance do you regard trade unions as having for social policy today?

Miegel: The unions have had their day. Today, they help to ensure that the huge transformations in the economy and the world of work take place in a half-way orderly manner. That is quite an achievement. But it cannot be compared with the role they once had. If unions still exist a generation from now, their form and content are not likely to have much in common with those of today.

Negt: If there is a social force, then it is the unions, which ought to draw up something like a model society, where the narrowing of the market, where society has become an apendage of the market, is combated and resolved politically. At the moment, the unions are standing with their back to the wall. They are in such a defensive position and so petrified that they cannot broaden their horizons properly. It is necessary to extend their political and cultural mandate and to do so at international level.

In your view, what holds a society together where the equilibrium between social justice and the so-called laws of the market is becoming less and less balanced?

Miegel: That is a typically German question. The spontaneous reply of the French, British or Americans would be their nation, their common history, culture, language. In contrast, we Germans define ourselves very much in terms of economics, in terms of our currency, economic growth, social systems and suchlike. To some extent, this is still an after-effect of National Socialism, which discredited anything that was not economic and not social. That does not mean that the question of social coherence is unjustified. But as long as a recipient of Hartz IV or social security benefits in Germany is still among the most prosperous one-fifth of humanity, the danger of a loss of balance is not very acute.

Negt: Even liberals like Dahrendorf complain about the instability of an unfettered society or, as Giddens puts it, a “runaway society”, in which people disperse, which erodes and which is prone to violence. It cannot be desirable even for the ruling cliques for links between people and what they produce, what they do, to disappear and for something like the force of social disintegration to gain in importance. How does one want to live, what is meaningful life, what is meaningful work?

What is important is that peoples' social energies are put on a public foundation. Totally privatising social systems is always a sign of decline. Whether you take the ancient world with its city-states or the Roman Empire, total privatisation and individualisation break up the public space and take away peoples' public experience.

Professor Meinhard Miegel was born in Vienna in 1939. He read philosophy, sociology and law in Washington D.C., Frankfurt am Main and Freiburg. Since 1977, he has directed the Bonn Institute for Economic and Social Research (IWG Bonn). From 1992 to 1998 he also held an extraordinary professorship at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Leipzig and directed the Centre for International Economic Relations at the University of Leipzig. Miegel is also a supervisory board member of a number of academic institutions that deal with future-orientated social policy questions. Publications (a selection): Epochenwende - Gewinnt der Westen die Zukunft? Munich 2005. Die deformierte Gesellschaft. Wie die Deutschen ihre Wirklichkeit verdrängen. Munich 2002. Arbeitslosigkeit in Deutschland. Phantom und Wirklichkeit. Bonn 2001 (with S. Wahl) Solidarische Grundsicherung, private Vorsorge. Der Weg aus der Rentenkrise. Munich 1999 (with Stefanie Wahl) Das Ende des Individualismus. Die Kultur des Westens zerstört sich selbst. Munich 1993 (with Stefanie Wahl) Ein Deutschland, zwei Wirtschaftsräume. Munich 1992.

Professor Oskar Negt was born in Kapkeim (East Prussia) in 1934. He read law, philosophy and sociology, notably with Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno and was an assistant of Jürgen Habermas. From 1970-2002, he was Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Hanover. Publications (a selection): Die Faust-Karriere: Vom verzweifelten Intellektuellen zum gescheiterten Unternehmer. Göttingen 2006. Arbeit und menschliche Würde. Göttingen 2001. Wozu noch Gewerkschaften? Eine Streitschrift. Göttingen 2004. Kindheit und Schule in einer Welt der Umbrüche. Göttingen 1997. Achtundsechzig. Politische Intellektuelle und die Macht. Göttingen 1995. Geschichte und Eigensinn. Geschichtliche Organisation der Arbeitsvermögen -- Deutschland als Produktionsöffentlichkeit -- Gewalt des Zusammenhangs. Frankfurt a. M. 1981 (with Alexander Kluge). Soziologische Phantasie und exemplarisches Lernen. Zur Theorie und Praxis der Arbeiterbildung. Frankfurt a. M. 1968.