9 characteristics of the New Inequality.

9 characteristics of the New Inequality
in Europe

Before the French Revolution, about 1 in 20 of the French labour force worked for the Court - making wigs, building palaces, gilding statues, or as servants. Is the post-industrial economy a court economy, in which the work of many, exists for the status of a privileged few? The trend is certainly in that direction.

A few examples of new work projects - workfare - from the Netherlands. In Groningen, a special van-taxi takes University and City personnel to work. Unemployed from the job pool (Banenpool) chauffeur, for these "high-income, central-urban employees". In Maastricht the unemployed polish shoes. The Local Economic Development Corporation recruited "4 people from the bottom of the labour market", to be shoeshiners in the city centre. In Amsterdam, employment agency Randstad plans a replica of a 1854 clipper sailing ship: 450 young employed are sent to build it. Randstad and the City council will use the ship for receptions, and business presentations. Besides these examples, thousands already work as street-cleaners, car-park attendants, hospital cleaners, and so on. Usually they are paid no more than their unemployment benefit. Typical for all these jobs is: the unemployed will never have the income and social status, of the people they serve. They will never have the money to hire a sailing clipper: they will never be a Professor at Groningen University. Almost certainly, neither will their children.

Those projects are just illustrations. They illustrate the term New Inequality, better than the statistical approach often used. In the United States, the term "new inequality" was used to refer to growing income inequalities. Low-income groups in the US have static or falling incomes, a generation long: higher incomes have risen dramatically. In Europe, economic processes are not the whole story. The nine characteristics listed below attempt to summarise the new inequality in Europe, in more abstract terms than the illustrations.

1

The primary characteristic of the new inequality is a political belief: "society has become so complex, that many in the population can not fully participate in it". This is what makes the new inequality different: so far as I know "social complexity" was not used, as a political or moral legitimation of inequality, 100 years ago. The new inequality refers to the future, not the past, for its justification. In caricature...

1500: "I am better than you, because my father was the rightful king, and I am a prince"
2000: "I am better than you, because in 2010 I will have adapted better than you"

Typically, new inequality includes the belief, that between 20% and 60% of the population can not cope with technological society. Not just because they do not have the skills or diplomas, for a high-tech job - but because of inherent personal incapacity. Also typical is, the belief that this necessitates a split society, in which this failed group has a service function, for the group that can adapt.

In other words, the new inequality is based on a social division into "producers" and their "servants", legitimised by the claim that this protects the "servants", and gives them social dignity. It is not necessarily a dual society, some models are of 3-layer or 4-layer societies (or labour markets).

2

Associated with this belief, is a return of traditional legitmation of inequality: above all a dramatic return of biological inferiority theories. The Bell Curve, published in the US in 1994, was probably the most serious academic claim in support of biological inferiority since 1945. And it made that claim about blacks. So it is also the most serious book of western biological race theory, for decennia. In "new inequality" societies, most high-income earners will believe, that they are biologically superior to low-income earners. Many will hold other "inherent-inequality" theories: cultural, or linguistic, or moralistic neo-Victorian.

3

The social policy context (and result) of this kind of society is the abandonment of social mobility as a social goal and ideal. Both of these abandonments feature in The End of Equality (Mickey Kaus, 1992). It advocated the conscription of the US (black) underclass into a sort of Labour Army - because no government policy will ever bring income or job equality.

The wave of new workfare projects in Europe are a similar rejection of the ideal of equality (in employment and income). Their starting belief is: that some groups (not just individuals), are beyond any traditional means of social mobility. Either for themselves, or for their children. Workfare projects characteristically include no social mobility provisions. If they include training, it is for a job at the same level as the workfare project. The street-cleaners "graduate" to indoor cleaners, at best - never to the Corps Diplomatique.

4

As a result of these attitudes and policies, the State, not McDonalds-type employers, becomes the main provider of new low-income jobs. All over western Europe, thousands of unemployed are being placed in workfare projects. Many of these are recognisably public-sector functions: sweeping the streets is a traditional low-income government job. Sometimes the administration is contracted out to private companies, but the jobs remain public-sector service jobs (and some domestic service). Typically, there is almost no production work. Security guards, concierges, cleaners, low-grade maintenance work in parks and streets, tram conductors, station attendants: all of these are service functions. Some urban workfare projects use the unemployed for urban renovation or 'environmental" projects, as low-grade construction workers. Typically, workfare projects include no capital investment, and productivity is inevitably very low. They form a low-technology sector. So the traditional criticism, that these programmes are a trick to lower high industrial wages, is not relevant. Classic production workers (cars or semiconductors) are unaffected - until they lose their job.

5

This employment provision by the state, workfare, becomes the only future for a large group. What is worse than an underclass of McDonalds employees? An underclass excluded even from work at McDonalds: and that is what is emerging in Europe. Some possibilities outside paid employment, will also be closed to this group. It is useful to look at the kind of work excluded from workfare projects, in most countries. Workfare is local: you have to work in your own region, work outside the country is excluded. Workfare projects will not allow you to work in health care in Africa, or on peace projects in Bosnia. These are stereotype examples - to emphasise that not just high-paid accountants jobs are being closed off. A youth peace camp in Bosnia is politically uncontroversial: but even this sort of project will be confined to the children of the upper-middle-class. From the perspective of many young people in Europe, non-governmental organisations (NGO's) are also "elite employers".

Also excluded from workfare are political projects in a broad sense, such as anti-racism work. The creation of a servant underclass, is also the creation of un-citizens. The "workfare class" is almost by definition outside "civil society". They can work to serve others, but they can not influence the structure of society through their work. Nor outside work. Many more political and social organisations exist in Europe, than 40 years ago, but almost all are run by university graduates. traditional labour Unions have become service and marketing organisations. By political rather than economic process, the low-income groups in European societies, can not exercise the formal rights to shape these societies.

The ultimate formalisation of this caste status would be the creation of a permanent parallel economy. The creation of exchange systems, for unpaid work is one possible route to this parallel economy. LETS systems (Local Exchange Trading Systems) "monetise" services for low-income people. If they are successful they create a sort of second-class currency, with approximately the same status as the non-convertible currency of a small African country. The earnings from workfare projects then become the "export earnings", of the parallel economy of the poor. They will use real money to buy food and housing. For their local tokens, they will repair each others cars, or cut each others hair.

6

The political context of the New Inequality is also different. Who invented all these humiliating jobs for the poor? Was it the fascists, or the neo-liberals, or the secret police? No: it was the left. The left, and social organisations, are the political motor in the formation of a servant underclass, using the social security system. At European level, the lobby for European-scale workfare programmes, comes from the Socialists and Greens in the European Parliament.

This in turn is based on a consensus of left and right to accept permanent inequality. The answer of the left (in general) is the creation of "socially useful work". This (and similar labels) are no more than political justification of policy, without real meaning. If sweeping the streets is "socially useful", then Green or Social-Democratic intellectuals should sweep the streets. Instead, however, they promote EU programmes, to force the unemployed into such jobs - or lose their social security benefits. The unemployed are not allowed to define the moral norms, for their future employment. EU employment policies are formulated in almost total exclusion of those they affect, partly because the unemployed have abandoned the political process. In different degrees, this pattern applies within the national states as well.

(At the European Commission, employment policy is the responsibility of Pádraig Flynn. Most of the programmes are part of the European Social Fund, ESF.)

7

The New Inequality is permanently present, even for those with real work: it means lifelong testing, the inevitable consequence of lifelong education. A society which emphasises employability, is a sort of students nightmare - examinations every month. Ironically those at the top will sometimes be tested less: simply because they are so difficult to replace anyway. At the middle range, the pressure on the employed will be very great . They are replaceable. They will be constantly assessed, and constantly reminded (by the army of car-park attendants), of what happens to those who fail. It is difficult to predict the consequences: but "petit-bourgeois fear of re-proletarisation" was one of the classic explanations, of the rise of fascist parties.

8

To guarantee employment status, beyond that of simple employee, a university degree or equivalent will be the minimum qualification. No-one under this level will ever take a decision at work. In turn, this will reinforce the already negative influence of universities in Europe. (See Europa ohne Universitäten).

Emphasis on education is not an inevitable consequence of a knowledge society, or information society. There is no qualitative change of the kind implied by these labels, which causes inequality. An implicit claim, that some people cannot cope with the social changes, is used to legitimise inequality.

9

To some extent there will be a revival of elite universities, and other elite institutions. There is a debate in the US about whether there is a new "overclass" to correspond to the "underclass". There are certainly new high-income professions (option traders). However, elites are not new in themselves, nor are elite institutions. Even elite nostalgia, for the customs of past elites, is not new. Rather than a simple return to the past, it is probably more accurate to see this revival, as part of the "constant-assessment" trend. Entrance barriers to elite institutions (formal and informal) test those who want more than the new minimum. For ironically, the new group of full-time, university-educated, high-income professionals, suffers functional homogenisation. Within this group social distinctions may become more important. "Yuppie traditionalism" is the result: attending traditional universities, classic styles in clothing, traditional weddings, etiquette, reading Latin classics, and of course attending The Opera.

Policy suggestions

The core of the new inequality in not economic process or restructuring, but a political belief. The ultimate answer to it is, the realisation that belief in equality and belief in inequality are incompatible. A society can not be egalitarian and inegalitarian at the same time: it is one or the other.

In the short term, the promotion of theories of inherent group inequality should be criminalised. That applies especially to theories of racial inferiority. The appropriate response to The Bell Curve, is to imprison its authors.

Secondly, all existing workfare projects in Europe should be dissolved. If participants want to restart the programme themselves, they should be allowed to do so. No organisation, public or private, should be allowed to use threats to social security benefits to induce work for that organisation.

Third, all attempts to officially define "socially useful" work, or "community benefit", should be abandoned. Individuals should choose for themselves, if they feel morally obliged to clean the streets for others.

Fourth, most important politically: the moral basis of social security payments should be redefined. Payment to the unemployed should be defined as: compensation for injustice and discrimination. In principle, an employer who refuses a job (or an individual who competes against others and gets a job), should compensate those who did not get the job. The State can then take over this obligation, in the form of a fund for unemployment, open to anyone who has ever been refused a job.

True, this is mainly a redefinition of the existing system. But it removes the moral claim, that the unemployed have an obligation to the employed. It is the other way round: those with jobs are guilty - guilty of involuntary competition. The free labour market is not a voluntary competition, like a marathon race. It is a race, created by the winners, to provide an opportunity to win. Any free market system is only morally acceptable, if participants can withdraw: and in reality they never can withdraw.

The moral justification, for treating unemployment benefit as compensation to the losers, is simple. Put all the "winners" in Europe in public, and everyone will see, that they are almost entirely white, male, upper-middle-class, members of the dominant nationality in each country. Explicit and obvious discrimination - that is the classic characteristic of free labour markets. That is the weak point of right-wing claims, that the unemployed have obligations to the employed. No-one acquires obligations, as a result of being unfairly treated. It is therefore morally legitimate, to redefine unemployment payments as "compensation".