Recognising…

…the precariat
Back in the day when factories were starting to belch out the smoke and soot in Europe and the US that pushed our global temperatures to its present tipping point, Marx gave the workers labouring in those hell-holes a name: the “proletariat”. Now even if you don’t like Marx, that was significant: if you don’t have a name for “something”, you can’t even talk about it and it doesn’t exist, does it?
Sure those workers were used and abused and must have complained bitterly. But it was “life”…they just drowned their sorrows in alcohol, domestic violence and general “acting out”. But when their condition was named, and its causes defined, they could then start doing something about it. And they did – ranging from forming trade unions to agitate for better wages and working conditions – to overthrowing the government – like in Russia.
But while everyone has noted the 1989 fall of that last initiative – which had been birthed exactly 100 years ago – the demise of the former has been a long, slow, lingering death that’s still going on. So what has happened to the proletariat that used to man – and “woman” – all those factories in the west, which includes us in their neck of the woods, albeit on the periphery?
Well UNCTAD – remember them? – just issued its report for the year and to no one’s surprise, announced that “financialisation” is what delivers the biggest profits nowadays – not production. Meaning – as we know – the Wizards of Wall Street and the City (of London) can make more profits from “derivatives” or “credit swaps” or all the other “financial innovations” they created, in one second than the entire Caribbean can earn from their TOTAL production from fields and factories in a year!!
So the reality is, the proletariat’s been thrown out on their asses, even as less than 100 individuals own as much wealth as the rest of the world combined. Life for those who were the proletariat have now reverted to the state described by old Thomas Hobbes in its “state of nature” – nasty, brutal and short. But mentally worse since we’d become used to believing if we worked hard and faithfully our lives would keep on improving.
With no stable employment, income and housing or social safety net, what’s the word to describe this new precarious existence? Well how about “precarity” and the folks enduring it, “precariats”?
And if you want to see precariats in the flesh – just amble over to Wales, where 1700 sugar workers were fired a year ago!
The 5000 from Rose Hall and Enmore given a 1-year reprieve, should go first.
…sexual harassment
But naming an objected-to condition doesn’t mean those who suffer can eliminate it soon. Just think after 170 years, the “proletariat of the world” didn’t unite to break their chains!! Now, there’s an even more topical instance – sexual harassment. Believe it or not, it was only in the late seventies that the term was coined – at the Ivy league Cornell University in NY.
Women, of course, had been groped, fondled and had their privates “grabbed” by men since cave-man days. But it was only when a woman academic suffered through the experience inflicted by a male colleague, reported him to the administration, and SHE was fired for “causing trouble”, that her colleagues named the act to protest it. She took the university to court and “sexual harassment” was born.
When Anita Hill exposed Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991 for the sexual harassment the term received a rush of publicity. But the post-Weinstein exposures illustrate how widespread the practice remains.
…the City Hall culprit
The Chief Constable just belled the Mayor and Town Clerk for their coverup of the sexual violation of a child.
He informed them the same night of the violation by their favoured cop!!