Class,precarity,and anxiety under neoliberal global capitalism: From denial to resistance

Reconciling class theories: A neo-Marxist synthesis

Across major traditions, there is consensus that a “well-formed class” is a group of people who have a shared set of everyday material and social circumstances, as well as a shared subjectivity including habitus, solidarity, and consciousness. In Marx’s theory, such a well-formed class is called a “class-for-itself” while in Bourdieu’s (1987) work it has been re-named as a “real class.” More fully, Bourdieu distinguishes between a probable and real class, as an alternative reading of Marx’s distinction between a “class-in-itself” and a “class-for-itself.” Bourdieu’s “real” class is alternatively understood here as an ideal class. That is, the “well-formed class” concept acts as an ideal non-sectarian yardstick tool of empirical measurement which can be set against actually existing class structures comprising less-than-well-formed or clearly distinguishable classes.

In Bourdieu’s neo-Weberian approach, individuals who have neighbouring positions in “social space” are classified as a “probable” or “paper class” (Bourdieu, 1987). Neighbouring positions are identified by shared circumstantial criteria, operationalised as levels of education and income associated with different occupations, which are validated because they indicate the subjectivity principle of status. “Real classes” are said to exist only when such nearness in social space translates into a common subjectivity. Thus, a tentative classification of a probable class is falsified or validated depending on the presence or absence of a sense of collective subjectivity and consciousness.

From a neo-Marxist perspective, Bourdieu seems to imply that a class-in-itself is just a classificatory experiment. More importantly, the Weberian prioritising of subjectivity is insensitive to the prevailing structures of society. It offers only a static empirical description of social groups that is disconnected from the societal processes that dynamically generate such observable patterns. The Marxist tradition, in contrast, starts with the assumption that empirically differing and dynamically changing class circumstances can be traced back to the “generative mechanisms” at the relational core of the social structures and institutions of capitalism and its economic process of extended reproduction. Following Bhaskar’s (1979) critical realist approach, one can say that generative mechanisms are distinct from, yet integrally connected to, the plane of empirical description which is the fundamental criterion of their explanatory validity.

In Marxist class theory, one can infer from the capital–labour relation a fundamental class division of interests and vantage points between those who own and control the conditions, process, and results of production (bourgeoisie) and those who produce (proletariat). However, this fundamental relation does not generate two well-formed classes, or even two well-formed probable classes. Rather, the capital–labour relation manifests as a complexly disaggregated social structure of functions and positions and corresponding collective groupings which, empirically speaking, are not that different from what the neo-Durkheimeans call “disaggregate classes” (Grusky & Sorenson, 1998). Capital and labour are each heterogeneously stratified into more or less well-formed social groups, plus there are positions that have overlapping or contradictory characteristics (Neilson, 2007). These collective positions located across the deeper relational structures of capitalism ground the class-in-itself concept in an explanatory class theory. While these class-in-itself positions can be traced back in a causal sense to deeper relational structures, the empirical pattern of social groups in complex societies does not simply reflect such structures.

The Weberian tradition is located primarily on the plane of empirical description and validates itself through a principle of human subjectivity, whereas the Marxist tradition locates itself in the structural drivers of empirical forms. However, these differences are reconcilable. That is, class theories together contain a range of class concepts which can co-exist and serve different functions for different levels of analysis. This paper is grounded in the co-existence principle, such that the theme of precarity is applied in a way that connects the deeper structures of capitalism with the subjectivity principle of anxiety.

However, Bourdieu’s conception of a “real class” is directly disputed here especially because it validates the misleading argument that classes do not exist in the current era (see Beck, 2007). One can agree that contemporary institutions and discourses of competitive individualism, post-traditionalism, and self-responsibilisation counter patterns of collective subjectivity and instead promote disempowering and precarious individualisation (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002; Rose, 1992). However, this is to be expected in the real world of actually existing classes that depart, more or less, from the ideal-type of a well-formed class. Moreover, following Bhaskar (1979) again, one can argue that because actually existing societies are “open systems,” a common subjectivity as an effect of shared class location is always and only a contingent possibility dependent on a multiplicity of interacting social, cultural, political, and ideological factors. Rather than implying the absence of “real” classes as in Beck’s work, the complexity of collective subjective tendencies under contemporary global neoliberal capitalism is grounded in a global class structure of variegated precarianisation across a disaggregated capital–labour relation within complex “open (societal) systems.”

From the generic tendency of capitalism …

Even though they are beyond immediate control and understanding, traces of structure are ever-present in people’s lives as everyday uncertainty and precarity. The “proletariat” is universally defined by its essential insecurity, that is, the absence of an alternative way to live outside of the wage relation. This precarity also implies that the basic source of capital’s bio-power is more or less experienced as the generic daily state of “formal subordination” for the “labouring population” (Marx, 1867/1976, pp. 1019–1038; Neilson, 2007). More completely, this precarity is grounded in the absence of an alternative to the insecurity of the wage relation, the capitalist prerogative to hire and fire, and the relentless, unstable, and uneven form of economic change under capitalism that systematically, though not in a completely predictable way, throws people out of work. However, the broader proletariat’s common precarity is unevenly experienced across a range of “disaggregate” classes.

The unfolding of the capital–labour relation’s employment logic that begins with the dispossession of the peasantry generates the “labouring population’s” division into an “Active Army” (AA) and a “Relative Surplus Population” (RSP; Marx, 1867/1976, Ch. 25; Neilson & Stubbs, 2011). The AA is located in the sectors of competitive capitalist productivity, while the RSP comprises a precarious population marginal to these core sectors. The former, in a critical departure from Marx’s implicit assumption of homogeneity, comprises the “industrial proletariat” plus knowledge workers that are distinguishable from each other and that are each stratified internally according to skill, income, education, and lifestyle variations. The latter, comprises an internally fragmented, marginalised labouring population, who are market-dependent but are without secure jobs. The RSP descends from the Reserve Army (irregularly employed within the core sectors of industrial production) towards other more marginalised strata including dispossessed peasants, servants, prostitutes, criminals, and beggars (Marx, 1867/1976, Ch. 25). In class terms, the labouring population all share the basic proletarian criterion of wage/market dependency; but in terms of empirical criteria of shared circumstances it is fragmented across more or less well-formed and overlapping social groups that can be stratified according to variations in security of work, employment, and income (Neilson, 2007).

In basic terms, the profit-driven development of productivity implies continuing erosion of the numerical size of the industrial working class. However, some numerical growth potential of knowledge workers is also implied, and further, “wage labour spreads absolutely” (Marx, 1871/1969, p. 573) into more social activities and the production of more and different things. Over the long term, Marx predicts that the productivity-driven erosion of the industrial working class that swells the ranks of the RSP will be capitalism’s dominant long-term tendency leading ultimately to the RSP becoming the majority of the labouring population. Furthermore, the redeployment counter tendency becomes problematic over time because it accelerates consumption of the planet, eventually implying a collision course between redeploying a growing surplus humanity making more and different things, and ecological over-reach (Neilson, 2013; Neilson & Stubbs, 2011).

… Towards mid-range analysis

Marx’s (1867/1976) prognosis of capital’s unfolding trajectory over the long term did not consider the contingently over-determining effects of (yet to occur) medium-term political projects. The French Regulation School’s famous account of the post-Second World War Long Boom (Fordism) aspired to provide this missing supplement (see Aglietta, 1979). In my (Neilson, 2012) third generation version, mid-range political or regulatory projects, or “models of development,” are understood as blueprints that, when institutionally implemented, either counter or activate basic capitalist tendencies.

The Fordist model of development, hatched at Bretton Woods in 1944 and master-minded by John Maynard Keynes, proposed constraints on international capital in order to make viable a national regulatory economic template driven by domestic demand. Its uneven implementation across the advanced capitalist countries countered the generic tendencies of capitalism by delivering stable growth and facilitating wage-earner security and solidarity (Aglietta, 1998; Piketty, 2014; Standing, 1997). This reversal of the generic capitalist precarity tendency has been undone—in the wake of the decline in viability of and support for the Fordist model—by the ascendancy to global dominance of the neoliberal project (Lipietz, 1988; Neilson, 2012).

By the mid-1980s, the neoliberal project had gained critical support, summarised in the blueprint associated with the Washington Consensus, amongst the leading global fractions of capital and their allies in academia, regulatory institutions of national and trans-national regulation, and in the political leaders of the USA and UK. This blueprint’s implementation has reversed the counter-tendencies of the Fordist era in two fundamental ways. First, varied adoption of the neoliberal domestic national template has involved the “rolling back” of labour’s social protection and the “rolling out” of the regulatory frameworks of labour market flexibility and social policy. This process has directly institutionalised “insecurity” (Standing, 1997) and underpins the proliferation of the insecure contingent, un-guaranteed, temporary, and informal employment that Standing associates with the “precariat” (Standing, 2011, 2012). Second, this regulatory direction has been grounded in national adoption—more or less—of the externally oriented component of the neoliberal template which has reduced national impediments to capital’s free movement, thus exposing the world’s population to generic long-range capitalist imperatives on a global scale.

Neoliberal globalisation has unleashed what might be boldly named capitalism’s “absolute general law” of increasing precarity. In particular, global competition has unevenly extended the RSP as industrialisation of agriculture leads to large-scale redundancy of the peasantry (Haroon Akram-Lohdi, 2007; Harvey, 2005; Neilson & Stubbs, 2011). At the same time, increasing industrial productivity—now driven by global norms and involving increasingly sophisticated levels of computerisation and automation—has eroded the industrial working class stratum of the AA and unevenly extended the RSP everywhere. While precarity explicitly manifests for the strata of the global RSP, erosion of the AA that is integral to this process extends fear of descent into precarity more generally. In addition, universal precarity is increased further in the contemporary world by the over-reaching of the planet’s sustainable reproduction (Neilson, 2013). In sum, market regulation which has eroded secure employment is underpinned by labour’s global oversupply, which has been generated by the neoliberal-led global intensification of capitalism’s long-term employment logic (Neilson & Stubbs, 2011).

The global class structure under neoliberal globalisation, underpinned by the unleashing of the capital–labour exploitation structure of accumulation on a global scale, empirically manifests as a complex process of dynamically changing, less-than-well-formed, and overlapping social groups. This structure—distributed unevenly across the world’s countries, which are at very different stages of development—can be characterised as two distinct but overlapping chains of class stratification and fragmentation.

Capitalism’s globalisation has intensified and raised to a global level the disaggregated hierarchical structure of the groups that comprise the capitalist class. The “trans-national capitalist class” (Carrol, 2010) and its economic, political, and ideological agents—which together underpin the Washington Consensus—form the global nucleus at the apex of this capitalist class hierarchy. Unlike the nationally and “vertically integrated” firms common in the Fordist era, the current era is characterised by “global production networks” linked with organisationally disintegrated chains of command going from trans-national companies downwards across varying horizontal and vertical sub-contracting medium and small firms. In addition, and also in contrast to the Fordist era of the salariat comprising a state component and a hierarchy of wage-earning supervisors and managers in “contradictory class locations” (Wright, 1976), Standing usefully identifies the emergence of a new group of “proficians,” some of whom are more clearly located amongst the range of knowledge-worker turned entrepreneurs that are leading small and medium knowledge-based capitalist firms. The flexibilisation of the employment relation has also led to the seeming transformation of waged-workers into sub-contracting petty entrepreneurs. In the slums of the non-developed capitalist countries, the most petty capitalists of the so-called “micro-entrepreneurs” grow in numbers but are very hard to distinguish from “own-account workers” (Davis, 2006).

For the labouring population, the fundamental fault-line is between the RSP, which grows, and the AA, which is being eroded. This basic trend is the combined effect of the unleashing of capitalist imperatives on a global scale, which has generated a massive global oversupply of labour; and neoliberal national regulation, which has extended the Reserve Army principle across different fragments—including knowledge workers—of the AA. Most significantly, the peasantry—still by far the numerically largest class in the world today—is being rapidly eroded and turned into what Marx called a “latent surplus population” that is being pushed towards the growing city slums of the non-developed capitalist world (Kabat, 2014, pp. 370–372; Neilson & Stubbs, 2011). As an effect of this global process combined with neoliberal national regulation, secure positions across the AA, and including elements of the salariat, are being turned into different contingent and temporary positions. Unevenly located across more or less developed and more or less successful nation states, these strata descend from a temporary and contingent workforce of knowledge workers; to the Reserve Army of Labour including short-term contracted workers to informally contracted day labourers; to a range of contingent low-skilled workers across the service sectors differentiated according to level of national development; to the unemployed of the advanced countries; to the informal sectors of labour descending from “own-account workers”; to the lumpen-proletariat, or what Standing (2011) calls the lumpen-precariat; and finally to those who are completely redundant including the physically and mentally exhausted or as Marx (1867/1976) described them: the “demoralised, the ragged, and those unable to work” (p. 797).

This contemporary global class structure, though grounded in the capital–labour relation-based process of accumulation, manifests as a complex fluidity of stratified and dynamically shifting patterns of more or less well-formed empirical social groupings disaggregated and fragmented across each side of the capital–labour relation. While neo-Weberian analysis is basically consistent with the empirical observation of complex social stratification, this neo-Marxist reading grounds this empirical complexity in a dynamic and explanatory account of the structures and institutions of capitalism.

This class structure can also be presented as an empirical pattern of stratification that reflects the subjective–objective principles of circumstantial/ontological security and precarity/anxiety. That is, the principle of precarity, fundamental to the generic structure of capitalism, and which has been unevenly unleashed and intensified under global neoliberal capitalism, can be deployed as a principle, that is consistent with the deeper structure of capitalist relations, to stratify the labouring population. Standing has usefully re-named the relative surplus population as an internally stratified precariat. However, in addition, he has extended the principle of precarity beyond the peripheral segment of the industrial proletariat segment of the AA; that is, Marx’s Reserve Army, to include the growing peripheral segment of the knowledge worker component of the AA. The point of interest here is that the process of “precarianisation” is occurring here as an effect of the erosion of various secure class positions. Thus, the precariat can be defined as a group characterised by insecurity of work and employment but at the same time this group is more of a structural-based “social bloc” which comprises the peripheral and redundant segments of a range of different secure social groups that form its inverse “social bloc,” which is named here the “securiat.”

Maintaining the neoliberal model of development without hegemony

Hegemony, following Gramsci (1971), is grounded in a hegemonic “social bloc” that links consenting elements of the “subordinate classes”—including all groupings across the labouring population—to the accumulation project of the dominant nucleus of the capitalist class (Gramsci, 1971). This form of class power corresponds with the democratisation of capitalism, which brings the ideological contest to win hearts and minds—the “war of position”—to the centre of political life. However, for Gramsci, the hegemonic “social bloc” is still underpinned by material concessions. Thus, the “securiat,” in contra-distinction to the precariat, actually identifies the circumstantial grounding of subordinate class support. In historical practice, as Gramsci understood, prevailing projects are varied and depart more or less from this ideal-typical account.

During the Fordist era the hegemonic bloc was ideologically cast as an aspiration towards an all-inclusive solidarity. In contrast, the neoliberal project’s conception of solidarity is explicitly exclusionary in that it identifies an “other” that is outside of and in opposition to this solidarity. In Hackell’s (2013) account of an advanced capitalist country (New Zealand), the neoliberal model of exclusive solidarity centres around the distinction between worthy working taxpaying citizens who are contrasted with unworthy citizens who do not work or pay taxes but rather receive benefits. In this model, the “working precariat,” is positioned within the neoliberal social bloc. Further, following standard neoclassical labour economics, the creation of an “actively seeking” flexibly employable workforce across the whole labouring population—that is, the working precariat—is the neoliberal goal. In practice, the working precariat grows as the combined effect of neoliberal-led strategies that erode the securiat, the peasantry, and the “idle precariat” (beneficiaries).

Thus, while the neoliberal strategy gains ideological support from social groups associated with various strata of the capitalist class; it actively erodes its major support base in the securiat. Mainly located amongst elements of the working class and middle class of the economically advanced and politically dominant countries, the neoliberal supporting securiat represents but a small and declining percentage of the world’s population (Robinson, 2004, p. 76). However, the neoliberal strategy, while acting to reduce the securiat and grow the “active precariat,” protects itself by vilifying the “idle precariat.” The “working precariat” is cast as honest, hardworking, frugal, clean-living, resilient, and morally opposed to taking welfare payments; while the “idle precariat” is cast as its alter-ego: lazy, fraudulent, wasteful, drug-addicted, and welfare-dependent. At the same time, this exclusionary view is reinforced by neoliberal promotion of the norms of market competition, which links with a mentality of “competitive scarcity,” the ideology of individual choice, and the mentality of “self-responsibilisation” (Rose, 1992) that feeds the “lie of self-sufficiency” (Layton, 2010).

This argument supports Gill’s (1995) neo-Gramscian position that the neoliberal project is “supreme” but not hegemonic. Until “a coherent opposition emerges” a “non-hegemonic bloc of forces” comprising a coherent global nucleus of capitalist class interests supported by a minority securiat and capitalist sub-groups can dominate “fragmented populations” (p. 400). While growing precarity erodes this narrow social support base and feeds the psychological conditions that encourage resistance and counter-movement, the neoliberal project maintains itself by facilitating disavowal and exclusionary solidarity. Specifically, the neoliberal discourse of the idle precariat legitimates the dismantling of the institutions of inclusive solidarity, while promoting social antagonism as “retaliation” against the contagion of the unworthy other. Further, contra an inclusive conception of solidarity, an exclusive conception can trade off inclusive solidarity and material security. Neoliberal ideology diminishes the institutions and mentality of social responsibility towards the “other” while promoting those of competitive scarcity. In this environment, residual attachment to the neoliberalised welfare state becomes strategically self-interested and solidarity retreats into the narrow exclusionary model of security plus solidarity that is “amoral familism” (Rodger, 2003). Narrowing and exclusive forms of solidarity, more generally, further facilitate a friend–enemy mentality where a reducing “us” confronts an expanding “other” (e.g., immigrants, minorities).

While withdrawal strategies encourage distancing or alienation from the other who is self-responsibilised and abandoned; there is only a short further step to where the other can be cast as the cause of precarity, provoking retaliation and “backlash.” As precarity intensifies, backlash becomes more likely. Especially for those looking to fall from the securiat to the precariat; the transfer of anxiety into blame can be linked with a more aggressive exploitation of social difference. In particular, those on the edge of, or falling from, security into precarity find themselves in desperate competition with each other for increasingly scarce employment; and as a result are likely to become more open to the construction of the “other” as a disavowal.

Securiat One: “At the end of the queue”

This particular grouping comprises the core middle class group of an eroding securiat, including some proficians and elements of the “salariat.” It is characterised by circumstantial security underpinned by high income, scarce professional expertise, and secure employment relations. This grouping is at the “end of the queue” to be thrown into precarity.

Based simply on circumstantial security one can impute to this group the likelihood of a stronger ontological security and, when combined in many cases with a clear positioning within the structure of the broader capitalist class, identification with the political status quo. Because recognition of universally increasing precarity would challenge existing ontological security, one can expect a strong tendency towards simple denial of contemporary capitalism’s increasing precarity. However, as a counter-tendency, members of this grouping are often relatively well informed by currently reported developments in the world. As such, a simple denial mentality is likely to be undermined by reports of increasing precarity. Therefore, this secure middle class grouping is expected to be subject to contradictory tendencies in its political consciousness and psychological dispositions especially as it becomes harder to dismiss increasing evidence of material and social precarity (see Norgaard, 2006).

Beyond simple denial, this grouping has the opportunity to be diverted from the need to directly confront feelings of anxiety by entertaining the escapist fantasies of pleasure contained in the promises of consumerism. Adapting Lacan, the consumerist diversion is ultimately unfulfilling but can be continually reproduced as new objects of pleasure are sought in a cycle of “jouissance” or “perpetual desire” (Stavrakakis, 2000). While this strategy is intrinsically lacking and is challenged by the advance of precarity especially in the forms of poverty and climate change; popular neoliberal discourse can still reconcile lifestyle and the world’s problems. High consumer spending can be rationalised as central to reducing unemployment and poverty. The world’s population in deep precarity is treated in the media as a “distant other to be pitied,” because ultimately the problems are too complex and there is nothing we can do (see Jutel, 2011).

However, such forms of ideologically assisted disavowal may not ultimately quell anxiety, and some may seek individualist therapies to promote ontological security. Can any of these therapies, such as mindfulness or counselling, be linked with the development of a progressive political consciousness? In particular, mindfulness techniques to cope with existential anxiety linked with a growing interest in a western secular Buddhism promote clear “detached” understanding—rather than denial—of the reality of life as suffering, combined with solidarity as “compassion” and caring altruism (Batchelor, 2012). However, such opening of consciousness, though an important psychological step, need not lead towards political engagement, especially in the absence of an explicit counter-hegemonic discourse.

Securiat Two: “On the edge of descent”

Neoliberal-led market regulation of the employment relation, state sector restructuring, globalisation, and now the global economic crisis continue to erode the security and size of the Fordist securiat (industrial working class and salariat in the advanced countries). As friends, colleagues, and relatives fall into the ranks of the precariat, the possibility of one’s own descent implies increasing anxiety filters into the subjective foreground of those left in the securiat. This greater sense of vulnerability and an actually declining circle of solidarity promote further collective “withdrawal.” Broader attitudes of solidarity give way to a more survivalist identification with a narrowing net of security that coincides with the needs of “self” and those like oneself; and this trade-off of broader solidarity and material security is consistent with the neoliberal model of exclusive solidarity. For example, a solidaristic view of the welfare state is re-cast in neoliberal discourse and practice in a way that fractures social solidarity and promotes a narrowing of collective self-interest. Welfare “targeting” “detaches” the middle class groupings from the welfare state; “workfare” addresses the lazy parasitic behaviour of the non-deserving beneficiaries; tax-flattening practice deploys—while the rhetoric rationalises—upwards wealth redistribution. Further, “pro-activation” of the deep motivational structure of capitalism based on insecurity and competition (Neilson, 2012) reinforced by the ideology of competitive individualism further feeds this process of insecurity, anxiety, and withdrawal.

The disturbing paradox is that while the need for solidarity’s altruistic extension increases, neoliberalism’s exclusionary model promotes social division that legitimates “withdrawal.” One can feel reassured about having a lack of concern for and solidarity with the precariat when it is cast as the “other” deserving of its precarious existence. Further, a reassuring counter-construction of the “self” is invited. While decadent characteristics attributed to the precariat account for and responsibilise its imagined fall from grace; the insecure securiat in an explicit contrast can be reassured by and disciplined to maintain its self-perceived moral virtue. Individual members of the insecure securiat can feel reassured that they will not fall into precarity, because “precarianisation” is a problem of individual psychology rather than being a systemic problem which is indiscriminate in its consequences for particular individuals.

This rationalisation of withdrawal by demonising the precariat grounds a “backlash” stage where vilification of the precariat can be cast as cause of rather than victim of increasing precarity. William Robinson (2012), in his examination of the rise of neo-fascist groups in the USA, points to the exploitation of cultural difference to divide the traditional blue-collar workforce, in decline towards precarity since the 1980s, from the immigrant labouring population—the other—that are undercutting them and taking their jobs. Blame is placed on individuals trying to survive in an environment of surplus labour rather than on the structures that created the oversupply of labour in the first place. Here, disavowal takes the form of a misdiagnosis that seeks to blame increased precarity, and release one’s own anxiety, on the other.

Nonetheless, some elements of this group, especially those who have experienced progressive forms of solidarity in the workplace and elsewhere, may be open to an explicitly progressive political agenda. Recognition of the deeper causes of, and the need to reverse general descent into, social and material precarity are its starting points. In such an alternative perspective, withdrawal and backlash are countered by the imaginary of an inclusive solidarity which recognises that one’s own ontological security is dependent on meeting everyone’s needs.

Precariat One: “Moving up”

The aspiration of upward mobility is set against opportunity that increases or decreases depending on income and wealth, security of employment, employment-relevant skill sets, health, and social support. The precariat can be internally stratified according to differences in such opportunity. While global capitalism’s environment of massive labour oversupply reduces individual chances of advancement for all social strata of the precariat (Neilson & Stubbs, 2011), some strata have more—albeit reducing—chance to advance beyond their ranks. Nonetheless, actual outcomes depend on individuals adopting appropriately motivating attitudes. For upwardly aspiring members of the precariat, such attitudes are about belief in the fairness of the structure of upward opportunity combined with belief in one’s own ability and entitlement. When threatened by decreasing structural opportunity in an intensely competitive world, continuing identification with this path to future ontological security implies adopting an attitude of disavowal.

Young educated people with aspirations of achieving secure work and high income—but who are without advantages such as rich parents or social capital—are especially confronted by extremely limited opportunities. An attitude of disavowal is needed to bolster self-belief in the face of the reality of intense competition in which only the very few can be winners. For example, those who win an internship against intense competition face a further round of competition with other interns, but with no or little pay, no guarantee of eventually getting a secure position, and working days filled with low order tasks. Doctoral students, another example, are repeatedly reminded of the massive oversupply of people with doctorates relative to available academic positions, and are exhorted to work harder to get a CV that might lead to securing such a position. In sum, aspiring individuals in this group are subject to the discourse and practice of super-human performance in order that they may have a chance of competing for a position in the “securiat.”

The few who do “win” can see the outcome as validating their belief in self and structure and, especially when combined with the attitudes of “non-caring” “omnipotent self-sufficiency” (Layton, 2010) and a belief in hierarchy, reinforce neoliberal discourse about the other as unworthy and deserving to lose. For those who do lose, the scenarios are different. If the neoliberal attitude of “self-responsibilisation” is maintained, then “coming face to face with failure” can lead to “scathing self-recriminations” (Layton, 2010, p. 314). Alternatively, resentment against a structure of opportunity that is now clearly recognised as unfair is likely. Anger may be directed specifically at those in the securiat who presently hold, and are gate-keepers of, the kinds of positions they seek.

Contrastingly, anger may be channelled into a progressive politics that is based in recognition of the structural crisis underpinning a world of declining opportunity. In the radical perspectives of the past, revolutionary cadre are identified as being drawn from the educated but disaffected. The increasing mismatch between educational credentials and career opportunities implies a growing pool of disaffected educated people who have not been able to find a place in the securiat, and who may be open to radical perspectives that challenge the existing political, economic, and social order.

Precariat Two: “Falling into the abyss”

In the present era of neoliberal-led global capitalism, informal sectors of the labour market and slums have grown throughout the world but especially in undeveloped and newly industrialising countries (Neilson & Stubbs, 2011). These are outward effects of a movement of the subterranean logic of capitalism, which has been unleashed and intensified by neoliberalism’s regulatory project to construct a global market civilisation. In everyday life, this complex multi-dimensional dynamic is experienced—especially for those at the sharp end of its effects—as a collective fate over which one has no control. All they can do is try to survive its effects. For the “informal proletariat” in the city slums, surviving this sea change usually means engaging in precarious employment in return for extremely low payment doing dirty, menial, degrading, and dangerous forms of work (Davis, 2006). This contemporary manifestation of the RSP in the non-developed world has been centrally supplied by the influx of an expropriated peasantry made redundant by their exposure to competition with first world agribusiness (McMichael, 2008; Walker, 2008).

For this peasantry, patterns of continuity central to ontological security are being disrupted by faraway forces. Large numbers of the peasantry, globally, are being thrown into a state of deep uncertainty and precarity as dispossession is followed by movement into the cities to face an alien environment, and holding a skill set that is not simply transferrable into the urban environment of factory labour and informal labour markets. In this world of increasing precarity the human chain moves from expropriated peasants to informal workers to a diversity of even more dramatic forms of human suffering including child labourers, slaves, prostitutes, and war refugees. In general, the circumstances of these desperate strata of the relative surplus population are characterised by extreme material precarity combined with almost non-existent opportunities for upward mobility. The descent of this portion of humanity into a state of deep precarity and anxiety is partly countered for some by informal networks of support and solidarity.

Some who confront such extreme precarity display massive mental strength and altruism as they adapt to their circumstances in order to survive personally while also helping others to survive. One suspects that such individuals display this fortitude because they have built-in constitutional capacities plus particular life experiences and useful forms of knowledge that have helped them to stay calm, aware, and strong even in the face of great suffering. Maybe such people are also sustained by the hope—despite their present reality—that things will change for the better? However, at what subsequent point—when things do not improve or even get worse—does such hope descend into denial as a retreat into fantasies and practices of escape? At what point might this fantasy give way to complete demoralisation, hopelessness, and deep existential anxiety? At what point might it bring forth all kinds of monsters and demons, as people become susceptible to extreme courses of action?