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Post-Wage Politics and the Rise of Community Capitalism

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Post-Wage Politics and the Rise of Community Capitalism WES0010.1177/0950017018755663Work, employment and societyvan Dyk 755663research-article2018 Article Work, Employment and Society 2018, Vol. 32(3) 528 –545 Post-Wage Politics and © The Author(s) 2018 Reprints and permissions: the Rise of Community sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018755663DOI: 10.1177/0950017018755663 Capitalism journals.sagepub.com/home/wes Silke van Dyk Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany Abstract This article discusses new patterns of precariarization and informalization beyond waged labour. Against a backdrop of multiple social changes, there is a new era of social reproduction based on the interplay between a politics of post-waged work and a politics of community, involving activities outside the realms of market, state and family. Whereas the implications of family- based care work have long been highlighted, the community-based political economy of the ‘post- wage regime’ has yet to be analysed. Taking Germany as an example, the article describes how the state is actively involved in promoting and exploiting post-waged work. At the same time, community projects and grassroots activities contribute to the social reproduction of livelihoods, often becoming an active part of the precarious post-wage regime. The question is raised whether or not these interweaving developments herald a new era of community capitalism. Keywords community, conviviality, post-wage politics, precarity, resistance, social reproduction, volunteering Introduction Much has been written about precarious work and job insecurity, with particular atten- tion being paid to the deregulation of waged labour. This article shifts the focus beyond precarious paid employment to look at the governance and practice of non-waged work that contributes to maintaining the public infrastructure and securing livelihoods. There is currently a growing interest in and promotion of voluntary work, neighbourly help, sharing economies, active ageing, multi-generational co-housing projects as caring com- munities, prosumer activities and open-source projects. The argument put forward is Corresponding author: Silke van Dyk, Institute of Sociology, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, Carl-Zeiß-Straße 2, 07743 Jena, Germany. Email: [email protected] van Dyk 529 that, although these activities are highly heterogeneous and seemingly unconnected, they are nonetheless pillars of a new post-waged work regime that ‘tops up’ and in some cases even replaces paid employment. This regime is fuelled by a new politics of community that offers values such as conviviality and voluntariness rather than monetary value in the form of wages. The prevailing view is that community spirit and voluntary activity are noble pursuits; meanwhile, the potential precariousness and the informality of these activities is quietly ignored – as is their systemic role in late modern capitalism. To be sure, neither the importance of non-waged work nor the recourse to community- based ideas is entirely new. However, major socio-economic changes are bringing about a qualitatively new form of precarious post-wage regime. Taking up the Marxist-feminist argument that ‘capital’s lifeblood is unpaid work’, Dowling and Harvie (2014: 882) argue that we are witnessing ‘the attempt to extend the realm of unpaid work that can be appropriated’ (Dowling and Harvie, 2014: 882); yet this realm is itself being restructured by social, technological and demographic forces. Whereas (women’s) care work has increasingly come under critical scrutiny as an unwaged social resource (Daly and Lewis, 2000; Federici, 2012), the political economy of the post-waged work regime beyond private households has yet to be analysed. To explore these issues, this article offers a conceptual framework that brings together apparently unconnected phenomena. It posits the idea that the growing importance of post-waged work is fuelled by the bewildering multiplicity of activities involved and that the common factor underlying these activities is a new politics of community. Contrary to popular debates about the decline of wage labour and the rise of postcapitalism (Mason, 2015; Rifkin, 2014), it is argued that the post-wage regime does not transcend capitalism but instead provides a new basis for value extraction, appropriation and exploitation. Is there a new era of community capitalism on the horizon?1 The argument is developed in several stages.2 First, the socio-economic processes of transformation mentioned above are outlined briefly in order to indicate how they con- tribute to the post-wage regime. This is followed, second, by some general remarks on the appeal of the community concept. Third, the concept of post-waged work is clarified and explicated using examples of post-wage policies from the German context. Fourth, the diverse roots of the nascent post-wage regime are discussed: alongside a state-led politics of post-waged work, there is also a growing grassroots post-wage movement ‘from below’. The article argues that the affirmation of community connects the diverse actors with one another and might be a reason why the problematic implications of post- waged work tend to be overlooked. The article concludes by considering whether com- munity capitalism might develop into a future hegemonic project. Social transformations leading to the rise of post-wage politics Without a doubt, fundamental changes to the welfare state in most industrialized coun- tries are a key to understanding the growing importance of post-waged work. Although country-specific in practice, these changes generally involve a ‘decentralization of social policy’ (Möhle, 2001: 271), a ‘return of social insecurity’ (Castel, 2009: 21) and an ‘imperative to participate’ (Bröckling, 2005: 22). The existence of a social ‘safety net’ 530 Work, Employment and Society 32(3) based on citizens’ rights and a ‘no questions asked’ approach is no longer taken for granted. There has been a transition from state-led provision to greater self-reliance and from collective to individual risk management. The politics of activation and retrench- ment is accompanied by an underfunding of public social infrastructure (Gornig et al., 2015: 1023) along with a state-led deregulation of labour relations, resulting in the rise of precarious work (Castel and Dörre, 2009). There is a wealth of literature on welfare state change based on activation and auster- ity that links these shifts to the revival of informal, community-building mutual support and voluntary work as a gap filler (e.g. Lessenich, 2008; Milligan and Conradson, 2011; Muehlebach, 2012). However, the heterogeneity of post-waged work is rarely addressed, and many authors identify welfare state retrenchment as the driving force behind com- munity governance. Current social transformations are far more multi-layered than this suggests, though. For one thing, fundamental changes are underway in gender relations, with more and more women entering the labour market. As a result, the amount of time available to them to serve as a full-time, unpaid ‘secret resource of social policy’ (Beck- Gernsheim, 1991: 66, author’s translation) is significantly reduced; as empirical research shows, men do not step in to fill the gap (Koppetsch and Speck, 2015). However, the true extent of the crisis of social reproduction (Jürgens, 2010) only comes to light if demographic changes are addressed concurrently. Of course, the wide- spread notion of an ‘old age crisis’ (World Bank, 1994) is problematic, since it suggests a naturalized crisis rooted in old age itself and not in the socio-economic conditions of the ageing society. However, in Germany, for example, about 3.4 million elderly people are dependent on care while there is an estimated shortfall of 500,000 professional care workers (Haubner, 2017; Prognos, 2012). Even considering such dramatic changes, the picture of the emerging post-wage regime is still not complete: current post-wage prac- tices are further fuelled by technological change, first and foremost by digitization and new virtual networks and communities. The ‘internet of things’ (Rifkin, 2014) increas- ingly connects everything and everyone, relying on diverse forms of non-waged activi- ties. Users establish self-help and counselling networks, they act as prosumers and share information to improve goods and services, they offer music, cars and flats on internet platforms, and they share knowledge. Although there is disagreement over which of these activities should count as labour and which as social interaction (Terranova, 2000), Srnicek convincingly identifies data as the raw material of the digitized economy ‘and the activities of users [as] the natural source of this raw material’ (Srnicek, 2017: 40, emphasis in original).3 Finally, and importantly, the economic crises from 2008 onwards are proving to be a threat to the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism, creating a new context for the political economy of post-waged work and community politics. These multiple crises, accompa- nied by ‘the alchemy of austerity’ (Clarke and Newman, 2012: 299), have aggravated social inequalities and divisions. Even though Crouch (2011) rightly identified ‘the strange non-death of neoliberalism’ immediately after the crisis erupted and even though there is ample evidence of the ongoing influence of neoliberal ideas and politics (Bischoff and Steinitz, 2016: 67f.; Schmidt and Thatcher, 2013), the system’s hegemony has come to be contested. Social protests around the world (Sitrin
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