Citizenship in the United Kingdom under Neo-Liberalism - Essay Example

[Supervisor Citizenship in United Kingdom under Neo-liberalism Part One Neo-liberalism is extensively used as a description of the revived form of economic liberalism that became increasingly significant in international economic policy discussions from the 1970s onwards. (Bateman 43) In its leading international use, neoliberalism refers to a political-economic philosophy that de-emphasizes or discards government intervention in the domestic economy. It focuses on free-market methods, fewer limitations on business operations, and property rights. In foreign policy, neoliberalism gives special treatment tot the opening of foreign markets by political means, by means of economic pressure, diplomacy, and/or military intervention. Opening of markets refers to free trade and an international division of labor (Bateman 48). Neoliberalism usually favours multilateral political force through international organizations or treaty devices such as the WTO and World Bank. It promotes plummeting the role of national governments to a minimum. Neoliberalism favors laissez-faire over direct government intervention (such as Keynesianism), and measures achievement in overall economic gain. To improve corporate efficiency, it strives to reject or mitigate labor policies such as lowest wage, and collective bargaining rights. (Faulks, pp 34-37) Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy rather than a broader political ideology. The swing away from government action in the 1970s led to the prologue of this term, which refers to a program of dipping trade barriers and internal market restrictions, while using government power to enforce opening of foreign markets. This is strongly different by economic liberals, who favor a free market and free trade. Neoliberalism accepts a positive degree of government involvement in the domestic economy, mainly a central bank with the power to print fiat money. It also favors an interventionist military (Cate 73). While neoliberalism is sometimes described as overlapping with Thatcherism, economists as varied as Joseph Stiglitz and Milton Friedman have been described - by others - as "neoliberal". This economic agenda is not essentially combined with a liberal agenda in politics: neoliberals often do not pledge to individual liberty on moral issues or in sexual mores. An extreme example was the Pinochet regime in Chile, but some also categorise Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even Tony Blair and Gerhard Schrder as being neo-liberal. It should be distinguished that, in the 1990s in the UK, a lot of social democratic parties adopted 'neoliberal' economic policies such as privatization of industry and open markets, much to the disappointment of many of their own voters. This has led these parties to become de facto neoliberal, and has often resulted in a radical loss of popular support. For instance, critics to the left of the German Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party blame them of pursuing neoliberal policies by refusing to renationalise industry. As a result of this, much support for these parties has been gone astray to the Christian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democrats, correspondingly. (Cate 77) Sometimes 'Neoliberalism' is use as a catch-all term for the anti-socialist response which sweep through some countries during the period between the 70s and 90s. 'Neoliberalism' in the form of Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet claimed to move from a bureacratic welfare-based society in the direction of a meritocracy acting in the interests of business. In actuality, these governments cut financial support for education and taxed income more deeply than wealth, which augmented the influence of big business and the upper class. Some conservatives perceive themselves as the true inheritors of classical liberalism. Jonah Goldberg of National Review argues that "most conservatives are nearer to classical liberals than a lot of Reason-libertarians" because conservatives want to protect some institutions that they see as wanted for liberty (Faulks, pp 45-48). Further confusing the classification of liberalism and conservatism is that a few conservatives claim liberal values as their own. Since the 1980s, the UK neoliberal hateful has developed strategies for defeating, disorganizing and crumbling the working class. Labour has been flexibilised and casualised to make stronger its exploitation; this 'flexploitation' imposes an anxiety, indignity and work discipline upon us all. Unemployed people have been requisite to perform work-like activities in order to receive state benefits. Recently the neoliberal unpleasantness has been challenged by developing alliances of sacked workers, direct-action environmentalists, anti-workfare activists, etc.; new collectivities recompose class rivalry beyond waged-labour. (Giddens, pp 6-8) Such forces have the potential to counterpoise substitute ways of life, yet they remain largely disjointed and vulnerable to attack by the New Labour government, which is promoting 'labour market flexibility' at the national and European levels. Political thoughts will be needed to build a confrontation which encompasses many worlds, many futures. Part Two Britain's Further Education (FE) colleges have been more and more important for many social groups: youthful people who recently dropped out of school, adults wanting to recommence their education, refugees, etc.. Since spring 1997, several FE colleges around London have had strikes. Staff and students have been differing new management plans which would further casualise, decrease, denigrate and discipline the teaching staff, as well as degrade the quality of education. For example, the running plans would get rid of most Senior Lecturers, who generally had long teaching experience and high-quality working relations with part-time teachers; these Lecturers would be replaced by full-time managers. The plans would also end contracts for part-time staff and replace some posts through an employment agency, the Educational Lecturing Services (ELS). Under the ELS regime, part-time staff would turn out to be officially 'self-employed', suffer a pay cut and lose their civil liberties under employment-protection laws -- as a major motive for the plan. The management plans had quite a few motives. The government was yearly reducing the payment per student to the college. This gradual decrease put colleges under pressure to increase student numbers and/or reduce staff, simply in order to uphold their previous income. Perhaps part-time teachers could be more readily manipulate by managers than by Senior Lecturers. Another reason was a court ruling which mandated equal terms and situation for part-time staff. As a management reply, the ELS agency 'is a racket intended to enable employers to get round [evade] their obligation over pension and idleness rights', according to the teachers' union. In some cases, directorships partly cover between the college and agency, so fees paid by the college would be gained by an additional branch of the same 'business'. The teachers' strike raised pressure for 'no compulsory redundancies', no 'compelled volunteers', and for a solitary [uniform] contract for all staff. The lecturers' strikes gained support from students, who recognized that the management plans in danger their own educational future. Prior to these strikes, some classes had no teacher, mainly because the part-time staff were being casualised and/or made redundant. By default, some of their everyday jobs fell to full-time lecturers. Given all these obstacle, students have had to work even harder to do their courses, get the qualifications and become a waged-labourer. To follow their demands, strike leaders emphasised a practical disagreement: The Blair government had undertaken to expand FE colleges as a key site for its 'welfare-to-work' programme; this would give vocational training for unemployed people and so help 'trainees' to improve their skills, or at least their credentials. Yet the new management plans would reduce staff numbers and quality, thus deflating the government's programme. Although the government plans and FE managing plans may well be not in agreement, they have a more basic consistency rooted in the funding system. Recently FE colleges have become more needy upon 'payment by results' -- i.e. financially dependent upon the numbers of ex-trainees who then find jobs. As their funding becomes less secure, colleges are driven to casualise their staff. Perversely, then, casualisation complement the tendency to marketise, regulate and vocationalise the FE curriculum. (Bateman 17) Despite a developing alliance, the various resistances remain disjointed, lacking a common language to express their aspiration or to understand their differences. In resisting the current neoliberal unpleasant, unity so far remains fragile. What are the forecast for linking resistances in Britain As other European states adopt flexibilisation strategies, what relevance has the UK experience How can a substantive unity include different aspirations, contain many worlds, and thus build a substitute future As describe above, various activists have begun to support each others' struggles -- not just as a formal 'solidarity', but also as a social network and joint identification. (Creek, pp 3-4) Having been marginalised from secure 'employment', wreckage of the working class recompose themselves into networks of confrontation. Having confronted the indignity of casualised waged-labour, they create solidaristic activities outside that sphere. At the same time, they support workers who insist reinstatement on dignified terms, though the latter prospect remains elusive. Such resistances have taken people into developing alliances, and perhaps beyond their preceding political-economic identities. Unreservedly, such developments disagree with the ideology of Labourist institutions, which have idealized an intrinsic 'dignity of labour' (or even a moral obligation to work). In organizing solidarity activities, however, many Leftists endorse their fantasy of what the Old Labour Party and trade unions should have been. Also, they direct all hope at the strikers gaining reinstatement, as if this were the only valuable outcome. This tunnel vision misses opportunities to generalize the confrontation next to flexploitation and to strengthen the sacked workers themselves. The confrontation deploys a oratory of credentials, which has a double-edged role. Understandably, as management seeks to design customary skills out of the labour process, sacked workers seek to re-asssert the communal social value of their former work. However, the 'professional/skill' rhetoric theoretically divides up the workforce into its proprietary credentials, and may leave us vulnerable to management difficulty that we obtain yet more official qualifications. Ironically, sacked workers (and some supporters) still insist 'jobs' or 'the right to work', in a period when 'work' is being turned into a humiliating, boundless obligation for us all. Now everyone has too much work, e.g. during overtime, workfare schemes, courses to obtain identification, etc. Meanwhile sacked workers have no biased language to express the dignified political 'work' which they are previously doing. For their part, many conservationist and anti-workfare activists tend to announce, "first, economic citizenship is elaborated in contradistinction to social rights and entitlements; economic and social rights are conceptualized as belonging in separate boxes. However, in European welfare states, the work/welfare relationship has always been central to the development of social policies, and it is more a question of unpacking the way this relationship has been reformulated over time." (Lewis, 176-185) Works Cited Bateman, Bradley W., and John B. Davis, eds. Keynes and Philosophy: Essays on the Origins of Keynes's Thought. Aldershot, England, and Brookfield, Vt.: Edward Elgar, 1991. Bateman, Bradley. Keynes' Uncertain Revolution, Ann Arbor, MI: Oxford University Press, 1996. Cate, Thomas; Johnson L. E. "Key Elements of the Economics of Keynes and of His Revolution," in Thomas Cate, ed., an Encyclopedia of Keynesian Economics, Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar, 1997. Crick, B. (1998), Citizenship and the Teaching of Democracy in Schools, DfEE, London. Faulks Keith, Citizenship in modern Britain, Edinburgh University Press, 1998. Giddens, A. (1998), The Third Way, Polity Press, London. Lewis, Jane (Jane E.) "Economic Citizenship: A Comment" Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2003, pp. 176-185 Oxford University Press Read More