Conclusion

Abstract

The historic power of the workers’ movement, inspired by Marx, was to “name” its shared condition of existence, the substrate of the multitude of injustices of which wage-earners, principally, were victims: Exploitation. The strength of this movement, which since the 19th century has made it possible to achieve so much in the social sphere, was precisely that it was fuelled by individuals driven by their shared experience to unite with a shared voice, beyond their neighbourhoods or their factories. Today, recognising shared reasons to struggle is not so simple in an extremely heterogeneous wage-earning society, which extends from the best-protected to the most precarious and includes such a wide range of incomes. It is tempting to leave real political power in the hands of (capitalist) institutions in order to focus wholly on the modest and ordinary-but often more immediately effective-politics of the nearby. But this does not mean that the new global precariat (Standing) is not active. It is changing the world locally, and is willing to be brought together under a new common imaginary-one that unites workers’ and contemporary minorities’ social movements.