Historical Significance of Labor’s Increased Precariousness in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Spain

• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Author: Xabier Arrizabalo,Lucía Vicent,Patricia Pinto
• Date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12266

Historical Significance of Labor’s Increased

Precariousness in Germany, the United

Kingdom, and Spain

By Xabier arrizabalo*, Patricia Pinto† and lucía Vicent‡

abstract. This article addresses the historical significance of the

increasing precariousness of labor, even in the most advanced

economies. Given the sterility of the mainstream approach, based on

methodological individualism, we start from a Marxist critique of

political economy, focusing on the laws that govern the process of

capitalist accumulation and its contradictions. Within the framework

of these laws, we analyze the tendency of labor exploitation to

increase in a capitalist economy, linked to the exigencies of

profitability due to the increasing difficulties of the valorization of

capital. The precariousness of labor is studied around some of the

main forms it adopts in three European economies: mini-jobs in

Germany, “zero-hours contracts” in the United Kingdom, and false

self-employment, together with internship and training contracts, in

American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Janua ry 2019).

DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 66

© 2019 American Journa l of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) since 1993. Director of the

Instituto Marxista de Economía (IME). Co-Director of Research Group in Political

Economy Capitalism and Uneven Development. Director of Continuous Training Degree

Critical Analysis of Capitalism: Marxist Method and His Application to the Research of

Current Global Economy (UCM). Author of Capitalism and World Economy and numer-

ous other books and articles. Participant in many international congresses. Supervisor

of 15 doctoral theses. PhD in economics. Other degrees in planning, public policy, and

development and in sociology. Email: xam@ccee.ucm.es

†Researcher at the Instituto Marxista de Economía (IME), focused on the analysis of

the labor market, working conditions, and their implications of all kinds. Holds degree

in economics (University of Salamanca), a Master’s degree in business administration

(ESIC). Diploma in Critical Analysis of Capitalism: the Marxist Method and its Application

to the Study of the Current World Economy (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).

Email: papinto@ucm.es

‡Researcher at the Instituto Complutense de Estudios Internacionales (ICEI) (Spain)

since 2012 and member of the research group Charles Babbage in Social Sciences of

Work (Complutense University of Madrid). PhD in economics, Complutense University

of Madrid. Fields of research: analysis of the labor market, gender inequalities, and the

study of capitalist dynamics in European economies. Email: lvicent@ucm.es

256 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Spain. Based on theoretical and empirical analysis, several conclusions

are proposed to understand the extension and deepening of labor

precariousness, built on the notions of overexploitation and

destruction of productive forces, linked to current demands of

capitalist accumulation.

Introduct ion

Job insecurity is spreading and deepening. There are now more than

7 million mini-jobs in Germany, with salaries that do not allow a

decent life, do not incorporate any social security or unemployment

benefits, and even cause an increase in the risk of poverty. Nearly a

million workers in the United Kingdom operate under “zero-hours

contracts,” which do not guarantee any working hours or salary but

may demand exclusivity. The regulatory framework of those contracts

is characterized by a lack of definition, which adds an element of

uncertainty and instability—or precariousness. In Spain, hundreds of

thousands of employees without a contract are fraudulently forced to

register as self-employed workers. Therefore, they do not have labor

rights, and they are also subject to systematic abuses with training and

internship contracts. These are just some of the multiple forms of job

precariousness present in Europe nowadays, the region identified as a

world benchmark due to its level of development.

In a capitalist society, people who lack the means of production

sufficient to obtain a livelihood from that source have, in principle,

only one way of surviving. They must sell their labor power, since the

payment received for it gives them the ability to purchase the nec-

essary goods for their existence. The price of that sale, which is the

salary, must allow for the reproduction of labor power—the power

that the worker embodies. In other words, “the following day” the

worker should be able to go to work. However, precariousness im-

plies such low wages that even the most basic reproduction of labor

power is in question. There are also workers without any salary under

the guise of supposed training or the prestige associated with certain

companies. The working poor are increasing, which means those who

are poor not as a result of being excluded from work, but in spite of

their status as employees. Added to this, the data show more than 190

257Historical Significance of Labor’s Increased Precariousness

million people unemployed in the global economy (ILO 2018). There

is a real devastation in the labor market that continues to spread and

that especially affects the most vulnerable workers (such as young

people, for whom it is increasingly difficult to build an independent

life).

How can we explain this fact, which is global, and is particularly

prevalent in the most historically developed economies? Is it merely

a matter of degree, or does it have a qualitative dimension different

from “traditional” labor exploitation? Is it a purely circumstantial phe-

nomenon, associated with the ups and downs of the pace of accu-

mulation in the short term, or does it have deeper roots related to the

increasingly acute contradictions of the world capitalist economy? Do

these aggravated forms of exploitation entail the establishment of a

new social class different from the working class, with its correspond-

ing political implications?

Mainstream economic analysis, which corresponds to the “neo-

classical synthesis” based on methodological individualism, claims

that society is a mere sum of individuals. Consequently, precarious-

ness is identified as the aggregate of a series of particular circum-

stances, thus denying any possible social explanation. Even proposed

solutions are at the individual level. Appeals to training (“human cap-

ital”) ignore the fact that training does not prevent precariousness.

In effect, neoclassical analysis does not fit the evidence, revealing

its analytical sterility. We use a method that shows how salaries are

determined socially, not technically, according to the laws that gov-

ern capitalist accumulation. This is the only way to understand why

wages are going down, particularly through the multiple forms of

job precariousness. Certainly, this is in the first instance a mechanism

for the salary reduction that profitability demands. But how far can

this reduction go? If the remuneration received by a worker does

not allow his or her own reproduction, we would no longer simply

talk about exploitation, but of overexploitation. Therefore, it would

be something more than a mere quantitative issue. The qualitative

difference raises the need to ask about its historical significance in

the 21st century.

We deal here with these questions within the institutional frame-

work of the European Union, which is constituted to support the