European Call for a Plural Citizenship and Economy
Eds
Recently, a number of French intellectuals endorsed an appeal urging Europeans to address seriously the negative consequences on social life of neoliberal economic trends. The following is...
...And we all agree, albeit with varying emphases, that any democratic economic and social policy seeking to mend the social fabric must explore three interdependent matters: (1) Reduce work-time, share employment The average work-week must be shortened...
...the effort was organized by La Revue du MAUSS and Transversales in Paris...
...An arsenal of measures must be deployed toward these ends...
...This entails initiatives for public financing of activities that have a high degree of social utility but that cannot develop through market logic...
...All these measures are immediately realizable— whether from a financial standpoint or a technical, economic, or moral one—provided that they are recognized as urgent priorities...
...Among these are determining what measure of work time should provide entitlement to a continuing income...
...SUMMER • 1997...
...We believe that a novel policy must strengthen democracy, rather than sacrificing it in the name of a technocratic or economic efficiency that usually proves wholly imaginary...
...audience...
...Neither the "free-market" approach nor the panoply of Keynesian stimulus measures will overcome unemployment or heal the social fractures that are widening everywhere if we do not recognize that Europe has entered a different era from the one that assured its prosperity up to now...
...A first conclusion is inescapable: the policies of the past twenty years, which pinned their hopes on a return to a level of growth sufficient to eliminate unemployment, have failed...
...Alongside traditional jobs in the market sector or in public service, we must promote a third economic sector—what many French authors classify as the "solidaristic economy" [and Americans call the "non-profit sector"—Eds...
...Eris...
...We therefore call for the broadest possible debate throughout the European community concerning the ideas presented here...
...In any case, it is essential to oppose mandatory work schemes (like workfare), which can only take us back to the nineteenth century, turning society's outcasts into scapegoats...
...The prohibition against combining the minimum income with other sources of income prevented them from seeking a job and keeps them trapped in unemployment...
...Some are very hesitant about distributing income without work being required in return...
...Finally, how much comes from the timidity of our economic policies and the debt and inflation limits imposed by the Maastricht Treaty...
...Moreover, they should be allowed to combine this minimum income with other resources, although the latter may be taxed...
...By ensuring conditions in which each person can engage voluntarily in activities that contribute to the common good, renewed forms of direct democracy can help complete and revivify representative democracy...
...There is a fear that an unconditional, meanstested minimum income will permit governments to take no further interest in the least advantaged, allotting them a pittance for their survival...
...The following is an abridged version of their "Call," translated and edited for a U.S...
...the introduction, where feasible, 26 • DISSENT European Call of a four-day work week...
...This means reflecting on how to achieve plural forms of economy and democracy, as well as sustainable development...
...How much is due to globalization...
...Past experiments in minimum incomes .. . have been unable to link adequately obligations, contracts, and volunteer work . . . and thereby locked beneficiaries into short-term perspectives...
...How can we go beyond current approaches to income maintenance...
...And provided that their close interdependence is grasped...
...It is also necessary to redistribute work—and the privileges of citizenship that go along with it—across the active population...
...This danger should not be underestimated, but it should be resisted by affirming that the minimum income is meaningful only if coupled with the two preceding measures [redistribution of salaried employment and a solidaristic economy—Eds...
...In any event, it is important to oppose the coercive imposition of temporary or part-time work as well as the proliferation of intermediate statuses between salaried work and subsidized makework that fragment the working population...
...Signers included Alain Caille, Andre Gorz, and Alain Lipietz, among others...
...How much is due to the spread of information technologies, whose productivity gains "free" workers from one sector while preventing them from shifting into another...
...3) Minimum solidarity incomes without stigma Finally, we insist that it is disgraceful when some members of a society are compelled to survive beneath a minimally decent material level...
...Many factors must obviously be considered in understanding the causes of the mass unemployment plaguing Europe...
...and the encouragement of freely chosen part-time work...
...2) A plural, solidaristic economy We need to encourage the sort of initiatives, now cropping up all over, that blur established boundaries between economy and society...
...It is on this question that the signers of this appeal diverge the most...
...Yet whatever our long-term differences, all of us concur that in the short run, simple good sense and humanity require an unconditional minimum income for every person who lacks the most basic resources— even if efforts at their social reintegration are not successful...
...Or to financial speculation...
...Among the signers of this appeal there are divergent opinions on all these points...
...But we are united in the conviction that no traditional economic policy can resolve the crisis of work and the exhaustion of the wage society...
...The continuing growth of wealth, because it is distributed more and more unequally, is accompanied by social divisions that are becoming intolerable...
...veryone sees it: all over Europe, even where the economy is not faring badly, society is falling apart...
...No serious moral, economic, or financial obstacle prevents us from taking such measures...
...The goal is to promote hybrid forms that combine the private and public economies with the third sector...
...The signers of this appeal—economists, sociologists, journalists, philosophers, and activists— believe that it is urgent to subordinate their differences in order to encourage a debate about how to stimulate innovative economic and social policies...
...Others believe that a new notion of citizenship requires an unconditional minimum income...
...The social contract of the last fifty years, based on full employment and the welfare state, no longer holds our societies together...
Vol. 44 • July 1997 • No. 3
