Enterprises are adopting a strategy of flexible response on two levels simultaneously: the firm's stable core of employees must be functionally flexi… - André Gorz

A system of co-operation between workers and management cannot survive, therefore, unless management effectively guarantees its employees job security, by which I mean employment for life. It is on this condition alone that there can be social integration on the Japanese model within the enterprise. Yet large Japanese firms are only able to guarantee their employees jobs for life by out the manufacturing and services which they, as , have no vital interest in undertaking themselves, to a vast network of satellite companies. These subcontracting enterprises cushion the parent company from fluctuations in economic conditions: they employ and dismiss their workers according to changes in demand, and the fact that their employees often have no union or whatsoever means this can be accomplished with great speed. Job security in the parent companies is matched by unstable employment and social insecurity throughout the rest of the economy. Employment for life and are privileges reserved for an elite (about 25 per cent of Japanese employees in 1987, a figure which is decreasing markedly as older workers are encouraged to retire early and are not replaced). They are only compatible with economic rationality within the framework of a dual society. This social division (or 'dualization') has been the dominant characteristic of all the industrialized societies since the mid seventies.

The image of the enterprise as a place where employees can achieve personal fulfilment is therefore an essentially ideological invention. It conceals the real transformations that have taken place, namely that enterprises are replacing labour by machines, producing more and better with a decreasing percentage of the workforce previously employed, and offering privileges to a chosen elite of workers, which are accompanied by unemployment, precarious employment, de-skilling and lack of job security for the majority. The advance of technology has thus resulted in the segmentation and disintegration of the working class. An elite has been won over to collaboration with capital in the name of work ethic; the great mass of workers have become marginalized or lost their job security and serve as a reserve army for industry which wishes to be able to adjust its workforce rapidly according to fluctuations in demand.

The ideology of work and the ethics of effort therefore become cover for ultra-competitive egoism and careerism: the best succeed, the others have only themselves to blame; hard work should be encouraged and rewarded, which therefore means we should not subsidize the unemployed, the poor and all the other 'layabouts'. This ideology (which in Europe finds its most overt expression in Thatcherism) is strictly rational, as far as capitalism is concerned: the aim to motivate a workforce which cannot easily be replaced (for the moment, at least) and control it ideologically for want of a means of controlling it physically. In order to do this, it must preserve the work-force's adherence to the work ethic, destroy the relations of solidarity that could bind it to the less fortunate, and persuade it that by doing as much work as possible it will best serve the collective interest as well as its own private interests. It will thus be necessary to conceal the fact that. there is an increasing structural glut of workers and an increasing structural shortage of secure, full-time jobs; in short, that the economy no longer needs everyone to work - and will do so less and less. And that; as a consequence, the 'society of work' is obsolete: work can no longer serve as the basis for social integration. But, to conceal these facts it is necessary to find alternative explanations for the rise in unemployment" and the decrease in job security. It will thus be asserted that casual labourers and the unemployed are not serious about looking for work; do not possess adequate skills, are encouraged to be idle by over~ generous dole payments and so on. And, it will be added, these people are all paid far too much for the little they are able to do, with the result that the economy, which is groaning under the weight of these excessive burdens, is no longer buoyant enough to create a growing number of jobs. And the conclusion will be reached that, 'To end unemployment, we have to work more.'