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ghosts
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download the expertenzeitung [in german] as a pdf file

Ghosts

Nobody believes in ghosts anymore. Unfortunately, because suddenly there seems to be a new ghost around - the lack of highly qualified employees that started off a new debate on migration. The ghost haunting Europe is the ghost of expertism.

Last summer Antonio Vitorino, the EU-commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs himself, declared that Europe had lost the "zero-immigration-battle". At least 500.000 illegal immigrants who manage to reach Europe every year have proved the idea of fortress Europe wrong. Vitorino suggested: If we cannot stop it, we should at least control it. The ghost of the experts fitted perfectly into a situation in which the idea of the "overcrowded boat" could not be held up anymore. Still, it seems as if nobody really can tell who exactly these experts are to be. However, there seems to be no problem defining who will benefit from them and who will bite the dust. Some say the notion of experts stands for useful migrants. While others claim that these experts will be responsible for the lowering of wages. Experts will back up the fragile pension-system or they will occupy the well-paid jobs reserved for the youth. There is confusion and even a commission of "experts" cannot get things clear(er).

What is that - an expert?

The government of Germany, for example, believes that somebody is an expert if s/he will earn more than 100.000 DM a year or at least has got a university degree. Experts cannot help but laugh at such a narrow definition: to become an expert is not difficult at all. In Hyderabad people with no experience at all become trained computer-experts within a few weeks. The most important quality for head hunter-agencies and heads of staff is the "hunger in their eyes" (their unconditional motivation to work for the company). In the United States as well as in Europe countless people doing low -paid work in the service sector teach themselves or each other how to programm computers. It is undisputed: Nowadays experts mainly work in sectors that foremost trade in information and communication. They work in strategical positions that can be characterised by the fact that the exchange-value of the goods they produce becomes increasingly irrelevant while at the same time it is impossible to tell the amount of time that has to be spent on it. This results in unbelievable differences in pay for at times identical jobs. Often it is one and the same company that is promoting precarious working conditions on the one hand while at the same time they are searching for experts. Experts who self-confidently deal with technologies, experts who can work on their own, experts who are able and willing to share their expertise and knowledge.

Forget about technology

Experts advise: "Forget about technology! We ourselves are the future!" Experts are people who have made a wide various experiences within one field. To experience is to see and understand changes in different contexts. These experiences are more than just the sum of all the situations. It is rather the ability to adapt to and to handle new situations. Therefore being an expert first and foremost means to be willing to get involved into social conflicts. Back in the 70s people from the Italian radical Left already anticipated that ordinary workers as well as employees would have to develop extraordinary communication skills and intellectual abilities in order to keep up with the demands and tasks they would have to face at work and in every day life. This represents a dramatic transformation of the notion of work itself, the way work is ganised and of the producers' subjectivities. Eventually, it is reasonable to conclude that the crisis resulting from advances in technology and the fact of migration will not stop at the Welfare, Nation or What-so-ever-State, but will go straight to the very basic capitalist concept of wage labour. In other words, this would be a crisis of labour as a commodity. It might sound like an exaggeration: Every single human being is an expert. But as it gets increasingly hard to measure and calculate the value of a certain job while at the same time factors like intuition, creativity and empathy (none of them can really be planned, forced or generalised) get increasingly important for the productivity, it is not at all an exaggeration. Every single human being specialises during his or her lifetime and the resulting variety of specific experiences determines the prosperity and productivity of the social reality.

Freedom of Movement - Worldwide

The thing that is useful is therefore good; and useful, according to classical utilitarism, is what make as many people as possible as happy as possible. Although it is actually impossible to restrict it only certain people are able to enjoy the freedom of movement at the moment. The right of freedom of movement is nothing but the basic human right to decide for oneself where to live and how to live. This right has to be fought for and people everywhere are taking their right in their hands without having to justify for it. Experts are needed everywhere and nobody can restrict their right to settle wherever they think it is appropriate. It makes no sense to try to restrict their usefulness or to try to set up a narrow definition of when they are useful. Neither in time nor in space. Everybody is an expert, last but not least, is a global experiment. It aims at all productive activities and appreciates their diversity and uniqueness - regardless of whether they fit inshort-term-exploitation-plans under the control of dull wage labour or not.

Summer 2001