Under the current regime, the worker can be encouraged to become an entrepreneur, the employee to become a manager. Mobility between these positions is possible under conditions linked to the social mobility schemes included in the scheme. In Quebec, changing position in the social management relationship assumes that the person has appropriate symbolic resources in the form of social and cultural capital. Education opens this possibility.
The education system, leading to techniques and professions distributes such resources, which are capable of being converted into position in the field of work. The shift in the social relations of the work field can be encouraged and achieved. It is more difficult to transform a social relationship, in other words to change the hierarchical framework in which equalities and inequalities play out between people who occupy different positions.
Transforming the social work relationship means granting a greater share of the company’s profit to the people who work there, limiting the exercise of the authority of managers and owners, establishing recourse against abusive treatment of employees and other things too, to promote equality and dignity in work relationships. In some cases, parity between positions is achieved and democracy is established in the organization. A path to modernization is thus marked out.
Let’s move on to the field of habitability. Rights define property (the sources of which are ancient in the West) and make it a sort of private preserve of the owner. Property thus conceived combines a right to the thing (for example a house or dwelling) and a right to non-interference by others. For the owner, the property is his. This property is designed on the basis of a denial of the rights that others might assert over this property.
Imbalance
Under this regime, the social relationship between owner and tenant tends to freeze into an imbalance which favors the owner. The arrangement of this relationship is preserved by promoting inequalities between tenant and owner. The government can encourage the transition from tenant to owner by developing an affordability system, accessible to certain people. The new middle class made up of less fortunate technicians and professionals is targeted by such a system.
Under this regime and this government, the transformative option of this social relationship is kept at bay. Transforming a social relationship means rebalancing the relationship of power and knowledge between the two parties. Property relations would then be re-examined and changed in a public space open to citizen intelligence and political imagination. For example, a rent could be considered as a contribution to the property, a right of interference in a property that is too absolute.
From the perspective of the imbalance in this social relationship, poverty would be a lack of rights and knowledge. Modernizing Quebec society meant transforming social relationships in the areas of parenthood, education, and work. Equal access is a concern linked to political modernity. Games of equality between positions become possible when symbolic resources are more equal. The problem raised here relates to the modernization of social property relations.
In the field of habitability, real estate ownership can take different forms in Quebec: public organization, private company, housing cooperative, seniors’ residence, individual. Building owners are neither unified nor unambiguous. They are a minority compared to the majority made up of tenants and residents. If modernizing means changing the state of a society so that everything is better, then it is desirable that property relations be called into question.
The owner/tenant relationship is affected by the bullish real estate market while the rules of this market take little account of the difficulties linked to social reproduction experienced by part of the population. Taking housing out of the real estate market by socializing it is a way of transforming the relationship in question, just like building it outside the market. Applying controls on the market to regulate it (rent register, limited increase) can help to rebalance the owner/tenant relationship.
Organizations such as the Institute for Research in Contemporary Economy and the Institute for Socioeconomic Research and Information are well suited to informing ministers, deputies, mayors, councilors and civil servants who are less aware of the issues and directions of such modernization in terms of housing. Unless the situation is blocked due to lack of political courage. It is necessary to rebalance this social relationship and intervene in a market.