by Joerg Drescher | Jul 6, 2015 | Opinion
In general terms, power is “to make someone want what you want”. You can use hard power – physical force or punitive measures, such as economic sanctions – to achieve this goal. However, there is another way – you can appeal to the reason of those, whose behaviour you want to change, by rewarding (sometimes seducing or bribing) means. The latter is called soft power.
In this article I use the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to show how a basic income – a regular payment to individuals irrespective of their income – could strengthen soft power.
As some of you may already know, I witnessed 2013/14 the revolution in Ukraine. Last year, right after the revolution, Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia and soon after Russia-supported terrorists have started a military aggression against Ukraine in the east of the country. As a response, the European Union, the United States and several other countries have introduced economic sanctions against Russia. This was legally backed up by the General Assembly of the United Nations, when more than 100 countries voted to affirm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and made it very clear that the phoney ‘referendum’ in Crimea was illegitimate and illegal.[1]
However, a group of investigative journalists found out that the realisation of the EU sanctions is not controlled. Each member state decides on its own, whether to implement the sanctions or not. As a result, almost no assets of sanctioned Russian and pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians, officers and businessmen were seized as intended by the EU. Later, the Institute for Economy Research in Vienna conducted a study on how the EU economy could be affected by their own sanctions. The findings showed that in a worst-case scenario about two million jobs and a value added of 100 billion euros could be lost within the European Union, if the sanctions were, in fact, implemented.[2] On top of that, Ukraine is far from being the only problem in Europe. The euro crisis, the situation in Greece, and a swing to the far right are setting alarm bells ringing in the EU.[3]
Thus, an euro-dividend proposed by Philippe van Parijs[4] – a similar idea to basic income – would make the unemployment issue in the EU less dramatic, because it provides a social security net. Either proposal could solve the euro crisis or the situation in Greece, and also help stop driving excluded people to political extremists.[5]
Now you may think that basic income would rather strengthen hard power than soft power, since the EU member states would get an opportunity to sanction Russia without having negative effects on their own economy. Your way of thinking is right. However, basic income does also strengthen soft power.
According to Joseph Nye of Harvard University, a country’s soft power rests on three resources: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad), and its foreign policies (when others see them as legitimate and having moral authority).”[6]
Taking these resources into account, a basic income could strengthen soft power, because it makes it easier for the EU to implement the foreign policy by imposing sanctions against Russia (legitimated by the UN) and, most importantly, by having a moral authority – as the EU would show it cares about its people and does not leave them economically alone with the effects of those sanctions.
This picture, which was at the barricades on the Maidan in Kyiv, shows that Ukraine wants to go with the EU instead of being dependant on Russian gas and adopting an authoritarian system like in Russia (picture by Ralf Haska)
Thinking back how the “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine started, it is obvious that the EU attracted Ukrainians with its culture and political values. When the former president Victor Yanukovych refused to sign a long-negotiated Association Agreement with the European Union, it caused deep indignation among many Ukrainians.[7] Even now, when Ukraine is war-torn and facing huge economic recession, to a great extent, due to the corrupt regime of Yanukovych, the EU is still more attractive than the authoritarian regime of Russia to most Ukrainians.
However, Ukrainians have to pay an enormously high price for their European choice. Beside the fact that there is an on-going military conflict in Eastern Ukraine resulting in tragic human loses, displacement and destruction of homes and infrastructure, they have to accept painful reforms, which decrease their income. They have to face inflation, increasing costs (mainly for energy), the devaluation of the national currency (hryvna lost more than 100 per cent from its value before the revolution) and unemployment (thousands of civil servants lost their jobs in the state sector and the jobs in the private sector are not secure).
A basic income could help Ukraine solve several problems – mainly related to corruption and social politics.[8] Ukrainians are not job-, but rather “income-less”: myriad volunteers have been helping and supporting more than a million internally displaced persons, the army, bereaved family members of killed or wounded civilians and soldiers all over the country. Even the most needy Ukrainians are willing to share what little they have to help and defend their country. The question may arise: what for?
If the EU is selling its moral values by caring more about the welfare of its economy and defending its assumed status quo rather than caring about the well-being of its people, it might lose its soft power by disappointing not only Ukrainians, but also its own people. Therefore, I think a basic income could strengthen soft power – by being attractive through common shared values and bringing back the end of the community of states to its origin: keeping peace within and among countries and in the world.
Sources:
[1] Samantha Power, answer at Facebook, approximately 2:30 minutes, 16. May 2015
[2] Video of Joerg Eigendorf (English, approximately 3 minutes), Die Welt, 19. June 2015
[3] “Strange Bedfellows: Putin and Europe’s Far Right”, World Affairs, by Alina Polyakova, autumn 2014
[4] Video of the lecture by Philippe van Parijs: “No Eurozone Without a Eurodividend” (approximately 1,5 hours), BIEN-Congress in Munich 2012
[5] Interview with Guy Standing (approximately 2 minutes), 14. February 2010
[6] “The Future of Power” by Joseph S. Nye, chapter “Sources of Soft Power”, PublicAffairs, 2011
[7] “Opinion: Basic Income and the Ukrainian Revolution” by Joerg Drescher, 30. December 2013
[8] “Opinion: Universal and Guaranteed Income? A Matter of Basic Rights” by Emanuele Murra, 30. April 2012
Further readings on soft power:
A Theory of Soft Power and Korea’s Soft Power Strategy
by Joerg Drescher | Apr 9, 2015 | News
Tony Atkinson is a well known scientist on inequality and a student of James Meade. Atkinson is Senior Research Fellow at the Nuffield College of the Oxford University and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. In an interview with the German newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” he pleads for a minimum heritage for all citizens at the age of 18 years.
In this interview he was asked about inequality in Germany. He said inequality has consequences for economic success. Even Christine Lagarde, the director of the IMF, worries about inequality which decreases economic growth. However, inequality is for Atkinson also a question of justice. He rhetorically asks whether we really want to live in a country in which some people can travel to space, while others have to eat at meal centres even if they have work.
He is not against good payments and argues that inequality does not mean to dissolve all differences. Rather he means equal opportunities, which are not given in unequal societies.
In his opinion many European countries implemented successful measures after World War II to reduce inequality, but in the last years these programs were reduced. He gives the example that the social state built up a very effective transfer system which helped poor people, but meanwhile social benefits were reduced in many countries.
Asked if Thomas Piketty is right to increase taxes for super rich people to distribute the money, Atkinson answers that Piketty is very interested in super rich people, but less in helping the poor. For Atkinson super rich people are not only a source for taxation; rather he sees in them a risk because at least in the Anglo-American sphere they have increasingly disproportionate political influence. This is bad for democracy. However, poverty as well as marginalisation of poor people is the worst consequence of inequality. In his opinion a further political question of our time is the inequality between generations and genders.
The interviewer asks if he really thinks those modern problems can be solved by measures of yesterday in the sense of more taxes for more social benefits. On the one hand, he says, he supports a progressive tax system; on the other hand, he suggests we unchain the pension system from work and think about new forms of unemployment insurance.
The conversation changes and Atkinson is asked about work and the problem that technological progress assists inequality and robots destroy certain jobs and no taxes can stop this development. He answers that the debate should be on the issue of what we want to be automated. For instance, it might be better to have robots in industry, but do we really want waiters replaced by drones? You cannot talk with drones about the weather (for some people the most important reason to use this service). Not everything a robot can do it should do.
The next question is about what would happen if there is no unemployment, because jobs are paid unequally. Atkinson counters that in future it is important to pay attention to how much people earn before they pay taxes. It is a matter of distributing wages and income from investments. Here he suggests a “minimum heritage” for all citizens at the age of 18 years. In this case they would have this security which heirs have. A possibility to fund this is to increase inheritance taxes. However, he agrees that this would not be easy in a global economy, but it could work if financial information were exchanged. A civilized society needs high taxes. People have to provide information which is needed for taxation.
Link to the original interview by Lena Schipper, 6th April 2015 (in German):
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/wirtschaftspolitik/armut-und-reichtum/interview-mit-tony-atkinson-ueber-armut-ungleichheit-und-mindesterbe-13511563.html
by Joerg Drescher | Mar 31, 2015 | News
After the crimes in World War II dignity became part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of many constitutions. The Ukrainian constitution also contains a right to be treated dignified. In the German constitution the first task of the state is to respect and protect the human dignity.
But who or what is a state?
Georg Jellinek, a German political philosopher in the 19th century defined: state territory, constitutive people and state power. It is comprehensible, that a territory cannot treat somebody dignified, but people and the state power can do. In principle, the members of the state power are also part of the constitutive people, but they have another status with the task to fulfil what is written in the constitution.
Does this mean, only the state power is responsible for dignity in a state? Of course not! The state power can only define the framework wherein dignity is possible.
However, what does dignity mean?
The German word for dignity, “Würde,” is closely related with the word “Wert” – value. In former times it described the rank, the prestige or merit of a person. But since the time of the enlightenment the German meaning has chanced to an abstract moral value. Immanuel Kant, for instance, described dignity as absolute inner value, which cannot be compensated. Each human being is unique and irreplaceable. In principle, dignity means the unconditional recognition of a human as human. “Unconditional” says, that dignity cannot be purchased or reduced by a particular behaviour. (The case of Breivik in Norway is a good example, because he was treated with dignity despite his killing of 77 people)
However, dignity is related to a concept of human. But this concept is less connected to the question “How is a human?” “How to be human” (actions of a human), but rather to the question “What is a human?” in the sense, what makes a human a human.
A natural scientist might answer, that a human is a living being, which pursues metabolism within an area until its death. For that, a human has certain skills and attributes which could pursue him to search for reliable ways (like reading on Gundry MD reviews, for instance) so that he can provide this metabolism. This means, in the eyes of a natural scientist, dignity would be given, if a human has “dignified” conditions to pursue its metabolism: give some food, clothes, and a dwelling, that a human can live “appropriate to its species” and voila – a human is a human.
Scholars of the liberal arts, such as philosophers, would not be satisfied and want to find differences, which raise humans from animals.
One thesis is, that humans have unlike animals a conscious freedom to choose, which is almost independent of instincts. External borders of this freedom are given by physical laws – a human cannot do everything that it wants (e.g. fly in the sky or travel on water without tools). Internal borders can be seen in moral ideas – not everything that a human can do is allowed. This inner borders are built during life and they are influenced by the respective society. Thus, dignity can be understood as achievement of civilization: to see a human in a foreign human and to respect its personhood.
What possibilities do a state have to guarantee dignity?
If dignity is something that we learn, education plays an elementary role. This is why states decide on the main content of basic education.
If dignity is something which is connected with freedom, it is the task of the state to guarantee this freedom. For that purpose there are state institutions as for example the police.
If dignity has something to do with a human’s ability to develop as human by developing its potentials and skills, it is the task of the state to define such a framework, that each human can do so freely.
And in this area there is an idea: Each person should receive monthly a sum from the state, to be able to live. Work is divided from livelihood. This idea has different names – basic income, guaranteed minimum, citizen’s income and others. In principle this state payment can be seen as monetary equivalent of dignity. The payment is also unconditional and it differs from social help, while no (often “not dignified”) proof of neediness must be given.
This lecture was held on 30th March 2015 in Kiev/Ukraine at the international conference “Philosophy of humans as way of humanism and dignity.” After the so called “Revolution of dignity” in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 when several people were killed by state security personnel, the search for new solutions in Ukraine is very high.
