by Kate McFarland | Feb 20, 2017 | News
Ashley Dawson, professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY) in New York City, maintains that the loss of biodiversity (with hundreds of species facing extinction each day) is rooted, in part, in global capitalism — a theme at the center of his 2016 book Extinction: A Radical History.
Dawson explains in The Guardian:
“Capitalism is an economic system founded on ceaseless expansion,” Dawson, who specializes in Postcolonial studies, said. “It must grow at a compound rate or it will experience convulsive economic and social crises. The contradictions of this system are patently self-evident: an economic system based on infinite expansion must inevitably crash into the natural limits of finite ecosystems.”
According to Dawson, the only way to forestall mass extinction is to shift to an economic system that is not founded on the goal of unlimited growth. As the summary in The Guardian describes, Dawson looks to indigenous groups and small-scale farmers as examples of ways in which communities may develop “using sustainable practices and living close to nature.”
One starting point considered by Dawson is the provision of a guaranteed income to people living in biodiversity hotspots, biologically rich areas including “tropical woodlands of Brazil’s Atlantic coast, southern Mexico with Central America, the tropical Andes, the Greater Antilles, West Africa, Madagascar, the Western Ghats of India, Indo-Burma, Indonesia, the Philippines, and New Caledonia.” By alleviating poverty, a guaranteed income would remove the pressure to engage in poaching and other environmentally destructive practices:
“Focusing such guaranteed income on the relatively limited number of biodiversity hotspots would remove the prime economic motive people living in such areas have for destroying their local environment: poverty.”
Dawson suggests funding the guaranteed income by measures such as a tax on financial transactions, stating, “Such a Robin Hood tax, of even only a very small percentage of the speculative global capital flows that enrich the 1%, would generate billions of dollars to help people conserve hotspots of global biodiversity.”
He emphasizes that the guaranteed income should not be seen as a replacement for existing conservation efforts but rather as a supplement to them.
Read more:
Jeremy Hance, “What if we gave universal income to people in biodiversity hotpots? [sic],” The Guardian, January 24, 2017.
Ashley Dawson, “Why the Extinction Crisis Isn’t Just About the Environment, but Social Justice,” Alternet, November 29, 2016.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo: Hall of Biodiversity at American Museum of Natural History, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Dom Dada
by Kate McFarland | Feb 19, 2017 | News
Indian economist Kaushik Basu, former Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, has written an article for Project Syndicate in which he recommends that the United States consider “some form of basic income” as a partial solution to the economic insecurity of the working classes.
Basu broaches the idea of basic income, in addition to recommending progressive taxation and investments in education, in the context of suggesting alternatives to protectionist trade policies. While he does not expand on the type of basic income he has in mind, he refers to the program being tested in Finland (in which means-tested unemployment benefits have been replaced by an unconditional cash transfer) and the scheme discussed in India’s Economic Survey (a “quasi-universal” basic income which might be rolled out gradually, beginning with more vulnerable groups).
An effective solution to the problems facing American workers must recognize where those problems’ roots lie. Every time a new technology enables a company to use less labor, there is a shift from the total wage bill to profits. What workers need, however, is more wages. If they aren’t coming from employers, they should come from elsewhere.
Indeed, the time has come to consider some form of basic income and profit-sharing. Finland has experimented with this. In the emerging world, India, in its most recent economic survey, has outlined a full scheme.
In the same vein, the tax system should be made much more progressive; as it stands, there are far too many loopholes for the ultra-wealthy in the US. Investment in new forms of education that enable workers to take on more creative tasks, which cannot be completed by robots, will also be vital.
Shortly before the release of his Project Syndicate article, Basu was reported as saying in a Tweet that “The Universal Basic Income scheme [in India] should give a cut off income & ask ones above it to voluntarily forego it.” Indeed, the Economic Survey’s author, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian, suggested encouraging voluntary exclusion of the wealthy from receipt of the basic income (see pg. 191).
It is unclear whether the “form of basic income” Basu mentions is also one he implicitly envisions as restricted to those below a certain income level. It is clear, however, that he supports the idea of divorcing wages from employment–at least as an important option to investigate.
Read more:
Kaushik Basu, “America’s Dangerous Neo-Protectionism,” Project Syndicate, February 13, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 World Bank Photo Collection
by Hilde Latour | Feb 17, 2017 | News
Business Insider published an article based on an interview with co-founder of BIEN, Guy Standing, focusing on his analysis of the working class in the Western world.
Standing sees a growing class of “precariat” workers, caused by a political agenda promoting market-led competition since the 1970s. A significant group of this “precariat” is prone to listen to ugly voices playing on their fears and supporting neo-fascist populism as a result. This helps explain the election of Donald Trump in the US, but also Brexit and the popularity of Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders in Europe.
He refers to his book “The Corruption of Capitalism”, where he describes a growing group of wealthy citizens (the “rentier class”) who live on income from investments and property (including copyright and patents that often last for 20 years). This increases the gap between the rich and the poor.
According to Standing, at least part of the solution could be the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI), and he has seen growing support for this idea from both left and right wing politicians, economists and many others in the last few years.
“I see no reason why we will not have it within the next ten years — and maybe sooner.”
Standing states that a UBI can be seen as a matter of social justice, as a compensation for a system of property that results in a loss of natural inheritance, a point argued extensively by Thomas Paine, who introduced the idea of a citizen’s dividend back in 1795. It would also enhance individual liberty and give people a sense of security.
The affordability of a UBI is not a problem, Standing argues. It would replace other forms of public spending, and could be funded by the establishment of capital funds, like those derived from oil in Alaska and Norway, and the rental flows from patents.
The belief that UBI would remove the incentive to work is ridiculous, he further claims. Enough evidence is available to show it is the opposite:
“If you had a basic income, it would mean that everybody would have a base, on top of which their earned income would be taxed at the standard rate of tax. That would increase the incentive to take low-wage jobs.”
The current Western systems of ‘social welfare’ discourage people from taking low-wage jobs. These systems are poverty traps, argues Standing.
“We must have a new income distribution system [as] real wages will continue to decline in OECD countries, insecurity will continue to grow, and rental incomes will continue to go to the top. That is a recipe for economic instability, political extremism, and a lot of other nasty things.”
Info and links
This article is the second in a two-part series based on Thomas Colson’s interview with Standing. The first article contained ambiguities that lead to inaccurate reports about the Indian situation. It was corrected in a Basic Income News article “Jumping the Gun in India“.
Special thanks to Josh Martin and Genevieve Shanahan for reviewing this article.
Photo: yinxu – oracle bones by Xuan Che, CC-BY-SA 2.0
by Guest Contributor | Feb 11, 2017 | Opinion
Written by: Katarzyna Gajewska
The argument that the system of peer production on a wide scale requires securing stable income for peers from the state is promoted, among others, by Michel Bauwens. In this article, I will argue that the reverse is also true. In order to be sustained, unconditional basic income (UBI) needs to be accompanied by changes in the realm of general interest services. This applies particularly to the domain of services of general interest that participate in the subsistence. Money transfer needs to be accompanied by de-commodification of subsistence measures.
Although UBI certainly would contribute to bettering the situation of the poor, it does not challenge the capitalist power relations. The domain of work and production is only one of the opportunities for the capitalist class to exploit inequalities and accumulate wealth. Other sources of wealth extraction are property rights, real estates, rent, access to natural resources, urban infrastructure, land grabbing. Elsewhere, I elaborate how, despite introducing a UBI, capitalist class domination would continue in the domain of subsistence1 and housing 2 if other elements of the system were preserved.
Technological unemployment due to robotization of production is indicated as one of the reasons for a UBI. Robotization would cause centralization of power in the hands of machine owners and technological elites. Since labor used to exercise influence on their wages through the threat of withdrawing from production, under the condition of technological unemployment it would lose its leverage.3 Therefore, adjusting the basic income to the level that enables a decent living would be increasingly difficult. On the other hand, the capital owning the means of production in the domain of services of general interest such as water, food, electricity, health or housing can demand higher prices once having dominant position, and there may even be additional costs for things like commercial water treatment products for businesses after the initial price is paid. Therefore, neoliberal pressure for privatization of subsistence-related services and goods is particularly dangerous. As a result of privatization, citizens can increasingly less meaningfully participate in the governance of general interest services, being left with the relatively passive roles of voter and client.4 The UBI movement needs to take this into account in formulating proposals for UBI reform, namely advocating for more democratic control over the means of subsistence.
Subsistence services in citizens’ hands: some inspirations
Representative democracy alone does not seem to prevent that services of general interest are privatized. Specific citizen mobilization around this issue is required. Three types of strategies can be pursued to bring more control over essential services: re-municipalization, overtake by citizen cooperatives, and commoning. I will give more space to the latter one because the two former have been described in other publications.
Remunicipalization
There are different models that incorporate the democratic dimension in the provision of services of general interest. For example, in water supply services privatization turned out to be dissatisfying for the customers both in terms of quality and prices. The book “HERE TO STAY: WATER REMUNICIPALISATION AS A GLOBAL TREND”5 analyzes examples of how this trend has been reverted by re-municipalization initiatives. It illustrates how significantly the quality can improve and prices lowered with the involvement of public authorities.
However, involving citizens in the process of decision making does not guarantee their influence on the final output. Incumbents’ initiatives in the realm of political participation do not seem to alleviate the democratic deficit. Participatory elements within the new public management and neo-Weberian state models can be motivated by the instrumental aim of overcoming resistance.6 Participatory and deliberative procedures can be used as ‘public relations’ tools by political elites to give citizens the illusion of engagement,7 so-called ‘participatory window-dressing.’8
Cooperatives
Citizens can organize to buy the infrastructure related to subsistence needs. In a small German town, Schoenau,9activists bought out electricity infrastructure to convert it into a cooperative of which citizens can buy shares. As an act of protest against the nuclear power, they turned to solar energy. Similar attempts have been undertaken by activists in Berlin to prevent the renewal of a contract with a multinational company of Swedish origin. Certainly, in the case of services that are sold on the market, there is a danger of degeneration of cooperative ideals due to the market pressure, which is quite common among worker and consumer cooperatives. Still it may be a better option in comparison to an accumulation of power in capitalist enterprises.
Commoning
The precariat, in the face of unresponsive state institutions, prefers the self-organized provision of services in order to become autonomous of these institutions.10 Heynen11 argues that the realm of social rights and the welfare state has diminished in recent decades in the US, so social movements have invented other forms of pursuing their struggles. Instead of trusting that delegation to the state will ensure the provision of public services and redistribution, activists create services themselves. For instance, Food Not Bombs produces and redistributes food. Furthermore, representatives of the recent generation of social movements believe that creating alternatives rather than reforming the system is a better way to bring about change, which reflects the mistrust of and awareness of the danger of cooptation by elitist politics and institutions.12 Activists focus on the ‘here and now’, practicing alternative forms of production and organization parallel to the state-based and market-based ones as everyday ‘revolutions.’13 For example, the domain of food-producing resources, although now mostly privatized, can be organized in a different way. In ancient times and still nowadays there are various communal arrangements in some parts of the world.14
In articles on People’s Potato, I describe a worker cooperative that coordinates the preparation of partly dumpster-dived food with the help of volunteers. Financed by fee levies, the meals are distributed for free. This type of the organization of food provision can be defined as peer production, which means a voluntary, spontaneous, and inclusive work contribution to produce a good or service in common that serves a broader community. Peers produce use value that is accessible even to those that have not contributed to its production. Initiatives such as Food Not Bombs or Incredible Edible follow similar philosophy. In the article on technological unemployment and work, I describe further initiatives of self-organized services: retirees time bank in Germany and subsistence cooperative in Catalonia.15 One could expect to optimize the costs and use of resources by restructuring production into commons. Las Indias’ Manifesto demonstrates potential gains that can be achieved by escaping the capitalist organization of production. Kibbutz movement managed to increase productivity and reduce the use of water in agriculture.16
Basic Income movement for other causes
“All we can ask of politics is to create the spaces in which the alternative social practices can develop.”17
Joining other movements in demanding the democratization of services, UBI movement could focus on a twofold struggle: mobilization against the privatization of services and for the re-appropriation of spaces for citizen participation and self-organization.
Elinor Ostrom argued in favor of creating institutional arrangements ‘for cooperative housing and neighborhood governance (…) to facilitate co-productive efforts for monitoring and exercising control over public spaces.’18Kooiman presents a model of ‘societal governance,’ a mix of self-governance, co-governance, and hierarchical governance.19
Bovaird predicts that the governance system may evolve into ‘self-organizing policy and service delivery systems – ‘governance without government.”20 The progressive theories of public administration have a vision of public administration that is ‘collaborative, facilitative, or transformational social role in support of citizen emancipation and self-governance.’ This type of re-conceptualization of the role of public administration has a longer tradition in the feminist movement and in the 2000s several authors have postulated this direction of change.21 In an academic article, I propose a change to the tax system. Taxpayers could allocate certain part of the due taxes to the organizations of their choice. In this way, the organizations can plan their yearly budget and produce as much as the collected sum allows.22 Also laws facilitating the access to unused spaces would make it easier for the self-organizing groups to start commons projects.
The example of People’s Potato, which struggles against corporate monopoly in food provision at Concordia University in Montreal, illustrates that the mobilization although it requires true determination, can begin now, case by case. I summarized the relations between People’s Potato, commercial food providers, and the university administration in another article:
“People’s Potato discovered that part of kitchen space previously used by Sodexho/Marriot was vacant, while the major part was overtaken by Chartwells. They started to use this space for their cooking. For another two years, People’s Potato struggled with the administration to get official use of the space. It is equipped with all necessary industrial kitchen facilities. The university charges the Potato for some repairs, like painting or heavy maintenance, but they pay all of their other utilities, such as garbage removal, electricity and hot water. The status of the collective within the university structure is ambiguous and there is always a fear of losing support from other organizations and the kitchen space as no official contract has been signed. “23
Instead of waiting for a more serious debate on UBI among political elites where activists could present a more encompassing reform, the change can arise from single initiatives. Späth and Rohracher point to the power of local experiments, which can mobilize actors. Niches, spaces protected from economic pressures can develop into full-fledged models for change. The local level change is possible in ‘off the radar’ spaces for interests of dominant economic actors. In this way, it is easier to overcome the problem of nested interests preventing change. Furthermore, institutional voids can enable introducing new practices.24
About the author: Katarzyna Gajewska is an independent writer. She has a PhD in Political Science and has published on alternative economy and innovating the work organization since 2013. You can find her non-academic writing on such platforms as Occupy.com, P2P Foundation Blog, Basic Income UK, Bronislaw Magazine and LeftEast. For updates on her publications, you can check her Facebook page or send her an e-mail: k.gajewska_comm@zoho.com. If you would like to support her independent writing, please make a donation to the PayPal account at the same address!
References:
1Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest. Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.
2Gajewska, Katarzyna (May 2014) : UBI and Housing Problem, https://basicincome.org.uk/2014/05/housing-power-land/
3Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest. Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.
4 Elinor Ostrom, “A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance,” National Civic Review (Summer 1993): 226-233.
5HERE TO STAY: WATER REMUNICIPALISATION AS A GLOBAL TREND :https://www.tni.org/files/download/heretostay-en.pdf
6 William N. Dunn and David Y. Miller, “A Critique of the New Public Management and the Neo-Weberian State: Advancing a Critical Theory of Administrative Reform,” Public Organization Review 7 (December 2007) 345-358, 355.
7 Léon Blondiaux, “L’idée de démocratie participative: enjeux, impensés et questions récurrentes,” In M.-H. Bacqué et al. (eds), Gestion de proximité et démocratie participative. (Paris: La découverte, 2005). Léon Blondiaux and Yves Sintomer, “L’impératif délibératif,” Politix 15.57 (2002): 17–35.
8 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, “Countervailing Power in Empowered Participatory Governance,” in Deepening Democracy (London/New York: Verso, 2003), 265.
9Elektrizitätswerke Schönau Netze, https://www.ews-schoenau.de/
10 Christophe Trombert, “Expertise professionnelle et contre-expertise militante dans l’accès aux droits sociaux: tension à front renversé autour du général et du singulier,” SociologieS, Théories et recherches, 25 June 2013. URL : https://sociologies.revues.org/4360
11 Nik Heynen, “Cooking Up Non-violent Civil-disobedient Direct Action for the Hungry: ‘Food Not Bombs’ and the Resurgence of Radical Democracy in the US,” Urban Studies 47(6 2010): 1225–1240.
12 cf. Day, “From Hegemony to Affinity.”
13 Marco Silvestro and Pascal Lebrun, “La révolution à l’échelle humaine, une radicalité actuelle concrète,” Argument 12 (Spring-Summer 2010).
14Vivero, Jose Luis (2015) : Transition Towards a Food Commons Regime: Re-Commoning Food to Crowd-Feed the World, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2548928
15Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest, Journal of Evolution and Technology 24(1): 104-112.https://jetpress.org/v24/gajewski.htm
16Las Indias’ Communard Manifesto, https://lasindias.com/the-communard-manifesto-html
17Gorz, A. (1999): Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-based Society. Cambridge: Polity, p. 79.
18Ostrom, Elinor (1993): A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance, National Civic Review Summer, 226-233, 232.
19Kooiman, J. (2000): Societal Governance: Levels, Modes, and Orders of Social-political Governance. In Jon Pierre (ed.) Debating Governance: Authority, Steering and Democracy, (pp. 138–64). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
20Bovaird, Tony (2005): Public governance: balancing stakeholder power in a network society. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 71(2), 217–228, p. 226.
21Stout, Margaret (2010): Back to the Future: Toward a Political Economy of Love and Abundance, Administration & Society 42(1): 3–37.
22Gajewska, Katarzyna (2014): Peer production and prosummerism as a model for the future organization of general interest services provision in developed countries: examples of food services collectives. World Future Review 6(1): 29-39.
23Gajewska, Katarzyna (30 June 2014): There is such a thing as a free lunch: Montreal Students Commoning and Peering food services. P2P Foundation Blog, https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/there-is-such-a-thing-as-a-free-lunch-montreal-students-commoning-and-peering-food-services/2014/06/30
24P. Späth, H. Rohracher (2012): Local demonstrations for global transitions – Dynamics across governance levels fostering regime change. In: European Planning Studies 20(3), pp. 461-479.
by Tyler Prochazka | Feb 7, 2017 | News
The first basic income conference focused on the Asia Pacific region is being prepared for March 18 in Taipei, Taiwan.
National Chengchi University’s College of Social Sciences is the main organizer of the event. Basic Income News features editor Tyler Prochazka is helping to organize the conference with co-chair, James Davis, student of Columbia University, and activist Ping Xu. NCCU’s International Master’s Program in Asia Pacific Studies is also an assistant organizer for the event.
Prominent basic income activist Enno Schmidt has confirmed he will attend. Other scholars from China, India, Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the United States are preparing presentations.
The conference will be live-streamed on the Basic Income Action Committee’s Facebook page.
Davis has interviewed Schmidt and Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Davis’ recorded interviews will be screened at the conference. Davis is scheduling additional interviews with other scholars and activists for the screening.
Prochazka received an Alumni Development Grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship program to assist in funding the conference.
Xu will is also planning to take part in a presentation with Taiwanese officials, and begin research into a village as a location for a potential future basic income trial.
The RSVP for the event can be found here.
Corrections: This article was updated on March 11, 2017 to clarify information on organization and Ping Xu’s planned activities in Taiwan.
