by Kate McFarland | Dec 13, 2016 | Opinion
This fall, BIEN celebrated 30th anniversary of its founding. Video recordings of its founders’ reunion are available online.
On October 1, several founding members and other past and present BIEN leaders — comprising three generations of basic income advocates — united at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) in Belgium for a conference held in commemoration of the occasion in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of UCLouvain’s Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics and the retirement of BIEN cofounder Philippe van Parijs as its director. (See also a Basic Income News interview in which Philippe discusses the past, present, and future of BIEN.)
Reflecting on the event and the history of BIEN, Belgian entrepreneur and long-time basic income advocate Roland Duchâtelet said:
What impresses me most is that during the 30 years of BIEN many different personalities expressed many different views regarding UBI models, implementation, and the way the organisation should behave… and yet, I do not believe there have been any defectors. Moreover, despite the highly diverse background of the members and their desire to succeed, the organisation managed to keep its harmony.
To me this was the prevailing feeling of the 30th anniversary event: we are a (strong) group of friends.
Roland Duchatelet (credit: Enno Schmidt)
For Jose Luis Rey Pérez (Adjunct Professor of Philosophy of Law at Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Madrid), BIEN’s 30th anniversary event rekindled memories of studying with van Parijs and others at UCL years earlier:
I was in Chair Hoover [in UCL] two months in April and May 2003, while I was writing my PhD. I learnt a lot from Philippe van Parijs during that time, and I had the opportunity to read everything that was published about basic income in that time. (In those years where books and articles were not on internet like now.) I had also the opportunity to share coffees, time and discussions with Axel Gosseries, Hervois Portouis, Yannick Vanderborght, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Myron Frankman who were in the Chair at that time.
It was nice, 13 years later, to listen and learn again from some authors that I have studied deeply. I wish Philippe a very rich retirement. I know that he will continue through his conferences, books and articles to enrich the philosophical thought. We have a lot of things to learn from him yet. Because he is one of the best philosophers of this XXI century.
Two other attendees, Bonno Pel and Julia Backhaus of the TRANsformative Social Innovation Theory (TRANSIT) research project, have written an extended feature article on the event (“BIEN Celebrates Thirty Years: Basic income, a utopia for our times?“), looking at the 2016 UCL event as a reflection of (a photo of) the founding meeting in 1986.
Video Footage
Belgian filmmaker Steven Janssens videotaped six conference sessions: (1) BIEN’s improvised birth, (2) Basic income implemented in the short and the long run (note: a parallel session on the history of basic income was not recorded), (3) Lessons from the Swiss referendum, (4) Promises and limits of past and future experiments, (5) Moving forward, (6) Final reflections.
(Janssens is also the driving force behind the documentary about a basic income pilot in a Ugandan village, with a planned launch date of October 2018.)
1. BIEN’s Improvised Birth: Testimonies by Some Co-founders
Featuring Philippe van Parijs, Paul-Marie Boulanger, Annie Miller, Guy Standing, Claus Offe, and Robert van der Veen.
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference1
2. Basic Income Implemented in the Short and the Long Run
Featuring Philippe Defeyt (“An income-tax-funded basic income of EUR 600”), David Rosseels (“A micro-tax on electronic payments”), and Karl Widerquist (“Sovereign funds and basic income”).
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference2
3. Lessons from the Swiss Referendum
Featuring Nenad Stojanovic and Enno Schmidt.
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference3
4. Promises and Limits of Past and Future Experiments
Featuring Yannick Vanderborght (overview), Guy Standing (on India), Jurgen De Wispelaere (on Finland), Alexander de Roo (on The Netherlands).
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference4
5. Moving Forward
Featuring Louise Haagh, Stanislas Jourdan, Roland Duchatelet, Yasmine Kherbache.
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference5
6. Final Reflections
Featuring Claus Offe, Gérard Roland, Joshua Cohen, Erik O. Wright.
https://vimeo.com/eight8/bienconference6
Reviewed by Tyler Prochazka.
Cover Photo: BIEN’s 30th anniversary renunion , credit Enno Schmidt.
by Kate McFarland | Sep 8, 2016 | News
Event Announcement: BIEN’s 30th Anniversary
An event commemorating the anniversary of BIEN’s founding will take place on Saturday, October 1 in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium–the location of BIEN’s first meeting 30 years ago.
The anniversary event has been organized by the Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics at the Université Catholique de Louvain in collaboration with BIEN.
Participants in the conference that launched BIEN
About the Anniversary Event
The anniversary event will begin, after a short welcome, with tales of BIEN’s birth as related from several cofounders: Paul-Marie Boulanger, Annie Miller, Guy Standing, Claus Offe, and Robert van der Veen.
Two parallel sessions will take place in late morning: one on the history of basic income (featuring Pierre-Etienne Vandamme on “Voltaire before Paine”, Guido Erreygers on “Brussels 1848” and Walter Van Trier, BIEN’s first secretary, on the British interbellum period); the other on implementations of basic income (featuring Philippe Defeyt on an income-tax-funded basic income of EUR 600, David Rosseels on micro-taxes on electronic payments, and Karl Widerquist on sovereign funds).
In the afternoon sessions, Enno Schmidt, co-founder of the Swiss popular initiative on basic income, and University of Lucerne Research fellow Nenad Stojanovic will review lessons learned from the Swiss referendum campaign. Then, discussion will turn to basic income experiments of the past and future. Guy Standing will talk about his work on pilots in India. University of Tampere Research Fellow Jurgen De Wispelaere will discuss the upcoming experiment in Finland, and BIEN cofounder Alexander de Roo (now chair of the Dutch basic income network) will discuss those to come in The Netherlands.
Finally, the conference will examine where the movement is heading next, with talks from Louise Haagh (BIEN co-chair), Stanislas Jourdan (co-founder of UBI-Europe), Roland Duchatelet (former senator and founder of Vivant), and Yasmine Kherbache (member of Flemish Parliament and, previously, chief of cabinet of former Belgian Prime Minister Di Rupo).
The event will conclude with reflections from two co-founders of BIEN, Claus Offe and Gérard Roland. They will be joined by political philosopher Joshua Cohen (UC Berkeley) and sociologist Erik Olin Wright (University of Wisconsin – Madison).
The anniversary event follows a two-day conference Utopias for our Time, which marks the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. Some participants in the BIEN anniversary event will also be speaking at this preceding event. For instance, Erik Olin Wright is to deliver a keynote address on the theme of the future of democracy, and Wright and Philippe Van Parijs will contribute to a special session on the question “Should academics engage indulge in utopian thinking?”
For more information on both events, see the event page at Université Catholique de Louvain.
Prospective attendees can register online through September 20.
Scene from BIEN’s founding meeting
About BIEN’s Founding
In 1984, three young researchers linked to the Université Catholique de Louvain–Paul-Marie Boulanger, Philippe Defeyt and Philippe Van Parijs–formed a group called the “Collectif Charles Fourier” to explore what they had chosen to call “allocation universelle”.
First written documentation of the existence of BIEN
Two years later — fueled by the unexpected earnings from a essay contest, for an essay on the “allocation universelle” — the Collectif Charles Fourier organized a international conference to discuss the idea. The conference, which convened in Louvain-la-Neuve in September 1986, gathered 60 invited speakers from throughout Europe.
Its final session would mark the genesis of the Basic Income European Network. (The name, suggested by Guy Standing, was chosen in part for the “good pun” of its acronym.)
In 2004, BIEN decided to become an inter-continental organization, owing to an increase in interest from outside of Europe. Unable to part with the acronym, the group decided simply to brand itself with the name it has today.
Read more about the history of BIEN.
Basic Income News will be providing continuing coverage of BIEN’s anniversary event.
Stay tuned for videos, photographs, and remarks from the participants, as well as other comments and reflections from current members of BIEN’s Executive Committee.
Text reviewed by Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght.
Photographs and scanned document provided by Philippe Van Parijs.
by Josh Martin | Dec 5, 2014 | News
[Josh Martin]
Matthews has written extensively on the basic income on Vox, and his most recent work is this brief two minute video explaining the history of basic income ideas in the USA, including policies produced by President Nixon in 1969 and the Negative Income Tax experiments in the USA in the 1970s.
Dylan Matthews, “We know how to end poverty. So why don’t we?”, Vox, 14 November 2014.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2458312/nixon_basic_income.0.gif?resize=450%2C253&ssl=1 "Matthews discusses Nixon's proposal in 1969 (Source: Vox)")
by Kai Nau | May 29, 2024
A meeting of the Basic Income Earth Network General Assembly will be held for members online, in connection with the 2024 BIEN Congress, on Friday 30 August 2024 at 13:00h British Summer Time (UTC+1).
If you are interested in becoming a member, you can do so by following the few simple steps outlined here. You can then register for the GA by following this link.
Invitation to affiliated organisations to apply to host the 2026 congress. Please apply by writing to the secretary at diana.bashur@basicincome.org.
The following documents will be useful for members to review ahead of this year’s General Assembly meeting:
by Peter Knight | Jan 29, 2024 | News
Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
“In May 2023, academic and policy experts in social protection, economics, public health, history, and ethics gathered at the Brocher Foundation in Geneva to consider the potential for Universal Basic Income (UBI) to contribute to health equity.
Health inequities have long been a recognised global problem. In 2013, a review of countries covering 74% of the world’s population found substantial variation in health outcomes according to income, education, sex, and migrant status. Achieving health equity is a moral imperative and necessary to fulfil the human right to health. Health inequalities cannot be solved by the health sector alone – achieving health equity requires addressing the social determinants of health that largely involve social domains beyond health, such as social security, education, housing, and issues such as domestic and sexual violence and abuse, race and class prejudice, adverse employment conditions, the physical environment, and climate change.
Read the full article here.
