by Karl Widerquist | Aug 22, 2014 | Research
John Danaher, NUI Galway
John Danaher, a lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Galway and a regular blogger at Philosophical Disquisitions, has written a series of blogs about basic income. The series contains nine articles so far, post from December 23, 2013 to July 18, 2014. According to the author’s summary, “I’ve written a number of posts about the ethics and justice of the basic income grant. I thought it might be useful to provide an index to all of them in this post. Most of these posts look at whether an unconditional basic income grant can be justified from a particular theoretical perspective, e.g. feminism, libertarianism, liberal egalitarianism, and republicanism. One of them asks whether there should be a right not to work.” Items in the series include:
From Philosophical Disquisitions
John Danaher holds a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland) and is currently a lecturer in law at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests range broadly from philosophy of religion to legal theory, with particular interests in human enhancement and neuroethics.
John Danaher, “Blog series: Philosophy and the Basic Income.” Philosophical Disquisitions, July 18, 2014 [December 23, 2013 – July 17, 2014]
by Yannick Vanderborght | Dec 17, 2012 | Opinion
Even if the term “emancipation” was devalued by feminism to a purely female topic, its original Latin meaning remains “to discharge a slave or adult child into self-reliance.” Thereby it is not a question of competence, but rather one of having the possibility and right to take responsibility.
Hermann Hesse wrote in his novel “Steppenwolf” (1927):
The citizen is […] by his being a creature with a weak motive for living, frightened, every divulgence of himself worrying, easy to reign. Thus he set instead of power the majority, instead of force the law, instead of responsibility the voting procedure […]
However, many are afraid to be independent because they fear that they will not be able to deal with their own life. A reason for this might be that there is nobody telling them how to do things because there is no “instruction” on how to live. And for a lot of people it is more convenient to have somebody who is guilty in case of their own failure.
It seems to me that this is also the reason for fearing Basic Income: from the viewpoint of a state, there should be somebody who tells people how to live their lives to ensure that the people can live together. However, precisely Basic Income would give people self-reliance and responsibility for themselves and the community they live in. The responsibility of the state fades into the background: the main task of a state is reduced to providing people with a Basic Income.
The trouble is that in a competitive democracy with its majority principle there are apparently a lot of people who prefer to cede their self- and co-responsibility to the state. But by doing so, they force all others to cede responsibility in the same way, or they cede responsibility only to those whom they allow to take responsibility for them.
This leads to the establishment of power relations. But this power is often not based on “natural authority,” meaning that the power holders have the respective knowledge, experience and professional competence. Rather power relations are based on access to instruments of power. And today, one of these instruments is money.
Basic Income would empower those people who want to be self-reliant, but it would also force those people to be self-reliant who think they need leaders. But for such people who wanted to gain and keep power for their own purposes that would be a problem: for them, money became an easy, “humanistic” and convenient way of making people want to participate in the leaders’ goals. With a Basic Income, those leaders would have to find other instruments than money to seduce people into helping them to achieve the leaders’ ends.
Assuming the above is correct, it becomes clear why the introduction of a Basic Income scheme is so difficult – even if it is obvious that everybody needs an income floor for a living. A majority wants to have leaders and leaders do not want to lose one major instrument of their power.
However, mankind is facing enormous challenges: climate change, environmental pollution, peak oil, the dilapidation of a once intact infrastructure, and so on. To solve these problems, I think, creativity is more important than money. But if we waste all our efforts thinking about how to earn the money that contributes to these problems, we are just going to increase the tasks for the future.
Finaly, responsibility and self-reliance provided by a Basic Income could unleash an enormous creative potential, because people, freed from the struggle for subsistence, would start to ask themselves how they would like to live their lives and what they need for them.
by Citizens' Income Trust | May 29, 2012 | Opinion
Tony Fitzpatrick, Welfare Theory: An introduction to the theoretical debates in social policy, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, xvi + 241 pp, pbk 0 230 27202 6, £19.99
The map with which political philosophers and social theorists are concerned overlaps, to a considerable extent, with the particular territory occupied by social policy. This book starts from the premise that you cannot properly understand the one unless you understand the other. (p.xiv)
This accessible and thoroughly researched book is also a vindication of Fitzpatrick’s conviction that ‘welfare theory’ – the philosophy of social policy – is a discipline in its own right. Welfare theory draws on both ‘social theory (the philosophy of sociology and social science) and political theory (the philosophy of politics and government)’ (p.xv), but it orders things in its own way and develops its own emphases. It is not insignificant that the first chapter is entitled ‘wellbeing’, now a focal concept for welfare theorists and social policy makers.
The book is structured around a number of concepts: equality, liberty, citizenship, community, state, power, poverty, society, and class. Fitzpatrick explores the histories of these ideas, the different ways in which they have been understood, and ‘recent developments’. Throughout, there is reference to social policy. For instance: the National Health Service’s achievements are judged against a variety of definitions of equality (p.39), the distribution and redistribution of income is the field on which a discussion of the relationship between equality and liberty is constructed (ch.3), new forms of ‘deliberative democracy’ are related to the idea of ‘democracy’ (p.79), and the chapter on ‘state, power and poverty’ is largely driven by the history and current state of the UK’s welfare state, the detail of current social policy, and measured outcomes (ch.5). The first three of these relationships fit the three types of relationship which Fitzpatrick lists in his introduction: ‘assessment’ (of practice by theory), ‘explanation’ (of practice by theory), and ‘reform’ (of practice by theory). But we can see that there is also a fourth relationship: practical policy’s influence on welfare and its concepts. To take a particular example: Beveridge’s ‘contributory’ and ‘social assistance’ welfare state was largely driven by previous government-supported co-operative insurance provision and by the Elizabethan Poor Law. The real-world relationship between welfare theory and social policy is a circular one, with each affecting the other. Fitzpatrick’s book is a text-book for students ( – the first edition was written for that purpose, and this second edition has benefited from the first edition’s use for that purpose), so we would expect it to concentrate on the ‘welfare theory forms social policy’ side of the relationship; but in his ‘concluding remarks’ Fitzpatrick suggests that
it is often necessary to take social policy themes and issues into account when discussing social and political theory. Social policy students do not simply debate how to translate principles into practical reality. Instead, they ask distinctive questions that enhance the method and assumptions of social philosophy. To explore social and political thought without substantial reference to the battles fought over social policies is to miss a key feature in the development of modern societies. (p.211).
Following the chapters on particular concepts, chapter 7 is entitled ‘ideologies’. Here Fitzpatrick describes the Radical Right, Conservatism, Social Democracy, Marxism, and Feminism. (Descriptions of the first two and of Marxism are followed by ‘criticisms’; descriptions of social democracy and of feminism are not.)
Chapter 8 is on ‘identities’: a recognition that social policy is often driven by the ‘recognition’ of an ‘identity’ (for instance, disability). Chapter 9 is on ‘globalization’, and shows how a global economy constrains national social policy; and this chapter in particular shows how economic policy has influenced both the idea of globalization and changes in social policy. The final chapter, on ‘global justice and environmentalism’, is new to this edition, and contains a useful taxonomy of types of global justice.
Finally, Fitzpatrick suggests that the utopian and the pragmatist need each other. The truth of this in relation to our tax and benefits system is obvious. Maybe it’s time for a second edition of his Freedom and Security, his book about a Citizen’s Income: a book which exemplifies the complex relationship between welfare theory and social policy which the book under review is all about.
by Citizens' Income Trust | Apr 30, 2011 | Opinion
Ruth Lister, Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy, Policy Press, 2010, xii + 311 pp, hbk 1 861 34794 7, £60, pbk 1 861 34793 0, £19.99.
Not only is this a most useful textbook, but it is also a sustained argument for the usefulness of theory. The back cover says that the book is for students and their teachers, but because it constantly draws connections between social science theory and practical social policy it will also be read with profit by social policy practitioners.
Most of the book’s chapters start with a set of theories or ideologies and then relate them to policy areas. Thus moral hazard and public choice theory inform our understanding of Thatcherism’s quasi-markets; feminism has changed the position of the public-private divide and thus our treatment of domestic violence; post-Fordism has contributed to the change from comprehensive education to niche-marketing academies; Foucault has uncovered the disciplinary networks which now influence many areas of our lives; and the idea of ‘social construction’ tells us where ‘the underclass’ comes from – to mention just a few of the many connections to be found in the book.
Three important chapters then start with social policy concepts – needs, citizenship, community, liberty, equality, and social justice; and these too are related to practical social issues: mental health, the relationship between social security claimants and the state, and press censorship – again, to name just a few.
The structure and method of the book reflects the author’s experience with the Child Poverty Action Group and as a university teacher, and the clarity of expression and organisation of the material have clearly benefited from her teaching experience. The final chapter on social movements similarly reflects Lister’s constant engagement with social policy issues through her involvement in organisations, through her speaking at conferences, and through her articles and books. This chapter would have benefited from a rather more personal approach and perhaps should have included an account of issues she faced while at the Child Poverty Action Group. In general, the last few chapters would have benefited from more practical examples.
This is a marvellously comprehensive and comprehensible textbook. There is bound to be a second edition. It should contain a chapter on future directions in social policy which outlines the options for reform of the welfare state, and in particular extends the material on the argument between universalism and means-testing briefly begun on p.191. The debate over the feasibility and desirability of universal provision will be increasingly important in an age of austerity, and students and practitioners would benefit from an extended treatment of the field.
