by Sarath Davala | Sep 6, 2020 | Opinion
I can’t claim to be a friend of David Graeber. I can say I am his fan and that his work has influenced the way I see the world. I met him twice though. I met him first two years ago for dinner at Barb Jacobson’s place where he arrived in a long coat accompanied by a mild fever. He just had some hot tea while we shamelessly gobbled our beers. He came to meet me because I was my friend Barb’s Indian basic income comrade hanging out with her in her London apartment in Charles Rowan House. David sat with us for a long time chatting and answering our questions. Julio Linares his student at LSE and my dearest friend was also with us.
The next day I went to the London School of Economics campus with Julio just to hang out with him in the Anthropology department. We had the Hare Rama Hare Krishna free lunch that they serve to students on the campus. Then we walked around and on an impulse barged into David’s office in the anthropology department. He was working in his sun-lit office. As we entered and greeted him, we accosted a box of his yet unpublished proof copies of Bullshit Jobs. Julio and I picked up one each and bullied him to sign our copies. He was such a comrade he didn’t mind our playful bullying and very affectionately signed the copies. When he signed his unique signature, I asked: ‘David, can you sign this again?’. He smiled and nodded. Being self-proclaimed anarchist, he said something that I will now leave to your imagination.. And we chatted for a while and left him to continue his work.
I cried when I got the news about his death. Megan Coxwell an American poet and Barb’s niece who was also with us that evening with David, sent me a message on FB messenger about his sudden death. I screamed when I saw the message. It was half past eleven at night in India. What made me sob more was just an hour ago I was talking to a group of international students, and I said: ‘ If you want to understand the poor, you need to understand ‘debt’ because they live in perennial debt. It has a curse. Please read David Graeber’s book ‘Debt – the first 5000 years’. He gives a perspective. Let’s talk about the book next time we meet.’
What more can I say?
Each time I think of him I have tears in my eyes. The meeting I am talking about was in 2018 Spring in London. Last year, I desperately called him and was keen to have him at the BIEN Congress in Hyderabad. But he was about to get married and legitimately preoccupied with it.
The last I met him was online when he invited me to speak at a Spectre TV inaugural discussion. It was one of the most enjoyable and deepgoing discussions I have ever had.
I miss you David. I was hoping to come and see you this winter. God bless your wife and the rest of your family. What more can I say?
by Barb Jacobson | Sep 6, 2020 | Opinion
Since I heard from a mutual friend at lunchtime today: ‘David is gone’, the shock I felt then seems to have reverberated around the world. One of the most curious of minds, finest of writers, kindest of hearts, most courageous and consistent callers of bull shit ever. Gone.
David and I met over a Twitter conversation about the appalling copy editing of the first edition of ‘Debt the 5000 years’. After swallowing the book whole when it came out in 2011, I complained on Twitter that it must not have had an editor, some of the sentences didn’t read as smoothly as most of the others, in fact were pretty confusing. David came back immediately that no, in fact it had too many, apparently nine before publication, but he was red-lining a copy for the paperback edition. I grumped in response that yes that’s it, no one had pulled a paper copy before, impossible to see all the faults on screen.
The last chapter of ‘Debt’ reintroduced me to the concept of basic income and sent me off round the internet to find out about it. UBI pulled together all the strands of my organising over the previous 30 years: housing, heath, welfare, work and women. Unlike monetary reform I could talk about it from my own experience, from the gut. I liked the fact that people either loved or hated the idea straight away, and it was fun to talk people round who immediately disliked the idea to at least consider it more seriously.
Later on in 2013 I invited David round for food with a friend, after feeling that if he had finally responded to Brad deLong’s obsessive trolling he must be lonely. He arrived in spatz, and was somehow nothing like the writer, or the Twitter warrior in his gentleness and kindness. I myself was at a low ebb: my job as a welfare rights advisor was getting ever bleaker with the reforms, and the propaganda campaign against claimants. His interest in the idea that shame about welfare is the flip-side of the shame about debt was encouraging, and he respected my experience even without a book to my name. We went on to be great buddies.
Since I’d lived in London and been politically active here since 1981, I knew the genealogies of most groups and people on the left. From David I got a better picture of what had been going on in the US in the aftermath of Occupy and in academia. We talked a lot about value, and care, politics of course – though we didn’t always agree – and personal travails, especially as Americans abroad.
By 2013 I was also trying to organise a movement for basic income here in the UK, but not making much of it. Over the next years David was consistently encouraging, getting me to speak about it at meetings, getting me a gig on the Keiser Report, doing an interview about it with me for Occupy London Youtube. I don’t know that I would have stuck with basic income without David. He helped me find my voice.
David refused to be pigeon-holed into writing about just one thing after he had a lot of pressure to carry on about debt after the success of ‘Debt’. He insisted that there was little point in being famous if he didn’t use it to write or talk about whatever interested him. We are all the richer for it, with considerations of bullying, democracy, bureaucracy, money, work, play, the future, care and many other subjects that defy expectation, challenge assumptions and expand our minds.
When David interviewed me about basic income for the final chapter of ‘Bullshit Jobs’ in 2018 I was worried about protecting the charity I worked for, so I didn’t want to be named. Also it seemed apt if everybody else was under a pseudonym that I should be too. He was sceptical, but respected it. And then made me two people for good measure.
David used the power he had as an academic, activist and a writer, and the money he earned by it, to pull many people and groups out of financial, academic, political holes. Others will talk in more detail about his role in saving the Syrian Kurds from Isis, but this is only the most famous of his interventions. He added his voice to defend Corbyn from the accusations of anti-semitism when Corbyn wasn’t defending himself. While a self-proclaimed anarchist, a practitioner and defender of direct action, an expert in consensus-building within groups, he was also a pragmatist about working with politicians, and did whatever he could to support working class demands.
David enjoyed what he had, and never forgot where he came from. He constantly acknowledged the fact that he got many of his ideas from conversations with other people, and insisted that the famous ‘We are the 99%’ was written by committee. He wrote and said publicly what so many of us thought or experienced silently, and in doing so changed our collective consciousness about it.
He always said, ‘The problem with privilege is that not everyone has it’. David lived his life working to spread what privilege he had as widely as he could, in whatever way came to hand. For that his life stands as an example of what to do with privilege, while owning one’s access to it.
That was the foundation of his support for basic income. For him it was a way to spread his privilege of having a secure, and sufficient income, while also having the freedom to pretty much do what he wanted. He wanted everyone to have that. ‘The imagination strikes back’, he said about it.
He was quite insistent that we start the negotiations high. ‘Oh I don’t know, about £30k? That’s good, isn’t it?’
I’m so grateful for what David wrote, and what he did, for our friendship and laughter over the years. But now there will always be that next other thing I won’t be able to discuss with him when it occurs.
I’ll always miss him. Forever.
by Malcolm Torry | Aug 6, 2020 | News, Research
Details of the unconditional local currency income experiment in Maricá can be found here; with a translation in Portuguese here.
The European Commission is advertising for a post-doctoral researcher to study the unconditional local currency experiment in Maricá in Brazil. Details of the opportunity can be found here.
by Courtney Hallink | Aug 3, 2020 | French
par Courtney Hallink, 28 Juillet 2020
Traduction par Christine Cayré.
On peut lire l’article par Courtney Hallink ici.
Le 21 Avril 2020, le Président Ramaphosa a annoncé la création d’un fonds de soutien de 500 milliards de Rands en réponse à la pandémie de COVID-19. Le montant annoncé comprend des compléments de revenus pour les personnes qui bénéficient déjà d’allocations ainsi que la création d’une indemnité d’urgence spéciale coronavirus. Cette indemnité d’urgence est versée aux personnes sans emploi qui ne sont pas éligibles à l’indemnité chômage et aux travailleurs informels qui ne peuvent plus exercer d’activité pendant le confinement.
L’annonce du fonds de soutien a fait suite à l’envoi d’une lettre ouverte au Président Ramaphosa signée par un groupe de plus de 75 économistes et autres universitaires qui appellent à l’adoption d’un Revenu Universel de Base. L’Afrique du Sud a déjà un impressionnant système d’allocations, en place depuis bien avant la pandémie et dispose donc de l’infrastructure nécessaire pour effectuer les versements monétaires aux citoyens.
Un peu plus de 30 pour cent de la population et environ 44 pour cent des foyers perçoivent tous les mois une allocation versée et financée par le gouvernement. Malgré l’envergure impressionnante du programme d’allocations sud-africain, les adultes économiquement actifs en sont généralement exclus. Dans le cadre du fonds d’urgence, les adultes en âge de travailler vont percevoir une allocation de 350 rands par mois pendant 6 mois, à compter de May 2020. Le 13 juillet dernier, la Ministre du Développement Social, Lindiwe Zulu a annoncé que le gouvernement avait l’intention de mettre en œuvre un revenu minimum de base à partir d’octobre 2020, date à laquelle le versement spécial coronavirus prendra fin. Un document de travail du Congrès National Africain (ANC) précise que le gouvernement souhaite adopter une politique progressive vers la mise en œuvre du revenu universel proposé. Une des premières étapes consisterait à verser l’allocation aux personnes actives et aux chômeurs âgés de 19 à 59 ans, soit les mêmes personnes qui perçoivent actuellement l’allocation d’urgence spéciale coronavirus. Cela représente environ 13 millions de personnes.
L’étape ultime de cette mise en œuvre progressive serait le versement d’un revenu minimum de base à tous les résidents sud-africains de19 à 59 ans, soit environ 33 millions de personnes. Ce revenu ‘universel’ minimum s’ajouterait au système d’allocations existant au lieu de remplacer les revenus sociaux déjà en place (y compris la pension alimentaire pour les enfants de moins de 19 ans et la pension pour personnes âgées de plus de 59 ans). Cela donnerait effectivement naissance à un revenu universel pour les adultes en âge de travailler tout en maintenant une garantie de revenu minimum ciblée pour les personnes de 18 ans et moins et de 60 ans et plus. Le revenu minimum de base proposé ici ne répond donc pas aux exigences d’un revenu de base universel tel que défini par le BIEN. Néanmoins, il s’agit d’une étape notable vers l’amélioration de la sécurisation du revenu des adultes en âge de travailler en Afrique du Sud.
Cette annonce de revenu minimum de base intervient après plusieurs tentatives infructueuses dans les vingt dernières années d’étendre le système de revenus sociaux aux personnes en âge de travailler. Le premier de ces essais était une proposition de revenu minimum de base qui émanait d’une commission pour la protection sociale désignée par le gouvernement au début des années 2000. Le deuxième fut une proposition appuyée par l’ANC en 2012 qui aurait consisté en une allocation pour les demandeurs d’emploi destinée à toutes les personnes en âge de travailler et qui visait à les soutenir dans leur recherche de travail. Cette proposition n’a pas obtenu le succès attendu et a finalement été abandonnée.
Le document de travail élaboré par l’ANC à propos du revenu minimum de base souligne que ce revenu est une réponse aux retombées économiques causées par la pandémie de COVID-19. Pourtant, comme le rappelle Isobel Frye, de l’Institut d’Etude de la Pauvreté et des Inégalités, cette proposition de revenu minimum de base est en discussion depuis environ 10 mois, soit bien avant la survenue de la pandémie. A ce stade, il est encore difficile de savoir si le revenu minimum de base deviendra une composante permanente du système d’allocations sociales en Afrique du Sud ou bien si ce sera seulement un amortisseur temporaire pendant que le pays se remet des conséquences économiques de la pandémie de COVID-19.
On peut lire cet article en anglais ici
by Courtney Hallink | Jul 28, 2020 | News
There is a translation of this article into French
On 21 April 2020, President Ramaphosa announced a 500 Billion Rand relief package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The package included top-ups for existing cash transfer recipients and the introduction of an emergency ‘coronavirus grant’. The emergency grant is available to unemployed individuals who are not eligible for the contributory Unemployment Insurance Fund and informal workers who are unable to work during the lockdown.
The announcement of the relief package followed the submission of an open letter to President Ramaphosa by a group of 75 economists and academics calling for the adoption of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). South Africa already had an impressive system of cash transfers in place prior to the pandemic and therefore has the infrastructure required in order to get people cash. Over 30 per cent of the population and approximately 44 per cent of households receive a government-funded cash transfer each month. Despite the impressive reach of South Africa’s social grant system, it has historically excluded economically active adults. Under the emergency grant, working-age adults receive R350 a month for a total of 6 months, beginning in May 2020.
On 13 July, the Minister of Social Development Lindiwe Zulu announced that the government is intending to implement a basic income grant (BIG) from October 2020, the last month the coronavirus grant is available. A discussion document by the African National Congress (ANC) outlined that the government would adopt a graduated approach to implement the proposed universal grant. One of the first steps would be to provide the grant to the economically active and unemployed between the ages of 19 and 59, the same group that is now receiving the emergency coronavirus grant. This includes approximately 13 million individuals.
The final step in the graduated approach would be a universal BIG that would be provided to all South African residents between the ages of 19 and 59, approximately 33 million people. The ‘universal’ BIG would add on to the country’s existing grant system rather than replacing the social grants already in place (including the CSG for individuals under the age of 19 and the Old Age Pension for individuals over the age of 59). It would effectively create a universal income for working-age adults while keeping a targeted minimum income guarantee for individuals 18 and under and 60 and over. The proposed BIG therefore does not meet the requirements of a universal basic income as defined by BIEN. Nevertheless, it is a notable step towards increasing income security for working-age adults in South Africa.
The announcement for a BIG has come after several failed attempts to extend the country’s social grant system to working-age adults over the last two decades. The first was a proposal for a BIG made by a government-appointed social protection committee in the early 2000s. The second was the push for a Job Seekers’ Grant by the ANC in 2012, which would have provided cash transfers to the working-age population in order to help people look for work. This too made little headway and the proposal was eventually scrapped.
The BIG discussion document drafted by the ANC outlines that the BIG is a response to the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Isobel Frye at the Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute shared that the BIG has been under discussion for approximately 10 months, far before the onset of the pandemic. At this point it is unclear whether the BIG will become a permanent feature of South Africa’s social grant system or if it will act as a temporary buffer while the country’s economy catches up after the setback from the COVID-19 pandemic.
