by Kate McFarland | Jan 17, 2017 | News
Juliana Bidadanure, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, has designed a graduate seminar on the philosophy of basic income, which she is currently teaching for the winter term.
According to the official course description, the seminar will address questions such as the following: “[I]s giving people cash no strings attached desirable and just? Would basic income promote a more gender equal society through the remuneration of care-work, or would it risk further entrenching the position of women as caregivers? Would alternative policies be more successful (such as job guarantees, stakeholder grants, or a negative income tax)? How can we test out basic income? What makes for a reliable and ethical basic income pilot?”
The seminar will analyze and critique basic income from multiple perspectives in political theory, including feminism, liberalism, republicanism, communism, and libertarianism. Initial readings include classic works by Philippe van Parijs and responses from his critics. Subsequent sessions will address contemporary philosophical work on basic income, as well as potential alternatives, such as job guarantees. Additional topics include empirical work on the health (and other) effects of basic income, the role of automation in motivating basic income, and basic income in relation to gender and racial justice, among others.
Explaining why she was inspired to develop the course, Bidadanure says, “It has been my dream for a while to teach a class on the Philosophy of Basic Income. First, because I am committed to the idea that everyone has a right to an income and because I think that UBI deserves serious treatment; second, because I think it is a great lens through which one can teach Political Philosophy. There is great writing for and against basic income from within pretty much each and every school of political thought. And so my idea was to introduce students of a variety of disciplines to a broad range of writers in political philosophy by focusing on UBI. Given the recent interest in Basic Income in the US, including by computer scientists, engineers and economists, I thought that the timing was right to launch the class!”
On February 8, a special panel on basic income experiments will be held in connection with the seminar.
The panel will feature guests Guy Standing (Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London; BIEN co-founder), Elizabeth Rhodes (Research Director of Y Combinator’s basic income experiment), and Joe Huston (Regional Director at GiveDirectly). Standing, Rhodes, and Huston will speak about basic income research in (respectively) India, Oakland, and Kenya. The event will be presented as a roundtable discussion and open to the public. More information on this event is available here.
Reactions from Students
Although housed in the Department of Philosophy, the seminar spans topics of interest to students in many disciplines. The seminar group is constituted by 10 enrolled participants as well as a further 10 auditors, comprising students of philosophy, political science, psychology, economics, computer science, engineering, and business.
Asked about his interest in the seminar, one participant, a PhD student in Economics, remarks, “Basic income is such a hot topic, but I’ve not come across much rigorous academic thinking on the topic, in any discipline. I now discover there is a whole bunch in philosophy, which I was unaware of and which is really exciting!”
Commenting on his reactions after the first session, he adds, “It’s awesome that the class is about a third economists, a third philosophers, and a third computer scientists – it seems like the venue for a truly exciting exchange of views; and the arguments for and against basic income are so much richer and more diverse than this economist expected!”
Another student in the seminar, Sage, is currently working towards a masters in Symbolic Systems while also finishing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Her interest in the topic derives from her work in the technology sector:
“My masters thesis is a work of political philosophy analyzing the responsibility of tech companies to help those in poverty. I am interested in Universal Basic Income because it has grown increasingly popular in the US due to the fear that one day all of our jobs will be completed by robots. I am interested in exploring the other reasons for Universal Basic Income and determining if it is a viable choice in the U.S. given our trajectory in the tech sector. I was impressed by how diverse our class was by region, interest, and background. Having the opportunity to discuss topics in basic income with students so different from me is a fantastic opportunity to round out my research.”
Anusha, a graduate student in Computer Science says her love for data structures (especially the top view of binary tree) made her focus on natural language processing and computer vision. She became interested in the seminar due to her background in AI:
“I was really interested in this seminar because Universal Basic Income has been receiving a lot of attention lately, especially in the Computer Science and AI communities, due to the potential impacts of automation on the future of work. There have also been a lot of discussions around the joint responsibilities of Silicon Valley and policymakers to help those whose jobs are most at risk. I’m really excited about this seminar because it addresses Universal Basic Income from several different perspectives, and I’m eager to learn about the various arguments for and against UBI from those standpoints.”
Nishith, an undergraduate senior in Computer Science who works on computer vision and reinforcement learning, became interested in UBI following a discussion of the economic impact of self-driving trucks and President-Elect Donald Trump’s emphasis on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. He is excited by Bidadanure’s seminar, adding, “I was surprised to learn that discussions about UBI need not revolve around automation (as they do in Europe) and had a great time talking about the potential benefits and pitfalls of this proposed policy [at the first class meeting].”
Dr. Bidadanure, who holds a PhD in Political Philosophy from the University of York, has research interests at the intersection of philosophy and public policy.
She has written on the theory and practice of equality, including, in particular, age-group justice and what it means to treat young people as equals. She has written on the specific arguments to give a basic income to young adults as well as on hybrids of basic income and basic capital.
Bidadanure plans to teach an undergraduate course on basic income at Stanford in the next academic year. She is also working to launch a basic income research initiative at Stanford as part of the Center for Ethics in Society in 2017.
Reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan.
Information and photo provided by Juliana Bidadanure.
by BIEN | Jan 16, 2017 | News
Councilors of the small Ontario town of Smiths Falls voted on December 19 last year to reject participation in its province’s basic income pilot, to the objection of residents and the town’s mayor. A petition requesting a re-vote is currently circulating online. The story begins, however, in 2008.
That year The Hershey Company shuttered its Canada operations, at the time based in Smiths Falls, largely for cheaper Mexico-based labor. This exit of the area’s biggest customer precipitated the same by other businesses, and although the ensuing purge of jobs merely reflected a manufacturing decline already underway in the province, the disappearance of five hundred positions at Hershey’s alone, accounting for nearly 6% of the town’s population, catalyzed especially forward-looking pain. That year the town operated at a surplus of C$11.2m, and by the town’s most recent reported fiscal year, its once budget excess had trudged through increasingly tight leverage to a deficit of C$1.3m (albeit improved since 2013). Today the town struggles with unemployment above the national rate, and a third of children live below the poverty line.
Given also an aging population and petering labor force – per census data the town’s median age increased by 2.1 years in the five years leading up to 2011, and the overall population declined by 2% – it could be in the interest of Smiths Falls’ residents to entertain a basic income system. Indeed the petition created by resident Carol Anne Knapp has so far gathered 113 supporters, with a goal of one thousand. This is despite the council’s three-two vote, with two councilors absent, against mayor Shawn Pankow advocating to Ontario’s finance minister for participation in the program. Pankow has meanwhile expressed interest in holding a public meeting on the topic this month, health officials in tow.
A prominent councilor, Dawn Quinn, cast one of three “nay” votes. According to Jordan Pearson, writing for Motherboard, her vote was at least partly informed by her credo of frugality, stating that “folks sit around in Tim Hortons all day instead of looking for jobs, and they should consider buying a tin of Tim Hortons coffee to make at home instead of buying a cup.” On that point Pearson continues, “[Quinn added] they could consider shoveling snow to earn some extra money.” Similarly conveying Quinn’s underlying sentiment, Kate Porter quotes her in CBC News: “They need to be able to learn how to take that money and stretch it […] we need more of that kind of thinking.” So it appears the belief that basic income causes squander was, at least for one decision maker, a reason for the council’s vote outcome.
There is, however, some evidence from a bordering province that suggests this perspective is dogmatic, as reflected in Knapp’s petition letter requesting that a “new vote be based on science and evidence.”
Nearly forty years ago, Dauphin, a similarly small town in the Canadian province of Manitoba, underwent a five-year minimum income (dubbed “mincome”) experiment. Mincome was also similarly basic income-lite. Rather than a true guarantee, which is regardless of preexisting income status, mincome subsidized only those poor enough and was reduced for those who earned above a threshold. Likewise, Ontario’s pilot makes whole those earning below a set threshold. Even so, the experiment provides refutation to Quinn’s apprehension of lethargic congregations at Tim Hortons.
Evelyn Forget (credit to: Ecocide Alert)
According to Evelyn Forget, an economist at the University of Manitoba and academic director of the Manitoba Research Data Centre, primary earners in Dauphin worked only marginally less within the five-year study, and much of the other reductions in labor force participation was comprised of women who extended maternity leaves and male high school students who simply stayed in school rather than work. Additionally, hospitalizations, in particular for mental health problems, dropped significantly (nearly 9% across the board) and would alleviate the burden on healthcare programs today.
Quinn acknowledges, though remains unpersuaded by, the Manitoba findings and is further dissuaded by cost – a concern currently aggravated by budget shortfalls. She protests that Smiths Falls became financially saddled after a 1970s investment in low-to-moderate income (LMI) housing, giving rise to her concern about opting into another government-borne program. A ten-year housing plan published in 2014 by Lanark County and Smiths Falls, however, notes that 74% of the county’s dwellings requiring major repairs were constructed prior to 1971. Coupling two observations then – 60% of LMI housing was developed under the program to which Quinn is referring; and renting in lieu of owning has been on the rise since Hershey’s departure – the 1970s investment appears to have provided an arguably necessary safety net.
Expenses, furthermore, reflect precarity when business output, curbed by economic disempowerment of consumers, constrains municipal revenues. In pursuing a conservative bottom line, rejecting basic income has a potentially truncating effect on the top, and budget woes thereby persist. On this, councilor Lorraine Allen, one of two “yea” votes, says the proposal would enable residents to “shop more, buy more groceries, perhaps be more involved in things that they couldn’t before.” Hence her vote for the program.
Still, the short-lived nature of the pilot is consistent with another of Quinn’s concerns: that a pilot implemented, then taken away, could prove negligibly meaningful. In the town’s 2015 operations approximately C$2.4m was spent on social and family services. Tucked inside these costs were, in addition to unspecified uses, assistance to the elderly, childcare and the social housing expenses which Quinn resents of the 1970s. If the Ontario program follows the recommendation by former senator Hugh Segal (a monthly allowance of C$1,320), the combined cost to eligible individuals could perhaps exceed the town’s existing social and family services expenditures. This mainly reinforces the need for cooperation between municipality and province-level governments to realize success from basic income. Eating the full burden, what Ontario offers is more generous than that. But in order for such a program to live past a test phase, the council of Smiths Falls would first have to heed the needs of its residents – and try.
Thanks to Genevieve Shanahan for reviewing this article.
Cover photo by wyliepoon.
More information at:
AreaScore, “Smiths Falls unemployment,” 2016.
Carol Anne Knapp, “Smiths Falls council reverse the decision regarding basic income,” Care2 Petitions, December 21, 2016.
City-Data, “City data of Smiths Falls,” 2011.
Evelyn Harford, “Basic income pilot project a no-go for Smiths Falls town council,” InsideOttawaValley, December 20, 2016.
Jesse Ferreras, “Ontario basic income should be $1,320 per month, adviser says,” The Huffington Post, November 4, 2016.
Jordan Pearson, “Why a struggling town voted against a basic income,” Motherboard, December 22, 2016.
Kate Porter, “Smiths Falls residents fight for guaranteed income pilot project,” CBC News, December 22, 2016.
Lanark County, “Lanark County and the town of Smiths Falls ten year housing and homelessness plan 2014-2024,” 2014.
Sarah Gardner, “On the Canadian prairie, a basic income experiment,” Marketplace, December 20, 2016.
Statistics Canada, “Census subdivision of Smiths Falls, T – Ontario,” 2011.
The Canadian Press, “Ontario floats idea of guaranteed minimum income to ease poverty,” CBC News, March 14, 2016.
Town of Smiths Falls, “2009 consolidated financial statements,” 2009.
Town of Smiths Falls, “2015 consolidated financial statements,” 2015.
by BIEN | Jan 12, 2017 | News, Testimonies
Interview by Scott Jacobsen
*Conducted via email with minor edits.*
The economy has shifted into high gear for knowledge and ability, the currently labeled Knowledge Economy concomitant with the Fourth Industrial Revolution. How has this affected inequality based on standard metrics of knowledge and ability, such as credentials from post-secondary institutions in relevant disciplines?
It has pretty much always been the case that an education will help you get a better job, with better pay and conditions. This is still basically true, though we are seeing even amongst the highly educated longer periods of unemployment, a failure to get “good” jobs, and increasing insecurity in the work that they do get. Why? Because we just don’t need the same number of people employed in order to make the economy work. By all means, get a great education, but look at it as much as an investment in developing yourself so that you will have a meaningful life as in getting a good job. Because maybe there is no job to be got.
You have argued for some form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as fundamental to the “progressive civic” and “economic reinvention.” What are other terms or phrases for ideas associated with, but not the same as, UBI? What characterizes them?
There are a number of forms of basic income, not all of them universal. A common one is the idea of a negative income tax. So instead of paying tax, you are paid an allowance, but as you move back into work, get a job, the amount you are paid tapers until finally, you are back to paying tax and must make sure you do your year end tax planning. The real difference between this and a UBI is that it tries to integrate the allowance with the labor market whereas UBI tries to establish an income independent of it.
What makes the UBI plan of action unique?
I guess at heart it is the way it has the potential to break the nexus between remuneration and a job. It recognizes that many of the things we do as citizens and individuals fall outside the normal parameters of paid work but that nonetheless those things we do — from caring for children to volunteering with community organizations or political parties or sports groups — are valuable to society and so it makes sense to recognize that contribution. It also empowers workers to be able to say no to crap jobs offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
What are the most common success stories of UBI or similar programs? Any failures?
Every trial of UBI I know of has been successful in that it has dispelled one of the biggest myths about giving people a no-strings-attached income, namely, that people become lazy and do nothing. Every trial shows almost the exact opposite. One of the most comprehensive trials is the one I talk about in my book, run by UNICEF in India. But similar positive results have been shown in other trials, including the one in New Jersey run by the Nixon Administration.
What city seems the most progressive and forward-thinking in its implementation of UBI?
Hard to say. A number of cities, including Utrecht in the Netherlands, are running trials, as are a couple of cities in Canada and Finland. I think this is great. It builds momentum and adds to the data supporting implementation on a larger scale.
What country seems the most progressive and forward-thinking in its implementation of UBI?
I guess Finland, but I think there are some issues with the route they have decided to take. They have chosen to test a partial rather than a full version. Still, it is good to see a national government move in this direction, however tentatively.
Any advice for would-be policymakers or activists about strategies for the implementation of UBI?
Gather data through trials. With trials, implement them with populations that will receive conservative support. In Australia, that might include rural communities, including farmers. Don’t pitch it as “free money” because it isn’t. Don’t let that description stand. Educate people about the notion of universality and why, in a democracy, it is important that everyone is entitled to certain benefits. Reach out across ideological divides, right and left. Involve business in discussions. Lobby for corporations to set aside a percentage of stock to be held by the government as part of the common wealth. It’s going to be a hard sell, so the sooner you start, the better!
And this raises the major piece of advice I would give: don’t oversell the idea of Universal Basic Income. As important a tool as it is likely to be for dealing with technological unemployment, it will not by itself solve the various social and economic problems that beset us and we should be careful not to suggest that it will.
This is the Korean version of the text.
by Guest Contributor | Jan 11, 2017 | Opinion
On January 9th, Zygmund Bauman passed away at the age of 91. He is considered one of the great philosophers and sociologist of our time, who introduced the concept of “liquid modernity” to describe the postmodern age.
He is the main character in the recently released documentary “In the Same Boat” where he urges to tackle global problems on a global scale, and suggests exploring new roads such as a universal basic income.
Read more in this review: “Man vs machine, or man ahead with machine?”
MACHINE VS MAN, OR MAN AHEAD WITH MACHINE?
Written by: Bart Grugeon Plana
In the modern era, digital technology is substituting human brain power in a similar way as the steam engine did in the eighteenth century, making muscle power inefficient. Would it be possible, however, to harness this digital revolution for the benefit of humans and the planet, to share prosperity? The documentary “In the Same Boat,” which is being released in several countries throughout Europe, has opened up this interesting debate.
We are in the middle of a new industrial revolution and with the advance of Artificial Intelligence, this process is affecting an increasing number of sectors in the economy. Not only is traditional blue-collar work being carried out by machines, but also work that requires specifically human capabilities. In the coming years, for instance, the self-driving car will turn the transportation sector on its head.
This revolution in productivity can be seen as good news, since machines will do our traditional work and we can dedicate our time to education, care, hobbies and services. Also, new technologies and the availability of huge amounts of data allow us to optimise the planet’s scarce resources. However, there is no guarantee that the increase of wealth will be spread over the inhabitants of the planet with any criterion of equity. There is a real risk that the ownership of machines will be reduced to a small number of people and that the great majority of the world’s population will be left without the means to generate an income.
Most countries in the world have seen income inequality rise during the last decade, in part because of the technological revolution. Economic data (Link 1) show that since the year 2000, the western economy has invested more in technology and less in human capital. This strategy has endowed innovative entrepreneurs with more benefits, without creating more jobs or raising average incomes. The generated wealth went to a tiny minority. Wealth accumulation can come if you already have financial capital and know how to invest it, but if you depend on selling your skills in the labour market, it becomes more difficult to make a living.
When looking at the data of the concentration of wealth, there isn’t much margin for many interpretations. There are 62 people in the world that are as wealthy as the poorest half of the global population. In the US, the middle class is endangered; in the period of economic recovery between 2009 and 2013, the top one per cent of the population was assigned 25 times more of the national revenue than the rest (Link 2).
Many people feel that they are being excluded from the labour market, and they are aware that they have little chance to win the race against the machines. The solution is to learn to work ahead with technology and to think about a strategy to create wealth together, says Erik Brynjolfsson, an expert in information economy (Link 3).
“We are in full transformation towards the society of the 21th century, and the outcome is still open: either with shared prosperity, or, at the contrary, with more inequality. This decision depends on our individual choices and on our strategy as a society. The power is in our hands. Technology is merely an instrument,” Brynjolfsson said.
RECONCILIATION OF POWER AND POLITICS
Image still from ‘In the Same Boat’
The dominant political debate today doesn’t pay much attention to the digital revolution we are experiencing, and mainly focuses on creating favourable conditions to stimulate companies to create as many jobs as possible.
This way of thinking conforms to the paradigm of the second half of the 20th century, when we got used to the idea of ‘full employment’, explains sociologist Zygmund Bauman (Link 4). In our social consciousness, the normal situation is to be in employment and a person that is ‘un-employed’ does not fit this normality. However, in the new technological world, the techniques of the past don’t seem to work, and a solution for the structural problem of unemployment hasn’t yet been found. In Europe, 8.5 per cent of the active population has no job, with significant regional and age variation (Link 5). The situation in Greece and Spain is the most alarming.
According to Bauman (Link 6), we don’t know how to regain control over our economic system because it operates on a global scale: “With just one click on a computer, a company can decide to move 100.000 jobs from here to another part of the planet where labour conditions are more interesting,” he asserts, “Capital and finance move without restraints, but labour does not.”
Looking for solutions, citizens turn to the political class who ultimately can’t influence the economic decision-making process. “They have a local sphere of action, mainly at the level of the nation-state, but power is organised on a global scale and escapes from political control. This divorce between power and politics is the essence of the problem of our society in transformation”, says Bauman, who considers it is a task of all citizens to reconcile both (Link 7).
For the first time in human history, all inhabitants of the planet are interconnected and are interdependent. If we want to resist the populist and protectionist wave that is extending over the globe after Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, we must think about different ways to organise work and to distribute wealth. Several experts insist that we should radically rethink the foundations of our society and they propose an open dialogue to come to sensible solutions.
WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT
The documentary “In the Same Boat” made a momentous effort to open this debate and to project the voices that invoke a new paradigm. Zygmund Bauman, Serge Latouche, Tony Atkinson, Mariana Muzzucato, José Mujica and many others explain why the current labour model has hit a dead end. With a cinematographic style, spectacular photography and a varied musical palette, the film is fresh and inspiring, even whilst dealing with such a weighty subject as the future of humanity.
Zygmund Bauman considers the message of ‘In the Same Boat’ the complete antithesis of Margaret Thatcher’s famous slogan ‘TINA’; claiming that “There Is No Alternative” to the liberalisation of all parts of society as it is the only way to guarantee welfare. On the contrary, the polish sociologist proposes to “change the course of the boat that all inhabitants of the planet are in”. He believes that the new paradigm of the 21st century should cut the ties between income and work. “We should abandon the idea of working to make our living. We cannot condition the right to live to the interests of the company we work for,” he argues (Link 8).
The documentary proposes a universal basic income as one of the solutions to fair wealth redistribution. It is not considered a charity for the misfortunate, but rather a technological dividend of the past — a common right. Mariana Mazzucato (Link 7), an economist specialized in technological innovation, explains that “innovation largely depends on public financing and on a collective effort. Moreover, innovation today is a heritage of discoveries of the past.” In other words, what makes your smartphone smart (battery, GPS, Internet, mathematical algorithms, touch screen, etc.) are no individual or private inventions, but are the result of the effort of society as a whole with publicly-funded research programs. Why is it then that the benefits of this technological heritage go to just a privileged minority? How can it be justified that the cost and the risk of research is burdened by the public, but the rewards are privatised? If technology allows us to delegate work to machines due to the effort of many generations, wouldn’t the legitimate heir be society as a whole?
The film has arrived at the precise moment to put the current economical and institutional crisis into a wider perspective. Hopefully it can help to spark a global debate about the necessary societal changes.
“In the Same Boat” was released in Spain in November 2016 and will be screened in other countries during 2017. Members of the Basic Income Network that want to organise local screenings can contact the team on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/inthesameb.
Included is the trailer of the documentary and the presentation with Zygmund Bauman, talking about the future of work. Barcelona, February 2016.
About the author:
Bart Grugeon Plana works as an investigative journalist for the Barcelona based newspaper La Directa, and collaborates with other news platforms such as Apache.be and Ouishare Magazine. He has a special interest in common-based peer production, collaborative economy, platform cooperativism and energy transition.
Trailer In the Same Boat
Interview with Zygmund Bauman
Link 1 the great decoupling
https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-great-decoupling
Link 2 US inequality
https://www.epi.org/files/pdf/107100.pdf
Link 3 Brynjolfsson
https://raceagainstthemachine.com/
Link 4 Bauman
https://www.socialeurope.eu/2013/05/europe-is-trapped-between-power-and-politics/#
Link 5 EU unemployment
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Unemployment_statistics#Unemployment_trends
Link 6 Bauman
https://wpfdc.org/images/docs/Zygmunt_Bauman_Living_in_Times_of_Interregnum_Transcript_web_I.pdf
Link 7 Bauman
https://directa.cat/actualitat/zygmund-bauman-ordinadors-poden-fer-nostra-feina-essers-humans-serem-redundants
Link 8 Mazzucato
https://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/
by Guest Contributor | Jan 9, 2017 | Opinion
Seth Ackerman, Mateo Alaluf, Jean-Marie Harribey, Daniel Zamora. Contre l’allocation universelle , Lux Éditeur. Kindle Edition, 2016
Review by: Pierre Madden
This is a book written by and for French intellectuals. Hegelian and Marxist notions are bandied about like so many baseball scores. Nevertheless, the message is plain and the reason for the vigorous opposition to Basic Income (BI) is clear. Some of the points inviting skepticism are well taken. Tracing the origins of BI back to Thomas More and Thomas Paine is in fact quite a stretch. The same familiar More passage is always quoted but have you ever seen a different one? We are dealing here with a posteriori myth making to establish legitimacy.
For this group of authors, the concept of BI is a part of neoliberal ideology. “The concept of BI is tied to the emergence of neoliberalism both in its response to the crisis [in post-war social protection] and in the conception of social justice it embodies.” Furthermore, in the words of economist Lionel Stoléru “the market economy can encompass the fight against absolute poverty” but “it is incapable of digesting stronger remedies against relative poverty.” The latter refers to income inequality rather than to deprivation.
Neoliberalism is opposed to the concept of social rights. A generous BI would be prohibitively expensive without cutbacks in “collective” spending such as welfare, education, public pensions, health, etc. Market forces would replace the idea and institutions of social justice. The “equality of chances” defended by neoliberalism would lead to a society that is more meritocratic but no less unjust, claim the authors.
It is no secret that wealth has increased dramatically since the 1970s but that the rich have benefited disproportionately. BI is seen by the authors as a Trojan horse in the heart of Social Society, whose purpose is to undo all of the social programs developed in the 20th century before the advent of neoliberalism. Proponents in the libertarian left argue that BI would be the “Capitalist road to Communism,” in the words of Philippe Van Parijs himself. BI is seen as a synthesis of liberal and socialist utopias. A description of the conflicting attitudes towards work will best illustrate the divergence in approaches. The classic leftist view is that a citizen’s work defines his contribution to society and tends to conflate work and employment. It is up to society to validate each member’s work effort. The authors claim that BI proponents refuse to accept the idea that work can be a factor for social integration, thus their view that full employment is not a useful goal. On the contrary “the social utility of an activity cannot be established as valid a priori; it must be submitted to democratic approval.”
What democratic approval would mean in practice is not explained but then the Swiss were asked to approve BI with few details provided and 23% voted in favour. Another argument in favour of BI is that it would enable natural caregivers in the home to provide for the young, the sick and the elderly. The authors of this book cannot agree that these activities are valid work in the Marxian sense. To believe otherwise, they say, is “to espouse neoclassical propositions omnipresent in economic pseudoscience.” Some feminists also oppose BI because they see it as a trap to keep women in traditional roles.
So, is BI just a neoliberal plot to destroy the social protections developed in the post-war years by the social state that are inextricably linked to the strength of labour? If not a conspiracy, BI is presented as the culmination of the free market utopia in our collective neoliberal imagination.
The four writers of this tract are nostalgic of more coherent times:
“Since Durkheim,the sociological tradition considers that in developed societies, the division of labour and the resulting specialization of functions produces a solidarity that assures social cohesion. The assignment of individuals to social positions does not only depend on their own will. Impersonal social forces, determinism, belie the claims that attribute to individual merit alone the possibilities of emancipation. The more autonomous the individual the more dependent he is on society. We cannot therefore be but ourselves, anchored in our individuality, to the extent that we are social beings.”
This is no longer the world we live in. In a post-industrial sharing economy, we are still social beings but employment where labour is pitted against capital no longer defines us. The nostalgic socialist authors are justifiably suspicious of neoliberal aims to cut existing social programs but these have a long history and broad support. Making sure that BI beneficiaries do no receive less than before is a part of any serious discussion or test of Basic Income. Vigilance is always appropriate but not to the extent of, as we say in French, tripping on the flowers woven into the carpet.
Book reviewer biography: Pierre Madden is a zealous dilettante based in Montreal. He has been a linguist, a chemist, a purchasing coordinator, a production planner and a lawyer. His interest in Basic Income, he says, is personal. He sure could use it now!
