by Kate McFarland | Apr 25, 2017 | News
Luke Martinelli is a research associate for the universal basic income project of the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath. In March 2017, Martinelli published the working paper “The Fiscal and Distributional Implications of Alternative Universal Basic Income Schemes in the UK”, which uses simulation techniques to examine the effects of four revenue-neutral basic income schemes for the UK on poverty and inequality.
Accompanying the release of this 46-page working paper, Martinelli also published a shorter blog post, focusing on some of the methodological issues underlying his decision to conduct simulation studies.
As Martinelli describes in the post, empirical evidence concerning the effects of basic income can be sorted into two main types: ex-post (“after the fact”) and ex-ante (“before the event”).
Ex-post evidence includes the results of pilot studies and experiments specifically designed to test some of the effects of introducing a basic income, as well as observational studies of related policies such as Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend. Martinelli points out that experimental studies are limited in their ability to forecast the effects of a basic income. For example, trials are limited in duration (whereas a basic income would be lifelong) and are influenced heavily by the specific contexts in which they are implemented, constraining the applicability of their results to other contexts. Moreover, the policies analyzed in both experimental and observational studies often diverge from full-blown basic income schemes in key respects.
Ex-ante evidence, in contrast, is exemplified by microsimulation–the technique used in Martinelli’s working paper–which uses computing methods to simulate any of a number of tax and benefit reforms. While microsimulation predict the fiscal and distributional consequences of a broad array of possible policies, it has other limitations; for instance, it does not shed light on the behavior effects of basic income (or other policies) or take account of such effects in prediction. Thus, Martinelli believes that ex-ante evidence must complement, rather than replace, ex-post evidence.
Martinelli’s forthcoming paper “Exploring the Distributional and Work Incentive Effects of Plausible UBI Schemes” will further examine the “distribution of winners and losers” under UBI, again using microsimulation techniques.
Read the full post:
Luke Martinelli, “Addressing the evidence deficit: how experimentation and microsimulation can inform the basic income debate,” IPR blog, March 13, 2017.
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
Photo CC BY 2.0 Michael Greenberg
by Sandro Gobetti | Apr 24, 2017 | Opinion
By: Sandro Gobetti
Basic income began to be debated in Italy from a diverse range of viewpoints about 4-5 years ago, when two law proposals were submitted to the Italian Parliament: one a part of the 5S Movement and the other the outcome of a popular initiative which had more than 50,000 signatures (the necessary threshold according to the Italian Constitution) collected by a pool of political and civil society associations. The role of Bin-Italy, which took part in the judicial extension of the latter text and played a consulting role for the 5S Movement, was particularly important. The two proposals have much in common (for example, that the financing burden falls on collective taxation, that the provision should be individual and not family-based, that the beneficiaries should have, at least at the beginning, an income below the threshold of relative poverty) but also have some differences, especially as to the degree conditionality is concerned.
For the 5S movement the possibility of refusing a job offer is a constrained to a maximum of three times and there is an obligation to work a number of weekly hours in community service. For the law of petition (BIN-Italy law), it introduced the concept of “fairness”, that it is possible to reject any job offer, which is considered “unfair”, since it is in line with the following three parameters: 1. the salary level is lower than previous jobs held or not in line with contractually stipulated pay rates (in the case of the young searching for their first job, without success); 2. the job is not in line with the qualifications and skills of the job-seeker; 3. the workplace is more than 70 km from the job-seekers residence.
Currently, these laws were discussed in the appropriate Labour Committees of the House and Senate but have not yet been put up for voting because the government chose other paths: in March, the new government approved the introduction of Reis (Social Inclusion Income) which presents very different characteristics from basic income and cannot also be considered a minimum income according to the parameters of the EU (PE Resolutions 2009, 2010, Charter of rights, the 1992 Commission Recommendation). Reis is only paid to families that have a total taxable income of less than € 3,000 a year (a ridiculously low amount), have a dependent or a disabled or at least two children and the breadwinner is over 55 years of age. Moreover, Reis includes an obligation to follow a path of integration to work, under penalty of revocation. The available financial resources amount to € 1.1 billion for 2017 and it is expected to increase to € 1,6 billion in 2018. The result is that only ¼ of households in absolute poverty can be helped. It is an expense of 0.1% of the national GDP in a country that already in social spending (net of pension) spends less than half of the average for European countries. The expense to cope with the two proposals for a real minimum income is between € 14 and 16 billion, according to different official statistical sources.
The current debate has given way to some experiments at the local level. Among these, the City of Livorno is testing (for a period of only 6 months), the introduction of a form of income support. To this purpose it has been allocated € 300 thousand. The municipality received 997 applications. Among the requirements was residency in the municipality for at least five years, unemployment status, registration at the employment center and a family income not exceeding € 6530 gross per year. In exchange for € 500 monthly, the municipality invited successful applicants to perform socially useful work.
Some Italian regions such as Puglia, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy have anticipated the governmental model of income support for those in absolute poverty and dependent children or only for the long-term unemployed and often with the obligation to carry out community service: in any case these are not even remotely sufficient to restore decent living conditions. The governor of Apulia Mr. Emiliano even spoke about the cleanliness of the palm leaves on the Bari seafront!
Acceptance with the condition of performing “community work” has been extended to unemployed and workers temporary outside production because of restructuring. Most minimum income experiments at local level are thus more like workfare programs, if not just poverty benefits still tied to a purely assistance-concept, selective, and on a strictly family-oriented basis; this has little to do with a ‘idea’ of a basic minimum income which is also an instrument of freedom and personal self-determination. Further, they are not in line with the instruments already in place in more European countries of fighting social exclusion.
In conclusion, not only is there no actual testing of basic income in Italy, nor are there even forms of guaranteed minimum income consistent with EU parameters. Finally, there is a generalizing culture of coercive control on beneficiaries and induction to accept any kind of work. This is paradoxical in a country known to be free from the implementation of efficient active policies in the labor market and efficient employment services and training.
Last, but not least, in Italy we suffer from a cultural delay regarding the idea that basic income is mainly a primary income. It is a means of remuneration, and not only passive assistance, of all the lifetime that today is put to labor and to value but not yet certified as productive labor and, hence, paid. It is not even related to the fact that unpaid labor is sharply increasing.
Executive Committee Basic Income Network – Italy
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
by Andre Coelho | Apr 20, 2017 | News
Maricá, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Fabiano Horta, the Mayor of Maricá, Brazil, has extended the unconditional income already distributed in Maricá, Brazil, to all its residents. He also aims at raising the distributed value tenfold during 2017.
The unconditional income is paid in Mumbuca, a local social currency. One Mumbuca is valued at one Real. The initial income was 10 Mumbucas per month, roughly equivalent to 3 €/month. It was introduced by Washington Siqueira (known as Washington Quaquá), who was Mayor of Maricá until late 2015. This was reported on at the time. The modest amount was given independently of the recipient’s job status, and initially only distributed to the town’s poorest residents, around 35,000 people. Under Mayor Fabiano Horta the program has already been extended to all residents (around 150,000 in total) in Maricá.
Like Quaquá, Horta is a PT party (left-wing) affiliate and federal deputy. Horta wants to raise the unconditional income, financed by the town’s oil revenues, to 30 €/month during 2017. This unconditional dividend is supplemented with conditional subsidies to poor families, where an extra 85 Reais/month (28 €/month) is available from current welfare programs.
The stipend is being paid electronically in the Mumbuca social currency even though fewer than 10% of all businesses in Maricá accept Mumbuca (businesses have to wait more than a month to get Mumbuca exchanged into Reais by the government). The program has been criticized by opposing politician Fillipe Poubel, who says that people will become dependent on the stipend. Poubel calls for the creation of jobs instead. Horta maintains the unconditional income will stimulate local economy. He also has said that the town will be able to scale up this project “in an exponential way over the next ten years”.
Fabiano Horta. Credit to: G1 Região dos Lagos
More information at:
Louis Genot, “Brazilian town embraces universal income experiment”, Yahoo News, February 14th 2017
Isabelle Gerretsen, “Brazilian city experiments with universal basic income”, International Business Times, February 15th 2017
Karl Widerquist, “Brazil: Municipality to introduce small basic income for local residents”, Basic Income News, December 6th 2015
by Citizens' Income Trust | Apr 19, 2017 | Opinion
An article by John Clarke, ‘Progressive Dreams Meet Neoliberal Realities’, poses an important question: Is it true that ‘we can draw a line between the models that are concerned with improving lives and raising living standards and those that are focused on intensifying the capacity for capitalist exploitation’?
First of all for some of the mistakes in the article. The ‘progressive’ camp is well described as offering a range of schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’, and that would provide enough money to live on: but it is not true that those who propose schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’ ‘pay great attention to explaining how nice their systems would be but give little if any thought to the concrete prospects of implementation’. Research published by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and by the Citizen’s Income Trust shows that schemes that would be ‘responsibly redistributive, reduce poverty and inequality and ease up on bureaucratic intrusion’ can be perfectly implementable.
A second mistake is to suggest that ‘there is a fight to be taken forward for living income, full entitlement and programs that meet the real needs of unemployed, poor and disabled people, as opposed to the present ‘rituals of degradation’ they embody.’ Unfortunately, it is precisely the fitting of benefits to needs that results in the ‘rituals of degradation’.
In the section of the article that matters, ‘Neoliberal version’, Clarke suggests that the motive underlying the schemes proposed by at least some of those governments proposing pilot projects is in fact the same as Charles Murray’s: the dismantling of all other welfare provision. He suggests that Citizen’s Income plans might be described with ‘progressive’ phrases, but their purpose is pernicious. He also suggests that Citizen’s Income proposals can provide cover for additional austerity within the current system; and that Citizen’s Income is being proposed in order to promote a more exploitative employment market.
In the section ‘Progressive Dreams’, Clarke suggests that ‘progressive’ versions of Citizen’s Income would be politically infeasible because they would tip the balance of power away from employers. He claims that it is neoliberal governments that seem to be interested in Citizen’s Income, suggesting that ‘progressive’ versions don’t stand a chance; that pursuing an infeasible Citizen’s Income might divert attention from tackling neoliberal depredations; and that Citizen’s Income would be an inadequate response to the problems facing our society. Clarke suggests that what we need is such public services as ‘free, massively expanded and fully accessible systems of healthcare and public transportation’, social housing, universal childcare, ‘living wages, workplace rights and real compensation for injured workers’.
Clarke’s final paragraph is worth quoting in full:
I am suggesting that our movements need to challenge, rather than come to terms with, the neoliberal order and the capitalist system that has produced it. For all its claims to be a sweeping measure, the notion of progressive BI is a futile attempt to make peace with that system. In reality, even that compromise is not available. The model of BI that governments are working on in their social policy laboratories will not ‘end the tyranny of the labour market’ but render it more dreadful. The agenda of austerity and privatization requires a system of income support that renders people as powerless and desperate as possible in the face of exploitation and that won’t change if it is relabelled as ‘Basic Income’.
The arguments need to be tackled one by one, starting with Charles Murray’s. Those who would like to replace public services such as healthcare with a Citizen’s Income confuse two different kinds of universality. The universality of healthcare must be one of availability, whereas the universality that characterises Citizen’s Income is one of provision. Whether healthcare is provided via the highly efficient NHS, or via an insurance system riddled with market failures, what individuals require is availability when it is needed, however much that costs. One person’s absorption of healthcare resources will be very different from another’s. Some people might spend months in hospital, and others might hardly ever see the inside of one: but they all need healthcare to be there when they need it. No standard amount of money can replace such a universality of availability. No doubt this argument will need to be made constantly. The important thing is that it is the only right argument and that it has to be made.
Some of Clarke’s other statements are genuine wake-up calls, and suggest that only Citizen’s Income schemes that do not impose losses at the point of implementation should be proposed. Similarly, nobody should be suggesting that a Citizen’s Income scheme could substitute for a National Minimum Wage or for a Living Wage. Citizen’s Income and a Living Wage would function very happily alongside each other, and would function far better than a Living Wage with a means-tested benefits system. Every time a Living Wage level is raised, means-tested in-work benefits fall, whereas this would not happen to a Citizen’s Income.
Some of Clarke’s arguments need to be tackled. No financially feasible Citizen’s Income would tip the balance of power very far away from employers and towards employees, if at all. Means-tested benefits function as dynamic subsidies – that is, they rise if wages fall – whereas Citizen’s Income functions as a static subsidy because it doesn’t rise if wages fall. Thus employers might experience more resistance if they attempt to cut wages. Also, because a Citizen’s Income might give to some employees more choice over employment patterns, and thus more ability to negotiate in the employment market, it might look as if the balance were shifting towards employees. However, because the overall effect would be to reduce the inefficiencies in the employment market, employers would find their firms becoming generally more efficient. This really could be a situation in which everyone wins.
No doubt some experiments are being conducted by neoliberal governments. This will not be a problem if researchers test the piloted schemes for household losses, and for changes in inequality and poverty. The best response, though, would be for governments across the political spectrum to research and pilot Citizen’s Income, and not to leave it to governments at only one end of it.
Finally, if universality and unconditionality are good for benefits systems, then they are good for everything else. The UK’s Sure Start childcare provision was designed to be universal, which removed the possibility of stigma. The NHS attracts no stigma, and it is highly efficient. Some services will need to be paid for, at least to some extent: experiments with free public transport can mean overloaded transport systems – but many public services are more efficient if free at the point of use. So far from Citizen’s Income being seen as a replacement for public services, it should be regarded as a default model for them unless proved otherwise.
As for Clarke’s final paragraph: let’s be realistic – the neoliberal age might be with us for some time to come, so what the situation requires is survival mechanisms and a modelling of how it might evolve to the benefit of people and planet. Citizen’s Income is precisely what is required. If Mr. Clarke would like to suggest a better alternative then we would be pleased to hear from him.
by Andrea Fumagalli | Apr 19, 2017 | Opinion
By: Andrea Fumagalli
Introduction: the minimum income
In Italy, the debate surrounding basic income has been ongoing for almost 20 years. It began, in fact, with the August 1997 publication online (on the site ecn.org) of my pamphlet entitled “Ten theses on citizenship income”. The pamphlet saw successful underground circulation, and was re-edited into the book “Tute Bianche“[1]. The pamphlet presents a survey of the Italian debate around the introduction of a basic income, a proposal that had begun to circulate in the neo-workerist environments of the previous 2 years[2].
Twenty years later, it should be acknowledged that the definition of “citizenship income” has created more negative effects than positive: at that time, although starting to increase, the phenomenon of migration had not yet assumed today’s proportions. The term “citizenship” was used without considering the concept of “citizenship” in a way that was not terribly ambiguous. In fact, it could then be used as part of an ethical and philosophical framework for designating that every human being is born already a “world citizen”, regardless of nationality. But increasingly today, the concept of citizenship has to do with the legal-national sphere and then with a grid of limited rights ius soli, and is not extended to those who were born outside a nation’s borders. From this perspective, the idea of a “citizen’s income” can only be misunderstood as a proposal limited to specific nationalities, in contradiction with what is our idea of a ”right to income”. The term “basic income” appears therefore more appropriate and inclusive.
There are now many examples of proposed basic income legislation, in Italy and abroad; policy initiatives and declarations in favor of the introduction of some form of income support independent of employment status.
And just as numerous, and well differentiated, are the various interpretations of such a measure. In the cultural political debate promoted by Bin-Italy[3], which for years has promoted a cultural and socio-political campaign aimed at introducing a guaranteed minimum income (basic income), it is necessary to define certain parameters, to reduce the interpretive confusion that has now reached a critical level that makes unclear what actually a “citizen’s income”, “minimum income” or “a dignity income” are (to use the most common names).
To actually talk about “basic minimum income” (we use this term in a broad sense and provisionally), we believe that at least 5 criteria have to be met:
- Individuality: the minimum income must be paid at the individual level and not at the level of the family. Following this, there can then be a discussion as to whether children under 18 years of age will have the right or not.
- Residence: the minimum wage must be paid to all people who, residing in a given territory, live, rejoice, suffer and participate in production and social cooperation regardless of their marital status, gender, ethnicity, religious belief, etc.
- Maximum extension of unconditionality: the minimum income must be provided by minimizing any form of compensation and/or obligation and be as free an individual choice as possible.
- Access: the minimum income is paid in its initial phase of experimentation to all who have an income below a certain threshold. This threshold may, however, be greater than the relative poverty line and converge toward the median level of the personal distribution of existing income. Moreover, this level of income must be expressed in relative terms, not absolute, so that increasing the minimum threshold (as a result of the initial introduction of the measure) the range of beneficiaries will increase continuously until it hasrisen to graded levels of universality.
- Funding and transparency: the modalities of financing the minimum income must always be set out on the basis of economic viability studies, detailing where resources are obtained based on an estimate of cost when necessary. These resources have to fall on general taxation and not on other assets of origin (such as, for example, social security contributions, sale of public assets, privatization proceeds, etc.).
The criteria 1, 2, 5 should not be amendable, while criteria 3 and 4, are expressed in relative terms, may be subject to additional definitions depending on the context, but within the principle directives we have just outlined.
When basic income is the primary income it is therefore unconditional
That basic income is good and necessary, is a claim inspired by the composition of labor and the modalities of accumulation and exploitation which are today dominate.
In this regard, it is necessary to propose a cultural leap before political steps are taken, and to affirm that Basic Income is a primary distribution variable: the basic income must intervene, in fact, directly in the income distribution of productive factors: such as salary, which remunerates certified labor time as such, or profit, that rewards the business entity or rent, which derives from a property right. Being a primary distribution variable means that it is not a re-distributive variable: it directly occurs at the level of the balance of power and social relations within a certain process of accumulation. Despite this, a redistribution of income, which occurs at a later stage, is the outcome of a second level of indirect distribution, an extra market level, thanks to appropriate discretionary economic policies.
If a basic income is remuneration, the question that naturally follows is what it is that it pays. To answer, it is necessary first to analyze what in contemporary capitalism the main sources of exploitation/valorization are. More and more studies and case studies confirm that today life itself, in every daily event, is the productive factor par excellence.[4] If we take into account the many acts of daily life that characterize our existence, they can be categorized into four types: labor, work, leisure, entertainment. More and more today no only labor is to be the basis of added value but also the time spent in creation (opus/work), the otium/leisure time, and entertainment time: all are included in a growing and continuous enhancement mechanism. The classic dichotomy of the Fordist paradigm between labor and non-labor time, between production and consumption, between production and reproduction are now partially obsolete. It is the result of a historic process of structural changes in manufacturing processes and labor organization, which marked the transition from a material Fordist capitalism to a bio-cognitive and financialized capitalism.
Today, wealth production derives, at the same time, from absolute surplus value and relative surplus value extraction, where for absolute surplus value there is intended a sort of primitive accumulation, in capitalist organization based on capital employment and on private property. The result is the change of the relationship between productive and unproductive labor. What in the material Fordist capitalism was considered unproductive (i.e. no production of surplus value and therefore not remunerable), has now become productive, while the remuneration remained anchored to that of Fordist era (the crisis of salarization, for example). As a result, we are facing new kinds of valorization such as “dispossesion” (Harvey[5]) and “extraction”, to which no remuneration is applied, according to the dominant rules (legal, industrial relations, uses and so on).
It is no coincidence that unpaid labor is sharply increasing, as it is from those sectors that more has been invested by the transformation of enhancement methods and the adoption of the new linguistic-communicative technological paradigms (new cognitve-relational activities).
Against this background, one proposal could be advanced to counter this phenomenon of unpaid labor (i.e., basically “slavery” with another name, even though for most it is not perceived as such) is to proceed with its salarization. But, we might ask: is this possible? If the answer is yes, no longer necessary is a basic income.
The vagueness of labor time
This question opens a second theoretical problem – political and, at the same time, methodological. When technological and organizational transformations favor the spread of increasingly intangible productions with a high degree of non-measurability, when value is created by a whole range of life activities, from learning processes, to social reproduction[6] and networks of relationships, there arises the problem of “measure.”
The theme of measure is linked to the calculation/quantification of labor productivity. Unlike in the past, where this calculation was possible because employee labor activity could be measured in hours and by an equally measurable amount of production on an individual basis, productivity today has changed shape: it depends on the increasing use of new forms of scale economies: learning and network economies). These are scale economies no longer static but dynamic, because it is the flow (continuously) of time that allows for growth and learning of social skills as well as social reproduction and thus increased productivity, whose effects can be seen no more on individual basis but on the social one. Both learning and networking, in fact, need a social context and social cooperation. Productivity in bio-cognitive capitalism is therefore primarily social productivity or, with reference to the role of knowledge, general intellect.
Learning economies are based on the generation and dissemination of knowledge. Knowledge is not a scarce resource, such as material goods, but abundant: the more you swap, the more it spreads, the more it grows, a highly productive cumulative mechanism: cumulativeness requires relationships and social networks. Learning and networking are two sides of the same coin: if knowledge is not spread through relationships, individual processes are not economically productive. Only if you develop social cooperation and general intellect do you become productive.
We’re not talking about the traditional sense of the term co-operation, that is, “join forces” but co-operation, namely the interaction of individual operations that only achieve synergy in the common processes of accumulation and thus of surplus value creation. These relational activities often hide forms of hierarchy and exploitation, whose value is difficult to measure, not only on individual bases but collective ones, too. If the traditional factory productivity was based on precise technical mechanisms that allow you to measure individual productivity in the labor places today, the productivity of social cooperation cannot be measured in terms of individual productivity.
Not just individual productivity but also the same product of social cooperation is not measurable. When you are producing symbols, languages, ideas, forms of communication, social control, what kind of measurement we can take? Every relationship between output value, its production time (measured in hours) and its remuneration (measured in wages) becomes almost impossible or very difficult and subjective.
The crisis of the labor theory of value derives from the fact that not only the individual contribution today is not measurable but also the output tends to escape a unit of measurement, the more the more the production tends to become immaterial. And this takes place in a context in which the measure of value is no longer constrained by a scarcity factor. As was pointed out earlier, learning (knowledge) and network (space) are as abundant, and theoretically unlimited (especially if we consider the virtual space), as human nature. A theory of value based on the principle of scarcity, such as the one implicit in the theory of free market founded on the law of supply and demand, today has no longer any economic and social relevance. It is only artificially perpetuated in market dynamics where are continuously defined by power relationships. Paradoxically, the only theory of value that appears adequate to contemporary bio-cognitive capitalism, the labor theory of value, is not able to provide any measure.
How measure social cooperation and general intellect?
One possible aspect to consider has to do with the sphere of financialization: the pervasive and central role of financial markets, such as investment financing tools, privatization of social welfare and the partial compensation of knowledge labor, has affected not only the sphere of realization but also that of production. In capital gains, the speculative activity partially derives from the value produced by the cognitive-relational living labor. It is in financial markets that we can roughly see the implementation of the process of expropriation of social cooperation and of general intellect.
This process is not immediate and direct. It is often handled by the dominant bio-power management and the hierarchical relationships that continually redefine the property structure and market structure.
From this point of view, basic income, as a primary income, becomes even more a tool of direct re-appropriation of the wealth that is generated by the common life time put to labor.
The inadequacy of wages: body and mind
The order of discourse leads us to say that the traditional salary structure is no longer adequate, it does not fully capture the transformations in the valorization process. The classic wage structure can still be useful in those parts of the overall production cycle in which there is a measure of the value of labor in terms of time. But it cannot be generalized. From a theoretical point of view, this issue leads to the need to review, rethink and redefine the Marxian labor theory of value.
The inadequacy of the wage form as remuneration for all the productive aspects of life, leads to say that we need another way of remuneration (in addition to the wage forms where these are measurable). From this point of view, a basic income is something structurally different from a salary (though potentially, in the future, convergent): it cannot simply be understood as an extension of the wage form, because it is necessary to take into account the quantitative and qualitative change that new technologies have generated.
In particular, I’d like to stress the relationship between human and machine.
In the sixties, the relationship between human beings (with his body, his nerves, his muscles, his brain, his heart, his eros) and the machine was a relationship between separate domains: on the one hand, the human being, living labor, on the other hand, the machine, dead labor. The relationship between life and death was clear, physically traceable. From the point of view of human inner, the machine was something external and tangible, separate from himself.
Since the nineties to the present, such a separation is no longer so clear. The machine loses some of its materiality: the old Tayloristic machine becomes increasingly linguistic and relational. In presence of linguistic-communication technologies (ICT), only the support is material (hardware) but the core depends more and more on cognitive-relational human faculties processes. The use of language as the main tool of the operation changes the relationship of interdependence between human and machine typical of Taylorist technologies.
What kind of direction does this hybrid between man and machine take? And is it ‘the machine that is humanized or rather the human becoming mechanical?’ Are we witnessing the becoming human of the machine, or rather the becoming machine of humans? That’s the challenge of bio-robotics.
Consider the web 2.0 and the recent spread of social media. “The profit of advertising agencies, just like the profit of all firms web 2.0, [is] almost entirely depend on the ability to develop [and] control technologies.” Social control is then presented as the only way to innovate, develop in the future. But what is checked, exactly, today? Our identities and how they change. “The profiling algorithms of digital technologies feed on human biodiversity that it is itself channeled and integrated “in a Panopticon space, completely transparent, where we are called to act publicly.” See Google Pagerank, for instance.
Control of the body-mind becomes today (in agreement with the unpaid labor) the new enhancement border. Even if such activities could be salarized or simply paid otherwise (which is not the case), our freedom of choice would be conditioned.
An unconditional basic income is also a tool not only to recognize that our life is an active part (though often not aware) of contemporary exploitation but also able to exercise the right of choice, that is towards an individual and social self-determination: the right to choose our destiny as far as social participation is concerned, and also the right to refuse bad and indecent labor conditions. And this cannot be allowed, otherwise there is the risk of breaking the fragile balance of social control and supine conditions of subordination. From this point of view an unconditional income is subversive and that is the political struggle.
Andrea Fumagalli
(Università di Pavia – BIN Italia)
Andrea Fumagalli note for the conference: “Future of Work” Zurich 4 May 2016
Notes:
[1] A. Fumagalli, M. Lazzarato (eds), Tute Bianche, Derive-Approdi, Roma, 1999
[2] M. Bascetta, G. Bronzini (eds), La democrazia del reddito universale, Manifestolibri, 1997. Il tema di un reddito sganciato dal lavoro, etichettato con il termine salario sociale era già stato patrimonio del dibattito degli anni Settanta a parte dalla formulazione del rifiuto del lavoro (salariato).
[3] See www.bin-italy.org
[4] A. Fumagalli, C. Morini, “Life put to work: towards a theory of life-value”, in Ephemera, vol. 10, 2011, p. 234-252
[5] D. Harvey, “The new imperialism. The accumulation by dispossession”, in Socialist Register, 2004
[6] C. Morini, “Riproduzione sociale” in C. Morini, P. Vignola (eds), Piccola Enciclopedia Precaria, Milano X, Milano, 2015
Reviewed by Cameron McLeod
