ReCivitas project at Oxford 1 Feb 2016
by George Bangham The ReCivitas project has paid an unconditional basic income to members of a small community in Quatinga Velho, in the state of São Paulo in southern Brazil,…
In this article Ben and Bert of Manchester Plan C discuss the potential dangers of the shared ground surrounding possible defences of a basic income. They argue that we should be careful to keep the more transformative potentials of basic income firmly in view.
The concept of a ‘universal basic income’ (UBI) – a regular stipend distributed to all members of a population – has recently emerged within certain left circles, including our own organisation, as a demand with potentially radical consequences. Yet the UBI proposal is not confined to the haunts of radical leftists; a recent New York Times article by the Princeton and LSE economist Paul Krugman called for a basic income to ‘solve’ the problem of technology-induced unemployment. A recent interview has suggested that there are in fact three ‘families’ of thought that argue for a UBI, ranging from communist through to liberal and republican positions, the latter having an almost Hayekian undertone of guaranteeing our ‘freedom from domination’. Does the UBI therefore provide a surprising point of agreement across the political spectrum, or do we need to go beyond a simplistic ‘for or against’ response and discuss our visions of the society behind it? This brief article will attempt to think through the potentials of non-progressive UBI policies and will argue that we need to be aware of the differing politics and potentials behind the policy of a UBI.
In a recent article, Thames Valley Plan C have suggested that ‘the UBI is a reform that, although not capable of displacing capitalism on its own, sets the stage for the further radical transformation of society’. As well as providing us with an assured basic standard of living and remunerating us for the largely unwaged reproductive work that capital relies upon, such as childcare and housework, it will also provide the material conditions for further experiments beyond the current constraints of society. Whilst we are therefore sympathetic to the possibilities this kind of UBI system could offer, we need to be aware that just as there are many different arguments for UBI, there are different ways it could be implemented. Given the disparity between the left’s current social power and that of neoliberalism, it is possible that we could witness the eventual implementation of a UBI as part of an austerity agenda, facilitating the offsetting of the crisis through the slashing of the social wage and further extending the marketization of society.
Consider the following scenario: Every citizen is handed their stipend which they are free to spend as they please. Whether we choose to spend it on healthcare, libraries, education, sports and recreational activities or trash-collection, our consumption of services becomes a matter of personal choice. Rather than the unequivocal socialized demand for healthcare, playgrounds and libraries that currently pertains, we instead expose these services to the vagaries of individualized consumption. Rather than a service that is provided free to all at the point of consumption, the viability of a service becomes measured according to people’s willingness to purchase it using their UBI.
The UBI is therefore potentially compatible with the extension of neoliberal reforms across the entirety of social services. It is not hard to imagine the total privatization of all social provisions in the name of ‘increasing quality through competition’. After all, if there is a demand for a ‘public’ library, people will use their stipend to pay for it, and the ‘success’ of the library becomes measured by its ability to attract UBI expenditure. Those services which offer ‘substandard’ services will thus fall by the way side, as more ‘competitive’ libraries manage to gain the dominant market share.
Try envisioning an ‘Even Newer’ Labour politician delivering the post-election speech:
“We believe in guaranteeing people the ability to protect and promote their own well-being as they see fit. Through introducing a monthly stipend, we will allow individuals to vote with their feet, supporting those services that offer ‘value for money’, and punishing those who fall short of expectations or lag behind the best in our society. This is about empowering people through their daily decisions, putting politics into the content of everyday life”.
This neoliberal vision of the UBI would be a world in which all decisions are economic decisions, one in which all services are dervied from a world framed by competition. Whether one decides to spend their stipend on a new Ikea table, a face-lift, their lithium prescription, schooling for their children or getting their bins collected is entirely up to them. The extent to which we believe in ‘universal healthcare’ or ‘education for all’ will be tested by our willingness to pay for it. What is deemed ‘right’ will not be a matter of public debate, but will in every instance be deferred to the market: A post-political ‘capitalist realism’ made real.
It remains an intriguing debate whether the demand for a UBI can form part of a broader package of more revolutionary reforms that simultaneously improve well-being whilst opening the space for non-capitalist alternatives and revolutionary projects. What becomes clear, however, is that the demand for UBI, when abstracted from the existing socio-economic context and isolated from wider political struggles, threatens as much to augment further neoliberal reforms as it offer prospects for the fomenting of revolutionary projects. We are thus less concerned with what UBI is than with what UBI does. Unequivocal support for the policy may lead us down paths that betray our political sensibilities, creating conditions antithetical to those commitments we regard as worthy of our efforts.
Through our organising we will encounter perspectives which differ, often drastically, from our own. There is nothing inherently progressive about UBI and we shouldn’t see everyone who is discussing it as a potential comrade. We need to be aware of the differing politics behind the same policy. We will share common points of agreement with many arguing for UBI but not with everyone. The challenge is to identify those perspectives which offer elements of a more liberated future and those which do not. A neoliberal version of UBI grounded in the promotion of a Hayekian version of liberty certainly does not echo with our politics, and we must challenge them or run the risk of “winning” something we don’t want.
Photo Courtesy of Russell Shaw Higgs
A fine article and I agree with the main thrust of the argument but I would be careful to lump the libertarian focus on negative liberty with the republican focus on non-domination. These two ideas have very different histories and it’s important to recognise the distinctions in order, as you rightly argue, to separate the perspectives we agree with from those with which we want no truck
Just trying to get up to speed on these debates and climb on board the train. Agree good article. I wonder though how much traction the libertarian arguments actually have. One can see the theoretical attractions of creating a passive, consumerist society where everyone, armed with their UBI, can procure the services they ‘want’, individuals functioning merely as a node for the flows of cash through the system. But the reality is that the present welfare system is an essential element, ideological and practical, in the exercise of class power and control. I see no sign of any serious move to abandon it.
Interesting point… I have colleagues who have the same ambivalence regarding the welfare state and see UBI precisely as the means to break free from that ‘essential element’… not abandoning it of course but placing it on a very different basis to its current forms and ways of functioning.
“A neoliberal version of UBI grounded in the promotion of a Hayekian version of liberty certainly does not echo with our politics, and we must challenge them…”
Sorry to see such a comment … maybe you should look at your politics, and please don’t include me in your we. Unconditional basic income eliminates poverty, removes the corruption of bureaucracies, and makes democracy real as people barter for what they want in a free market system, without the coercion of corporations or big brother, since individuals are empowered to make their own decisions. Apparently your politics is still about who get the fasces … the roman symbol of ultimate power, of life or death over citizens. UBI is the revolution, the ultimate liberation of the planet, and apparently you’d trade it for more squabbling over socialism???
This is interesting: Perhaps the author wouldn’t include you in his ‘we’ but it is always nice to see another ‘I’ enter the fray. However, I would argue that neo-liberalism (which is what the author is rallying against, at least here) is as reliant on surveillance, bureaucracy and government interference as any other system of government. Whatever Hayek’s intentions, where his work does bleed into an apologia for the current state of things, I think it’s ok to call bullshit on that… However, if you would like to write a defence of Hayek as it relates to basic income I would be more than happy to consider it for publication on this website.
Thanks for your response, David Jenkins. No question about the dangers of neo-liberalism you cite, or that reactionaries of all stripes (Reagan, Thatcher, etc) have claimed Hayek as their mainman. I’d just ask that you take better aim with that bullshit you’re tossing. Hayek actually published his support for a “minimum income”, and his anti-statist views are right on the mark, as Milton Friedman (one of the original proponents of guaranteed income with his Negative Income Tax plan in the 60s) confirmed in his introduction to Hayek’s _Road to Serfdom_.
I’d love to contribute a defense of Hayekian advocacy of an unconditional basic income, if I get the time to do the necessary research. But for now, I confess that my knowledge of Hayek is based on Part 2 of a 3 part BBC series called Masters of Money by Stephanie Flanders (on YouTube), supplemented by some wikipedia and serendipitous reading. Flanders gives an hour apiece to Keynes, Hayek & Marx, which on the whole seems to cover the essential ideas which have have built our toppling economic system. Marx’s analysis that capitalism is unstable and will eventually collapse seems right, but he really offered no solution, so the socialists (of the communist variety) claimed to have the solution and produced the disaster of the Soviet Union. Keynes made the case that the government, the state, needed to partner with capitalism in order to stabilize capitalism — by using its control of the money supply and its ability to go into debt — which resulted in state-capitalism: the Welfare State — as disastrous a solution, and no less unstable, as the communist solution. Hayek, then, apparently had the right answer when he argued that the Keynesian empowerment of government to solve social problems was a road to serfdom, and that the real solution was to empower individual citizens to solve their own problems.
It appears then, that the real solution can be found at that point where Keynes and Hayek actually agree: that a stable free-market economy of abundance requires that everyone have sufficient purchasing power. Unfortunately, Keynes thought that the only way people (who own no capital) could get purchasing power was through employment, and since the capitalists seemed unable to provide sufficient jobs, he advocated using the government to create jobs (a patently impossible task, since real jobs are a function of the market: the labor required to create goods and services), which turned out to be just an indirect route to the same centralized planning of socialism that failed so badly in the USSR. Just as Karl Marx clearly saw the flaws of unfettered capitalism, so Frederick Von Hayek discerned the flaws in Keynes’ theory of big government. Both were excellent diagnosticians and poor physicians, as neither clearly saw the path to economic health for a now global civilization. But apparently Hayek had the greatest insight, with his recommendation for a minimum income which the government provides unconditionally to every citizen as a right, thereby depriving the government of any power to discriminate or show favoritism to any citizen or faction of citizens, thus preventing the kind of corruption rampant in the American system today.
In this contest between Keynes and Hayek, I think it is interesting to note that Keynes, speculating in 1930 about the future we are now living, in an article titled “Economic Possibilities of our Grandchildren”, confessed his gratitude at not having to be alive to when humanity “solves the economic problem”. Focused as he was on economics as a problem of “human behaviour” (unlike the first truly scientific economist, Frederick Soddy, who saw economics as a problem of physics, the flow of energy as represented by money), Keynes thought it would be nearly impossible for human beings to cease thinking in terms of “working for a living”, so that, when technology advanced to the point of rendering human labor irrelevant in the production process, Keynes’ only hope was to imagine a reduction of working hours in the average laborer’s workday. Thus, according to Keynes, we should all be working about 15 hours or less a day by 2030, which of course is nowhere near the real trend, because Keynes neglected to consider the effect of the enormous amount of corruption his economic policies would produce. Instead of abundance with leisure for all of human civilization, we’ve got the 99% Proles ruled by the 1% Masters of the Universe. This misjudgment alone suggests we should consider what Hayek had to say.
[Also, I found this web article from last year which mentions Hayek’s proposal for a minimum income:
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/05/hayek-enemy-of-social-justice-and-friend-of-a-universal-basic-income/.
I understand your position francis, and no-one likes to have people assume that their poitics allign with something which, for them, is incorrect. But if you do look at UBI from the perspective of someone who is scheptical about the ability of freemarket economics to provide freedom this particular versionof UBI is understandably a worrying version of the future.
The fear here is that a large proportion of the populace has a tendancy to be short sighted, which means that some services would be remain underfunded as people do not value themuntil they are needed. Then there is the issue that in a scenario where UBI replaces funding for all benefits and the majority of services it is likely that on a long enough time line that certain right wing voices in government would errode the cash value of UBI without returning that value to state sponsored programmes. These fears are very genuine and not necessarily tied absolutely to autopian socialist dream, it is just a awareness of how little time the progressive ideas of the mid 20th centuary took to normalise back to a social order which somewhat resembles what preceeded them.
UBI in this form worries me because it is fragile and could easily be dismantled by incriments over time by successive governments who favour a very american style of freemarket capitalism.
Thanks for your response, Matt Rogers, and sorry it has taken me about half a year to reply … I can assure you that if the right basic income guarantee (BIG) had been adopted in the mean time, I would have gotten back to you sooner!
What I have to say about “UBI from the perspective of someone who is sceptical about the ability of freemarket economics to provide freedom” can only be an attempt to correct the errors of their thinking … and of course this would like be a long and ultimately futile effort, as most people make up their minds about things, then try to find arguments to bolster their position. I suspect David Jenkins may actually be the exception to this rule, but I generally have given up on trying to change people’s minds … much better to elucidate ideas to those willing to entertain them, and hope that enough people will jump on the bandwagon to effect change.
Your statement that “The fear here is that a large proportion of the populace has a tendency to be short sighted …” is simply the elitism at the heart of all socialist ideology (including communism): the ignorant masses don’t know what’s good for them, but the enlightened vanguard do. If you are unfamiliar with this approach, read Noam Chomsky, watch Amy Goodman, and all the rest: Don’t let people make their own decisions about what is best for them, let us tell them what to do, because we know better (and do as we say, not as we do).
But the following point you make is excellent:
“Then there is the issue that in a scenario where UBI replaces funding for all benefits and the majority of services it is likely that on a long enough time line that certain right wing voices in government would erode the cash value of UBI without returning that value to state sponsored programmes.”
In fact, here you have touched upon the central issue in the BIG campaign, how can it be enacted in such a way that it provides a sufficient level of economic security to all citizens, and cannot be diminished or removed by political corruption. The only answer I can see is that you have to remove the political corruption, which is precisely what BIG can do, if it is implemented correctly, because it allows the citizens in a democracy to remove the economic control which corrupt politicians use to coerce people. Sound paradoxical? I’m working on formulating at least one way in which this can be done, but as I mentioned earlier, economic insecurity continues to hamper my progress. Still, if you’d like a preview of the idea, please follow this link and read the text which accompanies the video (with my apologies for the musical introduction … it was my first stab): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teQLrGB4ol8