Category: theory

From ArtForum, April 2020:

HB: For newcomers, could you give a brief introduction to UBI? 

Philippe van Parijs: A UBI—short for universal or unconditional basic income—is an income paid at regular intervals to all members of a community on an individual basis, without means-testing or work conditions.

[…]

In this extraordinary era of crisis, isn’t it possible to envisage far more generous UBI measures than previously imagined?

When the economy is struggling, there is, by definition, less room for generosity than when it is thriving. But, as happened with the Great Depression and World War II, a crisis can trigger imagination and boldness. The result can be an institutional setup better equipped to forestall future crises or make them less disruptive. Earlier crises produced our welfare states and the European Union. This one could lead to the introduction of an unconditional basic income.

[…]

A UBI can be described as a “social dividend,” an equal dividend paid to all members of a society as equal joint owners of all its means of production. For this reason, its introduction and expansion amounts to making an economic regime more socialist…

[…]

Is there any way that UBI could represent a way out of capitalism, rather than a way to maintain it? 

Because the distinction between capitalism and socialism covers a continuum, there is no “way out of capitalism,” but there are many ways in which our economic regime could be made less capitalist. Because a UBI amounts to collectivizing—as a “social dividend”—part of the profits of the economy, it makes the economy less capitalist.

But socialism is no more an aim in itself than capitalism is. For Marx, a socialist revolution was necessary not because it would make society more just but because it would make the economy more efficient. The maximal development of the productive forces is needed to bring about as soon as possible a situation in which people would contribute voluntarily according to their capacities and consume free of charge according to their needs. A UBI consists precisely in approximating this situation without waiting for a socialist revolution: The higher the income is, the more everyone’s needs will be covered unconditionally and the more people will produce what is needed without being forced to do so.

[…]

I strongly believe in the importance of working out, proposing, and subjecting to a critical discussion what I call realistic utopias. These are not wild dreams of a better world. They are specific proposals for more or less radical reforms that are resolutely “utopian” in the sense of not being politically achievable here and now. But they are “realistic” in the sense that they take people as they are—not as we wish they were—or as freedom-respecting institutions could plausibly make them. What drives the search for such realistic utopias is the indignation with some aspects of our capitalist societies, even those undeniably made less unjust by a strong regulation of the market and the development of a welfare state: avoidable misery, humiliation, unjustifiable inequality within and between countries, consumerism, oppressive work relations, environmental degradation, etc. The challenge is to design economic institutions that reduce these evils as much as possible, but without just dreaming them: by taking seriously the strongest objections that can be made to them from whatever discipline.