[P2P-F] Fwd: [CommonGood] interesting article on Basic income

Thu Oct 27 07:34:52 CEST 2016

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From: tina ebro <cgebro at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Oct 23, 2016 at 9:04 PM
Subject: [CommonGood] interesting article on Basic income
To: Common Good Newsgroup <commongood at listi.jpberlin.de>

michael roberts posted: "The idea of a basic income has gained much
popularity recently and not just among leftists but also with right-wing
pro-capital proponents.  Basic income boils down to making a monthly
payment by a government to every citizen of an amount that meets 'basi"
Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on *Michael Roberts Blog*
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/author/bobmckee/> Basic income –
too basic, not radical enough
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/basic-income-too-basic-not-radical-enough/>
by
michael roberts <https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/author/bobmckee/>

The idea of a basic income has gained much popularity recently and not just
among leftists but also with right-wing pro-capital proponents.  Basic
income boils down to making a monthly payment by a government to every
citizen of an amount that meets 'basic necessities' whether that person is
unemployed or not or whatever the circumstance. As Daniel Raventós, defines
it in his recent book
<https://www.amazon.co.uk/Basic-Income-Material-Conditions-Freedom/dp/0745326293>
: *“Basic Income is an income paid by the state to each full member or
accredited resident of a society, regardless of whether or not he or she
wishes to engage in paid employment, or is rich or poor or, in other words,
independently of any other sources of income that person might have, and
irrespective of cohabitation arrangements in the domestic sphere”* (*Basic
Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom*).

He lists various things in its favour: that it would abolish poverty,
enable us to better balance our lives between voluntary, domestic and paid
work, empower women, and *“offer workers a resistance fund to maintain
strikes that are presently difficult to sustain because of the salary cuts
they involve”*.

And recent books such as Inventing the Future
<https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiI2fG29cfMAhVKCsAKHbuWBhoQFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.versobooks.com%2Fbooks%2F1989-inventing-the-future&usg=AFQjCNEHNAg8C7f_ruBIa1Om6Am8iGaddw&sig2=-wksPrc6XwUOd6f9E6oexw>
by
Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams and Postcapitalism
<http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2015/2008> by Paul
Mason
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/07/21/paul-mason-and-postcapitalism-utopian-or-scientific/>
have also brought this issue to prominence. These writers reckon that the
demand for a universal basic income by labour should be part of the
struggle in a move to 'post-capitalism' and should be a key demand to
protect workers from a capitalist world increasingly dominated by robots
and automation where human beings will become mostly unemployed.

But 'basic income' is also popular among some right-wing economists and
politicians.  Why? Because paying each person a 'basic' income rather than
wages and social benefits is seen as a way of 'saving money', reducing the
size of the state and public services – in other words lowering the value
of labour power and raising the rate of surplus value (in Marxist terms).
It would be a 'wage subsidy' to employers with those workers who get no
top-up in income from social benefits under pressure to accept wages no
higher than the 'basic income' which would be much lower than their average
salary. As Raventos has noted, (in the American *Journal of Economic
Issues* June
1996 with Catherine Kavanagh), “*by partially separating income from work,
the incentive of workers to fight against wage reductions is considerably
reduced, thus making labour markets more flexible. This allows wages, and
hence labor costs, to adjust more readily to changing economic conditions”*.

Indeed, the danger is that the demand for a basic income would replace the
demand for full employment or a job at a living wage.  For example, it has
been worked out that, in the US, the current capitalist economy could
afford only a national basic income of about $10,000 a year per adult. And
that would replace everything else: the entire welfare state, including old
age pensions disappears into that one $10,000 per adult payment.

The basic income demand is similar to the current idea among Keynesians and
other leftist economists for increased public spending financed by
'helicopter money'.  This policy means no fundamental reform of the economy
but a just a cash handout to raise incomes and boost the capitalist
economy.  Indeed, this is why the leftist Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/yanis-varoufakis-more-erratic-than-marxist/>has
viewed favourably the basic income idea.  A minimum equal income for
everyone, Varoufakis tells us, is the most effective way to confront the
deflationary trends that manifest capitalism’s inability to balance itself.
<http://basicincome.org/news/2016/04/basic-income-essential-approach-varoufakis/>
Creating a minimum income that’s delinked from work, he argued, would
increase effective demand without substantially increasing savings. The
economy would grow again and would do so in a much more balanced way. The
amount of the minimum income could become a simple, stand alone lever for
the economic planners of the 21st century.

Here the basic income demand provides an answer to crises under capitalism
without replacing the capitalist mode of production in the traditional
Keynesian or post-Keynesian way, by ending 'underconsumption'.  But what if
underconsumption is not the cause of crises and there is a more fundamental
contradiction within capitalism that a 'basic income' for all, gradually
ratcheted up by government planners, cannot resolve?

Raventos retorts to this argument
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/08/basic-income-basic-issues/> that *“Some
people complain that basic income won’t put an end to capitalism. Of course
it won’t. Capitalism with a basic income would still be capitalism but a
very different capitalism from the one we have now, just as the capitalism
that came hot on the heels of the Second World War was substantially
different from what came at the end of the seventies, the counter-reform we
call neoliberalism. Capitalism is not one capitalism, just as “the market”
is not just one market.”  *

This answer opens up a whole bag of tricks by suggesting that we can have
some form of non 'neoliberal', 'fairer' capitalism that would work for
labour, as we apparently did for a brief decade or so after the second
world war. But even if that were true, the 'basic income' demand stands
little prospect of being adopted by pro-capitalist governments now in the
middle of a Long Depression unless it actually reduced the value of labour
power, not increased it.  And if a socialist worker government were to come
to power in any major capitalist economy would the policy then be necessary
when common ownership and planned production would be the agenda?  As one
writer put it
<https://theconversation.com/basic-income-after-automation-thats-not-how-capitalism-works-65023>:
*“The call for basic income in order to soften the effects of automation is
hence not a call for greater economic justice. Our economy stays as it is;
we simply extend the circle of those who are entitled to receive public
benefits. If we want economic justice, then our starting point needs to be
more radical.”*

In his book, *Why the Future is Workless*
<https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/why-the-future-is-workless/>, Tim
Dunlop says that *“the approach we should be taking is not to find ways
that we can compete with machines – that is a losing battle – but to find
ways in which wealth can be distributed other than through wages. This will
almost certainly involve something like a universal basic income
<http://basicincome.org/basic-income/>.”* But is that the approach that we
should take?  Is it to find ways to 'redistribute' wealth* “other than
through wages”* or is it to control the production of that wealth so that
it can be allocated towards social need not profit?

I have discussed in detail in previous posts what the impact of robots and
AI would be for labour under capitalism.
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/robots-and-ai-utopia-or-dystopia-part-three/>And
from that, we can see an ambiguity in the basic income demand. It both aims
to provide a demand for labour to fight for under capitalism to improve
workers conditions as jobs disappear through automation and also wants
basic income as a way of paying people in a 'post-capitalist' world of
workless humans where all production is done by robots (but still with
private owners of robots?).

And when we think of this ambiguity, we can see that the issue is really a
question of ownership of the technology, not the level of incomes for
workless humans.  With common ownership, the fruits of robot production can
be democratically planned, including hours of work  for all.  Also, under a
planned economy with common ownership of the means of production (robots),
it would be possible to extend free goods and services (like a national
health service, education, transport and communications) to basic
necessities and beyond. So people would work fewer hours and get more free
goods and services, not just be compensated for the loss of work with a
'basic income'.

In a post-capitalist world (what I prefer to call 'socialism' rather than
mincing around with 'post-capitalism'), the aim would be to remove
(gradually or quickly) the law of value (prices and wages) and move to a
world of abundance (free goods and services and low hours of toil).
Indeed, that is what robots and automation now offer as a technical
possibility.

The basic income demand is just too basic. As a reform for labour, it is
not as good as the demand for a job for all who need it at a living wage;
or reducing the working week while maintaining wages; or providing decent
pensions.  And under socialism, it would be redundant.

*michael roberts <https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/author/bobmckee/>*
| October 23, 2016 at 10:22 am | Categories: capitalism
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/?cat=21385>, economics
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/?cat=657>, marxism
<https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/?cat=47885> | URL:
http://wp.me/pLequ-3s6

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