
The 21st century presents itself simultaneously as an achievement of modernity and a crisis of faith in those very same institutions allegedly responsible for bringing the world into modernity and progress. Within the modern world, an immanent critique is readily apparent: human achievement thus far has functioned both as an emancipatory landmark (freeing millions from the drudgery of the traditional-mundane) and also as a new mode of subjugation (bringing millions into the drudgery and anxiety of the modern-mundane). Technological innovation has not brought most of the planet’s population into an era of stability and extended leisure; on the contrary, it has mutated labor into a condition of monotony coupled with persistent anxiety. The American working class faces rising unemployment, reduced working hours, and a steadily rising cost of living. Some have called this new configuration of the American work force (of course, this trend is not exclusive to the United States) the ‘precariat’. It is an appropriate name – the defining characteristic and sentiment of working people is precariousness and anxiety. Marx’s critique of capitalism has morphed since the early-modern industrialization period of the 19th century; today the working class is more disciplined by the prospect of unemployment than by traditionally dismal conditions of employment (although in many instances, work conditions remain abysmal, particularly in the Global South).

Capitalists economies have shown remarkable consistency, historically, in generating economic crises (so-called ‘busts’). During these crises, radical ideas emerge into political discourse, often to the displeasure of the ruling economic class. During the post war years, one such idea entered the realm of policy debate – the Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposal. It is not particularly easy to define the UBI due to its many various configurations; specific numbers, qualifications, and criterion are as variable as the individuals debating the UBI. However, in broad strokes, the UBI is a universal guarantee of a set income to all citizens. It determines an income level and consequently ensures that all citizens receive the determined amount regardless of employment status. It is not difficult to realize the potentially radical implications of the UBI. While capitalism and UBI are not mutually exclusive, the logic of universal basic income directly confronts capitalist free-market orthodoxy and allows us to imagine a world where the automation of labor serves human beings rather than throwing them into a precarious state of anxiety and economic insecurity. While some commentators and advocates of the UBI imagine it as a great compromise between labor and capital, I would argue the opposite: Universal Basic Income will become the predominant axis of political and class struggle of the 21st century and when taken to its logical conclusion, will bring about revolutionary social change culminating in the abolition of capitalism and the emancipation of humanity from the barbarism of wage-slavery. 

To understand why the UBI is becoming increasingly common in policy debates and popular discourse, we must investigate the social conditions which generate this piqued interest – and remarkably, support for the UBI is not restricted to one social class, but instead has advocates from nearly all classes, albeit for different and sometimes irreconcilable reasons. The current social context of the UBI debate is an increasingly grim one. The threat of automation looms over the heads of all working-class people, and as an increasing number of people are thrown partially or wholly out of the work force, popular resentment manifests itself in various ideological forms (the Right’s otherization of immigrants and racialized populations and the Left’s growing hostility towards the bourgeoisie). The unemployment statistics speak for themselves: 86.7 million Americans were unemployed for at least a week in 2010, and there are an estimated 10 million Americans who have dropped out of the ‘work hunt’ due to difficulty accessing stable employment. When these work ‘dropouts’ are calculated into the unemployment calculation, we arrive at a stunning 16 percent unemployment rate (Sheahen 23). As unemployment rises, it simultaneously places a strong downward pressure on wages due to the laws of supply and demand. The bourgeoisie (capitalist class) then poses an additional threat to working class people: if they dare to unionize and demand living wages, their jobs will be replaced by machines. Capitalism here values working people less than inanimate machines – if human beings ask for material comfort then they are replaced by technology and abandoned to the whims of the market economy. This is not the first time this phenomenon has manifested in such a way; during British industrialization, industrial machines also displaced many workers. This led directly to the Luddite faction of British workers who would smash industrial machinery and oppose all efforts to automate the industrial process. Luddites are often pejoratively characterized colloquially as uncivilized brutes afraid of progress, yet such a slander is decidedly untrue and misleading. The Luddites were opposed to an economic system where technology was used as a threat of unemployment in the hands of a small, wealthy elite. Similarly, in San Francisco, billboards were seen warning (threatening automation) workers of the consequences of asking for living wages. Despite all of this, grassroots organizations are pushing through minimum wage increases in cities around the country, disrupting the uniformity of austere neoliberal economic policy.

Technological progress shows no signs of slowing down, and the world economy has entered a relative stagnation where growth exists, but is slow and sub-optimal. According to a Business Insider article recently published, former President Barack Obama in March 2016 “warned Congress about the looming threat of job loss based on several reports that found that as much as 50% of jobs could be replaced by robots by 2030” (Weller). It would be very difficult to argue that we should reverse or inhibit technological progress. Such an argument would be counter-intuitive and reactionary. As workers confront increased unemployment, a new idea will eventually seize the imaginations of working people: the idea that the fruits of automation and productivity ought to be redistributed and placed into the hands of the workers themselves, who create new technologies with their own sweat, labor, and innovation. As unemployment becomes increasingly systematic (and increasingly difficult to characterize as a problem of motivation) the culture of blame towards the unemployed will slowly dissipate. 

Higher workers’ productivity easily explains the loss of jobs and consequent rise of unemployment. The myth of jobs for all is becoming increasingly difficult to sell to a beleaguered working-class. The process of globalization, which accelerated rapidly in the post-war years, fundamentally changed the labor process. Capitalists and investors are increasingly using advanced information technology and computing power to limit capital spent on human labor (specifically, physical labor). The sector of the work force least affected by these changes is the educated so-called white collar worker. This section of the work force is growing, but still often finds difficulty in landing employment because many of these jobs are now competing directly with similarly qualified workers in emergent economies in Southeast Asia and the world more generally. The Ad Hoc Committee expressed the absurdity of the situation all the way back in 1964: “So we have a historical paradox: a growing proportion of the population is subsisting on minimal incomes, often below the poverty line, at a time when sufficient productive potential is available to supply the needs of everyone in the United States.” (Sheahen 27) 

It is in this context which the desirability of an alternative appears. The Universal Basic Income is a complex topic with many potential advantages and even drawbacks. An investigation of the UBI is necessary to determine how to best implement, or whether to implement it at all. It is important to begin with a certain criterion of a Universal Basic Income and the scope of its inclusion. Philippe Van Parijs, an expert scholar on economics and redistributive policy, argues that a UBI proposal must be an income paid to each member of society “(1) even if [they are] not willing to work, (2) irrespective of [their] being rich or poor, (3) whoever [they] live with, and (4) no matter which part of the country [they] live in” (35). The larger implication of these qualifications laid out by Van Parijs is the idea that work and well-being would be severed (perhaps not yet completely). The UBI would go a long way towards reversing the currently existing dynamic of ‘technology-as-punishment’ and finally giving citizens a meaningful share of their radically increased labor productivity. It is quite reasonable to believe that increases in productivity should correlate with a similar increase of the standard of living and material comfort, and the UBI within certain parameters would help realize this belief. 

One of the most common criticisms and reservations against UBI proposals is, of course, its price tag. After all, at least in the United States, there is a vast population to account for if we determine that UBI should truly be universal. It is important to account for this criticism, which claims that the UBI is merely a pipe dream of lofty minded idealist youths and by all accounts completely impractical. Some critics from The Economist claim that the UBI would require as much as a 60% additional income, however after careful consideration of economic statistics this claim is easily debunked. UBI advocate, Scott Santens explains how a basic income set at approximately $12,000 U.S. dollars per adult and $4,000 per child would ultimately require less than a 20% additional income tax, with a negative income tax (a refund) for the majority of taxpayers. Santens observes that there is about 8.4 trillion dollars of income in the United States, and the aforementioned UBI income level would cost around three trillion with current spending levels. Here, Santens notes that the UBI would be able to radically reduce spending on other various social spending programs, freeing up a large sum of money. An adequate UBI could, according to his estimates, reduce the effective cost of the UBI proposal to one and a half trillion dollars. This new amount would result in a 17.8% income tax increase on Americans, a far cry from The Economist’s sixty percent. For lower earning incomes, the UBI proposal would in fact not even be a tax increase at all, but a massive tax rebate. Santens takes, for example, an income of $20,000; with a 17.8% tax hike, they would owe $4,000 in taxes, yet after the $12,000 proposed income guarantee, they would essentially be receiving a massive tax rebate worth $8,000 dollars (Santens). For most Americans, this would essentially mean that the UBI is a massive tax refund. It would improve the conditions of the poorest and most overworked of our citizens – and it is important to not take for granted the costs of poverty on society. While the UBI is a massive redistributive income policy, it would in the short-term work towards the benefit of the economy as the newly distributed wealth would circulate among working class people providing a massive spending stimulus to the aggregate economy.  

However, not all critics of the Universal Basic Income come from the perspective of fiscal conservatism; there are critics on the Left who raise concerns over the ability of the UBI to meaningfully overcome the hardships and inequalities of capitalism. These critics warn that it is not enough to adopt the UBI and rest contented with what’s been achieved. This is a criticism I agree with, and yet ultimately believe that the UBI functions as an important stepping stone for the working class to fight for further equality and material well-being. At the start of January 2016, in Finland, the fiscally conservative Centre Party conducted a UBI experiment, paying 2,000 randomly selected Finns a sum of 550 to 700 Euros per month. From the outset, the government’s policy was not to liberate working people from mundane, low paying employment, but rather to encourage Finns to work low paying jobs (incentivized by their modest stipend). It is apparent that the income level was set low enough to not guarantee material comfort, but rather to get people to work ‘undesirable’ jobs. Matt Bruenig, writing in The Jacobin, criticized the conservative Finnish implementation of the UBI stating, “…it is just as possible to redirect the energy behind a liberatory UBI into implementing a conservative one — forcing unemployed workers into bad jobs while undermining organized labor, earnings equality, and the welfare state. Indeed, it is even possible to pull off such a bait-and-switch while convincing the rest of the world that you are engaged in progressive policymaking” (Bruenig).

These criticisms of the Basic Income proposal both from the left and the right are potentially concerning. The fiscally conservative fear of excessive taxation with the implementation of the UBI is relatively quickly dismissed through a close analysis of economic statistics and spending figures. Yet it is the criticism from the left that is particularly concerning to UBI advocates who desire to see such a proposal bring about radical changes as opposed to merely cosmetic or even alienating ones (“UBI-as-workhouse”). The solution to avoiding this danger is to properly frame the UBI within a socialist theoretical perspective. Marxist sociologist, Erik Olin Wright in his essay “Basic Income as a Socialist Project” argues that the Basic Income should adhere to three basic principles to maintain its integrity as a genuinely leftist, emancipatory project. These three principles are the strengthening of labor relative to capital, the decommodification of labor power, and the reconfiguration of the social surplus product towards social needs (in other words, a gradual declination of the markets influence on economic activity). Towards the first principle, Wright claims that a basic income guarantee would serve as a strike fund for organized labor, allowing them to challenge capital directly with the added safety of receiving income regardless of whether they are striking. Towards the second principle, it is important to first understand what is meant by ‘decommodification of labor’. In Wright’s own words it means, “To the extent that workers are able to have their [economic needs] met outside of the market through some process of social provision [a basic income, for example], their labor power is decommodified. Commodification is thus a variable and one can speak of the degree of commodification and decommodification of labor power.” A universal basic income, could theoretically, work towards decommodifying labor by freeing workers from the need to labor ceaselessly in order to survive. The more this relationship favors the working-class, the more their labor can be said to be increasingly decommodified. In relation to the third principle, Wright argues that, “Basic income can be viewed as potentially a massive transfer of social surplus from the capitalist market sector to the social economy, from capital accumulation to what might be termed social accumulation – the accumulation of the capacity of society for self-organization of needs-oriented economic activity.” In other words, the universal basic income would liberate a vast amount of social wealth from the hands of an oligarchic elite and return it to the working-class majority, allowing for a potentially radical transformation of the market economy into a ‘social economy’ – one where labor and economic organization is undertaken for the sake of meeting social needs (health, childcare, eradicating poverty, leisure, the arts and sciences, etc.) rather than accumulation of wealth for accumulation’s sake (Wright). 

With regards to these principles, we conclude that the Universal Basic Income is still vulnerable to political intrigue and manipulation by the ruling classes. While the UBI is potentially emancipatory, it is also potentially a mere cosmetic reconfiguration of the economic status quo. For the UBI to be a radical project which liberates rather than oppresses by a new name, it must be guided by the principles of socialism and framed as a tool of the working class to seize power. Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, had similar theoretical ideas regarding economic reforms of which the UBI could also be considered one of. He emphasized that the reforms must be means towards the higher end of socialist transformation of the economy and not the ends in themselves. He states in his essay, The Transitional Program:

It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat (Trotsky).

Our task then is to understand the UBI as a transitional demand. It is a means towards the socialist revolution, and must be defended at all costs against reactionary forces seeking to bring the working-class to heel through political manipulation and other forms of oppression. Through the political struggle over the universal basic income, the working-class must become increasingly aware of its status as a social class whose interests and well-being are directly opposed to the capitalist class and its various functionaries. 

Finally, we must understand the UBI as not merely an economic demand but a social one rooted in a radically libertarian impulse: that human beings ought to experience genuine freedom and self-realization. What is called freedom in liberal democracies is but a limited freedom. In an interview in 1936 with Roy Howard, Joseph Stalin comments the following on the concept of liberty:

It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread (Stalin).

As the crisis of capitalism accelerates, people and entire nations are thrown into political disarray, with the mounting threat of warfare both within and between states. The task of the working class in the historical context we live in is immense. It is only with trepidation, clarity of perspective, and revolutionary dedication, that all of mankind will be liberated from the chains of oppression. Without prejudice towards race, gender, sexuality, or religion, a new identity must be forged from the shared experience of exploitation: an identity of solidarity between the international working people of the world. The implementation of the Universal Basic Income is but one step, albeit a critical one and the most relevant in our current economic situation, towards this higher end. Should we go down its path, we must never lose sight of the higher end we strive towards: the emancipation of all the peoples of the world and for the first time in human history, the possibility of self-realization for all.
