Christopher Kirkland explores two crises in British political economy: that of trade unions in 1976–9, and that of the banking sector in 2007. He argues that existing inequalities manifested themselves not only in the formation of those crises, but also within policy responses to them

Kirkland, Christopher

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05/09/2017Why Basic Income alone will not be a panacea to socialinsecurityblogs.lse.ac.uk /politicsandpolicy/beyond-basic-income/Neil Warner, Frederick Harry Pitts, and Lorena Lombardozzi explain why a successfulimplementation of a basic income will require a wider and more radical intervention in theeconomy.A great deal of recent commentary and discussion suggests that Universal Basic Income (UBI) isan idea whose time has come. Although hundreds of years old as a proposal, it is probably thesubject of more attention and mainstream interest now than it has ever been. Forms of UBI arebeing proposed, discussed and even experimented with both by the right and the left. But it hasbecome especially prominent in recent discussions on the left. It is this debate about UBIamong social democrats and socialists that we focus on in a new paper for the Foundation forEuropean Progressive Studies.In the paper, we argue that its current appeal as an idea is that it seems to answer what wedescribe as ‘a triple crisis of the social’. The first of these is a crisis of the society of work ,sparked by flexibilization and automation. Secondly, there is a crisis of social reproduction dueto the severed link between the wage and subsistence and simultaneous cutbacks in thewelfare state. The third strand of the triple crisis is that of social democracy itself, as a growingnumber of people have seized on UBI as a way to regenerate the confused vision and scantintellectual resources of the left.Yet in the debate about UBI that has followed, powerful underlying forces are treated as givens without socialand historical foundation, and both sides tend to miss key questions that need to be addressed. Thefundamental roots of these crises cannot be resolved by the implementation of a UBI alone, and the desiredaims of its leftist proponents can only be achieved, if at all, by their situation within a wider suite of radicalreforms.Proponents of UBI suggest that basic income is the answer to challenges of flexibilization and automation thatare undermining the supply of jobs and the adequate remuneration for work. These proponents argue that itcould expand the degree of freedom within the social relations of production by providing a minimum means ofsubsistence beyond wages. It is also argued that UBI would be able to support more creative pursuits, and theexploration of new ideas without the urge of survival. Yet critics of UBI, particularly in the trade union movement,point out that workers would still lose the capacity to resist capital that is granted by their ability to provide orwithdraw labour. The key issue of this disagreement, however, comes down not to the qualities of UBI itself butthe wider structure of social relations within which it is embeddedThe concept of ‘social reproduction’ helps us to recognise the importance of this wider set of social relations.Social reproduction is how workers, and the mode of production of which they are part, subsist and survive in aparticular context. The current crisis of social reproduction is connected to what Nancy Fraser calls a ‘crisis ofcare’, in which women are increasingly integrated with the waged labour market, but remain at the same time theprimary caregivers of society, while state support for care is being withdrawn.The Marxist feminist focus on social reproduction has helped to popularize calls for UBI, partly via demandsaround ‘Wages for Housework’. But others, however, have been more circumspect. Whilst broadly in support,Kathi Weeks argues that ‘demand for a UBI does not address either the gender division of household-basedreproductive labour or its privatization’. It could relieve budgetary pressures on women, especially those affectedby job losses, and could help to ‘reorient’ gender-based divisions of labour. But it could also have the contrastingeffect of helping to reinforce traditional heteropatriarchal family structures by leading to ‘more men participatingin waged work and more women working at home’.1/3Recent research suggests that women are the first ones to be cut off from the wage-subsistence relationship withadditional and indirect risks of segregation, subordination, and dependence on asymmetrical income relations.Basic income seems unlikely to tackle this danger, and may even exacerbate it. Either way, the existence or non-existence of UBI does not emerge as a primary mechanism for dealing with the gendered division of labour. It isambivalent in its impact and is contingent upon more fundamental initiatives in the sphere of social reproduction.Green proponents of the basic income argue that UBI will enable an evolution away from ‘productivism’ andgrowth-oriented policies. But this misunderstands the contradictory unity of production and consumptioncaptured in theories of social reproduction. There are constraints on our capacity to consume, and these relate tothe way we produce, and vice versa. UBI may divert us from the intensive productive activity on which oureconomic system rests and decelerate our dependency on the exploitation of natural resources. But, without afundamental shift in the social relations that undergird a society based on the coexistence of overproduction andunderconsumption, the possibility remains that it still stimulates the economy in such a way as to exacerbatetendencies towards reckless growth and environmental ruin. Once again, UBI cannot be seen as a standalonepolicy that in and of itself changes the world.Additionally substantial new fiscal resources would be needed for a genuinely progressive and meaningful UBI.This problem of finding these resources becomes more pressing in the context of the wider model for the futurethat its proponents tend to assume – that it would facilitate a move towards lower work hours, lower growth, andan end to dependence on waged labour. A reduction in the amount of work hours in the economy and in theproportion of wages in people’s incomes would inevitably also imply a reduction in the amount of labour incomeavailable for taxation. Additional means of funding would therefore need to be found, but this would requiresignificant new departures in taxation, away from the labour taxes and growth-dependent financing upon whichthe fiscal system of modern industrial states rely.Additionally, if UBI, as envisioned by left-wing advocates, had a liberating or decommodifying effect thatincreased the bargaining power of labour, this would have long-term inflationary consequences once the currentdeflationary situation in the developed world had been overcome. To deal with this would require substantialrestructuring of the relations between capital and labour – at the very least amounting to a progressive form ofsocial partnership, or more ambitiously a tradition towards democratic management and/or ownership ofcompanies.All of these considerations point to the fact that successful and progressive implementation of UBI would requiremore wider, radical and dramatic, intervention in the capitalist economy. UBI is posited as a remedy for the socialinsecurity that attends the crises of work and social reproduction, and consequently as a way for socialdemocrats to renew their ideas and their sense of direction. But we can see that it ends up facing the samedilemmas which it purports to solve for social democracy. The question then arises as to whether arguing for oragainst UBI is a pursuit worth paying much attention to at all, or whether it is a distraction from the fundamentalproblems that remain much the same with or without UBI.______About the AuthorsNeil Warner is a PhD researcher at Trinity College Dublin.  Frederick Harry Pitts is Lecturer in Management in the School of Economics, Finance &Management at the University of Bristol. Lorena Lombardozzi is a Phd Researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.2/3  Featured image credit: Pixabay/Public Domain.3/3

Britain in crisis: how societal divisions exist in the formation and resolution of crises

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Britain in crisis: how societal divisions exist in the formation and resolution of crises

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