Amidst dearth of viable alternatives, the time is now to endorse a universal basic income to endorse a radical view for the future

[Mary and Tyler, “Making UBI radical: On the potential for a universal basic income to underwrite transformative and anti-kyriarchal change,” Taylor and Francis Online, March 6th 2023, Accessed via Georgetown Library, GDS – PL]

Conclusion

It is a difficult time to imagine a just future. There has been no shortage of trenchant critique of the world we have. Yet, the left has struggled to produce a widely compelling alternative, a clear and convincing vision of what we are for and how to get there (Ferguson, Citation2010). In this context, we urge a deeper consideration of the politics and possibilities associated with cash transfers, and particularly a UBI. To understand the possibilities of a UBI, in combination with radical imaginaries and action, scholars must ask how cash transfers can themselves transform relations between citizens and the state, and what broader changes this economic security might underwrite. We are not alone in making such a call, but work here to clarify congruences and conflict with an array of lines of critical argumentation.

Expanding radical engagements with the politics of cash transfers requires rethinking the questions and analysis that underpin much ongoing research, reading this literature differently. It involves a different judgment about the merits of withdrawing labour, undoing of dependencies and possibilities for participation in new non-capitalist economic processes. It means calling for studies of cash transfers that attend to different dynamics, ones that indicate possibilities for life outside capital. It also means not accepting these impacts as given, but considering the potential of radical scholarship and activism to shape and guide how time and money are spent.

In this paper, we position cash transfers as a politically tenable mechanism for wealth redistribution that accords with anti-kyriarchical, anti-essentialist politics and might well be used to underwrite more radical socio-economic ends. This position suggests that, in contrast to provisional welfare programmes directed by the state or creating political economic change outside the state, cash transfers and particularly a UBI hold unique potential. Rather than increasing the power of the state to induce particular behaviours, it is a politically tenable way to appropriate and redistribute resources from hegemonic powers. These funds may be invested in, and may be encouraged to be invested in, the types of socially and ecologically embedded economic development supported by advocates of diverse, non-capitalist economies.

Whether they will, or will not, is not given, but subject of future struggles.