UBI aligns with socialist ideas – freedom and equality

UBI has mainly been discussed and embraced as an instrument of freedom, and so there is a sense among critiques on the left that UBI is suspiciously libertarian (Rogers 2017). Further, when we think of an egalitarian proposal, we tend to think of a policy that reduces the gap between rich and poor. UBI is given to all, so it cannot be seen as reducing inequalities in this direct manner. Furthermore, it is no coincidence that UBI has attracted libertarian thinkers and has been opposed by labor unions (Vanderborght 2006). UBI skeptics on the left tend to think that UBI proponents too readily give up on the backbones of socialism: jobs and the interests of the laboring class. They also tend to worry that UBI may even be detrimental to egalitarian justice, if it is sold as a pill that will solve all ills, making market regulations seem unnecessary and full-speed automation look less objectionable (Rogers 2017). One important additional critique of UBI is that it makes no distinction between those who need many resources to achieve a decent level of functioning and those who need less to achieve the same goals (Anderson 2000). UBI then strikes us as perhaps inadequate for egalitarian purposes.

But in fact, as I show in this section and the next, UBI can also be seen as an instrument of equality (Baker 1992). Insofar as equality and freedom are conceptually connected, that is not surprising. Even Van Parijs’s (1995) real libertarian defense is egalitarian at core—the currency of egalitarian justice that must be maximized is simply “real freedom” rather than welfare, resources, or opportunities. As we highlighted above, Van Parijs has further demonstrated that even liberal egalitarian theories of justice, à la Rawls or Dworkin, are compatible with an endorsement of unconditional benefits. This is not, however, what most have in mind when they think of an egalitarian proposal, so here I want to underscore more explicitly the egalitarian case for universal and unconditional benefits. I do so generally first by drawing on social egalitarianism and then more specifically by focusing on two types of inequalities in the section that follows.

Let’s start by introducing yet another freedom-based framework that has been mobilized to offer powerful defenses of UBI: republicanism. Rejecting both the liberal conception of freedom as noninterference and Van Parijs’s (1995) indiscriminating conception of freedom as the right “to do whatever one might want to do,” republicans have put forward an alternative defense of UBI on grounds of non-domination. The republican conception of justice is more relational than the libertarian; it focuses on the presence or absence of dominating control by some over others, as well as by the state. Following Rousseau [1998 (1762), p. 52], republicans want to build a society where no one is too poor to be bought and no one is rich enough to enslave others. Insofar as UBI can realistically protect people from the dominating control of others by ensuring an income floor, it seems like a promising policy proposal on republican grounds (Pettit 2007, Casassas & De Wispelaere 2016). Widerquist’s (2013) independentarianism—a close cousin of republicanism— also led him to defend UBI as providing individuals with the “freedom to say no” to abuses and domination by spouses or bosses. Those accounts are freedom based, but they are certainly egalitarian too.

In fact, the accounts just described are strongly connected to a view called social egalitarianism. Social egalitarianism is a conception of justice that has been revived in recent years by such contemporary philosophers as Elizabeth Anderson, Iris Marion Young, Samuel Scheffler, Debra Satz, Tim Scanlon, Martin O’Neill, Jonathan Wolff, and others. Like republicanism, social egalitarians believe that a just society is one in which people are free from domination and oppression. Central to this conceptualization of equality are the notions of equal social standing, equal status, equal respect, and equal political power. Social egalitarians do not give as much importance to individual responsibility as luck egalitarians like Dworkin (who hold the view that inequalities that are the result of individual choices—as opposed to brute luck—are acceptable) (Axelsen & Bidadanure 2018). Most social egalitarians would be unwilling, for instance, to let anyone fall below a critical threshold because of the choices they make. Sanctions and discontinuations of benefits make people vulnerable to oppression in a variety of ways. By preventing extreme economic insecurity, UBI reduces those risks.

Although social egalitarians have not necessarily been vocal in support of UBI, I would argue that the establishment of an unconditional income floor is quite well connected to the social egalitarian ideal. UBI can help reduce work hierarchies and segregation. The exclusive concentration on activation of many benefits systems devalues activities that are not commoditized. By enabling activities like caregiving, UBI has the potential to unsettle hierarchies created by commodification. UBI could also help reduce the micro-domination and infantilizing that go on in the delivery of behaviorally conditional benefits. The latter are delivered with the assistance of a large bureaucratic apparatus. Welfare advisors and controllers are given discretionary power to monitor the claimants, intrude in their lives, and punish them for failures to comply. A radical way to protect claimants is to make the welfare payment an unconditional right and to change the role of the welfare officers from controllers to advisors.

Last, conditional benefits systems often condone an endemic demonization of the poor. The obsession with screening out the undeserving underclass, the welfare queens and benefits scroungers, has generated a toxic and divisive rhetoric that undercuts the equal standing of those most vulnerable and puts at risk the social cohesion so dear to social egalitarians. Such demonization creates dangerous binaries between deserving and undeserving, and fuels a growing disrespect for the least advantaged. Universal benefits can help move us away from this undemocratic rhetoric and protect the social basis of self-respect (McKinnon 2003, Pateman 2004, Birnbaum 2012). For this reason and the other reasons highlighted above and below, UBI is an egalitarian instrument, in addition to an instrument of freedom.