Reification - A UBI relies on an ideology which reduces individuals to commodities which allows them to be dominated or exchanged. This atomistic individualism is crucial to neoliberalism.

UBI: A Critique Taken together, the arguments above appear to present a powerful progressive case for introducing a UBI. In this section, I subject them to critique, drawing on the concepts of reification and real abstraction. I contend that while the quantitative advantages are undeniable, the qualitative changes UBI could bring are illusory as the implementation of UBI could in fact serve to reinforce the dominant modalities of thought and desire which exist within capitalist society. The adoption of the critical theoretical perspective is particularly valuable here, insofar as it enables a discussion of epistemic and depth-psychological concerns, which are often absent within traditional positivistic social research (see Delanty, 2020). Reification Adorno and Horkheimer (1997) united insights from Weber and Marx, and crucially, from Lukács, in their seminal work on reification. For Lukács (1972), reification chiefly refers to the artificial distanciation between the subject and their external world which is induced by capitalism. The capitalist subject views the world in a disengaged manner, abstracted from their surroundings, viewing others people, and their wider environment, as mere ‘things’, as ‘dead matter’ (Horkheimer, 1993: 81). For Lukács (1972), reification derives from ‘the fetish character of commodities’ and is ‘the subjective stance corresponding to it’ (p. 84). In a world which is governed by the exchange of commodities, a pathological form of consciousness comes to dominate. Reification is furthered by the market’s dependence on logics of false equivalence, what Lukács (1972) calls a ‘phantom objectivity’ (p. 6). The capitalist subject is encouraged to reduce their external world to exchangeable, purposeless matter which can be swapped for equivalent capital. The exchange value of a human liver is now commensurate with the exchange value of a certain weight of turnips, or of plutonium. The qualitative difference between the aforementioned objects is ‘written off as literature’ by the reifying logics of the market (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997: 7). For critical theorists, the hegemony of such reified consciousness is a crucial obstacle to progressive transformation as it prevents the development of critical reason. A fundamental concern for critical theorists, when assessing UBI, therefore, is will it help ameliorate reified consciousness? In this regard, the answer is a resounding negative. Rather than furthering a co-operative approach to all social relations, ever more domains of social life will become controlled by the market. As Van Parijs and Vanderborght (2017: 12) argue, it is ‘fundamental to the concept of a basic income . . . that it is paid in cash’. We would then see an attendant expansion of the commodity form, because we will see an attendant expansion of market actors. The capital relation will now become more, rather than less dominant, as more actors become ‘consumers’, regardless of how their capital is ‘earned’. While the ‘hidden abodes’ of capitalism (Fraser, 2014) were undeniably irrational and inequitable in past social formations, they remained substantially immune from the reifying power of the market. For example, love, esteem and respect can be earned in a manner not mediated by wage-labour (Honneth, 1995). The introduction of a UBI would see ‘recognition’ taking the universal form of capital. Recall that for Van der Veen and Van Parijs (1986) UBI could displace the socialist stage of production in the route to communism as it would enable the development of a community who are socially conditioned to more readily embrace communistic values. However, when viewed through a critical theoretical lens, UBI serves to further entrench and embed reification and false equivalence. By expanding the field of consumers, and reaffirming capital as the fundamental method of affirming social recognition, UBI serves to reinforce a reified atomistic consciousness, rather than serving to enable the transition to a more communistic form of thought and sociality. Critical theory thus offers a warning against the implementation of a UBI: by expanding the market-mediated domains of the social world, the deeply pathological reified form of consciousness associated with capitalistic societies would further proliferate, rather than recede (see Delanty, 2020). This would serve to retard prospects for qualitative socialistic transition as the reified form of thought associated with commodification and the capitalistic relation will be further enshrined, rather than challenged.