A UBI would not decommodify labor – it would still institutionalize markets through access to cash, which reinforces market ideology

For the LPE community, perhaps the most salient feature of UBI is its capacity to both decommodify and decenter labor. Decommodify by making space for work outside of labor markets, but also decenter by providing income unconditionally without requiring activity articulated as productive, whether inside or outside the market. But this decommodification only goes so far, as evidenced by UBI’s organization around money. Liberation from labor markets is institutionalized as access to the cash necessary for market consumption. It is on this point that Lydia Nicholson’s symposium contribution will enter the fray, in praise of in-kind provision over cash. Delving into the money nexus more structurally, Raúl Carrillo analyzes the risks of embedding programs that pump cash into people’s hands within regressive frameworks of fiscal and monetary policy that naturalize markets and mask the state by treating policies like UBI as redistributive transfers. Notably, these points about monetization apply substantially to variants such as GI but also a job guarantee (JG). Unfortunately, the symposium won’t delve much into the longstanding intra-left debate about UBI vs. JG vs. both. JG arguably pulls back from UBI’s unconditionality but in the name of a richer form of solidarity through partially decommodified work.