A UBI serves as a revolutionary tactic for class-based struggle – grants time and stability for political activity to fight the market.

We argue that a basic income should lead to a rise of the share of wages in the GDP, by significantly improving their bargaining position in various ways. Firstly, the bargaining position of workers would improve due to the macroeconomic consequences of implementing a basic income system. This reform, by redistributing income to the advantage of the poorer groups of the society would increase internal effective demand creating a better ground for profitable investments. That should induce investment, which depends on sales and expected profitability, which may increase employment and decrease the unemployment rate. [8] The existence of a huge group of unemployed or, as Marx puts it, the industrial reserve army, creates a downward pressure on wages, because it plays a role of a scarecrow discouraging the workers from struggling for their rights, better conditions of labour and higher wages. As this role is directly proportional to the level of unemployment, the smaller it is the lesser intimidated the workers are.

Secondly, basic income would increase the wage share, because it would get the workers away from the tight corner – as long as this benefit would exist, they would never have to worry about the survival of themselves and their families. Therefore, in the worst of cases they could resign from some particular job if they perceived it as not satisfactory (in terms of wage or working conditions) and have time to look for a better job (also in a different city or region). In this sense a basic income would obviously improve workers’ bargaining position, especially in the pay negotiations (Vanderborght, 2006, p. 5–6).

Thirdly, apart from an individual bargaining power, a basic income could also have a positive effect on the collective bargaining power, especially during a strike. As Yannick Vanderborght puts it:

… a BI would make each single strike less harmful financially, since workers would keep their entitlement to a guaranteed income floor outside the labour market. With a BI, strikers would be able to face long-lasting resistance from employers, and the collective powers of unions would therefore be enhanced.

(Vanderborght, 2006, p. 5)

Finally, basic income, by giving security and time, guarantees everyone the possibility to engage in alternative relations of production, such as cooperatives, build alternative non capital-labour relationships (by decommodifying different aspects of social life), and organize politically to struggle for a better situation of working people (including using the state policies and institutions). So it can foster non-capitalist social activities, which are worth in and for themselves, as well as helping directly and indirectly to the emergence of collective action with anti-capitalist goals.

Basic income, because of its effect on the wage share (due to the aforementioned four elements) may be considered an exemplary case of a pro-labour policy, that would lead to a greater growth of GDP in a wage-led regimes, i. e. most of the developed and big economies like United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France or Italy (and certainly the eurozone as a whole) (Lavoie & Stockhammer, 2012, p. 19–20). [9] Those economies are wage-led even when we take into consideration the negative impact of the increase in wages on the trade balance. That means that the neoliberal project in lowering wages went further than the requirements related to the process of globalisation.

Moreover, in these economies the same increase in wage share can create higher output and, plausibly, greater employment, thus enforcing the bargaining position of workers even more. Because this would again rise the wage share, we may face a reinforcing cycle, a progressive dynamic leading (or at least getting close) to the full employment (a new “kaleckian moment”). The limits to that dynamic are created by “the feedback effects driven by the productivity regime. Fast output growth may not entail fast employment growth, because of the rise in productivity growth generated by Kaldor-Verdoorn effect” (Lavoie & Stockhammer, 2012, p. 25). But those limits because of the rise of productivity don’t escape the realm of other possible economic policies. [10]

Therefore basic income strengthens workers’ bargaining position by giving them basic security, and providing them some quality time [11] to struggle for higher wages and engage in political struggle for more progressive reforms, and give them more freedom to choose those types of activities they want to perform. In these aspects basic income clearly outstrips a proposal often compared to it i. e. the Job Guarantee, which provides everyone with security, but not with time, forcing people to perform a full-time labour. Moreover it does not give freedom, because it cannot provide jobs that are suitable for needs and preferences of all those who can’t find a job in the private labour market. Therefore the possible positive influence of basic income on wage share should be significantly larger than those of Job Guarantee. [12]