1NC---Epistemic Indict---Transition

The AFF’s reliance on the early ideas of Marx doom the transition --- the 1AC overlooks years of Marx’s post-Hegelian philosophy which generates a massive solvency deficit.

David James Hobb, 4-25-2022, ‘The Left will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’: The dialectics of universal basic income, Sage Journals, Liverpool Hope University, Hope Park, Liverpool, L16 9JD, England, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02610183221092151, Accessed: 7-19-2023, //ONHS IF [Hegel = “hay-gul”]

Support from the Left It is clear why UBI is so popular on the Right and within certain sections of capital. Needless to say, the Left case for a basic income appeals to a rather different sensibility. The Left discourse stresses the inherently exploitative nature of work under capitalism, with numerous studies finding that British workers spend far too much time at their jobs - impacting both physical and mental health - while inequality continues to rise (Jones, 2019; Day and Prins, 2020; Scurrah, 2021). After decades of neoliberalism, jobs have become increasingly precarious, which only adds to the stress and anxiety that modern workers experience. Reflecting this reality, Leftist advocates emphasise the emancipatory potential of UBI, which would see workers freed from meaningless, unsatisfying jobs and cushioned from the harshest aspects of the market. For example, van Parijs claims UBI would ‘liberate […] all men and women of the compulsion to work for a capitalist’ and enable ‘people who work too much to reduce their working time or take a career break’ (2018: 2; 15). In the same volume, Schachtschneider envisages ‘[t]he partial decoupling of work and income’ and a ‘life beyond market structures’ as a result of a basic income (Ed. van Parijs, 2018: 74–75). Meanwhile, Standing (2017) attempts to wrestle the argument for individual freedom away from the libertarian Right and in favour of UBI, while the likes of Louise Haagh (2019) and Rutger Bregman (2018) hail the aspects which support classical liberal arguments concerning leisure time and personal development. It is these kinds of arguments that have made UBI so popular on the Left, and in particular those younger members of the labour force who are confronted with a future of increasingly insecure work and low pay (Sloman, 2018; Fitzgerald, 2017). Much of this discourse draws on Marx’s early ‘humanist' writing regarding ‘alienation' and the exploitation of labour to justify their basic income proposals. Whether this engagement constitutes a rhetorical device to gain the backing of the radical Left or a genuine interest in Marxism is uncertain, but what is clear is that a reliance on Marx’s early work at the expense of his research in political economy is bound to be limited. The French philosopher Louis Althusser went as far as to identify an ‘epistemological break' in Marx’s writing between his early humanism and his later “scientific” work, which came after he had shed the influence of the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach (Althusser, 2005). I mention this not to say that Marx’s early works should be written-off entirely - indeed they are foundational for what emerged later - but to suggest that remaining on one side of this break while neglecting later Marxist interventions in political economy does not offer a solid foundation on which to base a justification for UBI. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx explores the degree of ‘coercion’ present in the worker’s decision to work, and defines alienating labour as that which is ‘external to the worker’ (1844: n.p.). These insights, taken up elsewhere by Marx, demonstrate how the worker is forced to sell their own labour in order to survive, living on wages while the capitalist extracts further value from them. The worker thus becomes a ‘commodity’ to be exploited, rather than - as the Right sees it - a voluntary agent meeting the employer within the market of free exchange (Marx and Engels, 2015: 12). The views such as those of van Parijs expressed above therefore appeal to some Marxists, who see UBI as a way of freeing the worker of this exploitation to some degree. So too does Micheal Howard, a researcher associated with BIEN, who regards basic income as a ‘step beyond alienation because it gives more workers the option to say no’ (2002: 4). But in their preoccupation with notions of alienation and individual freedom, some UBI proponents on the Left overlook the integral role that surplus value plays in this exploitation of workers. As has been outlined earlier, it is this process of surplus value extraction that the entirety of the capitalist economy relies on, without which it would simply collapse. However, UBI does nothing to address this key driver of capitalist expansion, meaning it cannot hope to solve the problem at the heart of the inequality that capitalism inherently produces. In defending this, van der Veen and van Parijs claim that for Marx the priority was ‘the expansion of freedom’ and ‘the abolition of alienation’, and so ‘we need not be bothered by the persistence of substantial inequalities’ (1986: 651). But this represents a glaring misreading of Marx, and reveals the ‘primary reason’ why conservative and liberal figures were attracted to UBI in the first place (Navarro, ed. van Parijs, 2018: 51). This vision of UBI is therefore perfectly compatible with that of the Right. For most UBI supporters on the Left, the policy is a way of ameliorating some of the harshest aspects of capitalism rather than an attempt to move beyond it. But for van der Veen and van Parijs, basic income also represents an opportunity to embark on “the capitalist road to communism”. In their eyes, UBI has the potential to form part of a gradual approach to systemic change that would ‘turn the capitalist transition to communism from a utopian dream into a historical necessity’ (van der Veen & van Parijs, 1985: 652). However, the authors overestimate the power of UBI in bringing about systemic change. UBI alone could not possibly transform the capitalist economy so emphatically due to the fact it fails to deal with such a core problem, and reform that does not concern itself with the ‘capital-labour relations in each country’ - as UBI fails to do - is therefore ‘dramatically insufficient’ for solving the growing problem of inequality and moving beyond the current parameters of capitalism (Navarro, ed. van Parijs, 2018: 50). Utopian predictions about the incoming technological revolution, which are often coupled with support for a UBI, are also unhelpful. This is by no means a recent phenomenon; just as Sloman shows that support for UBI tends to emerge as a result of political crisis, Benanav too sees ‘automation theory’ as ‘a spontaneous discourse of capitalist societies’ which appears repeatedly amidst these crises ‘as a way of thinking through their limits’ (2019a: 11–12). What the current discourse about UBI and automation overlooks - hailing both as an opportunity to transition to a post-work society - is that ‘the level of employment is socially, not technologically, determined’ (Wilson, 2018: 61). In other words, ‘[t]echnology can only create new material conditions’, and whether these are used to serve progressive goals or conservative ones depends on ‘the social and political project underpinning their implementation’ (Gorz, 1985: 40). We have covered already how labour-saving innovation coupled with UBI has the potential to merely serve the interests of the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. After all, the ‘technologies developed in capitalist societies are not neutral’, they are designed to aid capitalist expansion rather than bring about a post-work world (Benanav, 2019b: 143). The task for radical social policy in the event of such widespread technology-induced unemployment should therefore concern who owns these new means of production, rather than a focus on UBI, as it is this question of ownership which would determine the abolition of work in the capitalist sense. However, there is evidence that the danger of a technology-induced unemployment crisis has been greatly overstated. What seems more likely to occur - as has done throughout history - is a “partial” automation which will alter how certain jobs are carried out, rather than abolishing them altogether. Matthew Cole argues that technology is having much the same impact ‘it always had’, that is a ‘partial’ one, ‘changing the task composition of most jobs rather than eliminating them entirely’ (2020: n.p.). This is not to downplay the potential dangers technology still poses to workers, but demonstrates that a clamouring for UBI due to widespread unemployment misses the point. As Benanav suggests, ‘we are heading towards a “good job-less future” rather than a “jobless” one’ (2019b: 117). Marx explains how the potential technology possesses to make jobs simpler does not always result in an improvement in the working experience, but rather ‘deprives the work of all interest’ in addition to the likelihood of a wage squeeze (2013: 292). In contrast, Italian thinkers such as Franco Berardi and Maurizio Lazzarato claim we have reached a fundamentally new way of working, a so-called “cognitive capitalism” which relies on “immaterial” or “intellectual labour”, rather than manual work (Berardi, 2013; Lazzarato, eds. Virno & Hardt, 1996). With value creation becoming harder to define, UBI would step in to replace traditional wage labour and open up new ways of supporting workers outside of the wage structures that are now obsolete. Both men belong to the Autonomous Marxist milieu, often characterised as post-operaismo due to its shared intellectual heritage with the original operaismo movement. This earlier current emerged in 1960s Italy during the height of industrialisation and included among its ranks the likes of Antonio Negri and Mario Tronti. The movement was primarily concerned with recognising the working class as an ‘autonomous, self-constituting force’, a revolutionary class capable of shaping capitalism to its own needs before eventually defeating it (Collins, 2021: n.p.). The operaisti thus paid close attention to class composition and how certain reforms and changes in work impacted its potential. Following deindustrialisation in Italy, the movement fractured into various trends loosely-defined as post-operaismo, and many of these same thinkers have engaged in support for UBI in recent years. Those like Berardi and Lazzarato do so with the view that it remains the only way of adequately remunerating workers for their labour in a world of mystified value. But while it may be true that immaterial labour represents a new classification following the birth of the internet, it is far from universal. Indeed such a view is rather Eurocentric, as while the imperial core may have seen a rise in this form of work, the uneven development of capitalism ensures the continued exploitation of the Global South for its more traditional labour needs. Talk of UBI and post-work on these terms is therefore rather chauvinist, and implicitly supports continued imperialism in order to fulfil a Western utopian vision. Indeed a reliance on what Marx termed “surplus populations” - which not only includes the reserve army of labour discussed earlier but colonial and neo-colonial subjects abroad - has always been vital for capital accumulation, while also funding the welfare programmes of the imperial nations. The welfare state built by the Labour Party as part of the post-war settlement in fact hinged on ‘a more systematic exploitation of colonies than at any previous time in imperial history’ (Callaghan, 2007: 164). Such a history of prioritising the living standards of the imperial core at the expense of the periphery must surely be reckoned with before heralding any form of UBI-funded, post-work utopia. Similar arguments are made by post-operaismo feminists such as Silvia Federici and Kathi Weeks, who argue that a basic income would more adequately remunerate the domestic/care work situated outside of the wage relation and performed disproportionately by women (Federici, 2012; Weeks, 2011). UBI would therefore recognise ‘the family […] as a crucial element of the wage system’ which carries the costs of social reproduction without compensation (Weeks, 2011: 121). This reveals the double-bind that domestic workers are in, whose unpaid labour consists not just of the surplus labour extracted by capital, but the productive and care work they perform as well. Indeed this is often performed on top of wage labour, be it a full- or part-time job. Federici’s “wages for housework” movement of the 1970s was perhaps the first feminist claim to a basic income, and the mantle has been taken up by many others since. Weeks does not just support UBI as ‘a concrete reform’, but rather emphasises ‘its performative dimension’ (2011: 129; 131). Taking lessons from the “wages for housework” discourse, she encourages the Left to see such a demand as a ‘provocation’ and an ‘incitement of antagonism’ against capital (Weeks, 2011: 131). In other words, she views UBI not as an end in itself - unlike some of its proponents - but as the beginning of a process; a demand which subsequently encourages further, more ambitious demands. But ‘[a] demand is in this sense always a risk, […] the success of which depends on the power that the struggle for it can generate’ (Weeks, 2011: 134). This attitude to reform is one that the aforementioned Mario Tronti - whom Federici claims on the back cover of Workers and Capital to have ‘read religiously’ - has outlined in his work (Tronti, 2019). Unlike those on the ultra-Left who oppose reformist tactics, Tronti stresses the potential for ‘capitalist reformism’ to act as a ‘positive strategic moment for the revolution’, but only when coupled with ‘a revolutionary growth’ of the working class and its organisational capacities (2019: 67). This approach is similar to what the Austrian theorist Andre Gorz conceptualised as “non-reformist reforms”, or reforms that seek to rebalance class power while remaining within the confines of capitalism. Though such a victory would be limited, any advance that improves the material experience of the working class must surely trump dogmatic concerns of reformism. The potential for UBI to act as a catalyst for the growth of working-class consciousness therefore rests on the strength of feeling and the size of the movement it can inspire.