1NC---No Solvency

UBI re-entrenches capitalism—accepts that we have already lost the battle

Esteban Mercatante, 8-7-2018, Esteban is an economist from Buenos Aires and a member of the PTS. (Universal Basic Income: A Capitalist Fix to the Evils of Capitalism?, Left Voice, 8-7-2018, https://www.leftvoice.org/universal-basic-income-a-capitalist-solution-to-the-evils-of-capitalism/, 7-20-2023)//AAlmand

Universal basic income, a guaranteed, no-strings-attached income for the entire population, is presented as a progressive solution to the “end of work.” But those who promote a UBI are doing one of two things. They either entertain illusions in a top-down palliative measure for the miseries of the capitalist system, or they are searching for an impossible shortcut to the challenges of organizing the working class, the only social force that can overcome capitalism. In either case, they lack any sense of realism. The “end of work” narrative A widely held belief suggests that most jobs today are threatened by the so-called “fourth industrial revolution” which promises to extend robotics throughout production. Unlike previous waves of innovation, according to this line of thought, the fourth revolution will result in fewer replacement jobs. Yet in reality the number of workers exploited by capital around the world has grown as never before. According to the International Labour Organization, over 3.2 billion individuals are employed today. While this supposed “end of work” has escaped serious analysis, the idea that a UBI could secure an income for those who can no longer expect to find gainful employment has become more popular. It is not a new idea. But what gives it a new sense of urgency and more adherents is that, as Paul Mason suggests, it could solve the problem of “the disappearance of work itself.” 1 Talk of the “end of work” is permeated with a fetishism of robotics. But in the conditions of the “secular stagnation“ of modern capitalism, the use of robotics does not produce sufficiently high rates of capital accumulation to present a real threat to most people’s jobs. More generally, the idea that capitalism can impose generalized robotization clashes with capital’s need for ever increasing exploitation of the only source of its profits – labor power. Advocates of UBI also assume that growing job insecurity and precarity, faced by a large proportion of the world’s labor force, are irreversible. It is true that accessing formal employment, participating in the social security system, and so on, are unattainable for a growing sector of the working class. The ILO estimates that 42 per cent of workers suffer from “vulnerable employment”, including self-employment, temporary jobs etc., which has increased among young people and especially women. 2 People are working more and earning less than they did decades ago. The length of today’s workday is as long, or even longer, than it was 80 years ago, and in the United States, Germany and France it is being lengthened further. Contrary to what John Maynard Keynes imagined when he considered the economic possibilities of his grandchildren’s generation, we are not even a fraction closer to 15-hour workweek than we were in the 1930s – even though labor productivity has multiplied threefold. But as Leo Panitch points out 3, such generalized job insecurity, seen as inescapable by those who propose UBI, has much more to do with capital’s advance against the historic gains of the working class than it does with supposedly irreversible changes in capitalism’s material processes. Thirty years ago, the most left-wing proponents of UBI, Robert J. van der Veen and Philippe Van Parijs, considered it “A Capitalist Road to Communism.” 4 But what these proponents see as UBI’s “progressive” side is in fact its fatal flaw: accepting the premise of the “end of work” and sidestepping this problem by fighting not for socialism but rather for a UBI. To accept this idea is to accept that the working class has already lost half the battle. Money for Nothing Money here and now, because there is no time to wait for great social transformations – that is the slogan of UBI proponents. They want to give every person a sufficient income to acquire the essentials, whether or not they have a job, whether or not they want to work, with no strings attached. Such a decoupling of the income of citizens from the obligation to work seems to some to be the only viable alternative in a world where the system of production throws growing numbers of workers to the side of the road.

UBI is a trojan horse in the interest of the free-market right—only weaken the welfare state

David James Hogg, 4-25-2022, David James Hogg is a social policy postgraduate from Liverpool interested in UBI and the Italian operaismo movement. (‘The Left will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’: The dialectics of universal basic income, Sage Journals, 4-25-2022, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02610183221092151, 7-20-2023)//AAlmand

The coronavirus pandemic has seen increased calls for basic income from academics, activists and politicians alike. A paper published by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in support of a “pandemic basic income” illustrates how the economic consequences of multiple lockdowns have been felt disproportionately by the poorest people, while ‘monetary policies are already rebounding in favour of the rich’ (: 1). The pandemic thus requires an urgent policy response, leading to support for UBI throughout the EU and within a cross-party group of over 500 British MPs (: n.p). Historian Peter Sloman identifies ‘five waves of interest’ in basic income in Britain, ranging from the inter-war years and Bertrand Russell’s ‘vagabond’s wage’, to the explosion of literature discussing the policy in the last decade (: 626). He argues that the increase of interest in UBI in various waves is often triggered by periods of crisis, of which the pandemic is surely the latest (: 627). This is exemplified by the rise and subsequent decline in interest of Juliet Rhys-Williams’s basic income proposals - perhaps the most well-known in Britain - which emerged to deal with the social problems exacerbated by the Second World War, but were eventually ‘overshadowed by those of Beveridge’ (: 122). Despite its historic associations with conflicting political projects, recent developments have seen basic income embraced wholeheartedly by many on the Left. Anxiety regarding technological unemployment is certainly a key factor in explaining this trend, and indeed much of the modern UBI literature draws on this heavily. The impact of neoliberalism on the world of work is another key factor, which is increasingly characterised by the ‘insecurity of temporary and casual employment’ (: 637). The widespread opposition to this neoliberalisation of work ‘has enabled UBI to attract unprecedented support within the Labour movement’, particularly among the young; Sloman points to the performance of the Labour Party in the 2017 general election and the demographic of their vote as evidence ‘that concern about inequality runs deep and that younger voters are increasingly receptive to radical thinking’ (: 639). On the surface, basic income does indeed appear radical, suggesting that its appeal ‘seems to lie partly in its very transgressiveness’ (: 638). But there are also dangers posed by its implementation, which is evident from the bourgeois support for UBI both historically and today. A ‘shape-shifting social policy’ What makes the implications of basic income so challenging to assess is the difficulty in pinning down what it actually entails. Calnitsky describes it as a ‘shape-shifting social policy’ which seems to represent all things to all people (: 293). This has led to wildly different interpretations of UBI right across the political spectrum, allowing it to ‘be sold to different political constituencies as a solution to a variety of different problems’ (: 638). It can also lead to those involved in the debate talking past each other, moving the goal-posts of what can truly be considered “universal” or “basic”. The language used to describe the variety of proposals reflects this. At various times in Britain, campaigners have referred to UBI as ‘a “vagabond’s wage”, a “state bonus”, a “social dividend”, a “new social contract”, a “basic income”, and a “citizen’s income”’, not to mention Friedman’s “negative income tax” in the US (: 626). Clearly each of these terms ‘evokes a rather different set of connotations’, and as a result basic income has often paradoxically been seen as ‘unconditional’, ‘selective’, ‘unitary’ or ‘two-tiered’ depending on the ideology of its proponents and the intended audience of the proposals (: 626; : 293). Guy Standing credits the myriad of opposing views within the BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network) group of which he is a part for its influence on the debate. Though he admits to ‘tensions between those who take a libertarian approach and those who have been more egalitarian’, Standing holds that ‘this “broad church” approach has been key to the success of BIEN’ due to the ‘knowledge base’ it has built and the fruitful contradictions that have influenced its research (: x). But while such an approach may be suitable for an organisation like BIEN, the irreconcilable attitudes and approaches to UBI from across the political spectrum pose real difficulties in determining how the policy is likely to be implemented in practice. Indeed, as Sloman argues, ‘[i]t is difficult to see how tech entrepreneurs and the TUC could ever be brought together in support of a particular scheme’ (: 639). While the Left sees basic income as emancipatory, reducing the exploitative nature of wage labour and constituting a radical reimagination of work, the Right view it as a continuation of their long-standing efforts to undermine the welfare state and cut the “red tape” of workers’ protections. A ‘Trojan Horse’? Throughout British political history, UBI has primarily been an interest of the ‘free-market right’ and the ‘pragmatic centre’ rather than the Left (: 9). Despite the idealism of the Enlightenment thinkers who first introduced the concept, the most influential of basic income proposals have been regressive, seeking to resist or weaken the welfare state. For example, Rhys-Williams’ scheme, emerging as it did amidst the post-war consensus, ‘might plausibly be read as an attempt to resist the growth of progressive taxation and the rising bargaining power of the organised working class’ (: 629). Such an impression is reinforced by her ‘ambivalence’ regarding the sum that would constitute a basic income and her concerns about ‘conditionality’ (: 629). There is a moralising of work within the Right’s support of UBI, one of the key components that make it antithetical to any Leftist variation. Following the publication of the Beveridge Report - which made the key recommendations on which the British welfare state was based - Beveridge’s ideas, and the Labour government’s willingness to implement them, inspired an anxiety in Rhys-Williams and her fellow conservatives that ‘[n]ot only will the idle get as much from the State as will the industrious workers, they will get a great deal more’, which would result in an ‘undermining [of] the will to work’ (: 164). In order to combat this, Rhys-Williams argued for a “new social contract”, ‘expressed by the actual signature of a contract between the individual […] and the State’, in which the recipient of a basic income would be obliged to ‘devote his best efforts’ to societal wealth creation in exchange for a basic safety net (: 167). A UBI on these terms would essentially be a form of workfare, and a comparatively timid solution when contrasted with what actually emerged as the post-war consensus. This concern for protecting “the will to work” is implicit within the UBI pilot scheme carried out in Finland in 2017–2018. The pilot consisted of 2000 unemployed people being given a mere 560 euros a month to live on throughout the trial period, indicative of the moderate sum likely to be introduced (). In simulating UBI models before the actual trial began, the academics involved found that such a low sum, despite offering more disposable income for social groups such as students and lower paid workers, would mean that ‘individuals with unemployment benefits would be the largest group of losers’, as ‘the basic income would only partially replace their existing benefits’ (: 90). These benefits would of course be abolished to make way for a UBI, as ‘[d]istributing a basic income to all beneficiaries on top of their current benefits would not be economically sustainable’ (: n.p.). Such a narrow conception of UBI should not be surprising, given Finland’s Centre-Right coalition government at the time - which included the Right-wing populist Finns Party - hoped the trial would help ‘diminish disincentives to working, […] reduce bureaucracy and […] simplify the overly complex tax-benefit system’, rather than provide more security for its poorest citizens (: 87). Such concerns with efficiency and bureaucracy are central to many conservative interpretations of UBI. Many of its supporters on the Right are ‘attracted to the idea as a pragmatic solution to the failings of the existing safety-net or as a free-market alternative to wage regulation and state welfare provision’ (: 627). In other words, this version of UBI represents little more than a continuation of the neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state and its attack on workers’ security. American economists Milton and Rose Friedman were key architects of this neoliberal revolution of course, and in Capitalism and Freedom advocated a basic income in order to ‘reduce the need for the social safety net and […] its expensive, inefficient bureaucracy’ (; : 174). The Friedmans saw their “negative income tax” as the most efficient way of ‘dismantling […] government interferences with the market’, typically positing this anti-welfare stance as one concerned with ‘individual liberty’ (: n.p.). Under this system, all state benefits would be abolished and replaced by a mechanism whereby above a certain threshold ‘you pay tax to the Inland Revenue; below it, they pay you’ (: 41). This would enable governments to cut off all support for those earning above an arbitrary figure which would ‘bring substantial savings’ and streamline welfare provision in the way the Friedmans and their fellow ideologues wished (: 41). The system would also tax those above the threshold at a flat rate rather than through progressive taxation, meaning the plans would also allow inequality to increase. Although Rhys-Williams’ proposals are probably the most well-known in Britain, Sloman sees those put forward by Arthur Cockfield in the 1970s as ‘the closest any British government has come to introducing UBI' (: 632). Cockfield’s proposals drew heavily on the work of the Friedmans, and like his predecessors he ‘explicitly rejected the notion of welfare rights’, wishing to be selective and exclude from the allowances those he labeled ‘the vagrants, the drifters, the drop-outs, [and] the petty criminals' (: 632; : cited in Sloman). Such plans to streamline welfare and the tax system were popular within the Conservative Party, which would allow them to reduce administrative costs by abolishing the PAYE method of taxation in favour of the flat rate. However, Cockfield’s plans were unable to command the bipartisan support needed to be introduced, and were later abandoned by the subsequent Labour government (). Such emphases on reducing bureaucracy, ‘streamlining' the welfare state and instilling a “will to work” in lower earners betray the major difference between Left- and Right-wing interpretations of basic income. However, by arguing for a version of the same reform, Leftist advocates risk masking the huge differences between these interpretations, serving as enablers for the introduction of a more regressive variation. This is a particular possibility given how policy-making processes function, and how certain stakeholders within this process are able to shape policy outcomes, which will be explored later in more detail. Milton Friedman himself was aware of this, taking great delight in warning that ‘[t]he Left, if it accepts the programme, will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’ (: n.p.). Bourgeois support for UBI is not just historic however. In the modern age, support is strong among those Zizek terms the ‘socially conscious billionaire' (: 39). In his estimation, such figures ‘stand for global capital at its most seductive and “progressive” – in short, at its most dangerous’ (: 39). This most advanced faction of capital ‘ha[s] embraced UBI as a way of defusing political resistance to automation and technological change’ (: 7). Techno-capitalists like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk view such changes as both desirable and inevitable, and indeed both have publicly shared their support for UBI at one time or another. Marxist political economy shows the importance of technological advances to the accumulation of capital. Marx demonstrates that capitalist growth relies fundamentally on the ‘surplus labour' of its workers, which is the value produced beyond that which is covered by the worker’s wages. The rate at which this occurs is ‘therefore an exact expression for the degree of exploitation of labour power by capital’ (: 151). But capital’s endless search for further growth makes the invention of labour-saving technology vital to the increase in the rate of surplus value relative to the value the worker is paid for. This increase in ‘the productiveness of labour’ therefore means a decrease in the ‘labour-time required for the production of an article’, meaning capital is able to shorten the “necessary labour time” for which the worker is remunerated, and in turn ‘lengthen the other part of the day, during which he [sic] is at liberty to work gratis for the capitalist’ (: 21; 222). Just as working hours are not limited to those of necessary labour time, the fact that the labourer is able to produce their “means of subsistence” – the value equivalent to their wages - in a shorter space of time as a result of a particular advancement in production does not then lead to a reduction in hours, but rather the opposite. Capital is able to use this new technology to squeeze the wages of those who remain in post following its introduction, as the threat of unemployment now looms large for those ‘rendered superfluous’ by this innovation (: 297). The work in which this technology is employed is therefore de-valued as “unskilled” - for much of it is completed by machinery with human supervision – which again spells wage cuts. In this way, even the very threat of technology – regardless of whether it is actually deployed in production - ensures the employer is able to reduce wage costs, while any workplace radicalism is quelled by the insecurity such innovation inspires. For those whose jobs are lost to automation, they either ‘flood[…] all the more easily accessible branches of industry’ or join the ranks of the jobless; what Marx terms the ‘reserve army of labour'. Either way, the result ‘sinks the price of labour below its value’ (: 297). A UBI in conjunction with technological advancement is therefore entirely consistent with the demands of capital, which often repurposes reforms for its own development. In assessing the impact of the post-war welfare state, John Saville writes that it emerged not only through ‘the struggle of the working class against their exploitation’, but also as a result of ‘the requirements of industrial capitalism […] for a more efficient environment’, in other words a healthier and more educated workforce (: n.p.). Similarly, UBI serves to create this “more efficient environment” through a liberating of employers from the constraints of paying full wages. Not only does the policy force the state - or rather the tax payer - to top-up these wages, but it continues to maintain the labour force for a comparatively lower rate. This combination of UBI and automation could well allow capital to continue increasing its profit margins while throwing at least some of its workers - now guaranteed a basic income - on the scrapheap.

UBI feeds the roots of unemployment that capitalism depends on

Capitalist production is dependent on not only an active labor force, but also a pool of unemployed and underemployed that are ready to take up any vacancy. This “reserve army of labor” exerts a constant downward pressure on wages and has a disciplining effect on the employed sector of the working class. A government-provided allowance that enables workers to fully withdraw themselves from the labor market would dismantle this key mechanism of any capitalist system. For this reason, it will be focused only on very low-income sectors and will not even amount to a basic income, but be set at levels below the poverty line. This is the only way that a basic income can be compatible with the continued exploitation of labor in the conditions that modern capitalism in decline requires, especially in backward and dependent countries, but also in the richest imperialist economies. Basic income is a long way from being a progressive reform that ensures a decent income for all citizens. Public policies are caught between the demand for fiscal austerity and the need to contain discontent and make capitalism’s continued social degradation somehow bearable. As Michel Husson states, “Progressive partisans of an income of 1,000 euros per month may well serve as ‘useful idiots’ for the establishment of a universal income of 400 euros, for a final settlement that also advantageously reduces the operating costs of the welfare state.” 6 UBI or the Redistribution of Working Hours? Tens years after the Great Recession, some have proclaimed that the world has turned a corner, even if the turbulence of more the last couple years discredits such claims. The capitalist class is preparing new attacks on the living standards of the working class, which it must do in order to increase accumulation. A key part of this are the labor and pension (counter)-reforms being imposed around the world (from France to Brazil and Argentina). But UBI also has its part to play. The proposal for a UBI shifts debate from the terrain of class conflict to that of public policy and citizenry. This could be of great service to the capitalist class as it continues its attacks on the working class. After all, a dispute about the primary distribution of income always entails the danger that the exploited will question who controls social production and begin to organize. But if the debate is shifted to UBI, it becomes a question of secondary distribution, of income management and social security expenses. Some on the left defend UBI because it will supposedly “empower” the working class in its confrontation with capital. The logic is that an income that can cover the basic cost of living would give the working class greater bargaining power, since all workers would have a credible “exit” strategy. This position is defended by, for example, David Calnitsky in Catalyst. 7 However, this argument has some major weaknesses. All efforts by capital in recent decades have aimed at creating job insecurity, flexibility and fragmentation of the workforce. Calnitsky is right that working class power is today at a historic low. So, can we really expect the government to come up with a proposal for UBI that gets any closer to a livable income? Doing so would be naïve. Then, what we need to focus on is not a policy proposal that shifts the attention away from class struggle, but the task of organizing at workplaces, in the unions, for the working class to become again a force that needs to be reckoned with. Of course, the argument of those who propose a “dignified” basic income is not that it will come from state generosity, but that it must be achieved through struggle. However, as Alex Gourevitch and Lucas Stanczyk argue in Catalyst, There is consequently no prospect of the hoped for policy coming to pass until there is a working-class constituency that is organized and powerful enough to be able to extract it, in spite of the predictable resistance of superbly organized capital.8 Accepting the “end of work” and fighting for remuneration outside of employment does not bode well for a working class that aspires to become such a powerful social force. If anything, it can facilitate the new attacks of the ruling class. The “progressive” proponents of UBI are thus caught in a vicious circle. UBI is not a shortcut to the independent organization of the working class that its progressive proponents imagine. In contrast to these illusions, there is only one response to either neoliberal austerity or miserable handouts: the struggle to reduce the workweek to six hours a day, five days a week, and the redistribution of working hours among all those available to work. Around the world, the workload for those who have a job is increasing, while unemployment and underemployment grow alongside it. Data from the US show that, even though labor productivity has tripled from 1957 to today, the eight-hour day remains unchanged and businesses have found multiple ways to impose even longer hours. In the last decades, the time dedicated to work has increased. The same goes for Europe, and even more so for many dependent countries that have joined the networks of transnational production. Far from being “natural,” this is determined by capital’s need to increase its appropriation of surplus value at the expense of labor. Therefore we must raise the demand for the reduction of the working day by distributing the available work among all those who can work, without any loss in salary, thus guaranteeing all employed people an income based on the cost of living. This proposal seeks to question the seemingly “natural” character of the industrial reserve army. The conditions have been created for everyone to work fewer hours. But while capital is in power, some must continue working as many hours as workers did many decades ago while a growing part of the population is transformed into a “relative surplus population.” Thus, we have to question the private monopoly of the means of production. The IG Metall strike in Germany last year, in which hundreds of thousands of workers fought for the reduction of the working day,9 showed that this is an idea that can resonate deeply in important sectors of the working class (even if in this case the strike was called off by the union bureaucracy after it imposed a salary cut in exchange for a shorter working day). What stands in the way of distributing all available work among all those who want to work, decreasing everyone’s working day? Why should some of us have exhausting working days while others are condemned to unemployment and underemployment (with or without a UBI)? Why can’t we use technological advances to reduce the working day to everyone? Why do the workers who produce all the social wealth have to settle for crumbs from the capitalist state, while eight billionaires own the same wealth as 3.5 billion people? Capitalism has created the conditions for reducing the time required to produce all socially necessary goods. But for the vast majority of the world population to benefit from this enhanced productive capacity, we need to question the mechanisms of exploitation that sustain the current mode of production. Then the only “realistic” thing to do is to fight to abolish the capitalist system. We must clear the path for a mode of production that is no longer based on private profit but rather on meeting the social needs of everyone.