‘The Left will find that it has bought a Trojan Horse’: The dialectics of universal basic income

Abstract

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in basic income proposals. While this is not an entirely new phenomenon, what is different about the current discourse is the Left’s wholehearted embrace of what has traditionally been seen as a conservative social policy in Britain. It is my contention that UBI is potentially a dangerous policy for the Left, in that it risks undermining the – admittedly imperfect – welfare protections already in existence. This paper draws on Marxist political economy in order to demonstrate how the emancipatory potential of UBI has been somewhat overstated by some of its Leftist supporters, while a discussion of the neutrality of the State is important in considering how this ‘shape-shifting social policy' is likely to be implemented in practice.

Introduction

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’ (Lapavitsas et al., 2020: 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 (Partington, 2020: 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 (2018: 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 (2018: 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’ (Parker, 1989: 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’ (Sloman, 2018: 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’ (2018: 639).

On the surface, basic income does indeed appear radical, suggesting that its appeal ‘seems to lie partly in its very transgressiveness’ (Sloman, 2018: 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 (2018: 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’ (Sloman, 2018: 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 (Sloman, 2018: 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 (Sloman, 2018: 626; Calnitsky, 2018: 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 (2017: 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’ (2018: 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 (Sloman, 2015: 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’ (Sloman, 2018: 629). Such an impression is reinforced by her ‘ambivalence’ regarding the sum that would constitute a basic income and her concerns about ‘conditionality’ (Sloman, 2018: 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’ (Rhys-Williams, 2004: 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 (2004: 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 (Kela, 2020). 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’ (Kangas et al., 2017: 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’ (Simanainen and Kangas, 2018: 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 (Kangas et al., 2017: 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’ (Sloman, 2018: 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’ (Friedman and Friedman, 2002; Stern and Kravitz, 2016: 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’ (Friedman, 2013: 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’ (Gorz, 1985: 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 (Gorz, 1985: 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' (2018: 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' (Sloman, 2018: 632; Cockfield, 1971: 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 (Sloman, 2016).

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’ (2013: 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' (2015: 39). In his estimation, such figures ‘stand for global capital at its most seductive and “progressive” – in short, at its most dangerous’ (Zizek, 2015: 39). This most advanced faction of capital ‘ha[s] embraced UBI as a way of defusing political resistance to automation and technological change’ (Benanav, 2019a: 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’ (Marx, 2013: 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’ (Marx, 2013: 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 (Marx, 2013: 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’ (Marx, 2013: 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 (1957: 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.

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.

Which Basic Income?

In order to implement a more progressive UBI, such a mass movement must be able to overcome, at least temporarily, the limitations of the capitalist state. As a result of capital’s dominance over the supposedly neutral state apparatus, ‘[m]ajor shifts in the forms of government intervention in the economy are adopted only under massive social pressure’ (Benanav, 2019a: 14). It is for this precise reason that Benanav expresses disappointment at the automation discourse by and large for its overlooking of the importance of social movements.

Marx and Engels described the state as the ‘committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (2015: 5). While more modern state theorists such as Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband have advanced this conception of the state, its apparatus is nevertheless skewed in capital’s favour, and is therefore able to shape and alter the nature of policies that are implemented (Poulantzas, 2014; Miliband, 2009). When assessing the Labour Party’s relative impotence in power, David Coates suggests party leaders ‘have repeatedly overestimated both the degree of class neutrality that they could legitimately expect from various sections of the State machine’, while simultaneously underestimating ‘the extent to which the close connections between the civil service and the senior managerial hierarchies of private business’ have served as stumbling blocks for policies that challenge these vested interests (1975: 148). In other words, the day-to-day business of managing the state is shaped by class relations, which dictate just how radical a programme a government can introduce.

It is perhaps natural then to be pessimistic about the kind of UBI which could be introduced. Given the influence of capital on legislation, ‘[a] basic income that was acceptable to business would thus be a version that expunged its most salient feature’: the potential freedom from wage labour (Calnitsky, 2018: 308). Indeed, as John Marlow writes in the New Socialist, ‘[t]he possibility of a UBI in a capitalist economy is conditional on it being low enough not to provide a viable alternative to wage labour for most people’ (2018: n.p.).

An analysis of any of the various UBI pilot schemes emphasises this constrained approach. Returning again to the UBI trial in Finland, researchers found that ‘[d]uring the first year of the experiment […] the basic income did not have any employment effects for the basic income recipients at group level’, and that the overall effects for the entire two years were ‘small’ (Kela, 2020: n.p.). While recipients reported an improvement in their wellbeing and sense of autonomy, this seems largely reliant on the social conditions of the group prior to taking part; ‘for those who were in a challenging life situation before the experiment, the basic income does not seem to have solved their problems’ (Kela, 2020: n.p.). Respondents also reported feeling increased ‘pressure to find a job’ as a result of the experiment, which was of course conceived with the objective of getting these people back into work rather than liberating them from it (Kela, 2020: n.p.).

A UBI on capitalist terms risks normalising a rise in what Mestrum and Wilson both term ‘“mini-jobs’” (Mestrum, 2018: 24; Wilson, 2018: 64). Again, this is one of the reasons for its support among certain sectors of capital, who see the policy as a wage subsidy that increases profits and the prevalence of insecure employment contracts. The visions of UBI at a rate large enough for recipients to live on ‘belong strictly in a post-capitalist world’, while UBI alone could not possibly bring about such a revolutionary transition (Marlow, 2018: n.p.). A UBI that frees us from work while leaving capitalism otherwise untouched is therefore an impossible contradiction.

So UBI is not a silver bullet. But what of its potential role in the process of revolutionary reformism? The operaista view of the working class as an autonomous force emphasises the ability of organised social movements to ‘force capital to modify its own internal composition’ (Tronti, 2019: 21). This is indeed how progressive reform has been achieved historically, from universal suffrage to the eight-hour working day. Tronti sees the opportunity therefore for the working class to act as a ‘general antagonist’ to capital, forcing it to make concessions and acting as an ‘internal contradiction’ to hasten its collapse (2019: 31; 33). But what must be borne in mind is that Tronti was writing when the strength of the labour movement was at an all-time high, culminating in the demonstrations of 1968 which occurred right across the globe. From today’s standpoint, following four decades of neoliberalism and a position of comparative weakness, it is difficult to write so combatively.

Popular protest does still occur of course, and one can never rule out dramatic surges in political militancy. So there remains the possibility, however difficult, that the demand for UBI can initiate the kind of process Weeks et al. envision. While the initial iteration of UBI would likely be fairly modest, the task for the Left would be to engage in the ‘longer process of winning it on our terms, as an unconditional, universal, liveable wage’ (Weeks, 2020: 591). But whether this ‘incremental approach […] is worth the risk’, given the potentially negative consequences of UBI for the Left, ‘is […] perhaps the critical question’ (Weeks, 2020: 591).

Conclusion

As Simanainen and Kangas - two architects of the Finland trial - admit, there are social policies that are ‘politically easier’ than UBI which do not risk the long-term undermining of workers’ protections (2018: n.p.). ‘The more obvious trajectory to follow’, Robin Wilson writes, is to pursue ‘proper labour market regulation and universal welfare provision’ (2018: 65). These protections must also extend to the Global South, whose neo-colonial exploitation must be combatted before the Left can possibly talk of a post-work world. These kinds of reforms may not sound as radical as a basic income, but they do offer solutions to similar problems while carrying less long-term risk. Something as simple as an increase in sick pay at the height of the pandemic would not only have provided workers with some much-needed financial security, but would also have helped slow the spread of the virus by allowing them to stay at home when needed. Such reforms would not come close to solving capitalism’s contradictions, nor bring about economic transformation, but it would be naive to oppose all incremental change regardless of context. This paper expresses scepticism for UBI not on the grounds that it is reformist, but on the grounds that it poses real dangers to the existing welfare system.

While UBI’s contradictions mean it appeals to both the Right and the Left, a Marxist understanding of the capitalist state shows it is much more likely to appear in its regressive form - if at all - which is exemplified by the meagre figures that have been posited. Indeed, the British politicians who signalled support for the policy during the pandemic suggested ‘an initial £48 per week payment’, a negligible sum (Partington, 2020: n.p.). Basic income risks aggravating the precarious nature of modern work and undermining our already imperfect welfare system, hence its traditional support among the neoliberal Right. But it does also offer potential as the first step in a revolutionary process that would reimagine the world of work. Ultimately, the success of this process is dependent on the strength of the movement that the demand can inspire, as well as its “performative” and “provocative” potential. Without such a movement willing to expand UBI’s reach and content, the policy is unlikely to be very radical in nature, and could even prove to be rather dangerous. The Left should therefore be mindful of these dangers before excitedly hailing basic income as emancipatory.