He'll not thank me for saying so, but I agree with Sam Bowman's call for a basic income (or, as he calls it, negative income tax). This raises a question: how can a Marxist so warmly agree with a right(ish)-libertarian?
In part, it is because Marxism is a form of libertarianism. But there's two other sources of agreement between us.
One is that I agree with Sam that alternatives to a basic income, such as a living wage, are inferior to the extent that they would price some people out of work. And I also agree that capitalism cannot provide full employment. We differ on how we express this: Sam would emphasize some people having a low marginal product and the effects of automation whilst I'd stress more systemic defects of capitalism. But our perspective is much the same.
Secondly, I suspect we agree in rejecting the idea that the welfare state should have a moralistic purpose. From the "less eligibility" principle of the Poor Law, through Beveridge's plan to "make and keep men fit for service", to New Labour's use of tax credits to "make work pay", the Welfare State has always tried to encourage work. Libertarians and Marxists are, or should be, sceptical of this. Libertarians because the state in a free society should be neutral between ways of life. And Marxists because we don't think the state should be capitalism's human resources department. And in a world where full employment is improbable, encouraging work is a counterproductive atavism. As Philippe van Parijs - who first converted me to its merits - has argued, a basic income is a response to the fact of persistent mass unemployment.
Where, then, might we differ? The answer, I think, lies in the level of basic income.
A lowish basic income satisfies the right's desire that there be only limited redistribution. But it would compel people to find low-paid and unpleasant work. We Marxists would find this doubly objectionable. It means basic income would fail to achieve the objective of real freedom for all. And it would remove employers' incentives to attract workers by offering them better conditions.
In this sense, there is a big difference between left and right.
The right might object that a high basic income would be unaffordable, in the sense of requiring high taxes and dampening work incentives - both for those burdened by the taxes and for those enjoying a high out-of-work income.
To which I'd reply: let's find out.
I think Allan W's scheme could work in practice, but only in some form of state socialist system like the DDR, where the state creates jobs for everyone and subsidises over-manning. This is fine if you believe that any form of work boosts an individual's morale, discipline and sense of well-being, and that work in an abstract sense is the essence of citizenship, but obviously has its downsides, and not just in an economic sense.
The problems for me are that, firstly, I do not believe in the merits of labour as a value in itself unless it is autonomous and self-directed for the individuals own ends. Secondly, the idea of the 'dignity of labour' is heavily reduced in state socialism by the fact that it is still something to be endured and can appear to be a rather unappreciated gift. Thus self-motivation and participation are limited. In job guarantee schemes people are highly unlikely to be given a free choice in the type of work they do, and may not even consider any skills or training they are given to be useful to them personally.
I prefer a different utopia.
Posted by: Igor Belanov | November 08, 2014 at 10:18 AM