A Citizens’ Income could give people power over capital once more
Stuart Rodger is a political activist based in Scotland. He tweets here.
One of the most talked-about ideas at last year’s Radical Independence Conference was a Citizen’s Income – a guaranteed, non means-tested, basic income granted to every adult citizen of the country, regardless of whether they are working or not working. The topic has also been discussed at a recent Parliamentary reception at Holyrood hosted by Jim Eadie MSP, showing that this idea is gaining traction outside of the usual radical circles. It made a very refreshing break from the toxic mainstream media debate about welfare, where the unemployed are relentlessly demonised – usually by very rich newspaper columnists who have no idea what they’re talking about – with very real, very brutal human consequences.
The obvious objection to a CI is – where would the incentive to work be? It’s a view of society which sees value in people only in their ability to serve capital, and which refuses to allocate its resources according to need, but instead uses those resources to physically coerce human beings into work. I regard it as fundamentally immoral, and not without important parallels with slavery, to use human beings as pliable economic tools. Under the wage system, money replaces the whip.
In reality, though, the incentive to work is that everything you earn is on top of your CI. A basic income is just that – basic. The infamous ‘poverty trap’ – where people can end up poorer or no better off in work than out – no longer exists. Furthermore, I think it’s possible we would see an increase in overall employment – part-time jobs that were previously not an option could now be taken on. Some economists now worry that solid, secure, jobs for life are something of the past. A CI is a way of adapting to that.
Risky entrepreneurial ventures that weren’t previously viable could now be launched. Business could boom. Indeed, when a form of the basic income was trialled in Namibia, what they found was that economic activity actually rose, and that people became mini-entrepreneurs. Non-CI income rose by some 200%. Scotland has its own communities devastated by de-industrialization: under a CI and a proper industrial strategy, these communities could be re-born.
And let’s not forget that a colossal amount of work is done in society that is not formally regarded as ‘work’. I am talking specifically about parenting, care of the disabled by family members, and voluntary work in the community. At the moment, much of this work goes unremunerated – and is even regarded as inferior to proper, ‘paid’ work in the formal sense. (”What are those mothers doing at home when they should be out looking for a job?” is a question often barked, usually at poor mothers). A CI finally provides the financial space for this socially invaluable work to happen. What sort of a society are we if we don’t recognise the importance of these tasks?
There is also the class politics of this – how it affects the relationship between labour and capital. It seems to me that ‘welfare reform’ has a very specific agenda, which is to create a more pliable workforce. If people in work know that there is no longer much of a safety net, then they will hold on more tenaciously to jobs with bad conditions and bad pay. All of that means higher profits. A Citizen’s Income – a new, bolstered welfare state – begins to tip the bargaining power back in favour of labour. This is why a CI should be taken up by the trade union movement.
But for me, personally, the best argument for a Citizen’s Income is to improve public health, through the stress relief that it would bring. I write this as someone who has been on and off benefits for the past few years, and I can personally testify that the stress of it all sometimes made me feel physically ill. As the authors of the Spirit Level suggest, what could fill the explanatory gap between economic inequality and poor social outcomes is, simply, stress. Obesity, depression, addiction – all rooted in the intensely stressful society we live in. A Citizen’s Income – as well as being profoundly redistributive – would, in one fell swoop, lift a corrosive level of stress from our society.
And what of the cost and the politics of it all? Well, it’s far more politically palatable than it may sound – as a benefit that would be universal, the divide and rule strategies used by the right to pit the working poor against the unemployed would be blunted. It’s possible that some people would simply not accept the principle that you can get something for nothing, but that is merely because people have internalised the twisted principles of capitalism: and that’s something we’ll have to fight against. It’s far more affordable than it sounds as well: as the Citizen’s Income Trust have demonstrated, the cost would work out at roughly the same as the current welfare bill, which – we must not forget, the vast bulk of which is pensions, housing benefit, and working tax credit.
These are just initial thoughts. It’s possible there are serious drawbacks I have over-looked. Two spring to mind immediately. First, the definition of citizenship could be open to abuse – excluding those with a criminal record, recent immigrants etc. Second, contrary to my previous point about the class implications of a CI, it could entrench poor working conditions. It would be imperative those industrial battles continued. But for just now at least, I think this is an idea worth fighting for.
There will be an event about the Citizen’s Income with the People’s Parliament project in the House of Commons on the 4th March with Guy Standing (author of ‘The Precariat’), and Matthew Torry (author of ‘Money for Everyone’). Details here
There will be a major National Day of Action against Atos and the work capability assessments on the 19th February, with protests planned outside every assessment centre in the UK. Details here
Some well put arguments for this progressive step. However, it might be also worth looking at the economic benefit not only in terms of increased ability to work flexible hours and more scope for entrepreneurship but less stagnation as people cling to old structures and fear change through fear of employment loss. One doesn’t have to be a ‘Robin Hood’ Marxist to see the advantage in terms of increased profits if people were truly motivated by gain rather than fear. We would all look ahead. There could be Social Credit, in the sense that as humanity becomes more efficient in meeting its own needs, everyone’s basic income could increase without the need for paid work to increase. In fact, this was the vision of the Welfare State, that people would have a safety net. Simply, means testing has made the system unworkable and open to political and market pressures. If income was truly universal, not only would we see the end of harmful forum shopping for cheap labour, with its carbon cost, but the gains from labour-saving progress made, ie. industrialisation and latterly computerisation, could be credited back. We don’t need to break down class barriers to do this, we might still need leaders and authority figures, we could even still have super rich people, although probably there would be less motivation to hoard money so their numbers would diminish naturally.
The connection between the Citizen’s Income and increased ownership of capital isn’t clear from the article.
Concepts of increased private, smaller scale ownership of the means of production have been proposed since the late 1890s, under the banner of distributism. However it is difficult to see how a Government could afford to pay citizens an individual payment, and that still doesn’t solve the problem of capital being in the hands of fewer and fewer corporations and rich individuals…
Isn’t it enough to have a progressive taxation system as a ‘safety net’, and encourage as large a number of smaller businesses as possible?
The Citizen’s Income is the single most progressive policy – with respect to poverty, working conditions and standard of living – being discussed following on from last November’s Radical Independence Conference held in glasgow. Scotland upon independence freed from the shackles of Westminster rule could demonstrate it’s progressive principles by wholeheartedly embracing and implementing this policy. Scotland would genuinely lead globally on the Citizen’s Income and progressive politics as a whole if it were the first nation to implement the policy.
What however will determine CI’s future in Scottish politics post-independence – assuming a yes vote later this year – will be the ability of the key advocates of this policy to persuade a large proportion of those involved in the Radical Independence Campaign and on the Scottish Left in general, of the transformative impact CI could have on the lives of the Scottish people.
First winning this argument on the left will not however be be easy. Essentially we who support CI should argue it to be the most important domestic policy an independent Scotland would implement if it chooses to do so.
In his article Stuart Rodger makes a compelling case for CI and is one of it’s staunchest supporter’s on the left of politics. Hopefully in the month’s leading up to the referendum Stuart and other’s willing will expand on his article and produce a policy document,taking in to account circumstances currently existing within Scotland, to further popularize CI.
Such a policy document could challenge in detail objections to CI, demonstrate how CI might work in practice and give examples comparing the possible rates and differentials at which CI might be paid out at would reduce poverty and tackle inequality whilst helping to simplify the increasing complex welfare system and encourage those currently out of work to take some paid employment.
I think the power dynamic that employees have to choose between destitution and a horrendous job being partially broken if a CI was implemented means that employees would have a greater ability to just walk away from jobs with poor working conditions.
It isn’t a replacement for the role of unions but I think it would be a net gain for improving working conditions. I imagine though that capitalists might if CI was implemented attempt to pressure governments to introduce anti-union legislation and frame their arguments in a way to suggest that unions are irrelevant in a world with a CI. I think unions should be able to defend themselves against such an attack.
Kevin
worth mentioning that the Scottish Greens are actively advocating the introduction of a citizens’ income.