Neil Wilson — The Political Aspects of a Basic Income Guarantee

Brian [Romanchuk] has put up a useful post called Consequences of a Basic Income Guarantee which runs through some of the technical issues of an Income Guarantee for Canada and other countries. 

I'm from the UK, and we've had 'Means Tested' Unemployment Benefit, Housing Benefit, Universal Child Benefit, Universal Pensions and a National Health Service for decades. The history of these benefits show why general income schemes just don't work properly in practice.

Let's run through some reality.

Neil makes the point that the practical issues surrounding assistance are fundamentally political rather than essentially economic.

I would add that politics is about power, who wields it and how it is used. In a democracy, the power structure determines candidate selection, while election is by popular vote. So there is a dynamic between the power structure and the mindset of the public. Obviously, it is in the interest of the power structure to influence the public mindset, for example, through popular media controlled by the power structure.

In a capitalist economy and liberal democracy, oligarchic democracy is the norm owing to the ability of the power structure to influence the public mindset through media as well as to select candidates through funding. It is very difficult to change this in a representative democracy with a constitutional government that favors the power structure, legitimating capitalism as the priority of capital (class cronyism) over the other factors, labor (people) and land (the environment).

Without a change in the public mindset little lasting progress can be achieved to reverse these priorities, and without reversing them, little lasting social, political and economic change can come about through the political process.

Marxists hold that the way forward is material, though changing the economic infrastructure, which can only be accomplished effectively through revolution. Therefore, the task is eliminating "false consciousness" by raising the consciousness of labor through re-education in order to effect a political revolution.

Humanists hold that the way is through raising the level of collective consciousness to expand appreciation of universality, thereby grounding political revolution in an expansive conception of human rights.

Both stand in opposition to the classical liberal and neoliberal assumption that the dominant rights, if not the only ones, are self-ownership and ownership of property, both of which are held to be alienable.

3spoken
The Political Aspects of a Basic Income Guarantee
Neil Wilson