Just finished "Bullshit Jobs" and it ends with advocating for a UBI, explicitly as a plausible first step towards fixing/dismantling capitalism.

Its a pretty solid argument, as long as you put the caveats of the goal to be to expand the benefits of society universally, not to consolidate the welfare state and reduce cost.

There are a lot of issues and technical details that one can imagine, and ultimately if the goal is to liberate all humans and save the world from capitalism, further steps would have to be taken. But a UBI does seem like a reasonable first step.

Though I guess the only would world the capitalist class would ever let a UBI happen is the world where we force them to, since even the $2000 one time payment basically is never going to happen.

So UBI as a advocating tool or a rhetorical device, but I don't think it should be a goal in of itself. A UBI is the compromise position and leaves the Capital class in place. Something closer to Universal Equal Payments (working title) should be the goal.

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    UBI will be immediately undermined by the very same socio-economic dynamics that undermined the New Deal and it'll happen even faster this time after the neolibs have had a half-century of practice destroying social democratic movements

    The left needs to come to terms with a deeper but obscure horror of capitalism; the capitalists aren't solely motivated by profit, in many cases it is the preservation of their social status that inspires and consumes their politics and the despoilment of the working class elevates their status even if in the long run it threatens their rate of profits

    This state of affairs is perhaps symptomatic of the future economic regime of capitalist democracies. In the slump, either under the pressure of the masses, or even without it, public investment financed by borrowing will be undertaken to prevent large-scale unemployment. But if attempts are made to apply this method in order to maintain the high level of employment reached in the subsequent boom, strong opposition by business leaders is likely to be encountered. As has already been argued, lasting full employment is not at all to their liking. The workers would 'get out of hand' and the 'captains of industry' would be anxious to 'teach them a lesson'. Moreover, the price increase in the upswing is to the disadvantage of small and big rentiers, and makes them 'boom-tired'.

    • Kalecki, Political Aspects of Full Employment pg. 4

    The capitalists as a class are comfortable with recessions and cuts if it disciplines the workers, and why shouldn't they be, the smart ones all have safety nets to fall back on

    • Not_irony [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Im confident my CEO /owner would rather nuke his whole company then let his workers unionize