On the problems of debating with advocates of basic income

Discussing the question of basic income (BI) and social protection (SP) is a very delicate exercise. In the many debates I was involved in these past years, it was very rare to see  any convergence of ideas. Even if it should be clear for everyone who knows the social problems, that there are many points in both positions – in favour of BI or in favour of SP – that are perfectly compatible. It also happened many times that debates I myself tried to organise, could not take place because the people invited – advocates of BI – resigned at the last moment.

In this article, I will only speak about my own experience and I will try to look for explanations for the non-debates. There surely is a lot of semantic confusion, there clearly is a lot of ignorance about social protection and its mechanisms, there may also be some ‘post-truth’ elements, by which I mean that people state something they should know can never be true, and yes, I think that some people do not want to put their own beliefs into question. They are afraid of a confrontation with other beliefs. Continue…

Introduction to the workshop on Commons and Public Services at the AlterSummit on Social Rights (26-27 November 2016, Brussels)

Our world to-day is faced with two major challenges: ecological destruction and the social question. Both problems are closely linked to democracy, that is the way citizens can govern and shape their world and can give direction to the policies that are needed to preserve our planet and sustain the livelihoods of people.

But as we know, democracy is threatened and we run the risk that both our natural environment and the necessary social protection people need are irremediably destroyed. Urgent action is needed.

Let me say some words on the social question. We know that the post-war social pacts are on the brink of being abandoned, faced as they are with fundamental changes in our economies and our societies, but also with ideological offensive policies that slowly but surely destroy our collective solidarity mechanisms. Public services are being privatised, marketised or commodified, whatever word we may use: in almost all cases it means that people lose their universal right to these services and have to buy on the market what they badly need. Continue…

Hundreds of people gathered last week in Brussels (15-17 november) for a very first ‘assembly of the commons’. No doubt about it: this was a success and the meeting on the 16^th in the European Parliament was very interesting.

I attended only two meetings: the first one on the evening of the 15^th was a discussion with representatives of DiEM25, the European movement initiated by Yannis Varoufakis. The second one was the formal gathering in  the European Parliament for a discussion with the existing ‘intergroup’ of the commons (with members of different political groups).

Though very different in nature I was mostly surprised by the very high quality of all discussions. Continue…

Social protection is high on the global political agenda today. This is good news, since social protection goes beyond poverty reduction. However, some caution is required, since different people give different meanings to the concept. Continue…

‘Social Europe’ has followed a very bumpy road since the inception of the European Community. This is not only a consequence of the lack of competences at the European level, or the lack of ‘political will’ at the level of Heads of State and Governments, but also and mainly of the ideological tendencies that have permeated all policies for the past six decades.

Since the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, most social movements in Europe have been demanding a ‘social and democratic’ Europe. However, never has it been clarified what this could or should mean. Even today, there are no clear demands on what precisely the European Union should do or not do. This article is meant to shed some light on the past, the present and the possible future of ‘social Europe’.[1] Continue…

I guess I am not alone in finding the commons literature highly confusing. And I guess it is normal that in a new field of research and practice many debates concern definitions and an attempt to streamline the great diversity of practices. The concepts of common, commons, common goods and the common good are still awaiting a clear demarcation, but this is only one of the many problems I see, and it is not the most difficult one.

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Production is not possible without re-production, we all agree on this obvious truth.

The emerging commons movement however has been focusing largely on production, whether it be material or immaterial, and much less on re-production. In a commons approach, this production is looked at from the vantage point of capital control/ownership and self-determination/autonomy of workers. These two points automatically lead to the question of re-production: what about the status of workers and their labour rights in P2P, cooperatives or social and solidarity economy contexts? How to avoid exploitation and self-exploitation of workers? How to protect the health and safety of workers and their families? Or simply put, how to protect the livelihoods of people? Continue…

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This report confirms what was said in the previous post: it is far far from simple to introduce a basic income scheme. While the report is mainly on the questions concerning the experiment itself, it already concludes that a ‘full’ basic income will be too expensive and that certain social security elements will have to be maintained, even if taxes will be high. Also, the question on who benefits and who does not leads to surprising results! Another dificult point is how to make the system compatible with EU law.

Read the report: http://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/KELA_Preliminary_Report_UBI_Pilots.pdf

Very instructive for those who want to know how to introduce a basic income:

Jurgen De Wispelaere: ‘The Politics of basic income. Anything but ‘Disarmingly Simple’