by S. Callaghan

Universal Basic Income has become a popular subject on the left as the capitalist economy falters under the pandemic. As Marxists, we know there can be no discussion of Universal Basic Income without rooting it firmly in a class analysis. Certainly, the bourgeoisie will do so. The only way UBI will exist in a capitalist economy is if the bourgeoisie believes it to be in their interest.  If serious leftists are to advocate for UBI, we must demonstrate how it serves the long-term interests of the working class when the ruling class believes the opposite.

UBI cannot be considered in a mythical context where it supplies a reliable income equal to a living wage, nor in any context that assumes the bourgeoisie’s legislative hirelings would allow it to exist if UBI fails to increase profits or secure continuing profitability. At present, there is no discernible discussion of UBI among the ruling class except occasionally as a block grant-style replacement for “entitlements”, programs that already offer shockingly low benefits for the working class. UBI would simply constitute a new way to distribute these paltry benefits, which exist only to stave off unrest, benefits derived purely from the ruling class’s own cost benefit analysis.

UBI is no less subject to reduction and contingency than the benefit system it would replace; in fact, it would be more so. In the United States, the multiplicity of benefit programs (Social Security, SSI, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, TANF, WIC, Food Stamps, Unemployment Compensation, and Workers’ Compensation), each with its own set of beneficiaries and interest groups among the public and the bourgeoisie, makes these benefits legislatively more complex and difficult  than UBI to reduce or eliminate.

UBI on the scale possible in a capitalist economy will reduce what little pressure exists to organize the economy for jobs, effectively becoming a way to pacify a reserve army of labor that will grow as automation grows. There is no discussion among capitalists of using UBI as a path to a broad reduction in working hours while maintaining a healthy standard of living for the working class. It relieves pressure on employers to raise wages for those who remain at work while, inevitably, growing the reserve army of labor and worsening the precariousness it was supposed to improve.

Further, UBI separates the working class from work, gradually divorcing more and more workers from their role in the processes of production and distribution, thus from one of the few sources of working-class power. Under capitalism, UBI will be designed to pacify the working class, not to protect it, normalizing the worker’s dependence on the crumbs the bourgeoisie brush from their table as jobs–and working class power–gradually disappear.

Given these conditions, the most productive course is not to pursue UBI, but to demand full employment with reduced hours across the board and no reduction in wages using all power the working class has at its disposal.

Still, we must acknowledge that UBI has support in many quarters of the left. Growing support among neo-liberals, too, makes some form of UBI look more likely, if not imminent. What is the correct course for the left to take if the pro-capital version of UBI becomes a possibility?

As always, the correct course is to subject conditions to class-based analysis and push them by whatever means possible toward increased working-class power. If workers broadly support UBI, we should support it, too, while pointing out the pitfalls and pressing relentlessly, on the left and in society at large, for full employment, shorter hours, and higher pay. Unlike capitalist UBI, these demands enhance worker power and are much harder to reverse. Despite the enthusiasm many comrades feel for UBI as a vehicle for class struggle, we should rather support UBI as a way to alleviate some of the misery facing the working class, especially the misery of workers who provide the unpaid labor of housekeeping, child care, and elder care in the home, labor that falls overwhelmingly on working class women. While no substitute for full employment and reduced hours with higher pay, this element of UBI could prove progressive.

UBI in any likely form will be designed by the ruling class to protect ruling class interests; this is inevitable. The workers must never allow UBI to short-circuit the demand for full-employment, reduced hours, and increased pay. We should further resolve that, should a broad left coalition decide to support UBI, we will support it, too, if only to alleviate somewhat the suffering of the working class while warning of UBI’s dangers and pushing it in the most progressive direction possible. If UBI exists, class struggle must push it in a progressive direction lest it become a capitalist Trojan Horse.