XI BIEN Congress
Cape Town, November 2006

Daniel Raventós (University of Barcelona)

I am very honoured to be with you today and I should like to thank our hosts (Ingrid and team) for making this possible. And for making this First Basic Income Earth Network Congress a reality. I hope you will bear with me if I read my speech since I should hate to ruin the English language by chancing a delivery without a text.

In the more than twenty years since BIEN was founded the world has changed in very significant ways. To limit myself to just a few though important facts, the President of the United States in 1986 was Ronald Reagan, while Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, both of them champions of what is more or less aptly named neo-liberalism; dictators who were also supporters of neo-liberal programmes were in power in Latin America and subjugating their populations with regimes of terror; the still-surviving Soviet Union was teetering at the peak of its crisis while, in many other parts of the world, neo-liberalism was rampant. By neoliberalism I mean the openly expressed objective of favouring the rich with the argument that this is evidently a good aim not only for this minority but also for the whole of society and, it must be said, convincing or co-opting in the endeavour a not-inconsiderable part of the left.

These were also times of crisis for the less complacent members of the left. The promises of socialism had nothing to do with the real-world conditions that the populations of the Soviet Union and so-called Eastern Europe suffered under the yoke of bureaucratic castes that dominated the political sphere and neither did the wonders promised by neo-liberal zealots bear any relation with the increasingly harsh conditions that the working class and less-privileged population in general had to endure. In what was then called Western Europe, unemployment figures rocketed up to levels not seen for many years and it was precisely in the 80s that they reached unthinkable extremes in this placid post-war part of the world.

In brief, this was the context in which BIEN appeared. The Basic Income proposal was a beacon in this sombre setting where ideas were mainly notable for their lack of originality.

Twenty years on, the situation has changed radically. Today, the Soviet Union no longer exists and neither do its former Eastern European satellite countries; neo-liberalism no longer inspires the same fervent support because now its disturbingly negative results are all too evident. Latin America now has several democratic governments, some of them more or less left-wing though all are determined to resist the neo-liberal assault. In a context that is so different from two decades ago, Basic Income could play, and I believe is playing, a very interesting political role. I shall discuss this below after highlighting two further points.

First, twenty years ago, Basic Income was virtually limited to academic circles with little impact beyond them. This is no longer the case. The Basic Income proposal is increasingly well-known now in trade-union, social and political circles, although perhaps not nearly so widely accepted.

Second, twenty years ago academic interest in Basic Income was confined, with very few exceptions, to Europe. Today, the Basic Income proposal, though it may be given different names, is no longer a total stranger in non-European countries.

This interest in Basic Income in countries like Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Colombia, which in no case can be seen as belonging to the select group of rich countries, is not coincidental, I believe. This Congress is a good example. Let us not forget that while GDP per capita rose in the rich countries by 150 per cent, the poor countries were not even able to continue at the same levels of poverty over the last two decades of the twentieth century. Another way of putting it is that the per capita GDP of rich countries in 2000 was over 120 times greater than that of poor countries. Whatever way you look at it, the difference is staggering.

I now wish to discuss briefly the fascinating political role that Basic Income could play at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In my view, the most interesting aspects of Basic Income are its formal features of being secular, unconditional and universal, which coincide exactly with those of democratic universal suffrage. Just as happens with the vote, one would have a right to a Basic Income for the mere fact of being a citizen – or accredited resident – independently of gender, group of origin, level of income, sexual choice or professed religion (if any). The great struggles for universal suffrage and democracy in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century by working populations certainly had a good dose of instrumentality because democracy was needed, it was believed, as a step along the way to other goals (socialism, redistributive justice, and so on). Yet the struggle for universal suffrage was much more than an instrumental project because the universality and unconditional nature of the right to vote ended up bestowing upon these populations value in and for themselves, however much the very antidemocratic nineteenth-century liberals and conservatives piteously brayed that the consequences of this would be dire.

I believe that the struggle for a citizens’ Basic Income could play a similar role in future. There is, of course, an instrumental side to this since its aim is to do away with poverty and put an end to neo-liberal policies or, in other words, to ensure that the greater part of the world’s population no longer has to subsist in conditions of the direst poverty and at the mercy of the caprices of the very few who are rich. However, Basic Income can also be non-instrumental in that the act of demanding it can crystallise in the formation of social movements and democratic public opinion as an inalienable right for justice and dignity, as a value in itself, however much the very antidemocratic twenty-first-century neoconservatives and neoliberals piteously bray that the consequences of this will be dire.

One of the great moral strengths of supporting Basic Income is that it not only draws attention to the appalling inequalities of the contemporary world but also to the erosion of freedom that goes hand-in-hand with hugely disproportionate disparities of income and wealth. Equality and freedom are not two goals to be chosen independently of one another. Great social inequalities are a real impediment to the freedom of many millions of people. The other side of the same coin is that the lack of freedom of so many people, the increasingly compelling need for working populations to ask permission of the rich every day so as to continue subsisting in conditions dictated by their masters, only aggravates inequality. Poverty is not only privation, material want, and income disparity. It also means depending on the whims and greed of others, lack of self-esteem, isolation and the social compartmentalisation of the poor. Anyone whose material existence is unsure also suffers the corresponding erosion of his or her freedom (in the form of “first-job contracts”, temporal contracts, absence of contracts, precariousness, job “flexibility” and outright unemployment without any social protection whatsoever). This erosion of freedom then redounds on the growth of material inequality (in the form of decreases in real salaries, insecure retirement pensions, privatised or pauperised public services and infrastructure, etcetera, while financial and corporative profits remain sky-high!). Freedom is a much abused word today. What I should like to focus on is the relationship between freedom and material existence. As James Harrington so well put it as long ago as the 17th century: “The man that cannot live upon his own must be a servant; but that can live upon his own may be a freeman”. Basic Income can play precisely this important role in the beginning of the 21st century: ensure the conditions of material existence that would enable everybody to “be a freeman” (or “a freewoman”, we could add).

Basic Income is not, of course, the solution to all social disasters and injustice. However, if Basic Income means decommodification of the labour market, even if it is only partial, as some authors tell us; if Basic Income means greater freedom to choose the distribution in our lives of the three kinds of work (remunerated, domestic and voluntary), as other authors tell us; if Basic Income can offer workers a resistance fund to maintain strikes that are presently difficult to sustain because of the salary cuts they involve, as still others authors tell us; if Basic Income means that a lot of women can cut loose from financial dependence on their husbands, if, in brief, Basic Income can offer greater freedom to a considerable percentage of the citizenry because, for the first time in the history of our species, they would have their material existence guaranteed, I think there are sufficient reasons for maintaining that we would be talking about a very different world from what we have at present.

Basic Income has two main aspects: academic and political. The former is essential if we are to avoid saying stupid things. But the second aspect, the political one, is just as essential if we are to avoid the mere contemplation of our navels.

Thank you very much.

XI BIEN Congress