AUT: re: basic income

[andrew robinson <ldxar1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lowe (apologies for the delay in replying BTW):



?Your statement of what one should say

doesn't quite take into account the entirety of who they are writing for,?



No, I rarely sense these kinds of things, I assess the validity or otherwise of the specific claims people make.  I know Negri?s pre-prison writings were a lot more radical, which is partly why I?ve found Empire so disappointing.  But what evidence can you offer that Negri is simply altering his language for some specific audience?  My own assessment would be that Negri, like so many radicals, has become tamer with age.



And if he is knowingly using reformist language to trick a non-Marxist audience to support his Marxist agenda, is this not simply cynical manipulation?



And if he?s so concerned about his audience, why does he write in a pretty inaccessible, theoretically heavy and neologism-strewn style?  Surely the first place the concessions to his audience would be made would be in style rather than content?



?I'm not seeing the point of this statement. A basic income doesn't get

rid of "work".? (Lowe)



But getting rid of work is surely part of the revolutionary project for overthrowing capitalism and realising a reversal of perspective and a reversal of the repression of desiring-production beneath social production!  And that a basic income doesn?t get us there is precisely the reason it?s a reformist demand, a demand which falls short of what is needed to challenge capitalism.



?Spell out if you could precisely the distinction between a

revolutionary and a reformist perspective.?



A revolutionary perspective is one which produces the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a qualitatively different kind of society or a qualitatively different space of social relations and practices.  Or which tends to do so, to the extent that it is actualised.  A reformist perspective is a perspective which aims for improvements in the condition of the worse-off or by the measure of some progressive perspective, without basically challenging the logic of the existing system.



If life-time is already work-time, the realisation of a basic income is a reform which would be in sync with capitalist development and does not challenge it.  The elimination of border controls in the context of a capitalist economy would be a progressive reform, but nevertheless, a reform which in and of itself leaves the capitalist system altered but intact.  I have struggled in vain to find a revolutionary demand or perspective in Empire, except in the form of a vague sense of a need to throw off empire.



?2) the

"no outside line" and "going through" (which is by no means a strategy

but a socio-historic necessity as far as I can see) problematizations

can't be abstracted from economic analyses. If you start from some vague

idea of political action without understanding that "no outside"

immediately relates to our very real situation WITHIN the stage of real

subsumption. The question of strategy is immediately altered by such a

consideration because there are no longer some "thems" who one could

overthrow and blah blah.?



Actually, I think you ? and they ? attach far too much *normative* importance to descriptive economics.  Economics might give part of the picture of where we?re starting from, but it says nothing about where we?re going.  And in any case I just don?t buy the idea that there?s nothing left to overthrow.  No truncheons.  No imperialist wars.  No state apparatus.  No financial elite.  No international monetary institutions.  Even if the point is to fight against a social logic which is spread across society, there?s still something to be resisted, to be overthrown.



I just don?t see how one can derive an ethical conclusion ? a sense of where we should be going, which measures should be supported, which demands should be raised, or which logics should be advanced ? from an economic analysis which is necessarily descriptive.  You can?t get ?ought? from ?is?.  Somewhere along the line, one would have to insert a prescriptive element to derive any kind of ethical orientation.  Including a strategic orientation such as that one should support or raise the demand for a basic income, whether this is a transitional demand or not.  Admittedly a strategic demand should take account not only of the goal or situation it is supposed to achieve but also of the situation it is aiming to escape or transcend.  But it needs the element of being a ?line? towards something, if not towards a goal than at least in a specific direction.



Regardless of whether on a macroeconomic level the division between life-time and work-time is tendentially decreasing or not, this claim is a far cry from a statement that the division has already been erased.  Especially if the claim is made universally, as a general claim about everyone and everything.  What, for instance, about those who try to ?drop out? of capitalist life, for instance by living on communes, or spending a year up a redwood tree or down a tunnel?  What if someone survives by stealing, or lives off rubbish found in a dump (which happens in the ?Third World? quite a bit), or who works in an occupied factory in Argentina or on a squatted farm in Brazil?   To come back to one of my ?favourite? issues ? wouldn?t something classified as ?anti-social? (whether in the form of delinquency, ?disruptive? protest, ?nuisance? or whatever) also be definitively not ?work?, because it is destructive of the context of work ? for instance, by undermining the functionality of
 spaces or by interfering with others? ?lawful business??



The problem is twofold.

Firstly, that if the claim is not valid at a sufficient level of generality and universality, the derivation of the conclusion is invalid.  This is a logical problem with the deduction.



And secondly, a worthwhile argument for a basic income would apply mainly to those who are precisely in these kinds of situations, who are often those who would benefit most from the elimination of the compulsion to work.


But I also think this linking of normative prescription to descriptive economics ties H&N?s argument too closely to capitalism; the basic income is justified as an outgrowth of existing capitalism, and thus loses its subversive edge.  This I think is part of what offends people like Crisso and Odoteo ? the sense that H&N are trying to deduce the logical conclusions from the present development of capitalism, instead of counterposing their own agenda to it.



I agree with Harald on the implications of a basic income being recuperative for capital.  It could very easily be used as part of a control agenda.  And the progressive content of the demand for a basic income can be expressed in other ways.  Harald for instance refers to an idea of income as a ?right?.  This would also be a strategic demand of sorts; the agenda of economic rights is an extension of a discourse of rights which is very central to capitalist legitimations, but which turns this discourse against capitalism.  But an idea of an income as a ?right? would not be potentially exclusionary in the same way; it would be less open to manipulation, because one can demand a ?right? on principle, whereas one can only demand a Hardto-Negrian basic income on grounds of one?s productivity.



I would be inclined actually to formulate the issue in terms of a ?gift economy? ? replacing work with play, and exchange with gift.  Precisely *because* work is colonising the lifeworld, because alternative kinds of work are no longer alternatives to capitalism and because the boundaries between work and its intra-system ?others? (unemployment, full-time education, leisure, etc.) are breaking down, the refusal of work needs to go ?further?, and involve a challenge to the idea of work itself, on behalf of a more radical ?excluded other? which is not a form of work at all.  The intense alienation arising from the spread of work across life is itself a potential cause of a revolt against work *in its entirety*, in favour of a gift economy.



But H&N do not seem to want such a radical gesture, which would go against the various chains which tie them to capitalism ? the ?going through?, the teleological attempt to derive normative demands from descriptive economics, the premise that there is ?no outside? of contemporary capitalism, the hostility to radical breaks ? and which would create the potential for an ?outside?.  Indeed, they seem to see the colonisation of the lifeworld by the world of work as a good thing, as a progressive development within capitalism which should be retained and built on.  Hence the use of this colonisation as the basis of a basic income ? whereas the basic income of the gift economy would be asserted precisely in opposition to this colonisation of the lifeworld.



And of course, the idea of a basic income as a reform within capitalism could then be supported on a transitional basis, as a step forward towards a gift economy ? even while also leaving the distance from such schemes intact, so that their recuperative aspects can be critiqued.



All of which leads up to one big question, which I?ve been trying to suggest all the way through this debate.



Why basic citizen?s income, instead of gift economy, as the basic demand?



Would a demand for a gift economy be too antagonistic perhaps?  Would it suggest too much of a straight division between what ?the multitude? demands and what ?the system? delivers?

And if so, why is this to be avoided?


		
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