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UW-Madison SOC 621 - Envisioning Real Utopia

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Lecture 28 Sociology 621 May 5, 2008 Envisioning Real Utopias: Institutional designs for moving beyond capitalism I. Unconditional Basic Income Grants 1. The idea: The Grant: give everyone by right of citizenship a subsistence grant sufficiently high to have a decent standard of living (Marx’s historical and moral standard of living). The means of production remain completely privately owned, and profits remain privately appropriated. Taxation remains taxation on the social surplus, through various possible forms. 2. Direct Implications i. Implications for Labor market: this makes work more nearly voluntary in the Marxist sense: workers are no longer forced to sell their labor power. This breaks the link between (a) ownership of the means of production and (b) access to subsistence. ii. Implications for unpaid labor: This in turn means that people are free to engage in voluntary activities on the basis of free association for the production of social projects. This is one of the essential ideas of communism: the free association of people for productive purposes. Unconditional basic income is a systematic way of transferring surplus from capitalism to the social economy: from capital accumulation to social accumulation. iii. Implications for capitalist exchange: But people are also free to enter capitalist relations -- to engage in capitalist practices between consenting adults -- if this corresponds to their life-project. iv. Communism: Capitalism and communism -- a society governed by “to each according to needs from each according to ability” and in which individuals freely associate with each other to realize their life projects under egalitarian conditions -- thus coexist without the intermediary of socialism (defined as state ownership. 3. Ramifications if sustainably implemented i. technical change: bias towards labor saving innovations, elimination of unpleasant work, workplace humanization ii. balance of class power: the potential power of workers is likely to increase for two reasons: (1) labor markets would become tighter, (2) workers have an unconditional strike fund. This means that the bargaining power of workers should increase. This does not imply that this power would be used to push wages to the maximum; it just means that workers are in a position confront capital on more equal terms.Lecture 28. Envisioning Real Utopias 2 iii. dynamic trajectory against consumerism: In all likelihood, a generous BIG would lead to a dramatic shortening of the working day because it would become more difficult to get people to work 40 hours a week. BIG would thus encourage an orientation away from consumerism and towards "leisure". iv. democratization: democracy takes time. BIG is a subsidy to political practice of ordinary people. 4. Sustainability Whether or not this is a sustainable project depends upon its dynamic effects. The level of a sustainable BIG depends upon several factors: i. The proportion of the population that would abstain completely from paid labor. If this is too high, the economy cannot sustain the level of surplus product needed to fund the BIG. ii. The level of work effort people are likely to expend when employed given that the threat of job loss is reduced. iii. The effect of increases in marginal tax rates on investment decisions: this is the core problem of capital flight and disinvestment in the face of rising labor costs and tax rates. iv. immigration, movements of labor: to the extent that BIG is implemented in a relatively open international setting of labor migration, it will attract people -- this is the problem of national BIGs in the EU. 5. Implementability The political feasibility of BIG is obviously a problem. Issues include: 1. The intuitive view that workers are exploited by people who opt for BIG without productive labor. This is similar to the welfare parasite problem in conventional capitalism. BIG violates norms of contribution based rewards. Reply: (a) few people will in fact be parasites; (b) the arrangement is freedom-enhancing for all; (c) the arrangement creates a more benevolent social environment (less crime, etc.) that is a public good. (d) a significant part of the surplus product in physical terms is not a product of current labor but the legacy of accumulated past labor and knowledge, which means it should not be viewed as a “transfer” from individuals who work but from the collectivity to itself. 2. difficult to institute incrementally: partial BIG’s have different effects from generous BIGs. 3. easier to implement against a background of high social wage than low social wage.Lecture 28. Envisioning Real Utopias 3 II. Market Socialism 1. The Problem: What is the macro-structure of socialism? Traditionally Marxists have drawn the following contrasts between capitalism and socialism: Capitalism Socialism Direct Producers: relation to means of production Separated from means of production collectively own means of production Direct producers: relation to means of subsistence separated from means of subsistence united with means of subsistence Property rights private ownership state ownership of means Distribution of wealth inegalitarian egalitarian coordination of economy markets Comprehensive planning Relations among producers competitive & individualist cooperative & associative class power capitalist class= ruling class working class= ruling class For each term, socialism is seen basically as the negation of the corresponding term for capitalism. The crucial point is this: in traditional Marxism, while different aspects of the normative criticisms of capitalism are then seen as rooted in different elements in this list, these two sets of attributes are seen as wholistic gestalts. You can not radically change one element without transforming all of them. Unconditional basic income is an example of a structure that changes one of these elements -- separation of workers from the means of subsistence -- without tampering much with the rest. Here we will explore another change that stops short of turning every element on its head. The idea is to change the mechanisms which distribute property rights in means of production without changing anything else and see what the economy would look like. The central question is this: can we imagine a property rights regime which has the effect of destroying the power of the capitalist class and eliminating


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UW-Madison SOC 621 - Envisioning Real Utopia

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