Basic Income as a Socialist Project1

Most discussions of basic income revolve around two clusters of issues: first, the normative implications of basic income for various conceptions of justice, and second, the pragmatic problems of the sustainability of basic income given a range of economic considerations including such things as effects on tax rates, incentives, labor markets, and so on. These are obviously important issues, but I want to explore a different sort of question: In what ways can a guaranteed basic income be considered part of a broad socialist challenge to capitalism? This may seem to some people a somewhat irrelevant question, perhaps even a stupid question, since the very idea of socialism has lost so much of its intellectual and political appeal in recent years. The idea that there is a feasible systemic alternative to capitalism, either in the sense of a workable design for alternative economic institutions, or in the sense of a politically achievable goal, seems far-fetched to many people, even those who still share the traditional socialist criticisms of capitalism. I feel that it is still meaningful to talk about a socialist challenge to capitalism even in the absence of a clear, well-articulated model of the design of socialist institutions. What we can try to do is articulate a set of anti-capitalist socialist principles and use these to indicate movements away from capitalism in a socialist direction even if we lack a clear understanding of our destination. It is like going on a journey with a compass that tells us the direction we are moving, but without a road map which lays out the entire route from the point of departure to the final destination. Of course, this approach is perilous: we may encounter chasms which we cannot cross or unforeseen obstacles which force us to move in a direction we had not planned. But it may also be the case that if we want to leave the social world in which we currently live, we have no better device than principles of direction rather than known-in-advance destinations. This way of thinking about socialism rejects the simple dichotomous view of capitalism vs. socialism. It implies that capitalist societies differ in how “socialistic” they are – to use an old right wing expression – and that, with respect to the values and emancipatory aspirations of socialists, it is better to be in a capitalist society with strong socialist elements than in a capitalist society without those elements. This