







With neoliberalism's ashes blowing in the wind, a new economic model could be starting to take shape in a major european powerhouse.





If capitalism was known to be crisis-ridden before, the last couple of months have revealed it to be as fragile as a house of cards. Remove the bottom row - the labour - and it all comes crashing down. It is in the interests of the ruling class to rebuild this hierarchy, and various governments have reacted to secure the unjust power structures that fragment our society. Many advanced economies - the UK included - have introduced schemes where the government will step in and pay the wages of workers. Through the lens of the ruling classes this is a genius move. It allows the government to put a pause on capitalism momentarily, without giving agency to the working classes. If you worked in a pub you get poverty wages, if you worked in finance you get up to £2500 a month: clear representations of the value of their work, right?





This ‘unprecedented’ state intervention for the workers is starting to feel a little bit like a scam. And yet a new tool of economic crisis management is edging towards the mainstream in mainland europe: Universal Basic Income. In most models UBI consists of a monthly payment to every citizen regardless of employment status, often discussed by out-of-work former Labour leaders, often dismissed as free handouts by vocal Tory millionaires (most notably former Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who said it would ‘disincentivize work’ - in the middle of a pandemic!). If those in power would like to be properly equipped to handle future pandemics (which there definitely will be) without total collapse of the economic system, then UBI may well be the most pragmatic option.





Differing models have been proposed. Some on the right advocate for completely overhauling the current welfare system, replacing ‘unnecessary bureaucracy’ with monthly income cheques. Some present the idea as a negative income tax, i.e effectively means-tested payments that taper off the more you earn. The ones most favourable to us on the left advocate preserving the welfare state and providing extra income to every citizen in the form of direct deposits. Any effective UBI system would have to be implemented hand in hand with a form of rent control, otherwise rents would just rise in tandem with the extra income, turning the scheme into a glorified subsidy for landlords.

Spain's ruling coalition which includes milquetoast social democrats ‘PSOE’ in power with ‘Unidas Podemos’ a coalition of smaller left wing parties, are in the process of rolling out a permanent form of UBI in order to deal with the crisis of a massive demobilisation of labour. Stimulus packages alone, according to the Spanish economics minister Nadia Calvino, would supply firms with temporary liquidity but make a fatal error in assuming that demand will remain high with so many people unable to work. In Covid-ravaged Spain, UBI could be the light at the end of the tunnel.





There are several criticisms from the left of basic income schemes, including concerns that it could provide governments an easy excuse to dismantle welfare programs, or fail to make work less precarious if set too low. But UBI could be an incredible gift to workers if implemented generously, allowing all those who are stuck in precarious, low-paid, expendable jobs to be able to withdraw their labour collectively without being undermined by strikebreakers that will still need to work because of bills and rent. It would allow those with necessary but not ‘monetisable’ professions, such as the arts, the ability to self-actualise and share their work without having to capitulate to capital. Even more than this, the decoupling of the means of subsistence from wage-work could start us down a path towards the kind of leisure-oriented society described by Paul Mason’s Postcapitalism, and Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism.





If UBI is seen to be a success within Spain it may be incredibly hard for established interests to fight it. With what could be the largest experiment in the history of basic income already underway, domino theory might well actualise - right here in the capitalist heartlands of europe.