The Instrument Of Freedom | Philippe Van Parijs

December, 1982. I had two problems, two worries, two nightmares, that prevented me from sleeping, one night after another. Problem number one, unemployment. There was then massive unemployment, especially for young people. What was the solution? The right and the left agreed: only one solution, growth. Of course, one expected productivity to go up, jobs to be lost as a result of technical change. Never mind: growth that would outpace the growth of productivity was the only solution. But this was already a few years after the alarm call of the Club of Rome about the ecological limits to growth. And I, along with others, thought, "This is crazy!" Surely, there must be something else to address involuntary unemployment than this mad rush for limitless growth.

But what? Then there was my second problem: capitalism. Capitalism is an interesting way of organizing a complex economy, that has undeniable virtues.

But it has at least one major drawback. It enslaves us. It subjects us as individuals, and as political communities, to the dictates of the market, to the dictatorship of competitiveness. Is there a solution? For decennia, some people had said that there was one obvious solution: socialism! The replacement of private ownership of the means of production by collective ownership. We were then a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I was not the only one to have my doubts about that solution. Because socialist economies, for reasons that didn't seem to be just contingent, were not doing too well in terms of economic efficiency. Their record was disappointing, even with regard to equality. And as regards to freedom, they were really disastrous. So surely, I thought, "There must be something else as an alternative to capitalism, as we knew it."

But what? Then one evening, as I was washing up and looking through the window, it clicked. I thought, "I've got it." A very simple, dead simple idea. I hadn't heard of it anywhere. I hadn't seen it anywhere, so I had to coin a new expression for it. I was thinking in French, so I called it "allocation universelle." Universal benefit, in analogy to universal suffrage. What was it, this simple idea? An unconditional basic income. Unconditional? Yes! Unconditional, in three senses. One, unconditional in the sense of strictly individual. One doesn't need to see who you live with in order to determine whether you're entitled to it. Two, universal. One doesn't need to see how much you earn in order to determine whether you are entitled to it. And three, duty free, in the sense that one doesn't need to check whether you are able or unable to work, willing or unwilling to work, in order to determine whether you are entitled to it. These three unconditionalities make it clear that this is something that's quite fundamentally different from social assistance, as born in the beginning of the 16th century, and still existing today in the form of what is here called life loan, and similar schemes in other countries. It's also fundamentally different, even more obviously, from social insurance, which forms now the bulk of our welfare states, born at the end of the 19th century, and covering a number of specific risks: involuntary unemployment, old-age pensions, etc.

It's fundamentally different from these two older models of social protection, which doesn't mean that it's not combinable with them. In fact, any serious proposal for a basic income today consists in fitting a modest unconditional floor under the whole of our distribution of income, including social transfers linked to social insurance or to social assistance. Basic income is not there to replace them, but to enable them to do a better job. Now you know more or less what it is. But that is the connection with my initial two problems? Let me quickly ask you a question. Suppose we have such an unconditional basic income. Will wages go up or will wages go down? Will it be necessary to pay work more than now, or will it be possible to pay work less than is the case now?

Who among you thinks that as a result of a basic income, wages will go up? Those, raise their hands. Who thinks that, as a result of it, wages will go down? Those will raise their hands. Okay. 58 percent up, 42 percent down. Good news is you are all partly right, bad news that you are all partly wrong. Why? Because a universal basic income is something that enables you at the same time to say, "No" to certain jobs, and to say, "Yes" to certain jobs. It enables you to accept a number of jobs which are not viable now, which you couldn't accept now, because they pay little or they pay in a very uncertain or irregular way. You couldn't accept them for that reason. But that make plenty of sense for you, because they provide you with additional training, because they provide you with future prospects, because they enable you to do useful things with wonderful people around you, because they enable you to realize your calling, whether as a future rock star or as a future smashing, fantastic inventor-innovator. These jobs don't exist now because you don't have now this unconditional floor to rest on, while doing these sort of jobs.

At the same time, a basic income is something that enables you to say, "No" to certain jobs, to the shitty jobs where you have to work with a bossy, awful boss, with boring, disagreeable colleagues, doing things that have no meaning to you, under dangerous or unpleasant material conditions. To those jobs you can say, "No," because it's unconditional. As a result of that, certain jobs will become possible. These cheap jobs in a way will develop, because they are meaningful in themselves. But at the same time, for other jobs, it will be necessary to pay them more in order to get enough people to do them. This should give you enough to have the intuition about the connection with my first two problems. Unemployment? Yes, a basic income will enable some people who work too much, who get sick because of working too much, to reduce their working time. To interrupt their career for a while far more easily without any complications that are now. On the other hand, it will enable some people who are excluded from work now to get to these jobs. Partly because they will have been vacated by the people working too much, but also because they can combine these jobs, part-time and full-time, provided they are meaningful to them, with this unconditional basis.

That solves the problem of unemployment. What about the other problem, this radical alternative to capitalism as we know it? Yes, a basic income is something that goes far beyond a more effective way of fighting poverty. It's something that's closely related to this old emancipatory ideal that was common to Marx and to the utopian socialists that preceded him, and that is captured in the motto: "From each according to his capacities, to each according to his or her needs." Because the higher a basic income is, the greater the share of the total product that is distributed according to needs. At the same time, of course, the higher the basic income, the more people will contribute voluntarily, according to their capacity, without needing to be prompted to do that by remuneration or higher remuneration. This idea is a fairly old idea. It goes beyond these 30 years ago, as I discovered later. Why is it today, in the last years, in the last month, in the last weeks, more popular, more talked about than it has ever been?

In my view, fundamentally, because the two problems I started with, these two worries, are perceived more widely, are perceived more acutely than ever before. Think about unemployment. Of course, there are now these forecasts about all the jobs that are going to be lost as a result of robotization and automation. But this is not new, because in the past you had similar forecasts about loss of jobs. What is new is that the skepticism about both the desirability and the possibility of limitless economic growth has grown, and is now unprecedented. 30 years ago, 1982, no one was talking about climate change. 30 years ago, no one was talking, as an increasing number of economies are talking about now, no one was talking about secular stagnation as being inevitable for Europe and for North America. And above all, growth, we've had growth. We are now twice or three times richer than we were at the beginning of the golden 60s.

Has unemployment been abolished? No, hasn't been abolished. It's still there, more than before. More than before. So it's high time that we stopped being fooled by the idea that growth is a solution to unemployment, let alone that it is the only solution. And finally, why my second problem? More than ever today, we need something like a mobilizing Utopia. A sort of vibrant alternative to suicidal neoliberalism, to their murderous alternatives that are provided for some people, even by the worldwide Islamic State. We need something to mobilize people again. Basic income is not the whole of it, but it is an essential, indispensable ingredient for any ambitious project, for a sane economy, and for a free society. For a society that gives the real freedom to say, "No," and the real freedom to say, "Yes." A society that gives real freedom for all.

Philippe Van Parijs holds doctorates in philosophy and social sciences, and is currently a professor at the University of Louvain. He is involved in various initiatives that aim to change the current social and political situation and published many books. In 1986 he convened the conference that saw the creation of BIEN, then the Basic Income European Network and now the Basic Income Earth Network.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx