|
BORGERLØNSBEVÆGELSEN |
|
CITIZEN'S
INCOME AS A HERETICAL, POLITICAL DISCOURSE: THE DANISH DEBATE ABOUT
CITIZEN'S INCOME Introduction The idea that everyone should
be guaranteed a minimum income goes a long way back. Members of the
European association for research on citizen's income, BIEN (Basic
Income European Network) refer to Juan Luis Vives, Mayor of Bruges in
1526, as the first to have formulated notions of providing a guaranteed
income for all citizens. In the period after
World War II the idea of a citizen's income has come to be associated
especially with the English liberal economist and politician, Lady
Juliet Rhys-Williams (Rhys-Williams 1943), who in 1942 proposed a
'social dividend' as a counterpart to the Beveridge plan. Whereas
Beveridge's prime concerns were with employment and people retired from
it, Rhys-Williams set out a scheme to provide everybody with a social
dividend. There seems,
internationally, to be much conceptual confusion around the notion of a
citizen's income. A multiplicity of different terms are used in English:
'negative income tax', 'basic income', 'state bonus', 'social credit',
'social wage', 'social dividend', 'guaranteed income', 'universal
benefit', 'citizen's wage' or 'citizen's income'. The latter, rather
than 'basic income', was agreed in 1992, when the cross-national
European association for research on the subject decided to adopt a
single term in common. In Danish, too, the
labels vary: citizen's wage, social wage, guaranteed minimum income,
social income; and ideas of this sort spread quite widely in Denmark
following publication of a book, Oprør fra midten (Revolt from the
centre, Meyer et al. 1978), which used the term 'citizen's wage'. In its
alternative form of 'citizen's income', this is the term I shall use in
what follows because it is the one that most clearly expresses the ideas
involved. What I want to do here
is to present the results of an analysis of the debate in Denmark about
a citizen's income, seen in international perspective, with a view to
both re-defining and developing further the ideas at issue. The concept of a citizen's
income: as an idea, as part of a scientific paradigm and as a political
discourse A citizen's income may be
defined as a general right of all citizens to receive from the state
sufficient support to maintain a modest material level of living,
without any general obligation to make themselves available in the
labour market. This is usually regarded
only as a specific policy for labour market arrangements. However, I
discern four layers within the notion of a citizen's income: these
concern respectively values, theory, politics and more practical or
technical matters. The notion is then to be seen variously as an idea
within a framework of conceptual understanding; as a paradigm within a
framework of scientific understanding; as political discourse within a
framework of political understanding; and, finally, as a set of
concrete, technical measures for political and economic affairs. Conceptually the idea of
a citizen's income reflects a particular interpretation of the
relationships between the fundamental social values of sustainability,
justice, freedom, equality and material security. In addition it can be
seen as an element within various social scientific paradigms concerning
the allocation of resources and rights. Finally it figures as a
political discourse in the competitive contests of politics. There are to ideas,
paradigms and discourses alike features of values, theory and strategy;
but these differ with respect to purpose, function and logic. Within the
ideological framework, the value element is to the fore; within the
paradigmatic framework, the element of theory; in political discourse,
the element of strategy. There are links between the various layers of
the concept and distinct social arenas. The conceptual layer of values
is aligned to the arena of ideological politics, that of theory to the
scientific arena, that of politics to the political arena. It is analytically
important to distinguish between the conceptual layers, because the
social arenas to which they correspond are different by way of function
and logic. The function of ideas is to provide ideological meaning and
motivation for action; that of paradigms, to create new knowledge and
understanding; that of political discourses, to bring about political
understanding and support from political actors for certain political
solutions, to the exclusion of other and undesired solutions. There are
to a degree, nonetheless, value-related determining influences from one
layer to another. Specific interpretations of the relationship between
freedom, equality and justice will, for example, set the shape of the
various scientific theories and paradigms that bear on resource
distribution. Social scientific paradigms in turn play a part in
determining the problem-specifications of political discourse. Finally,
considerations of political strategy may set the course for or against
concrete policy proposals. The Danish debate of the
1990s around the subject showed that the political discourses both for
and against a citizen's income drew on scientific paradigms. The
hegemonic growth-discourse thus sought support from the interpretations
dominant in economic science, in order to exclude opposing
citizen's-income discourse from the agenda. Adherents of the latter
discourse, by contrast, drew on the work of critical social scientists
influenced by new citizen's-income paradigms emerging in international
social science. The distinction between
different analytical layers within the concept of a citizen's income
makes sense and helps towards clarity, because the past twenty years'
debate in Denmark around the idea has moved unevenly, and has been
conducted on different stages and with different actors, in three
periods as follows. 1. The late 1970s and
early 1980s saw the launch of notions of a citizen's income by
'outsiders' in various ideological milieux. This meant that the debate
then stayed mainly at the layer of values and theory. 2. In the course of the
1980s a new social movement, Midteroprøret (the Centre Revolt), arose
which, inspired by the book Oprør fra midten (Meyer et al. 1978 and
1982), turned the issue of a citizen's income into a new political
discourse through its attempts to place the question onto the political
agenda. In the same period the idea cropped up in the scientific arena,
both internationally and in Denmark, to become a feature of a number of
new social scientific paradigms. 3. New formulations of
citizen's income as political discourse were brought to bear in the
early 1990s. Debate about the notion now spread among the public at
large, as an item on the general political agenda concerning renewal of
the welfare state. That debate was set going both 'from the bottom up'
by initiatives from new political networks, and 'from the top down' by
initiatives from various reporting commissions, research workers and
politicians. The emergence of a new idea of
citizen's income in the 1970s The interesting feature of the
climate of ideological debate in the 1970s is that, in relative
independence of one another, 'outsiders' in four different ideological
settings – social-democratic, socio-liberal, Marxist and liberal –
advanced parallel notions of introducing new social provision for
maintenance of livelihood without traditional wage labour in return. 1. The Swedish
economist, Gunnar Adler-Karlsson, then a professor at Roskilde
University Centre in Denmark, published a couple of books in the
mid-1970s (Adler Karlsson, 1976 and 1977) which put a social-democratic
case for a 'guaranteed minimum income'. 2. The idea of a
citizen's income aroused widespread public attention in Denmark
especially through publication of the book Oprør fra midten, by the
philosopher Villy Sørensen, the natural scientist Niels I. Meyer and
the politician Kristen Helveg Petersen, in February 1978. This linked
the idea to socio-liberal circles and to new 'green' aspirations for 'a
humanely balanced society'. 3. At around the same
time the ideas of the French socialist André Gorz about introduction of
a 'social income' came to be known, in socialist circles especially,
through translation of several of his books (Gorz 1979, 1981 and 1983). 4. Finally, a former
co-operative society director, Niels Hoff, launched the notion of a
'citizen's stipend' for debate in liberal circles (Hoff 1983). These very diverse
authors were at one and the same time each linked to a particular
ideological milieu while yet having an outsider status in relation to
it. They figured as typical heretics, conceptual innovators and
provocateurs, who 'stood things on their head', broke away from
established ideological frameworks and challenged industrial society's
conventional growth discourse. Common to the four
strands of thought was an assured awareness that the familiar measures
to solve societal problems were inadequate, and that prevailing
conceptions of nature and humankind in industrial society were wide open
to question. With these authors' shifts of conceptual framework went
also shifts in the language and the metaphors they used. New views of
problems and solutions will usually find reflection in language. For in
the designation of one thing as a problem and another as a solution,
problems are often described negatively, solutions positively. If you
then switch things around, you will commonly need new words to reflect
your new insights. So there was turbulence
in four separate ideological settings; and, if hesitantly and
tentatively, a movement emerged towards formulation of a new common
ideology, towards a sustainable development that was to include within
it the notion of a citizen's income in some form or other. To borrow a
term from the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn (Kuhn 1962), the
situation was pre-paradigmatic. But though there were many similarities
of approach between the four currents of thinking, there were
nonetheless also significant differences; and no dialogue between them
came about. A new grassroots movement and
its formation of a political discourse about citizen's income in the
1980s The thoughts of
Adler-Karlsson, Gorz and Hoff came to be known only within small circles
and were quickly forgotten. It was Oprør fra midten and its conception
of a citizen's income that stirred public debate. Publication of this book
led to the establishment of a new periodical, the formation of a new
grassroots movement and publication of a series of further books. A
network was set up, which served as a political agent to disseminate the
new ideas. It came as a surprise for the initiators that the notion of a
citizen's income proved to be among those ideas that attracted greatest
immediate support. It was this notion, therefore, which the new
grassroots movement took up first with a view to translation into
concrete policy. So an attempt was made
in the 1980s to turn the idea into a 'political issue', to set a
political discourse going about citizen's incomes. It followed that the
idea had to be linked to solution of a series of specific political
problems, and that efforts must be made to form a coalition or political
alliance around the issue. The means adopted to this end were a number
of conferences, publication of discussion books and pamphlets,
interviews with leading politicians. The prime objective was to build a
political alliance around the issue between the trade union movement,
the Social Democratic Party, the Radical Liberals and the Socialist
People's Party. The new grassroots
movement had to engage actively in the game of practical politics, and
show that it was not just preoccupied with utopian ideas, in order to
get into debate and dialogue with the political parties and the union
movement. It therefore put forward an alternative national budget, and
made specific proposals to provide a citizen's income for young people
and for others to have access to 'sabbatical leave'. The movement for
'revolt from the centre' failed in its endeavours to recruit the old
political parties that were its target for its policies of citizen's
incomes, or to persuade them to incorporate similar proposals in their
programmes. Yet although its hopes of thus putting the issue directly
onto the everyday political agenda failed in the first instance, its
ideas about general provision for state-supported sabbatical leave were
to prove significant for the subsequent acceptance of schemes of this
sort in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It must be said, then,
that the political counter-discourse initiated in the 1980s took only a
weak form. Its weakness of strategy
was that its proponents failed to link the idea, with sufficient clarity
and certainty, to a wider range of concrete social problems. It was not
made clear that citizen's incomes imply a strategy towards a
multiplicity of goals. There was a failure to specify the relevance of
the idea to resolution of the problems confronting the unemployed,
social assistance recipients, people on early retirement schemes,
disability pensioners and so on, in respect of their circumstances of
dependency as against their claims to personal autonomy. There was also
in the 1980s, moreover, an unfortunate tendency for division of the
debate around citizen's incomes into two parts, one ideological and the
other more practical, with the result that the new and weak political
discourse came quickly to figure in a form bereft of conceptual
elaboration and coherence. The idea of a citizen's
income had now taken material root in a social movement which sought to
place the issue on the political agenda. But this also meant that the
movement for 'revolt from the centre' had acquired a 'monopoly' on the
issue, which in turn prevented the formation of a cross-political forum
between social democrats, 'greens', liberals and Marxists to take the
matter further. Citizen's income as a
political discourse in the arena of politics in the 1990s In the early 1990s –
especially in the years 1992-94 – the citizen's-income debate
re-appeared in different guise. A new discourse on the theme was created
in the form of a counter-discourse to the dominant discourse around the
labour market and social policy concerning renewal of the welfare state.
The idea of a citizen's
income took on new shape as a political discourse, because the
movement-oriented, the scientific and the political strands of debate
about the issue came now, for a short time, to be twined together. A
number of parties took up the question. New cross-political fora were
created, and the idea became a subject of social scientific analysis.
For a brief period the new citizen's-income discourse thus managed to
give voice to sentiments widespread among the population, and to sow the
seeds of a new pattern of alliance between groups across a series of
political divides. The interesting feature
of the 1990s' debate about the issue was that the idea of a citizen's
income was brought onto the political agenda both 'from the bottom
upwards' and 'from the top downwards'. It came 'from the bottom upwards'
in the sense that it was promoted by marginalised people themselves, by
'outsiders' on the fringes of the worlds of business and trade unions,
by spinners of ideas and by a few practitioners and controversialists of
social science; and a new journal, SALT, strove to join the debates in
the party-political arena with the debates in the arenas of social
science and social movements. 'From the top downwards', in turn, the new
discourse was met by attempts to delimit, diminish or exclude it:
attempts to those ends were made by the leadership of the established
political parties, by a number of ministers, and by public commissions
of enquiry and civil servants. The fact that the issue
of citizens' incomes got onto the official agenda of politics in the
years 1992-94 can be ascribed to the development of a particular
political context and its coincidence with a set of economic,
institutional and political circumstances. The problems of
unemployment and transfer payments were attracting growing attention,
since joblessness continued to rise until the turn of the year 1994-95.
At the beginning of the 1990s the government had set up a series of
commissions of enquiry, whose tasks were to devise a more rational
system of labour market arrangements and public benefit provision: the
targets were simplification and savings. In 1993, moreover, the new
social-democratic government had enacted a set of measures for reform of
the labour market. On the one hand, these widened employees'
opportunities to take periods of paid leave away from work; on the other
hand, they gave significantly more scope for 'activation', that is to
say enforcement on the jobless of obligations to enter training schemes
or find work. By 1992-93 the hegemonic
growth-discourse was in crisis over its legitimacy in popular eyes. The
majority of the population had lost faith in the ideology of full
employment. Public opinion polls showed widespread attitudes in favour
of rethinking labour market policies and experimenting with alternative
models for distribution: 'dustmen's deal' models, for instance, along
the lines for job-sharing proposed by the dustmen in Aarhus; or measures
for reduced working-time, or for a citizen's income. In that situation,
the latter notion indeed came to figure as a serious alternative.
Politicians and their parties were forced into taking some stance on the
idea of citizens' incomes, and to spell out arguments against such new
and more radical modes of problem solution. The fact that the
discourse for a citizen's income vanished again from the official
political arena around the turn of the year 1994/95 must be attributed
to a change then in the conjuctures of economics and politics, and to
associated success for the hegemonic growth discourse in its endeavours
to exclude the rival discourse. That exclusion of the citizen's-income
discourse took place, at a rhetorical level, in public political debate
and within the political parties; and this was matched, at an
institutional level, by exclusion of discourse about job sharing,
sabbatical leave provision and citizens' incomes from the work of the
Social Commission, the Welfare Commission and the government's Economic
Secretariat. It is the task of a hegemonic discourse to set the official
definitions of what are to be recognised as problems, and of how those
problems fit in with existing institutions. The aim is to maintain a
viable common identity and a political coalition. This is often done by
way of public commissions of enquiry and civil service reports; and the
concrete means to the end are the terms of reference set for commission
enquiry, the appointments made to commissions, and the formulation of
their professional and technical discourse. The fact that it proved
hard for the idea of a citizen's income to make headway within the
political parties is connected with the point that, to a greater or
lesser extent, most of the parties were coloured by and linked into the
ideologies and organisational forms of established industrial society,
whose hegemonic discourse was challenged by the discourse for a
citizen's income. Those parties most clearly committed to the goal of
economic growth were also the parties most strongly opposed to the idea
of a citizen's income; while parties semi-critical of growth – such as
the Socialist People's Party and the Radical Liberals – held views on
the idea that were ambivalent and unclear. The Social Democrats and the
right-of-centre Agrarian Liberals now found themselves with a new enemy
in common, under the name of citizen's income, against whom they were in
agreement to keep the societal goal of economic growth intact and to
step up compulsory 'activation' for work and job-training. Both these
parties then amended their programmes to distance themselves from the
idea of a citizen's income. The failure of the
citizen's-income discourse to gain a foothold was tied up also with the
fact that it achieved little support from circles central in social
critique of the time. For these the notion either seemed too
controversial and so was ignored, or it was ridiculed as unrealistic.
The leading spirits of the women's movement thus dismissed the idea
without explicitly addressing it. And the left-wing think-tank CASA
(Centre for Alternative Social Analysis), which served as an expert body
for the left in trade union and political affairs, opposed the hegemonic
discourse for economic growth yet held back from taking any stance on
the idea of a citizen's income. CASA instead looked to an enlargement of
wage-earning work as the way forward, to be achieved through job-sharing
and the creation of new 'green' jobs in the public sector. An
independent cross-political debating group similarly held apart from the
citizen's-income discourse, and proposed that wage-employment be
expanded by means of new jobs in the private service sector. Taken
together, these responses demonstrated the continuing hold of the
ideology of wage labour over even the critical flank of public
commentary. Citizen's income as a metaphor
in various framework-narratives For the purpose of my analysis
I see conceptions of a citizen's income as an interesting new societal
metaphor. A metaphor is a
descriptive image of an object or a relationship that sets out to view
the world in a different manner. Metaphors can be used as
epistemological tools for conceptual and scientific analysis towards the
creation of new ideas and approaches. Concepts and scientific models
derive from some basic metaphors, and scientific innovations often take
the form of a shift of metaphors. Metaphors are organised into
hierarchical structures of meaning or frameworks of understanding. All
theories of society may therefore be seen as metaphorical systems based
upon some foundational metaphors or 'metaphors in depth'. For all citizen's-income
theorists, development of the concept involves endeavours to establish a
new language, including new metaphors distinct from those of the
dominant scientific paradigms and political discourses. To talk about a
citizen's income or wage is an attempt to give a name to a new situation
by creating a new concept through a combination of old concepts. A
'wage' is an economic concept that has something to do with markets,
whereas the concept of 'citizen' has something to do with state, society
and democracy. The new concept of a 'citizen's wage' implies a proposal
to add to the market wage another wage that is politically determined.
This in turn means giving democracy a more prominent part in
distribution, and so implies a new priority for the role of
fellow-citizenship vis à vis the role of markets. Public welfare payments
are usually seen as providing a 'safety net'. Some critics of the
welfare state argue, however, that many such benefits have become rather
a 'hammock' that encourages idleness. Many therefore talk about how to
turn welfare provision into a 'springboard' for work enterprise instead.
All these phrases are examples of the widespread use of metaphors. So too with the notion
of a citizen's income which is to be, not a benefit payment contingent
on restrictively defined need or past contribution but a universal
personal entitlement. It thus shatters the familiar one-sided view of
transfer incomes. The aims of a citizen's income are multiple; and just
which aims are to prevail will be a matter for individual recipients to
decide. So citizens' incomes can be seen as both a 'safety net' and a
'springboard'; and yet they can be used as a 'hammock' too. For people
have a need also to rest, and to decide just how and when for
themselves. A number of current
transfer payments and arrangements in support of enterprise can be
replaced by, and re-conceived as, a universal citizen's income. When
such re-conceptions are followed through, an entirely different
understanding emerges, a new vision. The new metaphor of a citizen's
income thus helps to change society's economic-cum-political conception
of normality. Everyone will be normal and equal by way of common
entitlement to an assured citizen's income. The old concepts are left
behind – transfer payments, welfare benefits, social assistance, leave
of absence, compensation and so on, all of which in some way or other
incorporate the notion of wage labour as the norm. A citizen's income
will not abolish wage labour; but it will relativise it, by depriving it
of its monopoly on normality and so of its hegemonic role. Citizen's income figures
as a new metaphor within frameworks of understanding which conceive
society as primarily a commonalty, a democracy or a civil society, and
for which the market metaphor has only secondary significance. So, as a
new metaphor, that of citizen's income points to a new scale of
priorities among the various societal metaphors applied to current
welfare society. A society of citizens' incomes is one that is
understood to be, first and foremost, not a labour market but rather a
democracy, so set as to ensure autonomy and security of living vis à
vis the labour market and the state within a civil society. Provision
for citizens' incomes will not have the power to dissolve the market
character of society or its features of political compulsion. But it
will set some clearer limits to that character and those features; and
arrayed against this vision are most of those sceptics or opponents of
the idea of citizens' incomes who, consciously or unconsciously, see
society primarily as a market and the market metaphor as basic. Frameworks of
understanding are systems of metaphors. Coherence within a framework of
understanding is created out of narratives, and it is through narratives
that metaphors and the pattern they form become visible. The metaphor of
citizen's income can be located within four different frame-setting
narratives. At the most general
level the idea of citizens' incomes may be understood by reference to a
narrative about the crises of ideologies and industrialism, and about
the limits to growth, in which citizen's income figures as part of a new
narrative concerning sustainable development. The seeds of this new
narrative were planted by the citizen's-income theorists of the 1970s
and acquired scientific form in the work especially of the ecologically
oriented economist Herman E. Daly (Daly 1977). Next, the idea of
citizens' incomes may be set within the story of the historical
development of democracy and the welfare state, where it appears as a
further stage of welfare provision and a full realisation of social
citizenship: the formation of some sort of 'third way society', where
the aspiration is to unite old and new political forces in a new manner.
Within those parameters
in turn, citizens' incomes can be viewed more narrowly by reference to a
smaller narrative about the problems of the welfare state and about
endeavours towards greater autonomy for the citizen vis à vis state,
market and civil society alike. Finally, the idea of a
citizen's income may be seen as a feature of some more technical
narratives about simplification and rationalisation of a series of
welfare-societal mechanisms. Citizen's income as metonymy
and a target of negative political stereotyping In the early 1990s the
citizen's-income debate took the form of an ideological contest over the
norms implied by linguistic usage. Supporters of the idea fought for
acknowledgement of the concept of citizens' income as a new term with a
core meaning that was neutral, and a complementary meaning that was
positive. Opponents sought instead to accord to the term both core and
complementary meanings of negative character. While supporters used
the concept as metaphor, opponents used it as metonymy to the effect of
negative political stereotyping. Whereas metaphors are aimed to create
new meanings through conjoining two different contexts, metonomy
involves the making of links only between features that conventionally
belong to one and the same context. Thus opponents of the
citizen's-income idea strove to associate it with a range of adverse
features of the established system. They described provision for it as
provision for 'enforced passivity', as something that would 'set no
challenges', as 'morally demeaning'. They argued that some particular
negative features of current welfare provision would be writ large in
any institution of citizen's incomes. And from this they drew general
inferences about the nature of a new entity, the citizen's-income
society, which they then stamped as undesirable. Metaphorical use of the
concept of citizen's incomes aims to open people's eyes to an
alternative social order involving a new enhancement of the rights of
fellow-citizenship and a sustainable development of civil society.
Metonymic use of the concept, by contrast, has been deployed to
strengthen the foundations of the established order. Citizen's income as a pointer
to a shift of ideas, paradigms and problem resolutions Another theoretical
perspective on the idea of a citizen's income is to see it as a sign of
a shift of values at the normative level and a shift of paradigms at the
scientific level. At the normative level,
the shift involved is from values that emphasise economic growth and
equality (distributive justice) to values that emphasise freedom
(autonomy), justice and sustainability. At the scientific level, the
concept of a citizen's income can be seen as an element to a set of new
social-scientific paradigms which stand in opposition to the paradigms
prevailing in that field of knowledge. Political ideologies and
scientific theories alike may be described as larger coherent systems
for problem resolution, within which there are internal connections of
common logic among the descriptions and explanations offered of the
various problems and problem-solutions in focus. What is characteristic
of a paradigm shift is that problems and solutions get turned around
through a change of viewpoints, values and language. Previous
conceptions of what constitutes a problem are radically reformulated.
The problem itself takes on new character and shape. Problems change
places with solutions, in the sense that they come to be seen as parts
of the solution, while what previously figured as solutions come now to
be seen as parts of the problem. Those ideological
outsiders who brought the notion of a citizen's income to Denmark in the
late 1970s and early 1980s – Adler-Karlsson and Gorz in particular
-spearheaded a shift of ideas and paradigms. What this involved was –
to borrow a term from the American sociologist, Alvin W. Gouldner
(Gouldner 1971) – a distinct change of 'domain assumptions', with
common agreement to abandon a hitherto dominant economic conception of
humankind, and to pursue a new awareness of the limits to human
exploitation of nature. With this went also a common concern to diagnose
social systems that had got into crisis over their modes of problem
solution, to such a point that 'vicious circles' had set in. The 1980s gave birth to
the idea of citizens' incomes as an element to new paradigms in
international social science. There were five of these – 1. an
ecologically oriented economic paradigm (Herman E. Daly 1990); 2. a
paradigm of procedural law (Jürgen Habermas 1996); 3. a paradigm of
citizenship (Bill Jordan 1992 and Claus Offe 1992); 4. a feminist
paradigm (Nancy Fraser 1994); and 5. a liberal property-paradigm (Samuel
Brittan 1995). All of them differed radically from the paradigms of
market – and public choice hitherto dominant in social science; and it
is on this score that the idea of a citizen's income can be seen as
generating a paradigmatic shift. Despite their diversity
of theoretical perspectives, language and traditions, these five new
paradigms all have a significant feature in common: they see provision
of a citizen's income as a way towards a fairer society and as a breach
with traditional conceptions of equality. They also all set their faces
against a conventional market-economic understanding of society; and
they join the idea of citizens' incomes to an argument that the state
has a special part to play, an active role superordinate to that of the
market, in creating justice in society. The emergence and
development of the notion of citizens' incomes, in a variety of separate
versions during the 1970s and '80s, can be construed as a shift of ideas
and paradigms in relation to the prevailing modes of conceptual and
social-scientific understanding. Yet no new common system of ideas, no
new single and coherent counter-paradigm to set against that of the
economic market, came to fruition in consequence. There was only the
germ of a new idea and of a new paradigm about sustainable development. Citizen's income as a case of
'the unfinished' My analysis of the Danish
debate about citizens' incomes draws on a range of concepts and an
approach developed by the Norwegian sociologist of law, Thomas Mathiesen
(Mathiesen 1982 and 1992). He has explored the way in which a hegemonic
discourse is created by means, on the one hand, of marginalising
(excluding) alternative discourses and, on the other hand, of
socialising (including) potential alliance-opponents within a mode of
perception common to the political public. Inclusion means that efforts
are made to absorb opponents into the hegemonic alliance by presenting
the common features of deviant action as disadvantageous. Exclusion
means that opponents are expelled through presentation of their action
as wrong-headed. Mathiesen lists a series
of rhetorical techniques for inclusion directed to erasing disagreement
with the hegemonic discourse. The aim is to render potential opponents
powerless by presenting them as being in essential agreement with that
discourse. But he notes also a series of rhetorical techniques for
exclusion, which by contrast underline the disagreement with the
hegemonic discourse and characterise it as fundamental. This technique
involves labelling the disagreement as Utopian, abstract and dangerous.
The aim here is to render opponents powerless by presenting them as
being in basic conflict with the system. The hegemonic discourse
is thus maintained by persuading the public at large to perceive and
define counter-discourses as being either wholly within or wholly
outside the system; and by encouraging opponents themselves to be
captured by this imagery, to the point of actually behaving as if they
indeed were either within the system or outside it. To establish
counter-power, it is therefore essential to avoid precisely such
encapture by the imagery of the dominant discourse; and this in turn
means demonstrating, in a variety of theoretical and practical ways,
that the logic of 'either-or' is spurious and needs to be replaced by a
logic of 'both-and'. The alternative to
'inclusion' and 'exclusion' alike is what Mathiesen calls 'the
unfinished'. This involves adopting a stance that is both opposed to the
established system and in competition with it. Mathiesen uses the term
'competing contradiction' to describe such a relationship and he calls
it 'unfinished', because it offers only a sketch, an outlined prospect
towards solutions, not a definitive answer or a final solution. It is
unfinished or incomplete in the sense that it has not been tested and
that its consequences remain uncertain. The risk to which 'the
unfinished' is exposed is either that it may be made 'complete' through
incorporation within the system as just a small positive reform; or that
it may be wholly excluded from the system as a remote and utopian
fantasy. The idea of citizens' incomes
can be taken as an example of an 'unfinished' idea, which has maintained
recurrent vitality just because it has served as a mode of 'competing
contradiction' vis à vis current welfare society. But the history of
this idea has been marked at the same time by tendencies towards both
inclusion and exclusion. In the debate on the issue during the 1990s,
opponents tended to depict suggestions for a citizen's income as the
adoption of an irresponsible line of policy, advocated by theorists
remote from real life and hostile to practical short-term measures for
improvement. These are typical rhetorical tactics for exclusion. In fact proponents of a
citizen's income have always been faced with a dilemma whether to
emphasise the proposition as an idea within a wider context, or to put
it forward as merely a technical measure. Technical sketches towards
practical implementation of citizens' incomes have in some circumstances
helped to give the idea appeal by way of 'competing contradiction'. That
was the case to some degree in the 1980s and early 1990s. But there is
then a large risk that ideas are quickly downgraded to matters of mere
technique, and so lose meaningful coherence. It was in just this way
that citizen's-income advocates, in the 1980s and the 1990s alike, came
to neglect argument for their cause by reference to the values and
concerns with societal context that justified it. There was a shortage
of actors who could bring ideas and techniques together and so give the
movement that overriding dynamic which the idea of 'the unfinished'
implies. The citizen's income debate as
a confrontation between 'reactionary' and 'progressive' political
rhetoric Yet another approach to
analysis of the issue is to see politics as a contest between diverse
political discourses, in which processes of hegemony formation and
exclusion take place. Political discourses arise out of the political
process, and have both a rhetorical and an institutional aspect to them.
The American social
scientist Albert O. Hirschman (Hirschman 1991) has set out some
ideal-type characterisations of the patterns of argument deployed by
'reactionaries' and 'progressives' during the 200-years-long history of
democracy. It can be seen in historical perspective that 'reactionaries'
have drawn on much the same basic patterns of argument against liberal
reformers or 'progressives', in three phases: first, at the time when
civil democracy was initiated by the French Revolution; secondly, when
political democracy came about through the introduction of general
suffrage; and thirdly, when social citizenship made its way through
growth of the welfare state. From this viewpoint it
may be said that we are now in a new phase of democratic development,
where the issue is how to take the welfare state further, and where the
'progressive' agenda focuses on provision for a citizen's income and
sustainable development. Hirschman identifies
three typical patterns of argument against reform: 1. reforms are
misguided (the 'perversity thesis') in the sense that they will have
consequences other than those envisaged by reformists; 2. reforms are
futile (the 'futility thesis') in the sense that they will not change
things anyway; and/or 3. reforms are dangerous (the'jeopardy thesis') in
the sense that they will destroy features of the present system which
are indispensable. As against these, supporters of 'progressive' reform
draw on three parallel patterns of argument: 1. reforms will have a
synergetic effect, in a process that will lead to solution of not just
one problem but a whole complex of problems (the 'mutual support
thesis'); 2. reforms are a matter of 'natural' progress or developmental
'necessity' (the thesis that 'history is on our side'); and/or 3. in the
absence of reform the system will collapse or produce a totally
unacceptable state of affairs (the 'imminent-danger thesis'). The aim of both types of
political rhetoric, 'reactionary' and 'progressive', is to persuade
recipients of the message by reference to the various kinds of effect
that will follow from the implementation and, conversely, the rejection
of reform. Reform opponents try to induce negative attitudes to a reform
proposal by assertion that there will by no effects to reform at all, or
some adverse and even dangerous effects. Reform supporters, by contrast,
try to encourage positive attitudes to the proposal by claiming that it
will set a virtuous circle in motion towards solution of several
problems; or that it constitutes a necessity either by way of the logic
of progress or in order to avoid misfortune. Both lines of argument may
involve manipulation, more or less covert, unless it is made clear that
neither supporters nor opponents are in fact capable of making
pronouncements about future patterns of development with any certainty. In the 1990s' debate
about citizens' incomes, opponents resorted to the
argumentation-patterns typical of 'reactionaries' in the following ways.
First, introduction of a citizen's income will be misguided: as a
'passive' measure, it will create a 'group of losers', 'lead to cuts' or
'send women back to the kitchen sink'. Secondly, it will be useless: for
'it will be fruitless to redefine the notion of work', 'we already have
a sort of citizen's income', 'it's just another word for early
retirement and disability pension'. Thirdly, it will be dangerous: 'the
unemployment funds will be transferred from trade-union hands to the
state', the proposal 'is in conflict with the constitution' and/or 'will
lead to economic collapse'. Correspondingly,
supporters resorted to arguments typical of the 'progressive' patterns
just outlined. First, provision for a citizen's income will solve a
number of linked problems: it will tackle 'problems of unemployment,
environment and democracy in common context', and 'a series of social
dogmas will fall like domino-pieces'. Secondly, it is in line with
'natural' development: it will 'round off the notion of social
citizenship', it will finally 'break away from the subsistence logic of
capitalism'. Thirdly, it is a necessity in order to avoid danger: 'the
choice is between citizen's income and barbarism'. To a very large extent,
situations in the labour market and in society at large can be seen as
involving an enforced choice between 'activity' and 'passivity', between
'independence' and 'dependence', between 'wage work' and 'transfer
income'. The things usually taken to be 'good' here are activity,
independence and wage work; the 'bad' things are passivity, dependence
and transfer income. In the dominant dualistic universe of language,
opponents of a citizen's income define provision for it in metonymic
fashion as a passive transfer income that creates dependency. They
adhere to the dualistic contrast between 'activity' and 'passivity', and
wish to maintain this because it serves to keep work for wages in
dominant place. Citizens' incomes may also be construed in metaphorical
fashion, however: as real freedom, as a mechanism to break up the
dualisms and double- binds, and to dissolve the enforcements of choice.
Seen from that angle, citizens' incomes reflect a shift in frameworks of
understanding – a 'framing' of social conceptions – and a challenge
to the linguistic and institutional dualism that prevails in society. Further development of
citizen's income as an idea and as a paradigm The idea of a citizen's income
entails a change or shift in the principles by which boundaries are
drawn between the different spheres of society – state, market and
civil society – because it advances new principles for the
distribution of money (of special interest to economists), for the
distribution of rights (of special interest to political scientists),
for changes in patterns of work and use of time (of special interest to
sociologists) and for revision of obligations concerning work and
maintenance (of special interest to lawyers). While the
citizen's-income idea has often been discussed and justified by
reference only to one of these spheres, whether market or state or civil
society, it has been my aim to offer a cross-disciplinary and more
rounded portrayal of the concept. I have tried to do so by examining six
different modes of approach to interpretation of the issue, drawn from
work across the social sciences internationally; and by then setting out
a critical analysis of the strengths and weaknesses to be found in a
range of diagnoses of the crises of the welfare state, put forward by
Danish social scientists. When taken together, the contributions of all
these various social theorists help to sketch a fuller and more
comprehensive picture of citizen's income as an idea and a scientific
paradigm. I conclude on that basis that this idea-cum-paradigm may be
seen, (1) as a further development
of democratic fellow-citizenship, more specifically as a full
realisation of social citizenship; (2) as an element in a process
of sustainable development, through its contribution to setting a
political limit to the exploitation of nature; (3) as a new form of property
right, which will make for a fairer distribution of resources in a
market economy; (4) as a means to creating
autonomy vis à vis the market, through its setting of a political limit
to the commodification of labour power; (5) as a means to creating
autonomy also vis à vis the state, through its setting of a political
limit to client-dependency on the state; and (6) as an element in the
process of creating a new gender balance. In sum, the conclusion is that
citizen's income figures as a prime feature in a narrative about the
further development of democratic fellow-citizenship, involving a
completion of social citizenship and a step towards establishment of
sustainable development. Within those parameters citizen's income also
figures in a range of more concrete narratives about the simultaneous
creation of greater justice in the distribution of a market economy's
resources (a new form of property right); and of greater freedom
(autonomy) vis à vis the market (de-commodification), vis à vis the
state (diminution of client dependency) and vis à vis the family and
civil society (diminution of family patriarchy). Further development of
citizen's income as a feature of a new political discourse about
sustainable development The notion of citizen's income
may be seen as a feature of narratives that take the form of ideas,
paradigms and political discourses alike. Seen as a paradigm the idea
can be so formulated as to figure in a series of narratives that have to
do with setting limits: in a narrative about setting limits to the
exploitation of nature; in one which concerns setting limits to
commodification of labour power; in another which is about setting
limits to client dependency on the state; and finally in a narrative
directed to setting limits to family dependency. These narratives about
limits may in turn send the ball rolling for a number of
discourse-narratives about the need for a range of new social contracts.
Welfare society's large social contract between labour and capital needs
to be replaced by a multi-dimensional contract which will pose new
limits to the exploitation of humankind and nature. This can be
expressed as the need for a new version of the contract between labour
and capital; and the need simultaneously for a set of other contracts
between state and individual, between the sexes, and between
generations. A new political contract for a citizen's income satisfies
these requirements, because arrangements for such provision will engage
with them all and serve towards restoring balance as against a number of
the fundamental imbalances of modern welfare society. Provision for
citizens' incomes will thus, (1) help to create a more
equal distribution of such work as is essential for society; (2) allow reinforcement of
individuals' legal rights and reduce the problem of client-dependency; (3) offer the basis for a
fairer division of labour between the sexes; (4) strengthen civil society
and democracy; (5) in conjunction with other
measures help towards more sustainable development. Viewed in relation to the
political priorities of the various ideological frameworks of
understanding, the idea of a citizen's income should be capable in
principle of gaining widespread support: support from those socialists
who are particularly concerned to see a more equal division of
societally essential labour; from those liberals who especially
prioritise a reduction of client dependency; from those feminists for
whom a fairer division of work between the sexes is a prime aim; and
from those 'greens' on whose agenda a strengthening of civil society is
in high place. It is the function of
political discourses to create such identity of feeling and such
frameworks for action as will make for a coalition of political actors.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the new discourse towards citizens'
incomes reflected some attitudes that were widespread in the population,
and it helped to sow the seeds of a new pattern of political alliance
across a range of familiar political divides. A further new discourse
around the idea, so pitched as to bring together support from among
socialists, liberals, feminists and 'greens' on the lines sketched
above, is still awaiting its realisation. History seems to show that the
idea has a vitality which allows it to re-appear in new shape, even
after it has been forgotten for a time. My aim in this analysis has been
to offer a firmer and more comprehensive basis for the next debate about
citizen's income. References Adler-Karlsson, G. (1976), Lærebog for 80'erne. Et
antikonsumistisk manifest, København: Fremads Fokusbøger. Adler-Karlsson, G. (1977), Nej til fuld beskæftigelse –
ja til materiel grundtryghed, København: Erling Olsens Forlag. Basic Income European Network, http://www.econ.ucl.ac.be/ETES/BIEN/ Brittan, S. (1995), Capitalism
with a Human Face, Aldershot: Edward Elgar. Christensen, Erik (1998), Borgerløn. Analyse af en
politisk ide. Århus: Hovedland (in the
press) Daly, H.E. (1977), Steady-State
Economics. The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth,
San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co. Daly, H.E. and Cobb Jr., J.B.
(1990), For The Common Good. Redirecting the Economy towards
Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future , London: Green
print. Fraser, N. (1994), 'After
the Family Wage. Gender Equity and the Welfare State', Political
Theory, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 591-618. Gorz, A. (1979), Økologi
og frihed, Viborg: Politisk Revy [English edition, Ecology as
Politics, London: Pluto Press 1983]. Gorz, A. (1981), Farvel til
Proletariatet – hinsides socialismen, Viborg: Politisk Revy
[English edition, Farewell to Working Class: an Essay on Post-industrial
Socialism, London: Pluto Press 1982]. Gorz. A. (1983), Paradisets
veje – kapitalens dødskamp, Viborg: Politisk Revy [English
edition, Path to Paradise: on the Liberation from Work, London: Pluto
Press 1985]. Gouldner, Alvin W. (1971 og
1977, 2nd ed.), The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, London:
Heinemann. Habermas, J. (1996A), Between
Facts and Norms. Contribution to Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hirschman, Albert O. (1991), The
Rhetoric of Reaction. Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy, Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hoff, Niels (1983), Borgerstipendiet – den liberale velfærdsmodel.
Forlaget i Haarby. Jordan, B. (1992), 'Basic
Income and the Common Good', in Phillippe van Parijs (ed.) Arguing
for Basic Income, London and New York: Verso, pp. 155-177. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962), The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. Mathiesen, Thomas (1982), Makt og Motmakt, Drammen:
Pax Forlag. Mathiesen, Thomas (1992), Det
uferdige. Tekster om opprør og undertrykkelse,
Oslo: Pax Forlag. Meyer, N.I. et al. (1978), Oprør fra midten, København:
Gyldendal [English edition, Rebellion from the Centre, London: Marion
Boyers 1981]. Meyer, N.I. et al. (1982), Røret om oprøret. Mere om
midten, København: Gyldendal. Offe, C. (1992), 'A
Non-Productivist Design for Social Policies', in Phillippe van
Parijs (ed.) Arguing for Basic Income. Ethical Foundations for Radical
Reform, London and New York: Verso, pp. 61-78 Rhys-Williams, J. (1943), Something
to Look Forward to: A Suggestion for a New Social Contract, London:
MacDonald. Artiklen er trykt i bogen: Jens Lind and Iver Hornemann Møller
(eds.) Work and Social Integration: Perspectives on
Unemployment and non-standard Employment. London: Asgate 1999. p. 13-33 |