Labour and the Basic Income: To make automation work for people, first the relationships between people and society, work and welfare, must be reframed

To tackle the problems of the future, first we need to rethink our approach to work and welfare. Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

In the passed few weeks, the Labour Party has been talking up it's determination to make technological advances work for ordinary people, rather than disenfranchise them.

For the party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the focus has been on the workplace. Corbyn has raised the question of how to use cooperative collective ownership of businesses by workers to put automation in the hands of people - rather than let automation be their replacement in the hands of their bosses.

Meanwhile, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has focused on the state role. McDonnell, talking at a Manchester anti-austerity event, spoke of a renewed drive for public investment as the first step to anchoring technology to people and their interests.

It was left to the Labour National Youth Conference to contribute the third integral component, with the future of the Labour Party backing a motion in support of the universal basic income.

The motion acknowledged both the problems with Britain's welfare system and the concerns for the future being raised by the rise of automation. To answer these, the LNYC motion presented the basic income.

The basic income is a universal form of welfare, a payment received - with very little bureaucracy - by all citizens. It is designed to cover the basic essentials of life, so as to end poverty and it's coercive power over how people choose to live.

Labour usually falls in with the same basic conceit, shared by most right wing liberal groups, social democrats and worker's parties: that life begins and ends with work - or rather, with wage labour. That work of this sort is a fundamental component and an axiom in the building of any social model.

Work, to 'earn' the right to live in exchange, is treated as a value. As a moral component essential to any social contract. But for progressives, this cannot be the last word.

If we are to have true social progress, we must start first with a base of no poverty and no homelessness. We must begin with the right to live. If we care about choice, about liberty and justice, we must not let coercion remain the starting point for engaging with society.

For the Labour Party in particular, embrace of that wage labour conceit verges on hypocrisy - the party of workers buying into the 'moral value' of 'working for a living'.

There has not been nearly enough scepticism of it, or recognition that it is a value of limited scope. Restricted to the specific benefits it delivers within a specific social system. A system in which even certain forms of work are prioritised above others, and were these forms of work are made nearly mandatory.

Right now there is a crisis in welfare - but not the way the Conservatives think. The crisis in welfare is one of dignity. Conservative cuts have strangled Britain's social security safety net.

That has left vulnerable people at the hands of an exploitative market and put through probing, demoralising, assessments by organisations with weak ethical codes and goals that run counter to the wellbeing of people who desperately need support.

If Labour are really going to reform this country, to tackle these kinds of injustice, they first need to get the foundations right. By no means is basic income a panacea. But it is a fairer and less coercive starting point for a society.

As more and more work becomes automated, as paid work becomes more scarce, we need that fairer starting point as a basis upon which to build a new kind of relationship between people and society - one that acknowledges, from the start, their basic right to live.

References

'Jeremy Corbyn: Let workers control robots'; on the BBC; 14 October 2017.

'How will you turn #automation to benefit of many, @garyyounge asks @johnmcdonnellMP, who says UK falling behind in tech development... #MCR'; from The Alternative, on Twitter; 2 October 2017.

'...#McDonnell says 1st step #publicinvestment, 2nd using public leverage to turn it public benefit - must encourage & support #coops. #MCR'; from The Alternative, on Twitter; 2 October 2017.

George Aylett's 'Delighted that @HullUniLabour's motion on Basic Income passed at Labour's National Youth Conference. Labour must consider the Basic Income to deal with the problems that arise with automation. @LabourUBI'; from Twitter; 14 October 2017.

Jim Reed's 'Why I secretly taped my disability assessment'; on the BBC; 16 October 2017.