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.

Conservative's callous attitude to disability benefits underlines the reasons to embrace principles behind universal welfare

Conservative policy is clearly to take away support from all except those in the most absolute despair - and to subject those remaining to demoralising assessments, pressures and sanctions. Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

The Conservative Party unmasked its own callous attitudes towards public welfare at the weekend, when one of Prime Minister Theresa May's aides took it upon himself to say that benefits shouldn't be going to those "taking pills at home, who suffer from anxiety" but to the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017).

After years of climbing uphill, campaigners have finally got mental illness - and the cause of giving it parity with physical illness - into the mainstream consciousness (Cooper, 2016). This comment, coming from a ministerial aide, is a huge step backwards.

It also underlines the inefficacy of the assessments regime, based always on the prejudices of particular governments and liable with its rhetoric, and in pursuit of budget targets, to set high the bar for access to support. And, right now, the Tories are running just such a harsh regime that is rolling back support further and further in the name of purse-tightening.

The compassionate alternative is universality. The idea behind a universal basic income is that everyone would receive a personal independence payment, as a basic safeguard against poverty and as a guarantee of their liberty.

The practical application of the idea, which is still only in the trial stage in a number of countries - where much can still be learned about how it might be shaped for real world use - might well be some time away. But the least we can do is learn from the principles underlying a universal system.

So what are the principles? The premier amongst them is personal freedom, which is hurt most by coercion - being compelled to make certain choices, or accept certain realities, by the absence of a true choice in the face of desperation.

Universality is an act of positive liberty. It seeks to enhance personal liberty by, not simply removing barriers, but reaching out to help people out of the pits that prevent their access - traps like poverty. It creates a welfare system that truly levels the playing field by creating a fundamental baseline.

Even in the modern world, a disability can prove expensive and mental illness, in particular, can be hard to predict and hard to manage. In a world of hyper-competition, that demands flexibility and only offers an insecure return, a person with a disability can easily find themselves out of despair coerced into making choices that are not right for them.

Conservative policy is clearly to take away support from all except those in the most absolute despair - and even then to subject them to neverending assessments, pressures and sanctions that demoralise people and rob them of their dignity.

That policy is an expression of an ideology of 'meritocratic' competition that rewards wealth with privilege and champions individual selfishness - in other words, believes that 'greed is good'. But those who do not 'win' and do not 'merit' privilege are left behind and blamed as the cause of their own failures.

It is that callousness that was revealed by Theresa May's aide. It is a must for progressives to make their voices heard in opposition to this selfish ideology that feeds privilege to the already privileged.

Progressive voices need to be heard too in support of a more compassionate way, that is underlined by the principles of universality - where we value our society based on how it empowers and liberates the least fortunate.