The debate over whether universal basic income (UBI) should be a central project of the Left is intensifying. Regarded as a transitional demand, advocates suggest that UBI is the solution to the crisis of waged labour as well as a good, realistic utopia. Opponents disagree, myself included. I laid out the reasons why we should regard UBI as a bad utopia in an article for Development and Change. Here I will limit myself to pointing out – once again – the elephant in the room: the problem with money. We know that the imperative of money for human survival creates all sorts of problems and misery in this world. My question is simple: will the ‘universal’ distribution of money solve or reinforce these problems?
The celebration of UBI as the utopia for the Left in the present circumstances is most concerning. The question about what money is has disappeared from the horizon of the Left and it is now only discussed in small Marxist circles. That’s not good. The lack of debate about money prevents those who defend citizens’ right to an income from understanding what money really is. The real problem that we confront is neither the lack of money nor a good way to distribute it, of which UBI is an example. The problem is the human dependence on money for existence.
Polishing the gilded cage
Money is not just the means of exchange. It embodies the capitalist social relations of dispossession, exploitation and subordination. Marx criticised political economists like Adam Smith for believing that money was merely an instrument of administration with no economic importance. He revealed that in capitalist societies money is not an innocent mediation of market exchange. It is the concrete expression of value, the substance of which is abstract labour. Value is materially and visibly expressed in money form.
