The Republican right to a basic income — Philip Pettit
Philip Pettit, “A Republican Right to Basic Income?”
This blog article reviews and presents the work of Philip Pettit, “A Republican Right to Basic Income?” published in the journal Basic Income Studies 2, no. 2 (2008): 1–8.
In this article I will not necessarily present my opinion on it along the way of my discussion, but as a general note, and as it occurs to me, the basic income policy proposal builds better on the framework of republicanism. Henceforth, I will attempt to present Philip Pettit’s paper. This was my discussion part on the “Ethics of UBI” seminar at the Freiburg Institute for Basic Income Studies (University of Freiburg) with Karl Widerquist — a known proponent arguing for UBI.
Firstly, I will provide some groundwork as to what republicanism is.
We know that liberalism is highly concerned with individual freedom, and sees freedom as non-interference. Republicanism is a type of liberalism in the sense that the way of looking at the meaning of freedom for the individual is in terms of non-domination. So, it’s a way of seeing liberalism from the prism of power structures in the society. Basically, this is the main concept of Pettit’s argument.
Now, I am confident that all of us know already what basic income is so I won’t get into that but as we’ve seen from our discussions in the seminar, the establishment of such a right has raised so many questions regarding for instance institutional feasibility, labor market and so on. Pettit also points these out.
In the introduction section, Pettit, asks even when there aren’t any problems with such concerns as I just mentioned, could a society of mutually reciprocal, equal-status society members accept a constitution that allows some members to do this — namely the establishment of basic income as a right. He argues that these obstacles can be overcome.
In the article he discusses some issues with the utilitarian and liberal perspective as to not being a sufficiently satisfactory argument for basic income. And, that is due to the two desiderata or requirements that he lays down that make up for justifying basic income given that no problems with establishing such a right occur.
First, it is the adequacy: as he puts it; “the argument should establish a right to an intuitively adequate level of income — an appropriate level for instance above poverty level.
And the second one is the desideratum of independence which means that the argument should establish a claim that a basic income cannot become invalid and it should be non stigmatizing.
Pettit thinks that the republican view on basic income provides for a better argument which captures these two requirements in a way that other alternatives do not — namely the utilitarian view or other liberal arguments.
What’s wrong with the utilitarian and liberal perspective in justifying a basic income?
The issue, according to Pettit, is that utilitarianism provides a basic income by happy accident because it justifies policies to the extent that they yield the optimal result. And the problem with that is that people wouldn’t enjoy a basic income as a right. Insofar the desideratum of adequacy is concerned, utilitarianism is kind of shaky in satisfying it.
Now let’s talk about liberalism. Liberalism on the other hand tries to maximize (basic) liberties by reducing or eliminating forms of intervention/interference. According to Pettit, it’s difficult to understand how this could serve as a foundation for a basic income. The liberal’s task would now be to demonstrate that a basic income is required to prevent outside intervention. But why would that be the case? A poor and needy person’s right to non-interference might be violated if they are left to perish of famine for instance. Van Parijs attempts to provide a liberal solution to this issue by claiming that there is no significant difference between purposeful obstruction by others that infringe on a person’s rights and unintended obstruction to freedom which could be natural (e.g. a natural disaster). The universal basic income, he claims, can also assist alleviating the latter type of hindrance, and as such can be justified under liberalism.
Pettit contends that treating unintended limitations as bad as purposeful interference as far as liberty is concerned, is unrealistic. As he puts it: “If someone stands in my way, that’s a different sort of challenge to my liberty than the challenge provided by the tree that has fallen in my path.” Pettit argues that if the rights are supposed to be freedom-based, it is quite conceivable to provide people with rights against willfully inflicted harm by others, but it is less reasonable to provide them with rights against unfortunate twists of destiny. He considers the liberal approach to be unconvincing.
What about republicanism?
To understand Pettit’s republican approach, firstly, it requires understanding the distinct notion of freedom. According to Pettit, the fundamental difference between republican and liberal point of view is that republicanism defines freedom as the absence of a certain type of dominating control, whereas the liberalism defines it as the absence of interference from others.
To be dominated means to be controlled by the desires or preferences of another person. For instance, control means that another person, say Karl, controls me when their presence in my life increases the likelihood of my acting in accordance with their preferences.
Pettit differentiates reasoned control, such as advice-giving, and unreasoned, such as slave-master control. The republican view holds that to achieve freedom as non-domination, all causes of dominating control must be eliminated.
One frequent critique of republicanism is that there is no real distinction between non-interference and non-domination. Pettit contends that there is. One can be free of interference while still being dominated.
As an example, if Driton is not interfered he is free according to the liberal definition of freedom as non-interference. However, assuming that on a need-basis, someone, say Karl, is in a position to interfere in any of the ways that can cause me to behave in accordance to their preferences, am I really free? Pettit says “no.” If my behavior deviates from the predefined pattern, Karl may feel compelled to constrain me in doing so. In that case, Karl can structurally and institutionally dominate me even if there is no reason for Karl to actively interfere. he exerts control by monitoring my behavior in order to interfere when necessary — and only when necessary. In that case I can only act “cum permissu”: with Karl’s permission. Moreover, Karl is within his rights to do so. Thus, if I am not guaranteed a basic income, Karl can meddle with me without facing legal barriers.
Moral of the story, the republican view holds that freedom is not a matter strictly constrained to non-interference but an institutional matter and power structures. It tries to remove, or at least minimize the potential that there is a certain dominating force which controls our behavior. The discussion demonstrates there is a strong republican argument for a universal basic income. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it seems that a basic income is transferring/shifting dependency, say between worker and employer with another — between the state and the individual. Society members will now rely on the state to take care of the basic economic needs which puts them in a similar situation as they were before.
I will discuss this on another blog post.
