So I was reading David Graebers Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, which I would highly recommend

So I was reading David Graebers Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, which I would highly recommend.

I was on the fence about UBI but in the last part of the book he makes the argument that goes sorta like this:

If you are on UBI then you can't really be compelled to work or to work in shit conditions. If your pay is shit you can leave, if conditions are shit you can leave. Its not like benefits either where you'd have to apply and you'd be living with fuck all and you have to search for jobs or get sanctioned, you would simply stop going to work.

In this way UBI can looked at like a strike fund, it would therefore contribute to upwards wage pressure.

I've heard it said alot that UBI would disempower the working class by taking away their bargaining chip of work, but I think this is not actually the case, I think it would actually increase the bargaining power of those in work.

Now consider that, done correctly, a lot less people would slip through the cracks and end up destitute. Reports show people are less stressed on UBI than normal benefits, which im sure over a long term would correlate to better health, more stable families( most marriages end because of money problems) , less crime, more time with the kids to help them develop etc etc

If you consider student loans and mortgages, for most people these do not exceed 1000 doru a month, so UBI would actually be in a sense of a huge form of debt relief, less interest and penalities would being going to banks (where they make most of their money), which would have the knock on effect of reducing the power of financial institutions somewhat, as well as freeing up large amounts of human labour potential.

On top of that, I think many people would choose to educate themselves further if they had more time, they would also have more time, for example, to attend protests/direct action (more importantly, to join organising groups and organise protests/direct action)

At the same time, it is likely that the increase in spending power would equate to more jobs in the standard Keynesian analysis.

Fundamentally, culturally, it would mean a break from the idea that you have to be employed in drudge labour in order to be valuable to society.

So, to sum up, a stronger bargaining position with employers, more jobs,healthier, happier working class with more time on their hands to organise, less held down by debts etc and immunised to protestant work ethic bollocks.

I think the first argument about upward wage pressure is the strongest i've heard in its favour, its completely changed how I looked at it really. It could actually be the tool that allows the general strike to continue until we win.

I post this stirner image for the quote, for nostalgia of old leftypol, but also because, if the state (im not an anarchist just make it synonmous with capitalism) rests on the slavery of labour, if labour has the choice through UBI not to be a slave, then that state is surely lost?

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Other urls found in this thread:

marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/
yang2020.com/policies/carbon-fee-dividend/
yang2020.com/policies/value-added-tax/
yang2020.com/policies/capital-gain-carried-interest-tax/
yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/
marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

bump

UBI is a bandaid on Capitalism.

/thread.

Yes. And? in case you didn't notice from your parent funded life most of us severely need a bandaid to stem the bleeding from a decade+ of austerity.

I know this is the case but could you respond to the main point: this particular band aid could dramatically increased the bargaining power of workers with their boss, perhaps the most important factor in making revolutionary change.

Lenin called for reform so that the proletariat can see the limitations of social democracy, attack on all fronts, seizing the state is part of those fronts.

I don't know if you take part in IRL organising. It is extremely consuming going to weekly meetings, actions etc, UBI would give more people the oppurtunity to engage in this, and crucially, the kind of people who would otherwise be working i.e. not middle class students

False, read Capital

100% this. It's so basic… Most everyone i know cant politics because they're busy working 0 hour jobs to just about scrape up rent on the monthly. This anti UBI stuff seems so sheltered, imho.

i have read capital which part exactly

this is only true if you are alright with lowering your standard of living to match that of ubi. people with families, car payments, high rent, or just consumerists can't do that.


It would disempower the working class in the sense that they would become so reliant of the capitalist system for the ubi that they would not want to revolt against it.


I highly doubt this. Have you see how people are with their spending habits?


This sounds nice but there is not a whole lot of evidence for them having more time or educating themselves with that alleged free time over entertaining themselves.


How would this not just cause them to be looked down upon by the people who pay more than $1000 into taxes?

it doesn't mean a stronger bargaining position with employers. You can make the argument that because people are getting UBI they don't need a minimum wage suddenly you have to work 40 hours a week to live off of slightly more than 12k a year.


that argument is reliant on people being ok with 12k a year and if ubi is implemented it will just inflate prices so that 12k will look closer to 10k etc.


Also its still capitalism.

by this logic we could be working in workhouses..

what?

Being against reforms because 'all capitalism is bad!!!111' it's fucking retarded mate.

Well done.

well your just shitposting at this point.
And yes reforms tend to be bad

spoken like someone who doesn't have to use food banks to eat or are seeing huge closes of public services. huge swathes of the country don't have the luxury of being so ideological.

People should not be fucking payed to not work. The workday needs to be reduced to 4 hours. That gets you everything you describe, and you don't fucking pay people to NOT PRODUCE STUFF. Fucking left-liberal mongoloids.

ideological is thinking you can reform away capitalism
being ignorant of history is thinking food banks came out recently

The New Deal was completely beneficial to leftists in burgerville right? Because the movement got only bigger after the 1940s.

and job guarantee too.

i haven't read capital, but i read the short economic texts. i think user may be referring to labour power as a commodity - so as the cost of labour power goes down, the price of labour power will also decrease, leading to the same standards of living as today.

let's also note that only one thing can increase the bargaining power of the working class - working class solidarity and class consciousness! a party capable of leading them to revolution!


OP i think you need to ask yourself, are we talking about reform or revolution?

in order to even win UBI, you'd need to mobilize the working class into struggle.

then, given the balance of forces, why would we stop at UBI? the point is not to "fix" capitalism, but to replace it with socialism.

as a transitional demand, UBI is interesting. it obviously sparks people's imagination and gets them thinking about reorganizing society - great!

but as a demand in and of itself, without a revolutionary perspective? it will be treated just like all of the gains of postwar boom - impossible in the era of capitalist austerity.

i think UBI is insufficient as a transitional demand. for example, my party program demands a 20 hour work week - without loss of pay! we fought for the 40 hour work week, let's bring back that fight! healthcare, education, employment, etc., for all!

UBI - by crossing class lines - blurs the class struggle and becomes (based on who I see support it) a thoroughly petty bourgeois demand. like I said, it's great that people are questioning capitalism - but it's not enough and it won't bring home the bagels.

we fight for and accept reforms, but only on a revolutionary platform! we use reforms to show the working class that capitalism is unable to meet the basic needs of its people.

I guarantee you most ppl in this thread have never fought for shit. on any platform. purity bs from armchair larpers.

are you running a PR campaign or something? Reform and revolution are mutually exclusive

literally has never happened and sounds childish

that may be true - but it also is irrelevant. Zig Forums is a place for discussion for comrades of all experience and interest levels.


marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/

No offense but why should anyone take 'comrades' who have no experience of leftism in reality seriously? It's easy to believe anything in a vacuum. As an example would you take life advice from a university or HS student over an actual adult? You wouldn't, would you?

>marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/

Yes I have read it. Care to explain how it is relevant? I am not a leftcom nor am I advocating armcharism

wait - i'm confused now. i am suggesting that people come to leftypol to explore their ideas - and it's our task to explain to them Marxism.


"no compromises! the direct path to revolution is the Communist way!" - i suggest that you re-read it.

It is not my task. I seek to engage with peers, not play teacher for young burgers.

then don't respond to young burgers? this thread is OBVIOUSLY not written by a Marxist. so i don't even know what you're upset about

Lenin was saying it was ok to allign with social democrats against the Tsar because they were still revolutionary back then.
Succdems are not revolutionary and haven't been for a long time.

UBI is still capitalism

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Why do you give a fuck how an imperialist power wastes it's money? This is the enemy, let it hurt itself.

the resources they waste are just the plunders of the third world. An increased in wasted money by imperialist powers is an increased is strain on the third world proletariat

That depends on how redistributive it actually is. Any UBI that tries to avoid raising taxes significantly on the rich isn't that. Of course, we all know Yang's UBI tries to make up the cost by letting people opt out of current benefits. The pilot that was in Norway or wherever was just replacing unemployment benefits. Right now our experience with UBI is as an "ambitious, new policy" isn't that at all, it is just a consolidation of the existing welfare state into this one mass payment. Ultimately this is an attempt to subsidize low skill labor and create further labor mobility, not free people from work.

Right now I'm talking specifically about Yang and these other tech capital owners who constantly shill this idea. Silicon valley ideology is all about dynamism and change, but not in some deep systemic way. Ideally it is about creating a machine that works fast, fails often and generates "innovation". They have a creation myth around their industry that it was some frugal nerds in their garages who built empires, and that these frugal nerds still exist who eschew real pay in favor of sweat equity so that they can bounce between uncertain startups trying to hit gold and become rich. Their ideal is actually to take a big risk on not getting paid at all for your time, so that later you may have an ownership stake in some billion dollar company.

I say all of this because the fact that UBI has become popular isn't really an accident. It's because famous people that plenty of normies are aware of have amplified the good word of UBI, and these famous people tend to be business owners who are saying that automation will require it or whatever. Of course, normies end up thinking that if the big tech business owners are saying automation is a huge threat it must be true because they're on the front lines of the tech industry! However, the only reason they amplify it is because they see how they can benefit from the scheme.

The reason a group of leftists support the Job Guarantee instead of UBI is because capital owners simply can't benefit from the JG. The JG will not touch benefits, if you qualify for welfare, unemployment or medicaid then you still get it. And of course there is no overlap with social security or anything like that, so no reason to cut it. In addition, it poses a challenge to capital owners in the labor market. The standards of the JG become the standard of the labor market. If JG gives you 3 weeks of paid vacation, the private sector will feel pressure to offer that to their low skill workers so they don't just go get a JG job. If JG gives you $15/hr, it becomes the de facto minimum wage. The specifics of the JG will immediately become a battleground for capital in policy because it is only a threat to them.

Additionally, it will likely require raising taxes on the rich. Hence, when somebody like Bernie gives it attention he proposes something like a capital gains tax, increased marginal tax rate, you get wealth tax proposals thrown around. The money to pay people HAS to come from somewhere for this because it can't come from the social safety net, they serve different purposes. This is a real new policy, it actually expands the role of the state and to a certain extent socializes labor, and it does it at the expense of capital.

Of course, capital doesn't like the JG for these reasons. So the other thing I would say is, in respect to you talking about debt relief etc., that if the reason capital supports UBI to the extent that it does is because they want to Third Way it and instead of raising taxes on themselves, actually raise them mostly on high wage earners and cut into the safety net in order to shuffle around money, then we can see that the difficulty of passing a "good" UBI is roughly similar to the difficulty in passing the JG and debt relief explicitly. However, the former can be more easily molded into a policy that is appealing to capital than the latter. So in terms of reformist policy meant to attack capital owners, it is better to support the latter since it can't as easily be perverted into a Third Way policy.

This
It's capitalist appeasement.
Yang is trying to save capitalism and is a propagandist for it.

I’m gonna reply properly to all these later, I am actually involved in the fastest growing union in my country dip shit, other organisations besides

UBI originated as a "negative income tax" that was proposed by Milton Friedman as a way to give consumers more purchasing power so they could participate in the capitalist economy. that should tell you all you need to know about it's revolutionary potential.
BUT: the fact is that UBI is going to become inevitable under capitalism because currently without it's becoming harder for capitalists to sell things if no one can afford them. When that does happen is going to look pretty shitty if we all argue for getting rid of UBI without proposing some alternative program that will help poor people that doesn't uphold capitalism.

this isn't a fact this is a shotty prediction

yang2020.com/policies/carbon-fee-dividend/
yang2020.com/policies/value-added-tax/
yang2020.com/policies/capital-gain-carried-interest-tax/
yang2020.com/policies/financial-transaction-tax/

This is coming to tens of billions of dollars of tax revenue proposed on things that are going to apply almost exclusively on investors.

bourgeois scum detected

VAT is inherently regressive and is a tax on the poor

lenin was writing about the _experiences_ of the bolshevik party, which included compromises and deals with the existing social democratic parties in russia at the time. the _point_ of the book is to expand these lessons to the new and young communists, who saw the world in black and white ("Reform and revolution are mutually exclusive").

i'm not surprised that you selectively remembered the book:

marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch08.htm


> “The German Communists are Communists because, through all the intermediate stations and all compromises created, not by them but by the course of historical development, they clearly perceive and constantly pursue the final aim—the abolition of classes and the creation of a society in which there will no longer be private ownership of land or of the means of production. The thirty-three Blanquists are Communists just because they imagine that, merely because they want to skip the intermediate stations and compromises, the matter is settled, and if ‘it begins’ in the next few days—which they take for granted—and they take over power, ‘communism will be introduced’ the day after tomorrow. If that is not immediately possible, they are not Communists.

user, i…

Oh look 30% of your UBI just got eaten up by your own retarded policy ideas. And that's assuming the best case scenario on inflation, when in reality every landlord is just going to increase their rend by $1000/mo in response to UBI

Lenin was saying it was ok to allign with social democrats against the Tsar because they were still revolutionary back then.

Succdems are not revolutionary and haven't been for a long time.

America sits so far to the right that succdems are arguably revolutionary specifically in the American context.

lol what?

socdems aren't "left"
there is no "scale" and succdems are not revolutionary

Then why does America keep eliminating them in other countries?

America does the same to capitalist countries

not socdem countries*

??? i just showed you the quote that shows you're wrong, that he is making a much broader point against left-wing communism.

and furthermore no one is talking about "aligning" with social democrats. the original argument was about fighting for and accepting reforms on the path to socialism.

You are heading towards reformism. Like someone earlier mentioned, UBI would require working class mobilization to pass and I would add a working class mobilization powerful enough for revolution because theres no way Bernie, Yang, or your favorite politician can pass this. Why? Cause capitalists will never willingly give away their profits unless they feel forced to, and they can never feel forced to under bourgeois parliaments, which they OWN.

We are also at a point where international socialist revolution is needed to stop nation-states from launching nuclear war and to actually reverse climate change. My advice is to stop being a pussy ass bitch, stop wanting to suck a soc-dem's dick and actually believe in the independent mobilization of the working class.

Read Capital.

Fuck off larper. Try to only engage with your "peers". If you were actually a Marxist you would understand that its necessary to especially engage with people who don't understand things to a higher Marxist level because its up to a Marxist to raise consciousness.

"Reformism" is only something to be allied with when it can actually serve a progressive purpose. Under globalized capitalism now(productive capital being globalized), there are NO reformist parties. Look at Syriza or a whole host of reformers that have been elected since 2008. None of them were able to do shit and in fact actively opposed an independent mobilization of the working class.

Marxists stick with reformers to the extent that the reformers can actually win gains for the working class but the material reality now is that all the old forms of labor organization serve to hold back the working class. Look at how the unions have continually sold out the workers since the 80's, by shutting down strikes and negotiating layoffs. The recent teachers strike is a great example as well. Also look at the fact that all of the successful strikes have been launched INDEPENDENTLY of the unions like the Yellow Vests or the Matamoros strike.

As things are right now, there is NO form of organization that advances the interests of the working class. Thats why reformist illusions are now infantile. That is also why a Marxist must fight for the INDEPENDENT MOBILIZATION OF THE WORKING CLASS, which can only be done through rank-and-file committees of workers. Marxists look at objective reality as constantly changing and the conditions that Lenin faced are far different from the conditions that now exist, which is why the tactics we need to pursue must be different.

no you didn't i replied here


I'm not a left com


voting into office sure sounds like aligning.
Succdem policies are not a path to socialism

they do if they empower workers, giving us more time and money to fight the pigs

but this doesn't happen

you and i are in agreement here. i tried to say as much but this guy

is just pedaling leftwing childishness (and repeating himself 3x so far to no avail)

oh hello Zig Forums
this is a leftwing board after all

but, to start out with, on top of your paycheck you are getting UBI, remember its not like benefits where you stop getting them if you work, you are getting say 12,000 a year extra which puts you in a much better financial place to start with to then contest your working conditions.


I don't think this really constitutes a dialectical or historical analysis, kinda smacks of right wing welfare dependency talking points also. I was talking about the relationship between employers in general and the working class as a whole, they are not revolting against UBI, they are revolting against employers, who are not the ones providing the UBI, the state is, through taxing these employers sure but the relationship is different.

this again smacks of reactionary politics where there working class are hapless/helpless/malevolent, how can you say on the one hand we cant have UBI because families need a certain amount of income from their jobs (assuming probably correctly the majority of the working class are family orientated and spend accordingly) then on the other say they couldn't possibly choose for themselves what to spend money on, because they are mostly (im assuming) unhealthy eaters, drinkiners, gamblers etc. It seems like you are pretending the working class are the lumpen


you could look at the social democratic reforms which have seen, for example, university places become more and more the domain of working class people, and those numbers declining with recent cuts to university, look at the UK . Regardless, even if they do choose to entertain themselves, that is spending which is jobs which is economic growth.

it may well be, the fact is that we have made the jump from everyone on benefits needs to jump through hoops to benefits are automatic for everyone.

Also dunno if you have a job mate but i earn just over minimumn wage and easily pay more than a grand in taxes every year, certainly dont look down people on benefits because paying a grand in taxes is being 1 step away.

but you get UBI regardless of work or not…. so you are getting 12k a year to do nothing, then you could work 15/30/40 hours whatever on top of that.

12k a year basic then whatever you work on top…

no it wont, you aren't adding money articifcially to the system, you are moving money from one area to another, you are simply increasing the consumer spending power of the lower demographics. Looked to minimum wage for the example which everyone said would cause massive inflation but which didn't. Plus unless you have a properly planned economy you are going to have inflation and then only way you can comobat that is outstripping it with sustainable growth, which if you plan to take on the capitalist powers in the world economy you are going to have to do.

so was the USSR and every socialist experiment ever unless you include small enclaves in China and Revolutionary Spain for brief periods

and pay stays the same? or do you just have more people earning less but working less hours (most people i know want less precarious work and more hours because they aren't getting given enough hours at work)

Why do you think people need to be producing services for the middle classes- a large portion of work these days- in order to exist in society?

well dont tell me to "read capital" if you yourself have not read capital?????? jesus christ

why in this instance does the cost of labour power go down? if you are refering to the automation of society yes that is the effect, but in the event that lots of people decide they dont want to work for shit, the cost of labour power goes up because they have to have more incentive to work.

this simply isn't true. The plague famously made conditions better workers who survived it.

a… i see tell me which party is leading which developed capitalist economy to revolution with anything approaching success in the last 50 years?

false dichotomy. If you are creating gains for the working class the is inherently revolutionary. Actually looking at history will show you this. All you have is struggle, building struggle, learning through struggle, the demarcation points of struggle are victorious, these can be tiny (stopping someone from getting evicted) or huge, (securing an 8 hour working day). Neither of these are "revolutionary" and yet both represents expropriation of capital to a degree.

it would be very nice if we could march straight into parliament with a mobilised working class on a pure revolutionary ticket but when has that ever happened in the west ? or even close to it? Revolutions do not happen over night. Small victories and gains are part of the longer process.

so increasing the bargaining power of the working class and their material conditions is a huge step towards this.

so provide a revolutionary perspective.

why stop at 20 hours without loss of pay, why not zero hours without loss of pay? I think the main problem with industrial union focussed strategies is that industry is rapidly become or has already become a thing of the past. In the UK, particularly in Scotlnad where i am, we literally make whiskey and thats it, there is no manufacturing to speak of.

why does it do this?

this is all true, the main point of what i am saying is precisely what you are saying, how can we push traditional union models when soon there will be no jobs?

I am also involved in community organisations, one similar to Acorn, these show great potential but with regards to state policy, i think it precisely the non partisan nature of the UBI demand, coupled with its potential benefits, particularly in the area of expanding bargaining powe, that makes it so appealing.

this is a fact its already happening google aggregate demand across the west look what is happening

Even somebody like Tulsi gabbard getting the presidency and stopping imperialist bullshit, even if they did nothing at home, would be a huge win for the global working class

this was written by a marxist, your use of OBVIOUSLY shows you are probably some kind of holier than thou university trot though

accelerationist, everybody

"puts you in a much better financial place to start with to then contest your working conditions." is a lot different than "you can't really be compelled to work or to work in shit conditions. If your pay is shit you can leave, if conditions are shit you can leave"

I'd agree with the former it might give you an advantage.
The latter is only true if a person is content with living at UBI
However following the same logic as UBI if people are given enough money to live why would they need to make at least enough at a job to survive?(minimum wage) Ultimately I see this as a way to increase the reserve army of labor but now it is formalized as people living off UBI.

how?

if there is any "revolt against employeers" it would take shape as social democracy i.e. tax the rich etc while still maintaining capitalism.
If there was a revolution against capitalism the government(that gives you UBI) would then be over thrown and replaced with a new Socialist one. At a time like this it is uncertain how realistic maintaining UBI in that situation would be.

how? And you're thinking I'm referring to the whole working class when in reality I'm taking about the lumpen.

I don't understand your response. You're saying I said because 12k a year is extremely hard to live off of we can't have ubi?

You're misunderstanding me. No where did I say the entire proletariat are unhealthy eaters, drinkiners, gamblers etc. In fact I am talking about the lumpen and those problems are manifested greatly in the lumpen and are problems that keep them in that spot.
Is it wrong to criticizing hyper consumerism?


As a communist I want a proletariat revolution more so than I want economic capitalist growth. Nicer cars, new iphones hyper consumerism and a more sedated population is not good trade off for a revolutionary class.

cont.

2/2


and?
anecdote

I don't see how this contests my previous reply.

you're typing like a teenage girl with the …
Also you said its good for a general strike which when on strike people tend not to be getting paid which means you're living off of 12k a year.

the poor have more purchasing power, increasing demand of items increases the prices this is supply and demand.


increasing minimum wage causes prices to increase. That is why it is done slowly over time in different areas not drastically all at once.

please.

why does anything need to exist

he's not wrong
not wanting to preserve capitalism isn't accelerationism

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predictions are not facts


Why would an imperialist stop imperialism?

a 12k a year strike fund is a collasal, unprecedented advantage. You are forgetting that most strikes in history have been conducted only with what can be scraped from union dues which was never much, being starved back to work has typically been the major reason strikes have no worked and a huge talking point for the bosses. "ive got to feed my familiy" is the call of of the scab.

so by that logic they drop out of the labour market entierly, they do not increase the reserve army of labour because they are never going to work, therefore the labour pool shrinks and wages go up.

but you dont need a revolution to implement ubi.

okay so the lumpen do this anyway as they do on current benefits but lead a less stressful life overall and are probably better for it, it negates your point about spending choices because the majority of the working class spend on the things they need.

no thats not what im saying, im saying you contradict yourself saying on the one hand the working class are family orientated spenders and on the other they are addicts and gamblers, you have further clarified that point now, but at first that is what you were doing.

you didnt make the distinction and it was implied in the part where you said the working class make bad spending choices.

no but it is wrong to not differentiate between lumpen and prole normal


Proletarian revolution only happens with the empowerment of the working class, the question is, does UBI as a reform empower the working class, i would say yes, as it gives them 12k a year more bargaining power during a strike. You forget that a great many families already live on less than this.

its not a trade off, you build community power and union power, you also seize the state

and that is profound cultural difference. Clearly.

well yes and no, i am anecdotal but working just over minimum wage for 30 hours is pretty typical int he UK and most of these people do not look down on people on benefits


because you are saying people willl argue that if there is UBI you dont need minimum wage (which is a huge reach by itself given there is no data on the subject), and therefore people will be getting less than 12k a year somehow, yet UBI by itself is 12k so obviously you are getting that or more.

im so sorry you dont like my tone

Also you said its good for a general strike which when on strike people tend not to be getting paid which means you're living off of 12k a year.

which is better than living off nothing a year or extremly little like most strikers in history.

what are you some ancap? prices increase yes, in line with aggregate demand, which means more jobs, more spending, so actually youve just increased the chunk that is taken by bosses. Inflation only happens if something outside of the economic system enters, not if you move stuff around within it.


no the reason its done slowly is because you have to struggle for it.

im not saying it was a bad thing, its pretty orthodox theory to go through a state controlled capitalism in order to develop socialism, that is the entire idea.

to make life better for the worker

good thing i told you to google a fact not a prediction then isnt it

gabbard is staunchly anti invtervention you mug

Capitalists have fixed the strike issue with a reserve army of labor. If you go on strike they'll be someone to replace you.

thats not how the reserve army of labor works they can still get a job if needed thus still part of the reserve army of labor.

thats not what I said at all. reread what i wrote.

You said that now they end up destitute and now you're saying that they will do this anyways so you're conceding your originally point
.Also the goal of communist isn't to just make life better under capitalism it is to have a revolution against capitalism.

can both not be true? The lumpen by definitions are addicts, gamblers etc. and most regular proletarians have families.

ok well you're doing the liberal thing where they for some reason apply an aspect of a group of people and strawman you thinking you said ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE of this group does X thing. stop, thats silly.

ok well i clarified above

but this doesn't happen despite years of succdem policies in Europe for example.

and this matters? why?

Your view of lower class people is the anecdote and irrelevant to society as a whole in terms of their view of lower class prols.


what I am saying is after UBI is implemented the argument against minimum wage holds more value i.e. "we already give you a living wage why do you need to make $15 an hour

you go back and forth when talking about upward pressure, saying people will make 12k+ depending on what else they make in their job and in the same argument about upward pressure say its good for striking when you don't make a wage.
My argument for upward pressure and UBI is this. It only works as leverage if you are ok with losing your job and living off of 12k a year.
YOU replied with: 12k + whatever else you make

does an understanding of economics make me an ancap now?
ok you agree with me

its done slowly over time because an increased minimum wage would cause huge price fluctuations

UBI is inevitable is a prediction
does not mean she is not a bourgeois imperialist
imperialism is more than the US invading places.

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what are you on about, there has always been a reserve army of labour as long as there has been capitalism

nope because its a shit job nobody wants to do and most people have UBI. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the reserve army of labour completely negates the act of striking?

but you dont NEED a job, as much, if you have UBI

fair enough, misread, in that case, you are assuming the happening of a revolution, which is more likely to happen if the workers have more bargaining power

no i was saying even if accept that the lumpen dont change their behavior, nothing has changed except the proletariat proper getting an extra 1000 a year, which is a good thing.


i agree, but in order to do that you need to build massive amounts of power and weaken your opponent. UBI, i argue, gives you power

both are true but in the first instance you made it sound as if only the former was true of the whole working class

I said it would stop people falling through the cracks, to which you said "I highly doubt this. Have you see how people are with their spending habits?" I dont see how i was speaking in any more of a generalisation than you were

indeed
Succdems for the last 40 years have been fighting a losing battle agains tthe neolibs privatising everything. They lost because the union power faded and nothing replaced it, now we are seeing a resurgence in the form of community based unions, Acorn for example. That doesn't mean you stop trying to work the state to your advantage and ultimately seize it. You do things bit by bit, not overnight.


this is why i say your thinking is not dialectical. Look, Protestant work ethic, born of its conditions, if you alter the conditions of work, i.e. by making it not 100%necessary, you eventually change the general work ethic, base to superstructure, superstructure to base. Economic relations are replicated reified in social relations

i mean yes it was an anecdote but go look at the stats and it will tell you this.

but this is idealism, it isn't the argument that matters, but the fact that due to increased spending by the lower demographic of consumers having more spending power, the boss will need to produce more and therefore employ more people, while at the same time people will be less incentivised to work, thus shrinking the labour pool while increasing demand. They will be forced to regardless of their propoganda

you go back and forth when talking about upward pressure, saying people will make 12k+ depending on what else they make in their job and in the same argument about upward pressure say its good for striking when you don't make a wage.
No i don't, both are true at the same time, you make 12k basic, you make whatever on top of that and dont lose the 12k, if you need to strike you still have that 12k, which again is way more than any other striker ever in history to my knowledge.

this is a fair point, but what i am saying is that most people will not stop working, they will simply add 12k to their earnings, however, it does give them 12k leeway if their boss decides to do fuckery.

i think we are just crossing wires, of course you lose your wage if you strike, but you still get 12k. What i think i didnt get across properly is that we are talking about the average family not just living off 12k but their salary on top of that.
no but using the simplistic argument that icnreased spending power only inflates prices and not real conditions is an ancap tier argument
yes prices increase but in real terms they do not increase because you have more money. Econ 102. That money was not artifically added to the system but moved from top to bottom

i was talking about the destruction of jobs

sure but it is one large factor

and mobilizing that reserve army and expanding it has gotten more efficient to the point now where strikes are irrelevant in the first world.

When has a strike in the west done something to further socialism?

getting UBI does not mean you're suddenly out of the reserve army of labor. idk what to tell you. Read Marx

no, this is the goal of communists
I don't think "bargaining power" is the right word here. We've had succdem policies in Europe and in the US since FDR which means an increased bargaining power where as in the third world we've been destroying, and yet there are communist revolutions there and not here. So your logic runs counter to reality.

And my response to that is that increased succdem policies is a way for the bourgeois to pay off the working class to not revolt.

Communist revolution has been possible for over 100 years and yet it has not happened. Power isn't the issue , willingness to do revolution is and UBI kills that.

Have you ever read anything about UBI? Milton Friedman suggested just that in regards to UBI

production cost of most things is incredibly small compared to the markup any given goods already has. And yes the possible need to employ more people is one reason why lowering the minimum wage is suggested by UBI capitalists.

I'm saying "upward pressure" as a result of UBI is only relevant IF a person is willing to strike and live off of 12k. The argument could be made that people would rather accept their conditions so long as they can keep their spending habits.

again, on the topic of upward pressure. I said that it only works if you are willing to live off of 12k.

ok thats how prices work.

you said "UBI is going to become inevitable under capitalism "

and? just because you end US wars doesn't mean imperialist is stopped or even slowed it could be easily replaced with something else puppet governments etc

And you have the gall to call others left-liberals.
Work should not be worshiped.

those who do not work neither do they eat

this is conveniently abstract. the "work" of biblical times and the "work" of modernity are different beasts

you mean USSR?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_does_not_work,_neither_shall_he_eat

i encourage you to read the article you so smugly linked
my previous post's point is that "work" isn't some abstract black box: input labour, output food. the mode of work makes a world of difference. if your argument in favor of forcing people to work in the modern mode only concerns maintaining a sense of fairness with regard to raw resources consumed vs produced, and is unconcerned with the process itself, i'm done talking to you.

Sorry comrade, but the Marxist stance on this is correct. Labour is self-actualization, it's rewarding, it improves quality of life. Just because class society corrupts this healthy and social process doesn't mean it's bad in and of itself.

the quote
which people are responding to is made in reference to OP's argument in favor of UBI. not in reference to some unspecified objection to labour in and of itself. the implication is that he would rather wage slavery continue, because getting a free lunch is so much more offensive.

This is quite clearly bollocks there are hundreds of recent examples of strikes and other worker mobilisation winning gains.

I could give so many examples, rent strikes in Glasgow, the Dublin Lock Out, miners strikes etc. What i would like you to tell me is what has done more for the cause of socialism than strikes?

Also you have now shifted the goalposts. You refuse to concede that UBI acts like a strikefund, in the first instance this is what we were arguing, now you have been backed into a corner suddenly we are arguing about the relevance of strikes. So you concede, if striking is a good thing, UBI helps strikers.. yes?

the reserve army of labour are the unemployed who are trying to get back into work. If you are not trying, you do not represent any downwards pressure on wages.

As i have already gone through in the this thread, i have read Marx, the last person who told me to read Marx then couldn't tell me which bit, so, which bit of Marx am i supposed to be reading where he says if you are on UBI you are part of the reserve army of labour?

Why do you refuse nuance? Clearly the conditions of someone who is unemployed and penniless are different to someone who is unemployed but is on UBI. Its like saying someone who lives off stock dividends is still part of the reserve army of labour.

yes well done you believe in revolution. Okay, so how do you bring about revolution. Can i ask have you ever actually organised anything in your life? You do realise its a long term process, a slog, not just something that springs up.

it is exactly the right word, wages are decided through bargaining. I am specifically talking about UBI as it enhances bargaining power, so why would we not talk about it in those terms?

The New deal and post war reforms DID increase the bargaining power of the worker though, do you think it was better before the world wars? Just because it was then brutally pushed backed during the cold war does not mean it wasnt a gain in the first place.

conditions there are different, the state is weaker, the national bourgeoisie is not completely aligned with international bourgeoisie, its completely different

ignore debt relief, ignore the power that is brought through a greater ability to strike, ignore health and education

citation needed

what is your reason behind people being unwilling to revolt? Do you think they aren't starving quite enough or something? Power is the issue, the organs of working class power were attacked, subverted and destroyed systematically.

If there is no will to revolution revolution is impossible, you contradict yourself.

oh militon friedman said it so it must be valid.

and?

and yet nowhere have i suggested that, so im not gonna argue for points im not making.

which they are much more likely to do than living off nothing when they strike. Really couldnt be simpler


which has always been the case and yet people strike still

which is better than living off nothing like your usual striker

prices are relative to other things in the market like wage levels and income, prices going up does not necessarily meaning real term spending goes up. You are either ignorant or being deliberately obtuse

no i didnt
but that isnt what she is suggesting she is suggesting an end to foriegn intervention all together

bump

calling it right now

I doubt spending power will increase since it's relative. Prices will adjust towards the UBI making the UBI irrelevant. If the UBI would be too high people would cease to work since the time investment would bear too little fruit. Social welfare and overall strong economic system gives a better bargaining chip for workers. Even better if the government enforces strict policies in regards to trade protectionism and worker migration. Otherwise the employer would just search lower paying countries to prey on its people who would be given a relatively bigger salary but smaller than the natives, killing salary growth and displacing local workers.

Labour will always be needed in some form, in modern society the labour is more focused on services as a lot of production jobs have been automated. People need incentives to perform jobs, killing incentives kills off economic growth and advancement of one's society. To answer the last question: if people lose incentives to work through UBI, then that country is screwed economically and will be surpassed by any nation not employing such a self destructive scheme.

Well? Where's your revolutionary army, mr realpolitik?

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This this THIS!

If people are making more money, the price of basic goods and services will magically go up at a 1:1 ratio. Just look at millionaires who need to spend $600k/yr on gasoline and need to buy bread for 20 grand a loaf.

Not really. Here the subject of UBI has been processed, deconstructed, discarded, critiqued, all from many perspectives ever since the creation of this board.
While some heavily conditional and critical support for UBI is given here occasionally, it is a far cry from rallying behind a self-declared pro-capitalist entrepreneur promising concessions to the working class to ease and delay the ever more self-destructive nature of capitalism.

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I hate chromatic aberration, Can you undo it with gimp?

Hm. Good question, I should try doing that once I get home. Sounds like a good challenge.

this is your brain on Zig Forums


No, prices only go up if the money supply is increased artificially, but that isn't what you are doing, you are not printing money, you are moving a chunk around

UBI is a necessary step towards communism. It will "delay" it the same way literally any welfare "delays" it, but it's also necessary. Because only once UBI (wealth redistributions "final form") proves unsustainable will people realize that capitalism itself is unsustainable. Until they realize that, even a full economic meltdown will not ensure that a pro-communist civil war happens, it will more likely just be a new government with "human capitalism v5.7".

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Schizophrenic tier take

What you do is you try to get UBI passed. Than capitalists in Parliament block it. This rises class consciousness which leads to revolution. Substute any reform for UBI and it still works, but it’ll work best for UBI because UBI unlike most reforms has labor aristocrats on board.

Silicone Valley is a bunch of labor aristocrats, very few of them own equity or stalk. Their ideological mish mash of the new left and neoliberalism comes from this.

Back to Zig Forums

This but a different take.

People need to develop the concept of social wealth distribution and why it's necessary for human society to continue in a large scale.

The problem isn't UBI, the problem is capitalism.