Corona can only become a kairos if we gain the theoretical capacity of recovery and create the conditions for a transformation. Taking the healthcare system away from the markets and obliging large companies to be oriented in the common good would be steps to infrastructure socialism.
The discussion about Corona
by Herbert Böttcher
[This article published in Mayl 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=17&posnr=735.]
Since our first text on Corona in the Crisis of Capitalism, some of the fears expressed have already been confirmed. The discussion has continued. New facets are coming to the fore. The following remarks suggest themselves to some of them:
In the debate about Corona, President of the German Bundestag Schäuble warns against giving absolute priority to the "protection of life" over other goods1. This cannot be contradicted from a 'heaven of principles' in which supposedly timeless truths are turned back and forth. And so, professionally and vocationally, those entrusted with supratemporal truths and confidants, like philosophers and theologians, have hastened to agree with Schäuble.
In their insistence on general truths, they are all more or less heirs of Kant's ethics. His ethics are based on a purely formal principle: acting out of free will. He is free because he is not bound to any other principle than that of reason and in this he gains that general validity that finds its expression in the categorical imperative. The duties arising out of the pure form of the categorical imperative, however, are unfortunately duties that must be fulfilled in the earthly world. They cannot remain 'pure form', but must be connected with material contents, with contents from the sensual-empirical world. Thus - Kantian-speaking - a power of judgement is required, which subordinates the special of the empirical-sensual world to the general, i.e. to the general truths from the timeless heaven of principles.
It is precisely at this point that it becomes clear that the heaven of principles is by no means as timelessly innocent as it may appear at first glance. In the appearance of universally valid truths, that which in historical reality represents the generally binding law of reason appears in a highly earthly manner: the law of value and the sexual separation connected with it. The historical form of the value-splitting society has always been presupposed without reflection when it comes to the ethical weighing up of goods that are in competition with each other.
This insight sheds light on the darkness of enlightened ethics and its reasoning about which of the contingent goods deserve the preference. Then Schäuble's sensational seeming statement that in the realm of the contingent there can be no absolute - not even the good of life - proves to be as self-evident as it is banal. It becomes problematic, however, because it aims at the crisis of capitalism, which has been further intensified by Corona. Politics seems to want to protect the lives of its own citizens from Corona with a huge national debt. It is precisely this that shows that the life of the capitalist general public is dependent on the production of goods and the fulfillment of the tasks associated with the reproduction of life. The motor of exploitation as well as the motor of reproduction must therefore be restarted as quickly as possible if capitalism is not to completely run into the wall. It is precisely this highly mundane purpose that the banal self-evident things from the heaven of principles should prepare the way. For this purpose not even the platitudinous hint is too embarrassing that the inviolability of human dignity does not exclude "that we must die".
In essence, the reference to the relativity of life to something familiar to capitalism appeals to the willingness - and if you are not willing, then I need violence - to sacrifice life. Thus - despite all the experiences from the two world wars - the discussion about worldwide German military operations was accompanied by appeals that soldiers must be willing to give their lives. Solidarity also requires sacrifice. Peter Jungen from Peter Jungen Holding GmbH, a business angel investor in Europe, the USA and China, made it clear what this meant: "Solidarity means keeping rules "2. What is meant is Italy, which is supposed to pay back its debts. Crisis and questions of coherence or not - debts must be paid. This is all the more true since Italy has refused to implement structural reforms despite its debt. The fact that even greater savings in the healthcare system would have caused even more people to die is the sacrifice that must be made to the law of values.
The killing in fulfillment of the economic and political obligations that go with it, the making of people superfluous, the flight of people and the global destruction of the natural foundations of life, all these are expressions of the capitalist obligation to sacrifice - preferably out of insight and free will, if necessary forced - in a system in which it has always been decided a priori, as it were, that the value of life does not apply to the 'absolutely' unusable. Under the pressure of the crisis, this also applies more and more clearly to the non-usable in the capitalist centers, in times of Corona not least to the sick and old, who represent a burden for the process of utilization. This is exactly what Schäuble has talked about and reminded us of, both banal and cynical. Not 'man as such' is an end in capitalism, but the increase of capital for its own sake. And this is considered 'absolute' despite the contingency of its historical form and thus as a fetish that insists on the fulfillment of the corresponding 'moral' duties.
In the context of a return to capitalist normality as quickly as possible, the implemented loosening moves, which are accompanied by ever new demands for loosening. The infection of 300 - one third - of the cheap laborers from Romania employed at Müller Fleisch in Pforzheim shows where they can lead. At the same time, it becomes clear how unequally risks and burdens are distributed in this normality - an inequality that Corona exacerbates to the point of being life-threatening.3
In the debates about easing the rules, concerns of virologists are wiped away with hints, since wrong political decisions can be revised. In view of the spread of the virus, this would not be so easy. A deceptive certainty seems to suggest that the reproduction rate will fall, so that warnings of a second wave of infection are played down or ignored. The Easter holidays have already shown a slight increase in the reproduction rate4. Above all, in the event of a second wave of infection - because the virus spreads not only in individual hotspots, but throughout the country - it would have much better starting conditions and could have more serious consequences than the first wave.
Political decision-makers are not only under pressure from the economic crisis, but also from those who are pressing for a return to the 'normality' of everyday capitalist life. There is some evidence that under this pressure the political debate - emphasizing the independence of political action - is separating from the debate about scientific assessments of the danger of the virus. Political assessments of different virological expertise are being replaced by the discrediting of scientists. In familiar hostility to theory and reflection, rational considerations threaten to disappear behind mixtures of 'gut feeling', 'common sense' and 'popular feeling', accompanied by conspiracy ideological considerations. This does not deny that loosening up is useful and necessary where people meet in isolated old people's homes or when accompanying the sick and especially the dying. However, there is often a lack of appropriate protective measures, including sufficient tests and protective clothing for visitors, nursing staff, and doctors, which is not least a consequence of the economic calculations associated with the neoliberal reforms.
In a situation in which 'getting together' and cooperation would be important, tendencies toward political isolation are becoming apparent. The fact that the USA is stopping payments to the WHO is just as wrong a sign as the absence of the USA and Russia from the conference on vaccine development. Above all, it is an illusion to be able to save oneself from the virus by leaving collapsing countries to their own devices. The fight against the virus will not be won with compartmentalization and nationalistic isolation. Those who are rightly concerned about surveillance, authoritarian state and state of emergency should focus their concerns on the period of return to capitalist crisis normality.
There is a danger that authoritarian measures tried and tested in the Corona crisis will then be enforced to deal with the capitalist crisis reality with its social distortions. It is also feared that these measures will meet with approval precisely when they are intended to safeguard capitalist crisis normality, as if they are "only" about containing the corona virus. The normality of the state of emergency for fugitives has not yet been disrupted by any liberal party.
There are parallels to 9/11: Even the measures that were decided on head over heels at that time are still being applied today in areas that have nothing to do with terrorism, and they have been retained, even though they have proved ineffective as measures to combat terrorism. It is therefore obvious that the technical and repressive possibilities associated with the 'corona app' or a lifelong (!) existing digital biometric 'vaccination certificate'5 will by no means be limited to 'corona-specific occasions'. It should make people sit up and take notice if some demand that corresponding tracking programs should be mandatory6 or that data should also be collected from non-infected persons.7
The extent to which even supposedly critical thinking is integrated into the forms of thought associated with the value-division society becomes clear in an interview with Marlehn Thieme, the president of Welthungerhilfe8 . She refers to "the disastrous interplay of the corona pandemic, armed conflicts and climate change", which "leads to a famine catastrophe of the greatest magnitude". And yet everything depends on the exploitation process: "Even with one percent less economic growth, the number of poor and starving people could increase by 2 percent. Conversely, this means that we need 'growth' - regardless of the destruction it brings with it.9
In the discussion about crisis capitalism in Corona times, the hopeless jumping back and forth between polarities seems to take place ever faster and more confusingly. Sometimes the protection of life by the state, sometimes loosening in the interest of the functioning of the economy - and this too serves to protect life, because all other values, the entire canon of values of the constitution, depend on the utilization of capital. On the one hand, there are complaints that digitization in schools has not progressed far enough. At the same time, complaints about the psychological and socio-psychological burdens caused by the lack of face-to-face communication are forcing open doors because they increase the pressure to relax. Political forces are torn between relaxation and a state of emergency. It is quickly overlooked that even authoritarian politics has its limits. It has to assert itself in the face of dwindling resources and by means of wild apparatuses and, as the opening of schools shows, it also encounters a collapsing functional intelligence. The tangled back and forth and then again the turning in circles is an expression of the confused and confusing conditions that are fired by Corona, but not created with Corona.
Some leftists move close to those who see an opportunity in the crisis. It is said that every crisis is associated with a kairos, a favorable time for a turnaround. With the collapse of Corona - as a perverted Badiou event, so to speak - we make the existential experience that our everyday life can change "from one day to the next". Then something else can change as well: the activities invisible under the fetish of goods, such as nursing, become visible and appear in the light of systemic relevance. The savings in the health system turn out to be a mistake. Politics saves companies, why shouldn't it be possible to democratize them? After all, measures that Corona suggests could be made permanent: In other words, "taking the healthcare system away from the market, obliging large companies to orient their economic activities to the common good," would be a step in the direction of infrastructure socialism. If it were that simple: Corona blows away the crisis, including the value-division society, its thinking and socio-psychological conditioning. and all will be well.
It is not Corona that has driven us out of our minds. That was lost with the collapse of theoretical reflection and the pragmatism associated with it even before Corona. This loss is one of the pre-existing conditions that the virus encountered. The effort to become theoretically capable would be an indispensable prerequisite for a process of recovery and change that does not dream and wish for itself, but recognizes and negates what constitutes capitalism and thus creates the conditions for a transformation based on the negation of the value-divisionalization. Only then would Corona have become a kairos.
Herbert Böttcher, early May 2020.
The discussion about Corona
by Herbert Böttcher
[This article published in Mayl 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=17&posnr=735.]
Since our first text on Corona in the Crisis of Capitalism, some of the fears expressed have already been confirmed. The discussion has continued. New facets are coming to the fore. The following remarks suggest themselves to some of them:
In the debate about Corona, President of the German Bundestag Schäuble warns against giving absolute priority to the "protection of life" over other goods1. This cannot be contradicted from a 'heaven of principles' in which supposedly timeless truths are turned back and forth. And so, professionally and vocationally, those entrusted with supratemporal truths and confidants, like philosophers and theologians, have hastened to agree with Schäuble.
In their insistence on general truths, they are all more or less heirs of Kant's ethics. His ethics are based on a purely formal principle: acting out of free will. He is free because he is not bound to any other principle than that of reason and in this he gains that general validity that finds its expression in the categorical imperative. The duties arising out of the pure form of the categorical imperative, however, are unfortunately duties that must be fulfilled in the earthly world. They cannot remain 'pure form', but must be connected with material contents, with contents from the sensual-empirical world. Thus - Kantian-speaking - a power of judgement is required, which subordinates the special of the empirical-sensual world to the general, i.e. to the general truths from the timeless heaven of principles.
It is precisely at this point that it becomes clear that the heaven of principles is by no means as timelessly innocent as it may appear at first glance. In the appearance of universally valid truths, that which in historical reality represents the generally binding law of reason appears in a highly earthly manner: the law of value and the sexual separation connected with it. The historical form of the value-splitting society has always been presupposed without reflection when it comes to the ethical weighing up of goods that are in competition with each other.
This insight sheds light on the darkness of enlightened ethics and its reasoning about which of the contingent goods deserve the preference. Then Schäuble's sensational seeming statement that in the realm of the contingent there can be no absolute - not even the good of life - proves to be as self-evident as it is banal. It becomes problematic, however, because it aims at the crisis of capitalism, which has been further intensified by Corona. Politics seems to want to protect the lives of its own citizens from Corona with a huge national debt. It is precisely this that shows that the life of the capitalist general public is dependent on the production of goods and the fulfillment of the tasks associated with the reproduction of life. The motor of exploitation as well as the motor of reproduction must therefore be restarted as quickly as possible if capitalism is not to completely run into the wall. It is precisely this highly mundane purpose that the banal self-evident things from the heaven of principles should prepare the way. For this purpose not even the platitudinous hint is too embarrassing that the inviolability of human dignity does not exclude "that we must die".
In essence, the reference to the relativity of life to something familiar to capitalism appeals to the willingness - and if you are not willing, then I need violence - to sacrifice life. Thus - despite all the experiences from the two world wars - the discussion about worldwide German military operations was accompanied by appeals that soldiers must be willing to give their lives. Solidarity also requires sacrifice. Peter Jungen from Peter Jungen Holding GmbH, a business angel investor in Europe, the USA and China, made it clear what this meant: "Solidarity means keeping rules "2. What is meant is Italy, which is supposed to pay back its debts. Crisis and questions of coherence or not - debts must be paid. This is all the more true since Italy has refused to implement structural reforms despite its debt. The fact that even greater savings in the healthcare system would have caused even more people to die is the sacrifice that must be made to the law of values.
The killing in fulfillment of the economic and political obligations that go with it, the making of people superfluous, the flight of people and the global destruction of the natural foundations of life, all these are expressions of the capitalist obligation to sacrifice - preferably out of insight and free will, if necessary forced - in a system in which it has always been decided a priori, as it were, that the value of life does not apply to the 'absolutely' unusable. Under the pressure of the crisis, this also applies more and more clearly to the non-usable in the capitalist centers, in times of Corona not least to the sick and old, who represent a burden for the process of utilization. This is exactly what Schäuble has talked about and reminded us of, both banal and cynical. Not 'man as such' is an end in capitalism, but the increase of capital for its own sake. And this is considered 'absolute' despite the contingency of its historical form and thus as a fetish that insists on the fulfillment of the corresponding 'moral' duties.
In the context of a return to capitalist normality as quickly as possible, the implemented loosening moves, which are accompanied by ever new demands for loosening. The infection of 300 - one third - of the cheap laborers from Romania employed at Müller Fleisch in Pforzheim shows where they can lead. At the same time, it becomes clear how unequally risks and burdens are distributed in this normality - an inequality that Corona exacerbates to the point of being life-threatening.3
In the debates about easing the rules, concerns of virologists are wiped away with hints, since wrong political decisions can be revised. In view of the spread of the virus, this would not be so easy. A deceptive certainty seems to suggest that the reproduction rate will fall, so that warnings of a second wave of infection are played down or ignored. The Easter holidays have already shown a slight increase in the reproduction rate4. Above all, in the event of a second wave of infection - because the virus spreads not only in individual hotspots, but throughout the country - it would have much better starting conditions and could have more serious consequences than the first wave.
Political decision-makers are not only under pressure from the economic crisis, but also from those who are pressing for a return to the 'normality' of everyday capitalist life. There is some evidence that under this pressure the political debate - emphasizing the independence of political action - is separating from the debate about scientific assessments of the danger of the virus. Political assessments of different virological expertise are being replaced by the discrediting of scientists. In familiar hostility to theory and reflection, rational considerations threaten to disappear behind mixtures of 'gut feeling', 'common sense' and 'popular feeling', accompanied by conspiracy ideological considerations. This does not deny that loosening up is useful and necessary where people meet in isolated old people's homes or when accompanying the sick and especially the dying. However, there is often a lack of appropriate protective measures, including sufficient tests and protective clothing for visitors, nursing staff, and doctors, which is not least a consequence of the economic calculations associated with the neoliberal reforms.
_______________________________________________________
Alternatives to Capitalism - In Check: Unconditional Basic Income
by Günther Salz
First published in: Network Telegram of the Ecumenical Network Rhine-Moselle-Saar No. June 2019
[This article published in June 2019 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://exit-online.org/textanz1.php?tabelle=aktuelles&index=12&posnr=740.]
The Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) has been the subject of repeated debate for decades - some would even speak of centuries. In times in which more and more people are employed in Germany - in contrast to global developments - but on the one hand hardly in so-called normal working conditions, but rather precariously, and on the other hand more and more production processes are taken over by machines and computers/robots, the discussion about a BGE increases again. Many people hope that this will put an end to the domination by job centers, social services and employers, as well as an end to the general obligation to work and social insecurity. Conversely, a BGE should enable everyone to work in freedom and security and to better combine work and family life.
But can the BGE deliver what it promises? This question must be clearly negated in the context of a crisis-ridden capitalist society. Neither a redistribution of wealth, no matter how well-intentioned, nor the justified wishes for an emancipatory overcoming of existing conditions can be fulfilled by the BGE.
As a social worker who has been active in the fight against poverty since 1980 and has experienced both growing unemployment and the erosion of secure employment relationships, the issue of a "basic income" was almost impossible to avoid. That is why I already briefly dealt with the topic in my first book on "Poverty through Wealth", which was published in 1991. I was more involved with the basic income (GE) when the KAB launched a working time offensive in 2005 and in 2007 brought a resolution to introduce a guaranteed basic income into the public debate. I liked the idea of combining the demand for a general reduction in working hours (AZV) with a GE in order to be able to compensate for possible wage cuts with its help. However, after I, together with other KAB and Netz colleagues, had dealt with its basic categories of commodity, labor, money, crisis, market and state (and later with the split-off and femininely connoted moments that constitute its mute precondition) in the context of a capitalism course, it occurred to me that the idea of a basic income together with the KAB vision of an "activity society" would do the math without the capitalist host.
1. essentials of the unconditional basic income
An (unconditional) basic income is "an income that is paid individually by a political community to all its members without means test and without consideration" (Vanderborght/Van Parijs, 2005, p. 14).
It is thus paid from birth to individuals and not to households or "need communities" as for example with Hartz IV.
It is universal and each citizen of a community (German nationals) is entitled to it.
It is unconditional and is granted without any advance or consideration such as savings or work benefits and without regard to one's own income and assets - i.e. without a means test.
In most cases - but not always - the BGE is associated with the idea that it should be paid out in an amount that secures livelihoods and avoids poverty (Rätz/Paternoga/Steinbach, 2005, p. 12).
The fact that it is to be paid out unconditionally to all shows that there is more at stake than poverty reduction. But the ever-increasing circle of its protagonists also indicates this.
For the group of BGE advocates has meanwhile become a motley collection of entrepreneurs, institutes close to business, left-wing liberal citizens and citizens, precarious self-employed persons, politicized youth (BDKJ), social movements such as Attac, critics of labor and capitalism, parties (such as parties (such as the GE network within the left), representatives of the unemployed and networkers from the KAB to humanist socialists, human rights activists and prominent advocates such as Klaus-Maria Brandauer, Jean Claude Juncker, Yanis Varoufakis and the philosopher Richard David Precht. Especially the corporate side has been pushing the introduction of a BGE in recent years, according to the association "Wirtschaft für GE", or Klaus Schwab, the organizer of the rich people's meeting in Davos, or Joe Kaeser, the head of Siemens.
Their tendency to share a common diagnosis is that full employment is a thing of the past and that the basic income represents a departure into a new future. A basic income enables self-determination, creativity and freedom. "Working in freedom and security" is the credo of the BGE'ler.
It is probably doubtful that the aforementioned all pursue the same goals or humanistic intentions. But let's take a closer look at this and examine some approaches by way of example to highlight the differences.
2 The current BGE discussion
In doing so, I first refer to two market radical-neoliberal concepts, then to the approach of the "BAG GE" in the party "Die Linke" and finally to the ideas of the KAB.
2.1 Götz Werner
So, first of all there is the approach of the founder of the dm drugstore chain. He considers Hartz IV to be "open prison", a "right to work" to be nonsensical and demands a BGE as a civil right that frees people from existential fears (Werner, 2007).
He sees that human work is becoming less and less due to ever more technical progress or the use of machines. To eliminate the unequal duel between man and machine, he proposes the introduction of a consumption tax and the abolition of income and wage taxes. This would turn Germany into a "tax haven and a labor paradise" (p. 192). Companies would be able to invest again and, with the help of the basic income and without the annoying corporate tax, would much rather hire than today (2007).
With the BGE between 800 and 1.500 € all social transfers would gradually become superfluous - as well as area tariffs and thus probably also the trade unions. Götz Werner wrote this in his book "Einkommen für alle" in 2007; in 2018 he has published an updated new edition of his book with the subtitle "Bedingungsloses GE - die Zeit ist reif". Here he once again examines the obstacles and counter-arguments against a GE and explains - similarly to 10 years ago - why a GE is the only alternative to "full employment" and the nonsensical "right to work" (Werner, 2018).
Instead of sticking to the historically heralded ideology of work, one should welcome technical progress and the disappearance of work. For the sense of rationalization is to produce more efficiently and to free people from bad and dangerous work (p. 97). Moreover, the labor market is not a free market, since one has no real choice and no income without work. In a real labor market, the principle "everyone can work, but no one has to" applies. The "right to work" was no longer up to date and had to be replaced by the "right to income" - especially for low-income earners (p. 99 and p. 128f).
Götz Werner is concerned with abolishing all obstacles to the free development of capital and work - for capital by means of a consumption tax at the end of the value-added process and with a BGE between 1000 and 1500 Euro for fearless and thus creative work. In this way capital and labor could work in peace (p. 277). Here apparently all contradictions between capital and labor, all contradictions within the commodity and the production of goods are eliminated. According to Götz Werner, labor and capital are "forms of the same human power," nothing material at all, but basically something purely spiritual. And this spirit changes reality (p. 277f.).
2.2 Thomas Straubhaar
Another lively spirit in the GE discussion is the Swiss Thomas Straubhaar, Prof. for International Economic Relations at the University of Hamburg and ambassador of the neoliberal "Initiative Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft". In a study from March 2007, he had (together with others) not only calculated and presented the old house model of "solidary citizen's money" as financeable, but also developed his own ideas on the basis of model calculations (Straubhaar et al., 2007). In doing so, he starts out from a critique of the social security systems. The insurance system is too expensive and too inefficient. The population pyramid is reversing, growth forces are weakening, and the previous scope for distribution is disappearing. Since lifelong gainful employment would be the exception in the future, the old wage-labor-based security system would become loose from its roots. In this situation, only a change in the system would help.
And this change can be achieved with a BGE. In this way, a universal socio-political transfer would be paid to all Germans from the cradle to the grave, without conditions, without consideration, without application and thus without bureaucratic effort (loc.cit., p. 13). In return, pension, health, unemployment and nursing care insurance, Alg II and social assistance, housing and child benefits disappear, as do protection against dismissal and minimum wages. Thus, the welfare state should become leaner, i.e. cheaper.
In his new book "Radikal gerecht" ("Radically fair") from 2017, Straubhaar updates his older considerations and opens his concept with the striking words: "'Money for all'. From the state. Without return service. Just like that. To all. Whether poor or rich, young or old, with or without family, living alone or together with others", whether with or without work - enough to ensure the minimum subsistence level and to make participation possible (Straubhaar, 2017, p. 7).
Why "money for all"? Because it responds adequately to the developments of the 21st century such as individualization, aging and digitization (p.28). The old concepts of the 19th century are no longer suitable. Therefore, a system change is necessary.
However, the "system change" does not refer to the capitalist whole, but primarily to the welfare state and the tax system. At its core, the GE is a fundamental tax reform by bundling all social policy measures in one instrument in the manner of a negative income tax (p. 14). With 80 million recipients, the costs of this instrument amounted to about 576 billion euros annually with a GE of 600 euros and to about 960 billion euros with a monthly income of 1000 euros (p. 142). The GE is to be financed by withholding taxes on all income at a uniform tax rate - regardless of the origin of the income (p.62). The taxation also includes profits from the use of robots by taxing their owners, e.g. when companies distribute profits from share ownership. A direct machine or robot tax would only slow down their use - very similar to what Götz Werner thinks.
One sees: Technical and economic progress should be promoted by the BGE and an adequate tax system. According to Straubhaar, the replacement of people by machines is part of the essence of capitalism. Through the same taxation, an immanent justice for all economic subjects should be established - but the real property relations and especially the dependent wage labor remain untouched. In a liberal gesture, Straubhaar considers the administrative labor breeding by the job centers to be dispensable because it is inefficient and too expensive. But be careful: This could indeed abolish the obligation to work; but at the same time, it would create a low-cost post-industrial reserve army for the changing needs of capital (see Financing Models p. 142f.). My conclusion: Straubhaar's concept seems quite reasonable and coherent in itself - but it is the immanent rationality of capital that speaks from it.
2.3 The left BGE
Left-wing ideas of the BGE address social contradictions and the question of distribution, but also oppose the state-imposed obligation to work.
Since 2007, a group within the party "Die Linke", led by the member of the Bundestag Katja Kipping and her research associate Ronald Blaschke, has been working to assert the idea of the BGE within and outside their party. A "repression-free, needs-oriented basic security" (2007) or a sanction-free minimum-security of 1050 euros, as demanded by their party today, is not enough for them.
In 2013, the BAG Basic Income in the Left Party then passed an extended resolution, which has been available since 2016 in the form of a brochure entitled "Our concept of a BGE - financeable, emancipatory, promoting the common good". The new BGE, which is designed in two variants, namely as a social dividend and as a negative income tax, comes out of the middle of the left-wing discussion and is intended to be an emancipatory one. It is to be understood as a basic security, which is granted to all without repression or preconditions and which is not in character a social benefit, but rather a kind of "primary income", which is supposedly upstream of market and capital incomes. The emancipatory GE wants to guarantee more self-determination, freedom from poverty and freedom of leisure and to be a pacemaker towards a solidary and ecological economy. In this way, gainful employment could be only one of many possible activities for men and women; and in this way, social power and the power of wage laborers could be strengthened. Therefore, other social goals can also be considered, such as a democratic organization of the economy and finances, the appropriation of all means for a social production that breaks with the cultural domination of capital and consumption. The left-wing GE also makes it possible to oppose the overexploitation of nature "without fear" because it is secure. It is thus much more than a restructuring of the social systems, but rather an approach to overcoming capitalist and patriarchal power relations (p. 29). Moreover, it is understood as a global human right.
The level of the GE is linked to the level of GDP. For children under 16 years of age, half of an adult GE is provided. This would have been 540 euros in 2013; adults should receive 1080 euros accordingly (p. 31). The GE will not count towards other incomes, but can be fully accumulated. This will ensure an appropriate wage gap (no "relativization of gainful employment"!).
The total cost of a left-wing GE in the social dividend variant amounts to about 985 billion euros per year. With crediting of omitted tax reliefs still net 863 billion Euro per year. The costs of a GE in the form of a negative income tax would amount to 589 billion and 467 billion euros net (p. 32f.). The GE is to be financed by a separate BGE levy on all gross primary incomes, which is a left-wing particularity among the various BGE concepts. But similar to the KAB concept, the plan is to flank it with minimum wages, shorter working hours and an expanded provision for basic needs as well as the introduction of a citizens' insurance. This brings me to the KAB model, which is called Guaranteed Basic Income (GGE) here.
2.4 The GGE of the KAB
With its GGE, KAB also has a vision, that of the "activity society". It stands for the desire for liberation from the domination of capital over people, for the intention to relativize gainful employment. For this reason, in the activity society, gainful employment, family work and work oriented to the common good are recognized as being of equal value in principle (triad of work). This idea includes a new justice and gender parity. Everyone should be able to participate in all forms of work: Poor and rich, women and men. The goal is to move from externally determined work to self-determined activities - also by replacing social security with wage labor centering with the help of a GGE. Accordingly, it is defined as a human right and not a right based on gainful employment.
The amount of the GGE is basically based on the poverty avoidance threshold. As of 2015, adults will receive 795 euros and children 497 euros. The housing benefit entitlement remains. If necessary, there is a life-situation allowance of 298 euros. The classic social insurance schemes will remain in place, but welfare benefits such as ALG II, social benefits, but also child benefits and Bafög will be dropped. These savings, together with a fair tax reform, are to finance the GGE. Income exceeding the GGE will be subject to tax and social security contributions from the first euro. An expanded public provision of general interest, a minimum wage and reductions in working hours are important basic conditions for the KAB model (KAB 2015).
The KAB emphasizes the importance of work for participation in society. And so the guaranteed basic income is based on a "positive image of man". It is based on the fact that people will continue to work even if a GGE is introduced. Because work is supposed to be participation in God's creation and only "good work", which makes a good life possible for everyone.
3 Fundamental criticism and evaluation of the BGE
Is this idea only a utopia or a realistic hope? Is a BGE an instrument of a new, free society that has abolished poverty and in which one can "work in freedom"? Doubts are in order.
Basic income models usually remain at the distribution level of macroeconomic processes and usually ignore the political-economic depth structures as well as the functional relationship between state and market. They often do not realize the tacit prerequisites of their concepts. One progresses more or less effortlessly from a description of the problem to its solution, the BGE, without having performed a categorical analysis of the social contradictions underlying the problems, let alone having shed light on the crisis-like structure and dynamics of capitalism using Marxist and feminist criteria and concepts. Although the concept of the LEFT BAG suggests this reference, it does not develop a genuinely Marxist concept of social change. Thus, it remains stuck in capitalist immanence. Already the concept of the "social dividend" shows the proximity to capitalist thinking in the context of financial capitalism: there is supposed to be an individual claim to an income similar to that of shareholders, so to speak as a shareholder of "Deutschland AG", which cannot be handed over to me, wherever it may come from. The impossibility of this undertaking, analogous, so to speak, to the impossible tapping of "money without value" (Robert Kurz) from the bubble economy, cannot be perceived at all in this form of thinking.
Yet the guaranteed or unconditional basic income is already a fascinating idea. Who did not want to "work in freedom"? Who did not want to live in a free and solidary society? Which philanthropist did not want to abolish the repressive Hartz system with its compulsory work? Who did not want to work shorter, more meaningful and more self-determined? Who should have something against a secure existence, shortened gainful employment and a better balance between work, family and community?
But: These models are neither up to the capitalist idiosyncrasy nor its dynamics. This will now be explained using key moments of capitalist totality.
3.1 BGE unconditional?
A general basic income would not be unconditional in any economy. First of all, a surplus product must always be created if "non-workers" - both rich and poor - want or need to be fed. Under capitalist conditions, any income presupposes successful value-added production and value-added realization on the market. Value-added production presupposes (wage) labor, that is, exploitation and dependence. The "freedom" of basic income recipients thus requires the lack of freedom of wage laborers. The obligation to work would only be abolished for those who want to live on a (preferably high) basic income, but not for those who would have to finance it. The attribute "unconditional" applies at best to the omission of a needs assessment and possible payment by tax offices. In principle, it is not possible to create an oasis of freedom in the middle of the desert of capital - just as it is not possible to really decouple income and work. The BGE "points (...) as little beyond the existing society as a mirage points beyond the desert that creates it", Rainer Roth comments aptly (Roth, 2006, p. 71).
3.2 Freedom through money?
But how can the illusion of wanting to bring about freedom through money come about? This has to do with the peculiar, not easily comprehensible nature of money. For money is not simply a means of exchange or payment. Money is the manifestation of value as an abstract, sensually intangible relationship between producers and the goods they produce on the market. What does that mean more precisely?
Money is the most general of all goods. At the end of the production and sale of goods, money advanced is to become more money (G-W-G'). This is the alpha and omega of capital. The produced 'goods' serve as material carriers of exchange value only incidentally for the fulfillment of human needs; the main purpose is the multiplication of money as capital, as an endless process and end in itself. Human labor is the decisive means to this irrational end in itself, which is hostile to humans and nature (Kurz, 2001, p. 56-59; Ders. 2004, p.44-129). This is also the reason why a taxation of robots, which some protagonists mention as the financing basis of a BGE, is not possible. Machines/robots - in contrast to human labor - do not generate (added) value and therefore cannot be taxed.
In money, wage labor expresses itself as "abstract", generally human labor and substance of value. Money reflects the extent of the average working time, i.e. the value contained in the production of goods. And in the exchange of goods in the market, value appears in the form of money as the abstract common of the most different goods. For the value as the "ghostly quality" of a social relation (see above) needs an independent, recognizable expression - and this it gets in money. Without abstract labor there is no money, and without added value from exploitation there is no money multiplication. In the abstraction "money", all capitalist production and fetish relations are contained as independent, foreign power over the makers, as relations of things that determine the relations of persons, as deception of wage relations as allegedly just and equal exchange, as abstract wealth in concrete poverty, as money becoming independent from work, as financial crises that nobody wanted, as universal competition, and as environmental destruction that is obviously unstoppable. Only through the naive-unconscious abstraction from these fetish relationships can money appear as a remedy for liberation from the yoke of wage labor or even for self-realization. But since it is part of the essence of money as the most abstract, general expression of value to make the connection to production and the market invisible, it is capable of creating illusions and delusions about reality. This also includes the deception of creating social security with money or being able to decouple income from work - and at the same time not even mentioning, let alone critically reflecting, the ecological crisis dimensions or the split-off moments.
3.3 The state as guarantor of freedom?
If the economy and its money cannot realize liberation - can the state perhaps be a midwife and guarantor of freedom? This is obviously the hope of many BGE/GGEler and also of the KAB.
But even this is hardly to be assumed, considering that the state is the complementary side of the market and the economy. Since it is dependent on successful capital accumulation in order to function, it must first and foremost guarantee its duration and thus the stability of the capital relationship. (KAB 2016, p. 35f.; Netztelegramm, 2014, p.2) This includes that labor should remain guaranteed, which as the "substance of capital" (Marx) must always be available. Under these circumstances, can one seriously believe that the state will pay a kind of exemption or strike pay for everyone by means of a basic income? (see Roth, 2006, p. 44).
Instead, the introduction of a basic income would possibly even mean a deterioration in the situation of wage workers. For capital would just about benefit from a reduction in wages and be relieved of the moral obligation to at least ensure the reproduction of its labor force. For with a BGE or GGE, the state would have assumed the sole task of securing the livelihood of all. Employers could easily reject workers' claims to an adequate wage by referring to the basic income. This would possibly lead to what already occurred during the English system of wage subsidies for poor workers between 1795 and 1834: the capitalists regarded public assistance to the poor as part of the wage and deducted it from it as a matter of course (Marx, MEW 40, p. 524).
Even the amount of a GE should not be too lavish for cost reasons. If the GE was to come into the world, it would be as a capital-functional variant for rationalizing capitalist contradictions. Because the BGE fits like a fist in the eye of a unlocked flexible capitalism. Apparently, the head of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, has recognized this. With a view to digitalization and precarious work, he also pleads for a GE. So where is the emancipatory left?
3.4 Human rights as guarantors of freedom and security?
Even if the basic income were to be crushed between the state and capital - would human rights not then be a lifeline to freedom? After all, they are supposed to protect the rights of the individual from the state and within the state. In fact, the idea of liberation from dependence and existential fears for BGEler is based on the idea of human and civil rights. Human rights, such as the right to life(!), are always unconditional, says for example Werner Rätz of Attac, a long-time advocate of the BGE.
But unfortunately, human and civil rights also came into the world with a birth defect. Already during the French Revolution (in June 1793), the right to property, i.e. the freedom of entrepreneurs, took precedence over the right to life1 that Robespierre had demanded (see Rainer Roth in www.klartext-info.de/artikel/bge_als_menschenrecht.htm). At that time, human rights allowed slavery, exploitation and disregard for women's rights, just as they do today in wars of globalization and a billion-starving people. Human rights are part of the freedom and equality ideology of the civil enlightenment, which already carries its opposite within itself. Recognition as a legal subject, and thus recognition of "inalienable" human rights, is only granted to those who are exploitable and want to be exploited (see Kurz, 2004, pp. 53-88). For this reason, the civil state on which the BGElerInnen rely has put the "right to life and integrity" at the disposal of the BGElerInnen with Hartz IV and the sanction paragraph 31 SGB II.
Incidentally, it is telltale and enlightening what the revolutionary and human rights activist Thomas Paine put forward in 1796 to justify an early type of basic income: He recommended, among other things, that all citizens from their 25th birthday onward should be paid a small lump sum of money "as compensation for the natural rights (according to which the earth belongs to everyone; G.S.) that have been lost to them through the system of land ownership" (see Vanderborght/Van Parijs, 2005, p. 21).
Similarly, a basic income today would be a kind of compensation for small self-employed, precarious wage workers and the unemployed for lost possession of means of production and lack of participation in social wealth. On the capital side, it would be a bad exchange that did not change the competitive and value relationship.
But this is exactly what the left-wing BGElerInnen (and also the KAB) think they can achieve with the GE. Probably this illusion is also connected with the fact that they, like the neoliberal approaches, lack a thorough monetary and crisis theory of capitalism.
3.5 Crises and GE
But if labor, goods, and money are inseparably linked, as discussed above, what is the crisis of labor that has given rise to the discussion about a BGE? This is less about cyclical crises of utilization than about the potentially final crisis of decay of capitalism and the connection between this and the devaluation of money. For in the blind accumulation of capital there is a big worm inside it that is capable of devouring the system itself. In his "Grundrisse" of 1857/58, Marx calls this the "processing contradiction", which he describes as follows: "Capital itself is the processing contradiction (in that) it seeks to reduce working time to a minimum, while on the other hand it sets working time as the only measure and source of wealth" (Marx, 1974, p. 593). In simple words: capital lives on labor as its substance, but it must reduce it increasingly!
This system contradiction is caused by the compulsive competition of the individual capitals among themselves. For if individual capital wants to survive in competition on the market or even make an extra profit, it must be more productive, i.e. cheaper and faster than the others. It achieves this through the increased use of labor- and time-saving machines and thus makes human labor superfluous.
If now in the course of the third microelectronic revolution and the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) more productive work is lost in total than newly created, the logical contradiction becomes historically mature. Capital comes up against its inner (value) barrier and its outer (nature) barrier at the same time. Because with the increased use of machines on the one hand the productivity and thus the material output is increased, but on the other hand the mass of surplus-value contained in goods is reduced. Since it is precisely what capital needs, however, even more goods must be produced to compensate for the loss of value. But this means even more resource consumption and further rationalization. In this compulsively crazy way capital self-destructively undermines the foundations of "all wealth: the earth and the worker" (Marx, 2008, p. 529f.). And this cannot remain without consequences for money either. How is security to be achieved by money, considering that "money" as the most abstract expression of value is as much affected by the melting of the value substance "labor" as the state? Visible signs of this decay are national debt and flight to the financial markets with their worthless money bubbles as well as the spread of precarious work and disintegrating states with their plundering economies and despotic-authoritarian forms of rule that can supposedly control everything, only definitely not the abolition of the litigious contradiction.
4 What follows from this?
In my opinion, it is therefore imperative not to create security and participation through a gigantic redistribution of precarious wealth, but to tackle precisely the overcoming of this kind of wealth production as an independent fetish form: namely, the abolition of abstract labor, of value and the production of goods, of money and the market, the overcoming of wage labor and with it the abolition of capital, but also the abolition of the state as organizer of the market and the fetish form "nation"-and not to forget the abolition of the split-off and inferiorly connoted side of reproduction as the mute precondition of the capital relation (cf. Scholz 2011).
The attempt at emancipation from the global destructive capitalist form of society, which is also considered necessary by left-wing proponents of BGE, must therefore take paths other than BGE and must not speak out in terms of simplified, unreflected longings for illusory (economic) security under capitalism. To put it positively: "With the abolition of the value (secession) form and fetishism, a new humane, solidary context of existence and meaning would have to be constituted that enabled people to live on undamaged without unnecessary, socially caused suffering; a new socialization context that is transparent for everyone and that is based on the self-determination of those in need of and capable of supplementation, d. i.e., concrete "social individuals," and made possible an autonomous, social purpose of production that ensured a dignified life for all people. Conditions, then, in which nature too would come to its 'right' and man would no longer be a means for foreign, systemic ends, nor a degraded, enslaved, abandoned, contemptuous being, but 'the highest being for man' (KAB 2016: 98).
We see this categorical imperative of Karl Marx not as an antithesis to the Christian conception of the commandment of love among men, but as a linking of Jewish, Christian, and Marxist thinking, in order to achieve a state without alienation between men and without alienation between God, man, and nature.
We have institutionalized a presentiment of this state in the Jewish Sabbath and in the Christian Sunday. An institution that is more than resting from and for work, but living in conscious freedom from all domination - be it personal or systemic.
Literature
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A right to life only has to be claimed if the very existence of the person is already being questioned! ^
Original: The discussion about Corona