Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No

by Karl Widerquist

Freedom is commonly understood in two different ways: the absence of restriction or interference (scalar freedom) and the absence of slavery or oppression (status freedom). Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income argues that philosophers have focused too much on scalar freedom and proposes a theory of status freedom as effective control self-ownership simply, freedom as the power to say no. This exciting new volume argues for and explores the implications of this theory of freedom. It shows that most societies today put the poor in situations in which they lack this crucial freedom, making them vulnerable to poverty, exploitation, and injustice. Widerquist argues that the basic income guarantee is an appropriate institution to help secure status freedom in a modern industrial society.

Genres: Economics, Philosophy

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Karl Widerquist is a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar. He specializes in distributive justice: the ethics of who has what. He is an interdisciplinary scholar who holds two doctorates, one in Normative Political Theory (Oxford University 2006) and one in Economics (the City University of New York 1996). His writing and research cross the disciplines of philosophy, politics, economics, anthropology, and the philosophy of social science. He has published dozens of scholarly articles and eleven books including Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge, the Problem of Property, the Prehistory of Private Property, A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments; Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy; and Independence, Propertylessness, and Basic Income: A Theory of Freedom as the Power to Say No. Much of his writing is about Universal Basic Income. He was a founding editor of the journal Basic Income Studies, cofounder of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network, and cochair of the Basic Income Earth Network. The Atlantic Monthly called him “a leader of the worldwide Basic Income movement.”
Website: www.widerquist.com
Twitter: @KarlWiderquist
Email: Karl@widerquist.com

Reviews

[Otto Lehto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are people entitled to enough resources to survive? And enough to be independent from other people and their demands?

This book argues that both private property rights regimes and governmental regimes commit injustice when they demand compulsory obedience, whether in the name of libertarian freedom or egalitarian social justice. This argument shares traits with left-libertarianism, classical liberalism, republicanism, and anarchism. All people, including the poor and the propertyless, are owed the right to be left alone or, where this is not possible, to be compensated for the duties that society demands of them. Our engagement with other people's projects should be set on a voluntaristic, non-dominating basis. Neither laissez-faire capitalism nor social democracy pass the test (at least in their current or historical forms). The best solution, given the existence of widespread "resource domination," is for the government to secure a sufficient level of unconditional access to economic resources to all citizens. This can best be done in the form of a basic income guarantee (also known as UBI). It will give them the power to say no: a robust exit option from forced cooperation in the government-backed game of harsh post-industrial capitalism.

Widerquist's book is a major contribution to the basic income literature, standing shoulder to shoulder with Philippe van Parijs's 1995 classic, "Real Freedom for All." The theory of freedom it expounds makes for a compelling argument that needs to be taken seriously by right-libertarians and liberal egalitarians alike, since it cuts at the heart of their theories. It therefore revitalizes liberalism as a cutting-edge research program of voluntarism.

Widerquist's comprehensive theory goes by many names - arguably too many names: independentarianism, justice as the pursuit of accord, ECSO (Effective Control Self-Ownership) freedom, the power to say no... This creates unnecessary confusion and overpopulation on the level of concepts. (For example, the latter two are supposedly sub-instances of the former two; but this broader theory that they point towards is only hinted at.) Even the title of the book is a little bit excessive in its cumbersome delineation of interlinked concepts.

However, once the reader is acquainted with the technical jargon employed, the arguments flow easily. The ideas are technical and philosophical, but they are brought down from the ivory tower. They are illustrated with the help of commonsensical thought experiments, and the basic theory of "the power to say no" could as easily be explained to a five-year-old as a professional academic. In this regard, the book manages to be a reader-friendly experience - not exacly best-seller material, mind you, due to the technical nature of the enterprise, but certainly palatable to a wider audience. And while many of the arguments that Widerquist uses have been made by earlier thinkers, and sometimes the author overstates the uniqueness of his arguments, he manages to put it all together in a unique way that should appeal to a broad, curious audience.

I have my disagreements about some of the technical arguments: 1) The link between the positive right to UBI and the negative right to ECSO freedom is not explained in sufficient detail. For example, if freedom requires non-domination, why not throw out the resources in the form of uncultivated land, oil, and minerals? Why deliver the resources to people rather than allow people to find and appropriate them? Why not give the resources, as Paine proposed, in the form of a single lump-sum payment upon the age of adulthood? Why paternalize people with a monthly grant? 2) The notion of "status freedom," like any treshold theory, suffers from demarcation problems: why draw the line here rather than there? The capability approach with its voluminous lists of basic functionings seems to suffer from similar arbitrariness and vagueness. And, unlike scalar freedom, status freedom runs against the psychological fact that people's desires seem to be never-ending (on a scale to infinity, albeit with diminishing utility). Overall, I prefer the notion of scalar freedom, even if it fits worse with a commitment to a minimum standard of resource sufficiency. 3) What are the precise political implications of the theory? Can people be compelled, with the bribe of UBI, to accept the laws and regulations of the United States government? Or of Norway? It seems to me that the theory logically leads to a rejection of most forms of welfare states beyond UBI, unless one ties the notion of freedom to an unreasonably weak view of sufficiency that excuses all kinds of coercion. If one commits to the maximixation of the power to say no, most forms of taxation and public services will appear unjust even after UBI is accounted for. There does not seem to be any basis for e.g. forcibly taxing non-rent-seeking, non-resource-dominating billionaires to reduce social inequalities, at least beyond the certain provision of sufficiency. This would count as compulsory cooperation. After all, do not billionaires and the people with whom they economically cooperate (e.g. customers of their products, their employees) have the right not to be interfered with? I would be OK with this left-libertarian conclusion, but I think Widerquist would want to reject this conclusion, since he has reservations towards libertarianism and fondness for the welfare state. (I'm looking forward to reading his upcoming book(s) on justice to see where his position takes him!)

Overall, despite my reservations about some of the technical points and some of the terminology, the book is an overwhelming success in what it sets out to do. We desperately need new theories of freedom that revitalize lost traditions of voluntarism and break free from the right-libertarian and left-liberal deadlock. Widerquist's argument is one of the best liberal cases for UBI out there - right up there with Van Parijs, Paine, and Friedman. It offers practical policy implications that are hard to ignore going forward.

[Jeremy Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new favourite. Widerquist's writing is clear and nonsense-free. His objections to existing theories of freedom, independence, and especially duty are thorough and methodical. No one (aside from David Graeber) has done more to change the way I think about property and employment. This book is full of simple but compelling thought experiments, and is also one of the most quotable books I've ever read:

"Right-libertarians talk about freedom from force, but they invite everyone to ignore the tremendous amount of freedom-threatening force involved in the establishment and maintenance of property rights to the earth and all its products."

"All economies (that we know how to create) contain what we might call a casino element: they are persistently affected by systemic unfairness, such as nepotism, brute luck, irrelevant requirements, and odds stacked in favor of people with past advantages."

"An egalitarian attempt to eliminate the casino element but to retain forced participation misidentifies the problem in the modern economy. We cannot eliminate that casino element, but we can avoid forcing people to participate in an economy with a casino element or with any other features to which they might reasonably object."

"Supporters of contemporary capitalism apply the principle of voluntary agreement selectively—to the exchange of property rights but not to the assignment, definition, and enforcement of property rights."

"Property rights’ advocates have created confusion on this issue in two ways. First, some of them have characterized negative freedom as the “freedom from” and positive freedom as the “freedom to.” As McCallum established decades ago all liberties are both the freedom from something and the freedom to do something. If there is a meaningful definition of negative freedom that is consistent with common understanding, it must be the freedom from interference by other people with what one is able to do. Land and natural resources were here before all of us. All you need to use resources is for others to refrain from interfering with you while you use those resources."

"In most places today, if 1, 100, or 100,000 propertyless people would like to support each other, they are denied the option to try."

"In the same way a negative claim that no one breaks your leg can transform into a positive claim to cash if someone does in fact break it. Under this theory, the obligation to pay compensation runs from those who would otherwise dominate resources to those who are in some way disadvantaged or would otherwise have been made propertyless by resource domination."

"The words “work” and “labor” are used to mean many different things. Five senses of the word work are important here—“toil,” “employment,” “service,” “time spent making money,” and “social contribution.”"

"Each reason that people might refuse to work is complex, involving usually three issues: the individual’s opinion on whether it is a good reason, the enforcement authority’s opinion on what is a good reason, and whether it is in fact a good reason—to the extent that it is a factual issue. If it is not a factual issue the question is which side’s opinion should matter. Is it legitimate for individuals to refuse participation in a joint project because in their opinion they have good reasons, or is it legitimate for the ruling coalition to force individuals to participate against their will because in the majority opinion, these individuals do not have good reason?"

"Enforced participation in the economic system is also a strange mix of the mutual obligation model and the trade model. Employers may hire workers for their own private gain, but workers must accept jobs as part of a “mutual” obligation. Only participation is modeled as an obligation; the goals pursued by firms, the products people buy, and so forth are all modeled as self-interested trade."

"The mandatory-participation economy creates one enormous exception to that respect: all people are obliged to contribute to a social project up to 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, 40 years of their lives whether or not they consent to the goals, methods, and terms of the project. This point of view is surprising when most of our economic activity is directed toward frivolous and often contradictory activities that can only hope to be justified on the basis that people choose to do them. We cannot simultaneously justify each particular economic activity by supposed consent and justify forced lifetime participation in the economy as a whole by a supposed emergency. Even most of those parts of our economy that are dedicated to fulfilling vital needs are not usually pressing emergencies like the story of the drowning child."

"Suppose society tried to solve any abuses that follow from the dependence of women by regulating marriage. They created a form of unemployment insurance for unmarried women provided that women remained ready, willing, and able to marry as soon as a marriage partner became available. Certainly, any such set of laws make women unfree."

"Considering the great number of frivolous goods and services produced in modern economies, a blanket responsibility to work must force people to do things that aren’t actually duties."

"Mandatory participation might be motivated less by the fear that individuals will refuse participation than by unwillingness to pay them enough to elicit voluntary participation."

Against Rawls: "Behind the veil of ignorance, I expect to be the least advantaged person with the lowest pay and least desirable working conditions. I also expect that the ruling coalition will be made up of fallible people who will make mistakes. I am subject to both market and political vulnerability. My pay might be lower and my working conditions worse not only than I want, but also worse than is morally justified. The social project will pursue goals and use methods that I object to, and it is possible that I am right and the ruling coalition is wrong. Expecting to emerge from behind the veil of ignorance into such a world, I can’t imagine anything I would want more than independence."

Regarding democracy: "We also need a constraint on the majority’s behavior. A theory that tells them to attempt magnanimity is not an effective constraint."

"Any egalitarian who supports a mandatory-participation economy needs to recognize that even if such an economy is capable of virtually eliminating poverty ex post via conditional benefits, it cannot eliminate poverty, destitution, and propertylessness ex ante. In fact a mandatory-participation economy relies on poverty; it creates and uses poverty and destitution as a threat to ensure participation."

"Much if not most of modern economic activity is dedicated to things that are unnecessary and that people clearly have no duty to do. If duties were limited to those things and applied equally to all people, whatever duty people would have would be much less than a fulltime work obligation, leaving people with a lot of time to pursue either leisure or optional economic activities."

"Certainly we can agree that the workers who built the pyramids should have had the power to say no to serving the Pharaoh. Alexander’s conscripts, Roman slaves, medieval serfs, Aztec peasants, ancient Chinese harem members, early American slaves, native peoples displaced by colonialism, Victorian proletarians, and Soviet citizens should have had the power to refuse the things the privileged people of their societies force them to do. Yet rather than freeing the people from force, many political philosophers today are focused on perfecting the conditions under which a forced, lifetime work obligation supposedly becomes allowable. We need to realize that advantaged people have spent too much time throughout history forcing disadvantaged people to serve them, and we need to deny that power to anyone."

[Shaun Terry jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. It's not without its flaws, but for what it is, it does an excellent job. It's highly readable, but not at all watered-down. It's concise, and powerful. I think that this book does a good job at recognizing the direction of future polities. If the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, then maybe it's through greater individual independence, and the eventual discontinuation of the servitude of oppressed groups. The book's comparisons to and criticisms of popular ideas by Rawls, Nozick, and the like are smart, and thought-provoking. I'd recommend this to anyone who's interested in political philosophy, political science, public policy, sociology, etc.

[Chance Lacina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The arguments in this book are powerful. If even a shred of liberalism stirs in your heart, Karl will disabuse you of the weak notions of freedom we currently espouse today, and in a powerful voice of solidarity with the propertyless, he will transform you into a radical, decrying previous liberal thought as camouflaged tyranny, and demanding justice in the form of effective control self ownership (ECSO or "exo" freedom); the freedom from any direct or indirect force that comes between us and our access to the resources we need to survive.