Two interesting papers out of the memory hole of a defunct organization

In this blog post I am doing something slightly different. One of my topics is Universal Basic Income (UBI) , including criticisms of it. I also have an interest in Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).

OCAP recently went out of operation. It was thought to have lost its focus of late. I think it lost what focus it had about the time they drummed me out of the organization, in 2003.

Nonetheless, it produced a couple of interesting pieces about UBI, dating from 2017. This was when the liberal government of Ontario introduced a “pilot” of a UBI. Of course, this disappeared when the Ford conservative government won the election the next year.

Since OCAP’s newsletter and archive works on WordPress, when I started my own blog I was able to ‘reblog’ them. This only means that with a short introduction from me, it links back to the original articles. These are two articles which link to each other.

These articles were written by John Clarke and A.J. Withers. They are both dipsticks but they have a point about UBI and ‘pilots’. I was also involved in the debates at that time about whether ‘left’ activists should be supporting a UBI.

My own position was, of course, no. However, I did not support the OCAP that the idea should never be considered. Of course it would not work under capitalism, which is about maximizing exploitation of workers.

However, it gives us another good reason to get rid of capitalism. When we have got rid of capitalism, it would be a good way of dealing with some problems which would continue in a post capitalist economy. I will be doing some blogging about that in future.

I have always seen UBI, under its various prior names, as a left issue. I am disappointed that the right wing seems to have captured it. It always seemed to me to be the ideal issue to build a post capitalist economic model around, as a platform for a real anti capitalist party.

This has always been the problem with socialist parties. They have only one vague idea and nothing concrete to offer. They have had the wrong headed idea that we have to get rid of capitalism first, then we will make it up from there.

That is a very bad strategy. I want to see a fully worked out model of a post capitalist system. Since the fossilized left does not provide one, I have been gradually working it out myself.

Of course my model includes a UBI.

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OCAP was a fossilized left organization for a very long time. It was founded around 1992. Its heyday was in the late nineties, during the Harris premiership in Ontario.

I was involved with it back then. I do not think they ever decided if I was a real member or not. Like most people, I gradually became disillusioned with the stupid rhetoric and unimaginative tactics.

The decline of OCAP began after student groups became well organized and began to lead the street fight against the Harris creeps. I believe the actions of this group, especially the ‘snake marches’ which avoided the police while keeping downtown traffic gridlocked, led to the final exit of Mean Mike Harris.

This really infuriated the hard core Marxist vanguardists who always had control of OCAP from the shadows. They imagined they were being “revolutionaries.” They wanted violent confrontations with the police so that someone could get killed and they could have a martyr.

More moderate factions within OCAP headed off real trouble. No one was really interested in becoming a martyr. The moderate faction gradually drifted away to start other things.

The relatively moderate OCAP faction did some useful things. They developed the idea of ‘direct action casework’. This meant going in big noisy groups to stop evictions, get wages paid out, and get various welfare benefits cleared. Among the best things they did was to go into bail courts and show the cops and screwhead magistrates that the person they were screwing around was not just some isolated loser, but had friends on the outside.

Many groups in poor communities in Ontario are now doing these kinds of things. This is the good thing that came out of OCAP.

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Below are the two articles from the OCAPs archives which I consider worthy of preservation before OCAPs net presence goes down entirely. They contain links to other useful articles which will probably stay around for awhile. For people who want to look into the hard left’s view of UBI, here is a good place to start.

First is “The Neoliberal Danger of Basic Income”, a position paper and invitation for endorsements. It makes the good point that the sudden interest in the part of neoliberal type organizations in the UBI concept should be seen for what it is. It could be a dangerous weapon against the working class; a wage top up for low income employers and a way of defunding other programs and benefits.

Basic Income pilots are frauds. They cannot tell us anything useful and help to stall actually useful measures. It is highly predictable that when you give poor people a little more money, their lives improve a little. Running such an experiment on a small group of people, or within a small geographic area, tells nothing about how such a scheme would work when applied to an entire economy.

Second is “What Basic Income Means for Disabled People”, a discussion of how a UBI could be especially bad for disabled people. Every disabled person has different needs. Some have large expenses in managing their problems. Cutting back on specialized support programs to fund a UBI would be disastrous for them.

This also asks the obvious question which should be thrown at Canadian UBI advocates at every chance. That is, why are nominally “progressive’ politicians becoming so interested in UBI, when it would take a long time to implement and there is much they could do right away to reduce poverty?

The cute “wolf in sheep skin” graphic came form OCAP’s original article.

The Neoliberal Danger of Basic Income
Posted on September 18, 2017

Statement for endorsement: We have drawn up the following statement on basic income (BI). It makes the case that, progressive hopes to the contrary notwithstanding, BI is being developed as a measure of neoliberal attack that should be opposed. We invite progressive organizations and individuals who hold positions in agencies and academic institutions, who agree with our arguments, to sign onto the statement. We hope that it will raise a voice of opposition and help develop information sharing and forms of co-operation among those, internationally, who reject the notion that basic income represents any kind realistic response to the neoliberal attack.
Endorsements and other responses can be directed to us at ocap@tao.ca.
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The Neoliberal Danger of Basic Income

We, the undersigned, are convinced that the emerging model of basic income, reflected in pilot projects and other initiatives in a number of countries and jurisdictions, is one that would intensify the neoliberal agenda. The hope that there is any realistic chance of ensuring a truly adequate, universal payment, that isn’t financed by undermining other vital elements of social provision, is misplaced in our view.
We are far from wanting to suggest that existing systems of income support are anywhere close to adequate.  They provide precarious sub poverty income under conditions that are marked by intrusive regulations and forms of moral policing.  Moreover, decades of neoliberal austerity have made these systems considerably worse.

However wretched and inadequate present systems may be, the assumption that basic income must or even could be an improvement on the status quo has to be tested by considering a number of factors.  Historically, income support has been provided because those in political power concluded that outright abandonment of those not in the workforce would create unacceptably high levels of unrest and social dislocation. In the far from dead tradition of the English Poor Laws, income support has been provided at levels that were low enough to maintain a supply of the worst paid workers, in forms that were as punitive and degrading as possible. Again, the neoliberal years have seen these features intensified in what we must concede has been a highly effective drive to create a climate of desperation and a plentiful supply of low paid and precarious workers.
If austerity driven governments and institutions of global capitalism are today looking favourably at basic income, it’s not because they want to move towards greater equality, reverse the neoliberal impact and enhance workers’ bargaining power. They realize that a regressive model of basic income can be put in place that provides an inadequate, means tested payment to the poorest people outside of the workforce but that is primarily directed to the lowest paid workers. This would be, in effect, a subsidy to employers, paid for out of the tax revenues and it would be financed by cuts to broader public services. Such a model would lend itself to disregarding the particular needs of disabled people and, as a “citizen’s income,” could readily be denied to many immigrants, especially those left undocumented. Under such a system, you would shop through the rubble of the social infrastructure with your meagre basic income. The kind of pilot projects and other initiatives that are emerging offer severe warnings in this regard (we include some links that provide information on several of these)*.
However, some suggest that while regressive models could be developed and may pose a danger, a progressive and even “emancipatory” form of basic income is possible and realistic as a goal. Often, this is linked to the idea of preparing for a “workless future” in which vast numbers of technologically displaced workers can be provided for. The notion is that a universal payment would be provided unconditionally and that it would be adequate enough so that paid work, if it were an option, would be a matter of choice rather than necessity. While there are a few who suggest this could be won through large scale social action, advocates for a progressive basic income more often seem to assume that capitalist support and acceptance by the state can be won by way of a vigorous lobbying effort.
In our view, a truly adequate and redistributive, let aside transformative, basic income is not possible within the confines of the current economic system. Firstly, the present balance of forces in society, after decades of neoliberalism, does not lend itself to the conclusion that a sweeping measure of social reform, that would reverse this whole agenda, is immediately likely. Beyond this, however, an income support system that removed economic coercion in a way that progressive basic income advocates suggest, would be more than turning back the neoliberal tide. It would actually mean that the state was providing the working class with an unlimited strike fund. It would undermine the very basis for the capitalist job market. It would constitute social transformation, a revolutionary change that is, to say the least, beyond the capacity of any possible social policy enactment.

If basic income as emancipation is not possible, it can only too easily take form as neoliberal intensification.  Yet, sadly, progressive advocates end up offering legitimacy to that regressive alternative but placing hopes in musings about basic income by Silicon Valley billionaires or by presenting cynical pilot projects, set up by austerity driven governments, as flawed but important first steps. However much they wish otherwise, the sow’s ear will not become a silk purse.
If faith in a progressive basic income is misplaced, we wish we could offer a shining and readily attainable alternative but this is not possible.  We are largely fighting a defensive struggle against a virulent agenda to undermine social provision and increase the rate of exploitation. We can only offer the hard slog of building stronger inclusive movements of social resistance, rejuvenating unions and building a working class political challenge to neoliberalism. As we do this, we must fight for free, expanded and accessible public services. We must win decent wages and workers’ rights. We must struggle for income support systems that are based on adequacy, full entitlement and that are purged of intrusive rules and moral policing. We must infuse all of these movements and struggles with a sense of a very different kind of society from the capitalist one we are fighting. This doesn’t have the glitter of the dream of a progressive basic income but it does accept that reality that there is no social policy way around neoliberalism or a long and hard fight against it. The progressive welcome mat for basic income is a very big mistake.
*Links:


https://recoveryinthebin.org/2017/06/25/the-neoliberal-writing-on-the-wall-ontarios-basic-income-experiment/
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/ubi-finland-centre-party-unemployment-jobs/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/universal-basic-income-scotland-week-cash-payment-life-nicola-sturgeon-first-minister-snp-a7934131.html

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What Basic Income Means for Disabled People
Posted on April 12, 2017

by AJ Withers and John Clarke

Disabled people in Ontario are much more likely to experience poverty than non-disabled people. Many have to live on sub poverty payments under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) or the even more wretched income provided by Ontario Works (OW). Those that are in this situation are confronted by an ongoing process of surveillance, invasion of their privacy and moral policing. Those disabled people who are working, because of systemic discrimination, are less likely to be receiving living wages and are far more likely to be precariously employed. As anti poverty organizers, we fully understand the anger and desperation that such a situation generates.
On this basis, it is easy to see how, at first glance, there are aspects of a Basic Income (BI) approach that could be found attractive by disabled people. The promise of a somewhat higher payment, provided without the kind of intrusive element that presently exists, would seem to represent a step forward. However, we think it’s important to ask why the Liberal Government would suddenly support a new approach that would mean considerably increased costs. Why would a Government that has driven down the adequacy of benefit rates and cut programs for disabled people want to reverse course so dramatically? BI can look very alluring but we are convinced that, In reality, it will mean a degrading of the already inadequate ‘social safety net’ that will make things dramatically worse for disabled people. The Ontario Government’s adviser on BI, Hugh Segal, has proposed a pilot project under which a small sampling of people on OW would have their income raised to $1.320.00 month. A group on ODSP would be paid $500 more than they are at present. In both cases, the money would be provided without much of the scrutiny and intrusion people presently have to put up with. There is no doubt that the small number of people who became part of such a project would be better off for as long as it lasted. However, it is unlikely that the Ontario Government will run at test at income levels as high as their advisor suggests. Moreover, while a small minority of people are being tested in this way, over a period of several years, far greater numbers will be living as in deep poverty as before on OW and ODSP. There is also no reason to assume that any Province wide system of BI that was eventually adopted would provide the same income as under the pilot project.

Why Basic Income?
It seems curious that the Liberals are ready to offer the promise of long term improvement by way of Basic Income while they flagrantly ignore the glaring problems with the existing system of social assistance and other poverty causing factors that they could deal with immediately. Raising social assistance rates and the minimum wage, building more affordable housing, ensuring that homeless people at least had basic shelter, developing free or low costs pharmacare and dental programs, expanding disability related benefits for all low income people and eliminating the long waiting lists for things like attendant care and supportive housing are all things that they could act upon now to make a real difference in peoples’ lives. If they won’t do things why should we believe that they want to redistribute wealth and alleviate poverty but way of a system of BI
The Ontario Liberals have established a long and very ugly record of imposing an agenda of imposing austerity and attacking public services. We might ask ourselves if there is a danger of BI being implemented in such a way as to deepen, rather than reverse, that agenda. During the years of they have been in power, the Liberals have driven down the adequacy of social assistance and, apart from the money this has saved them, this has created a situation where people are more desperate and ready to accept even the lowest paying and most exploitative jobs. By making ODSP ever harder to get onto and, by allowing the rates to fall lower against inflation, they have ensured that disabled people are frequently forced to be part of this scramble for the worst jobs on offer. Indeed the reference to setting up a pilot project that was contained the last Provincial Budget actually stressed that there was a hope that Basic Income could ‘strengthen attachment to the labour force.’ The real danger with a BI system, as it might actually be designed by an austerity driven government, is that it could be a basis for making things even worse.
The right wing US political scientist, Charles Murray, advances a version of BI that calls for a wretchedly inadequate payment of $10,000 a year to be provided but, Murray stresses, it is essential that this payment replace all the other elements of social provision. At a time of mounting austerity, with public services at acute risk of privatization, this is exactly the way in which BI could further a regressive agenda. Even a payment that is somewhat higher than under the present social assistance rates would still be a step backwards for disabled people and poor people in general if it was used to justify and increase the attack on public services and other benefits. Things like the Special Diet, medical transportation and the child care benefit might be targeted. What good would a slightly higher payment be if, as part of the new arrangement, people now faced exorbitant costs for things like hearing aids, wheelchairs, prosthetics, medical supplies and respiratory devices? If BI opened the door so such regressive measures, it would lead, not to reduced levels of poverty, but to a very much worse situation.

The kind of Basic Income we might expect the Ontario Liberals to design would turn the social safety net into a tightrope. The network of present systems is undoubtedly inadequate but a system of universal payment would be even more vulnerable to austerity and the impact of allowing it to fall against inflation or of reducing the level of the benefit would be enormous.
For all the talk of a ‘no strings attached’ system of income provision, governments that are looking at BI or designing pilot projects are very focused on issues of how the system might serve to prod people into low paying jobs. Linked to this, are the old notions of molding poor people into becoming ‘productive’ conforming workers and consumers. This is why coded language around the reconstruction of people can be found in BI literature. For example, the Manitoba Liberal Party supports the implementation of a guaranteed income on the grounds that it would help in ‘the building of self-reliant, taxpaying citizens.’ Similarly, Ontario’s report on BI argues that behavioural changes and increased independence are important goals. The old moral assumptions have not really disappeared.
 Basic Income and Disability
There are different ways that a BI could be implemented. The Ontario Report suggests that disabled people get $500 extra in recognition that the ‘costs of living with a disability’ are higher than those faced by non disabled people. However, this isn’t true in the same way across the board. The expenses of someone having to pay the daily cost of a service dog, someone who needs special dietary items, someone who must pay for attendant care, someone who has to pay for ASL interpretation or someone who has to replace a $40,000 wheelchair are all very different. If BI were used as a pretext to eliminate other systems of support, there are a whole range of needs that different disabled people have that would be placed out of range for them.
Importantly, who gets the disabled top up will revolve around how the Government defines disability. Lots of those who are disabled will not be accepted as such. The definition of disability is very limited in terms of accessing ODSP and it’s likely that the vast majority of disabled people will not qualify for the additional payment under a BI system. Governments are presently working to narrow the concept of ‘disability’ and the introduction of a new income support system would likely offer an opportunity to take that further.
 Imagining the future
Right now, we are being told that we are at a crossroads and there are two possible futures. One in which things remain the same with inadequate social assistance rates and rampant poverty or one in which everyone gets a BI payment at 75% of the poverty line in Ontario, making it supposedly easier to escape from poverty altogether. The second, BI future will require study, public consultations and several years to put into place but we are told it’s the best possible outcome.

One of the main arguments for BI is that social assistance is deeply flawed: the rates are too low and it is punitive and degrading. However, it isn’t necessary to pin hopes on BI to fix these things. The Government could raise social assistance rates to decent levels but it has made the deliberate choice to perpetuate the suffering of the poorest people in Ontario. The Government could eliminate the policies and structures that make social assistance so punitive. It could make the system fair and respectful and expand benefits to all disabled people but it chooses not to.
A lot of people who promote BI have very good intentions. This isn’t the case, however, for Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals and other governments that are investigating BI. They intend more cuts and to increase pressure on people to scramble for the worst jobs. Rather than pin our hopes on the flawed concept of BI, so easily implemented in ways that further a regressive agenda and harm disabled people, we suggest fighting for adequate income, living wages, improved, expanded and accessible public services and income support systems that are adequate and free of surveillance and moral policing. This won’t be won by trusting governments to do the right thing but through strong collective struggle.