Abstract
In recent years, political polarization in the USA reached new and alarming levels. As a result, political activists face new challenges in their effort to mobilize around struggles and demands for policy changes. In light of this, we argue that universal basic income can serve as a key policy around which social movements and political activists (both within the progressive movement and across the ideological spectrum) could form an “overlapping consensus.” Using this Rawlsian framework, we focus on the comprehensive doctrines of feminist activists, racial justice activists, liberal egalitarians, Marxists-socialists, and classical liberals (libertarians). We argue that forming an overlapping consensus around UBI would enable activists to have a common political goal without necessarily having to face the challenge of reaching agreement over fundamental values. This, in turn, could enable them to gain more political visibility and thus increase their ability to promote sociopolitical change.
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Notes
- 1.
We can only offer a very brief summary of this concept here. For Rawls’ most comprehensive account of the idea of an overlapping consensus, see Rawls (1987, 2005, lecture IV). For additional insightful discussions on this concept, see Wenar (2017), Freeman (2003, 306–307), Nagel (2003, 84); Dryzek and Niemeyer (2006), Gutmann and Thompson (1990), and Klosko (1993).
- 2.
Rawls explains that “I think of a moral conception as general when it applies to a wide range of subjects of appraisal (in the limit of all subjects universally), and as comprehensive when it includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, ideals of personal virtue and character, and the like, that are to inform much of our conduct (in the limit of our life as a whole). Many religious and philosophical doctrines tend to be general and fully comprehensive” (Rawls1987, 3f). See also Rawls (2005, 2§3).
- 3.
Importantly, the doctrines among which an overlapping consensus can be formed are expected to be not only general and comprehensive, but also “reasonable.” A doctrine is “reasonable” when it acknowledges that it carries no special claim on people beyond its merit, and that reasonable people can adopt any of the competing reasonable doctrines. Thus, “reasonable persons will think it unreasonable to use political power, should they possess it, to repress comprehensive views that are not unreasonable, though different from their own” (Rawls 2005, 59–61).
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- 6.
We recognize that these positions do not by any means exhaust the current political spectrum, but believe that they provide a sufficient sample for the purposes of this paper.
- 7.
It is worth noting that the empowering effects of the benefit would be largely dependent on its level. Plausibly, if the individual benefit was too low, it would not provide economic dependents with true exit options.
- 8.
While we cannot provide here an extensive discussion of the feminist concerns with UBI, some of them are worth mentioning. First, it is not clear what would happen to the gendered division of care work under a UBI program because of the lack of empirical evidence. Given existing social norms, UBI could actually have the effect of encouraging women to withdraw from the labor market (Orloff 1990; Gheaus 2008). If UBI would provide economic security independent of formal labor, it could make it easier for the spouse who has traditionally been responsible for childrearing to opt out of the workforce and dedicate herself to care work, thus further entrenching our gender norms around care. Second, UBI remains fairly limited in its capacity to address women’s situation in the labor market. As an in-cash benefit, it might not directly challenge the sexist and discriminatory attitudes women often face at work (Orloff 1990).
- 9.
Rawls famously held that the extra leisure enjoyed by those unwilling to work “would be stipulated as equivalent to the index of primary goods of the least advantaged. So those who surf all day off Malibu must find a way to support themselves and would not be entitled to public funds” (cited in Van Parijs1991, 101).
- 10.
A decade later, Van Parijs concluded that this conception of social justice did not allow people to have diverse conceptions of the good life, and he turned to embracing a liberal concern for this and to developing a justification for basic income grounded in a liberal, neutrality-based account of equality (Van Parijs1995).
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Lenczewska, O., Schwartz, A.M. (2020). Disagree to Agree: Forming Consensus Around Basic Income in Times of Political Divisiveness. In: Caputo, R.K., Liu, L. (eds) Political Activism and Basic Income Guarantee. Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43904-0_2
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