Basic Income and Productivity in Cognitive Capitalism

Abstract

In this article, basic income (BI) will not be considered as a measure to raise living standards and social well-being. Rather, it will be presented as an indispensable structural policy for achieving a healthier social order governed by a more equitable compromise between capital and labor. Embracing the French Regulation School approach, we maintain that such a compromise is founded on the redistribution of productivity gains. Describing the dynamics of productivity enables a better understanding of the main features and development of contemporary capitalism. In advancing our argument, we focus on the socioeconomic transformation that has overtaken the Fordist paradigm within Western countries and propose the term “cognitive capitalism” to describe the new economic system. We argue that BI can be seen as a viable economic policy able to contrast the instability generated by the present form(s) of accumulation, as it increases productivity through network and learning processes.

Keywords:

• basic income
• productivity
• cognitive capitalism
• crisis
• Regulation School
• post-Fordism
• knowledge

Acknowledgments

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) Boston, MA, 6 January 2006. We would like to thank all the participants, and especially John Marangos, for their helpful comments. We would like to thank two anonymous referees who helped to improve our work. We also thank Paolo Ramazzotti and Cosma Orsi who provided us precious suggestions. Bertie Vitry and Samantha Ball for improving our English. The usual caveats apply.

Notes

General intellect is a crucial term in the debate about post-Fordism. It appears in Marx's Fragment on Machines, section of the Grundrisse (1973). This is an attractive metaphor for referring to the knowledge that makes up the epicentre of social production and preordains all areas of life (see Virno 2001). The interpretation of Marx's Fragment gave rise to many considerations in the so-called Italian Workerism approach (see principally Panzieri 1964; Tronti 1971; Negri 1979; for an overview of the English literature on this term, see Wright 2002). In recent years, this approach led to investigating the capital-language nexus. This nexus is considered as the real turning point of the socioeconomic system in cognitive capitalism (see Zanini and Fadini 2001). Fumagalli (2005) defines the general intellect social productivity as bioeconomic productivity.

In Italy, between 1976 and 1979, the so-called fifth generation of workers, who had grown up in large cities during the construction of the welfare state, entered large factories: the core of the Fordist organization of production. The experiences of the new employees were radically different from those of the previous generations of unskilled workers. “They rise up against both the wage ‘structure’, its ‘form’ and the necessity to work for the whole duration of one's life itself, to receive an income rather than a salary. The subjectivity expressed by this new labour force certainly failed to undermine the factory regime overall. If anything, it made it more viable and eased the restructuring move towards flexibility” (Zanini and Fadini 2001: 23). In this context, the proposal of a basic income began to surface in the Italian political debate.

Unlike Fordism, where low wages could lead to under-consumption crises, in CC the negative effects of a low wage structure on the ability to generate and diffuse knowledge is more important.

The Kaldor–Verdoorn law postulates the existence of a significant positive relationship between the growth rates of labor productivity and output, at least in manufacturing (see Verdoorn 1949). It was Kaldor who coined the term “Verdoorn's law” and ensured that it received general recognition. It was one of the two empirical regularities by which he tried to explain the causes of the British slow rate of economic growth (Kaldor 1966; see also Kaldor 1975).

The definition of these new rights can be summarized with the term flexicurity. Flexicurity means the possibility to be flexible in an active way without being precarious. In other words, it is the right to a free choice among work opportunities rather than the right to work. In the academic field, flexibility and security are unambiguous concepts. Flexibility is often equated to a low degree of job protection, while security is equated to income security. However, flexicurity is also related to issues such as working time, work functions, pay, active labour market policy, education and training, leave schemes, etc.