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UNA SOLA MOLTITUDINE: STRUGGLES FOR BASIC INCOME AND THE COMMON LOGIC THAT EMERGED FROM ITALY, THE UK, AND JAPAN

by toru yamamori [University of Cambridge]

1. Introduction

“All of us are guaranteed to Basic Income without any condition!” This is the demand called by various names; Basic Income / Renta Basica, Citizen’s Income / Reddito di Cittadinanza / Guaranteed Income / Revenu Garanti / Revenu D’Existence / Allocation Universelle, etc. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri describe this demand as one of three programmes of the multitude. This paper is written as a response to the three following situations: First, critiques against Hardt and Negri (hereafter H & N) do not understand this demand properly. Second, while recent developments within academic literature concerning this demand should be welcomed, the fact that one of roots of the demand is radical grassroots’ movements in 1970s is usually ignored with a few exceptions. Third, while experiences of Lotta Feminista, Autonomia Operaia and other spontaneous movements in Italy are recognized as an example of people making such demands among participants of this conference, experiences outside of Italy are might not recognised as such.

The argument will go as follows: I will start by introducing current academic discourses on this demand (Section 2). This will help to point out mis-understandings within the critiques against H & N.  Then the argument by H & N will be introduced with a brief reference to struggles in Italy in 1970’s (Section 3). Then some points of scepticism concerning Basic Income  are overviewed (Section 4). Is  Basic Income the cunning of Empire? It might be, so the context of the introduction of  Basic Income is crucial. Thus we can learn from the struggles for  Basic Income. I will look at the experience in the UK (Section 5), and in Japan (Section 6).

2. Recent Arguments for Basic Income

2.1.Many names and one content

As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the demand for guaranteed income is given various different names. Here I mainly use the term “Basic Income” due to the convenience derived from the fact that this is the term most widely used within the academic literature, and with no intention to give privilege to neither this terminology nor academic discourses. The recent development of academic discourses on  Basic Income can be traced via an academic community; the Basic Income Earth Network, which started in 1986 as the Basic Income European Network. [1]

Basic Income is an unconditional guaranteed income for all. Philippe van Parijs defines it as “an income paid by a government, at a uniform level and at regular intervals, to each adult member of society.” It is paid “irrespective of whether the person is rich or poor, lives alone or with others, is willing to work or not.” (van Parijs 2001, p.5) [2] There are three reasons why  Basic Income is called “basic”:  First, it is a basic platform which “[a]ny other income - whether in cash or in kind, from working or saving, from the market or the state - can lawfully be added to (van Parijs 2001, p.6).”  Second, it helps to satisfy “basic human needs.” [3] Third, it is an entitlement derived from “basic human rights.” The name “guaranteed income” could be a source of the overlooking of significant differences between  Basic Income and existing/existed welfare states (cf. Boron 2005), because one of the main tasks of the latter has been “the minimum income guarantee”. We could say that this name itself reveals that welfare states have failed to do this, and also reveals the existence of “second class citizens” who are not guaranteed minimum income. By the name “allocation universelle”, we can see continuity and discontinuity of  Basic Income from existing welfare systems.

2.2. Continuity and discontinuity

Let us look at the continuity aspect first. The direct income transfer system under existing welfare states consists of three different types of provision: social insurance, social assistance, and social allowance. Social insurance requires two conditions: a contribution beforehand (e.g. monthly payment for certain period) and eligibility (e.g. having been injured at the workplace). Social assistance requires a set of tests which should be cleared: a means test, a work test, and (usually implicitly held) a behaviour test. Social allowance does not require these kinds of conditions. However, usually it is not for all people, but people who fall into certain categories (e.g. having a child / children under a certain age).[4] Logically there is no huge gap between social allowance and  Basic Income, so if we expand this third type of provision to all people, it could be a first step to  Basic Income: from social allowance to universal allowance (allocation universelle).

Now we turn to the discontinuity aspect. In order to understand this clearly, we need to look further into the characteristics of the welfare state. The three transfer systems are never considered equally. Among them, the social insurance system is at the core of the welfare state. This insurance system covers “risks” in peoples’ lives. There is an assumption that these risks are temporal. It was not expected that people (meaning “male bread winner” for the planners of the welfare state) would be out of waged work for long period. People should and can work. Some people termed the welfare state with two names; the Keynesian-Beveridgean welfare state. While Keynesian economic theory corresponds to the “can work” aspect, the following statement by William Beveridge corresponds to the “should work” aspect.

[T]he correlative of the State’s undertaking to ensure adequate benefit for unavoidable interruption of earning, however long, is enforcement of the citizen’s obligation to seek and accept all reasonable opportunities of work” (Beveridge, 1942, p.58)

The other two systems (social assistance and social allowance) are thus supplementary at least normatively speaking. We can see this clearly in the fact that the main social assistance programme in the UK was called “supplementary benefit” for a long time. The norm that “people should work” stigmatizes claimants of social assistance as “second class citizens”. This divide between “first class citizens” who can access decent social insurance programmes and “second class citizens” who cannot access it them and whose “risk” cannot be properly covered by them alone, is also gendered and raced. Because the adequate social insurance programmes usually come with secure full time employment, this divide reflects the divide between the “primary labour market” (secure employment in the formal sector) on the one hand, and the “secondary labour market” (precarious employment both in the formal and the informal sector) and exclusion from the labour market, on the other hand. Many women belong to the latter group (Fraser 1997, ch2). The same can be said in the case of racial division and the abled / disabled divide. 

Thus we can say that the notion of contribution is essential to the welfare state, and wage labour is at the core of this notion. In terms of this priority or duty of work,  Basic Income is totally different from the welfare state as we know it.  Basic Income will guarantee income without any condition, although there are some variants: some  Basic Income advocates think we could abolish any other kind of income transfer, and others think we could have other complimentary income transfer systems. Some critiques against H&N argue that their recommendation of  Basic Income is not far from the welfare state (Boron 2005, pp.89-90). But this is simply wrong.

This difference of  Basic Income from the welfare state on the treatment of wage labour is at the centre of the argument about the pros and cons of  Basic Income. I will briefly come back this issue later, but first let us see Hardt and Negri’s argument.

3. A Programme of Multitude and Italian Experience

Hardt and Negri listed  Basic Income as one of three programmes of the multitude (H&N 2000, ch.4), and also referred as “a constituent project aimed against poverty” (H&N 2004, p.136). The calling for  Basic Income is rather widespread as we saw in the last section, but their justification is unique.

The demand for a social wage extends to the entire population the demand that all activity necessary for the production of capital be recognized with an equal compensation such that a social wage is really a guaranteed income. (H&N 2000, p.402)

Under the current mode of production - biopolitical production - “the production of capital converges ever more with the production and reproduction of social life itself (H&N 2000, p.401)”. Thus, (1) not only the industrial working class, but the multitude as a whole, which includes houseworkers and the unemployed, produces values, and (2) these values cannot be measured in the sense of the traditional labour theory of value. So we, the multitude, are entitled to a guaranteed income.

From the logic offered to us in Empire, we can directly arrive at the provision of a guaranteed income for all (i.e.,  Basic Income), and do not need to come via a social wage. Then why do H & N mention social wage at all?  We can understand this through Italian experiences and Negri’s articulation of these in his earlier writings.

“Refusal of work” was a slogan which symbolically covered varied struggles by diverse agencies; from factory workers to the unemployed, students and housewives. While they refused wage labour, they tried to make it explicit that they were engaging in another kind of work, which should be paid. For example, Feminists demanded a “salary for housewives” (Bono and Kemp 1991). This political moment (demanding a recognition for unpaid or invisible work) explains why the demand of the multitude of Italy took the form of a social “wage”.

Another reason why it was social “wage” (not directly basic “income”) can be found Negri’s articulation of refusal of work. Negri’s earlier theorization of it took the form from his reading of Marx. It eloquently told us that there was (and I think still is) a difficulty for those who identified themselves as “Marxists” to understand this form of uprisings and resistances. This tendency can be called “naturalisation or mystification of work / labour”. Through reading Marx’s Grundrisse, Negri emphasizes there is no concept of work that we could rescue. He concluded that “Marx insisted on the abolition of work. Work which is liberated is liberation from work (Negri 1991, p.165)”. This argument itself seems to support directly a  Basic Income rather than a social wage. However, what Negri tried to do is not only justification of the refusal in terms of Marxist tradition, but also giving a meaning via reading Marx. As he later articulated with Hardt (clearly referring Diane Elson’s work)(H&N 1994, p.9), a labour theory of value is also a value theory of labour. While the former is losing explanatory power, the latter enables us see the singularity of diverse movements. The dichotomy between the traditional class struggle, which is usually explained in Marxist terms, and the new social movement, which is usually explained in post-structualist terms is a misleading one, and both are the struggles over the determination of labour, and then of value. In this theoretical line, again as same as in the case of practices in Italy, we once again need the concept of social wage before reaching  Basic Income. [5]

4. The Cunning of Empire?

As we saw in section 2, the main discontinuity from the current welfare state is on the location of wage labour. This is located at the centre of the welfare state, but it is not in the case of  Basic Income. Most of the skepticism towards  Basic Income centers on this issue. Will people stop working once we have  Basic Income? Isn’t it a denial of a right to work? Isn’t it the cunning of Empire that threatens our unity and solidarity as the working class?  We would not get the singular answer to these questions from  Basic Income as an institution. Through plural imaginations that conceptualize  Basic Income, we will reach plural answers.

4.1. On the incentive to wage labour

First, there is a discussion on neutrality of  Basic Income. The golden rule of liberalists is that social institutions should be neutral to preferences of individuals. From this point of view, the current system is criticized on the grounds that it isn’t neutral about individual preferences on labour and leisure, and it favours preference to labour. Some critique argue against  Basic Income insisting it will reduce the incentive to (wage) labour. But nothing is wrong with reducing this incentive. The social institution should not convey any incentive which affects individual preferences, because it isn’t neutral. Phillipe van Parijs, an eminent advocate of  Basic Income, argues in this line (van Parijs 1995).

Second, some other advocates also are happy with less incentive to wage labour in  Basic Income, but from different points of views. Some ecologists favour  Basic Income because less incentive to wage labour might be good for the transformation from an industrious society to a post industrial one (cf. Gorz 1999). [6]

Third, obviously enough, less incentive is also welcomed by Hardt and Negri. Wage labour is to be abolished. Why should we be motivated towards wage labour?

4.2. Ambiguous Effects of  Basic Income

Isn’t  Basic Income the cunning of Empire that threatens our unity and solidarity as the working class?  Well, yes and no. Worries about  Basic Income in this line argue that  Basic Income justifies precarious labour and undermines the material condition for workers’ solidality. [7] First of all, we could say that in the same manner that some trade unionist demands such as “full employment”, and “equal pay to equal value labour”, and their form of solidality based on waged labour justify discriminations against people who do not or cannot work. The positive effects of any demand can only be understood by looking at their specific context.

Second, some of them might argue the following. Yes, we are worried in this particular context about neoliberalism dominance. It makes labour more precarious, less well paid. Milton Freedman, self-claimed neoliberalist advocated the negative income tax, which is similar to  Basic Income. Because of this, some would argue that  Basic Income must be neoliberalist product, or the cunning of Empire. Yes,  Basic Income could be used in this way, just as the notion of “worker’s power” has been used by Stalinists, and the notion of freedom and democracy has been used by Neo-conservatives. We have to be cautious of misuse in this way, but it makes no sense to negate notions themselves. If we closely study the radical movement around 1968, we will find that most of their demands, like freedom against bureaucratic states, were stolen by neoliberalists later. But this fact cannot deny the value of their demand.

Let me give one other example. No progressive authors say anything positive about the Speenhamland system in England, which was introduced in 1795 and lasted about 30 years. This system gave an income which met the gap between subsistence income and their wage to the poor. It is usually said that employers began to pay less to their workers because they could get income from this system, and workers were “demoralized” because they did not need to work hard for their survival. The latter part of this critique makes no sense for us. This normative labeling might disguise the resistance that existed against the market economy, and the potential for the emancipation of the poor which wasn’t realized. The former part of the critique should not be ignored. A similar thing would happen in the case of  Basic Income. But we can learn from history. The Speenhamland system was introduced with the legislation that criminalized the formation of trade unions or whatever form of worker solidarity. This fact tells us two things. The first, because the ruling class knew the “danger” of the Speenhamland system in potentially giving power for emancipation, they introduced it with the other legislation. Second, we should deliberately fight for  Basic Income and shouldn’t compromise or give up some other demands. The context in which  Basic Income will be introduced will be really critical. We could learn from the experiences of the grassroots movements on what kind of other legislation should come with  Basic Income. I cannot enter into this in this paper. Instead, let me briefly describe two struggles other than the relatively well-known Italian case.

5.  “Abolition of the Wages System”: Claimants Unions in the UK

It has been said that the claimants union movements appeared in London around the end of 1960’s. Here “claimants” means the people who claim various social benefits and services; pensioners, the disabled, the sick, social assistance recipients, single parents, students, the unemployed, etc. While these people were not perceived as having a common interest before, claimants unions sought to make their common interests explicit through having the same enemy; i.e., the department of social security, and then having the same demand; i.e.,  Basic Income.  The fact that this collective identity wasn’t apparent, and was pursued by the claimants unions, can be seen in their publications at that time. For example, at the beginning of their handbook for pensioners, they emphasised their usage of “we / our” means not only pensioner but also all claimants (The National Federation of Claimants Unions, the year of publication unidentified).

They insisted that their banner should be changed from “a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” to “abolition of the wages system (The National Federation of Claimants Unions, p.5)”. They problematised unpaid work based on sexual division of labour and work ethic combined with waged labour. This work ethic was imposed not only by the welfare authority, but also by “poverty industries” such as charity organizations and other voluntary groups.

This handbook is written by “the national federation of claimants unions”, which is explained as “merely a network of all those Claimants Unions which have affiliated together”. They shared the four common demands known as the “Claimants Charter”. These are;

1. the right to an adequate income without means test for all people.

2. a socialist society in which all necessities are provided free and which is managed and controlled directly by the people.

3. no secrets and the right to full information.

4. no distinction between so-called “deserving” and “undeserving”

                        (The National Federation of Claimants Unions, p.3.)

The first demand is about  Basic Income, and it was repeated as the first demand among 13 demands specific to pensioners; “a free welfare society, with a guaranteed adequate income per individual as of right (The National Federation of Claimants Unions, p.37)”. The welfare state at that time was criticized because its aim was to control people.

Unfortunately it is not clear when and how the demand for  Basic Income was introduced in this movement as a whole. Instead, I will introduce an episode from one of local claimant unions. In Newton Abbot, south west of England, a claimant union was formed around 1971 and lasted for about 4 years. This union seems to be different from typical claimants unions in three ways. [8] First, in terms of size; around 400 people joined this union at the peak of movement. It was therefore quite big compared to the average size of claimants unions. Second, in terms of class composition, it did not include any middle class people except the secretary, partly because there wasn’t any university there. Third, the following two things were severely criticised by other claimants unions at the national federation meetings: growing vegetables in an allotment (others insisted that we should not do any kind of work) and having a voluntary secretary who was not a claimant (others felt that they should not include anyone who was not a claimant).

At one of the weekly meetings in the early stage of this union, some members who knew that some other claimants unions had demanded a  Basic Income, decided to discuss  Basic Income in the meeting. They weren’t sure that what other members would think about this, and expected that there might be some objections. But during the meeting there wasn’t any objection and people really supported for this proposal. The secretary later said to me that it was a good surprise and was ashamed that he had doubted popular support. Some ex-claimants said that members shared the same belief that we should not be deprived humane life because of unemployment, disease and disability.

However, usually these people demand a decent job or a decent allowance for his or her own category. Why could they reach the common demand of  Basic Income? We can see two reasons for this; the one is an objective condition, and the other is about subjectivity. First, all of them were forced to be in the common situation of being excluded from wage labour. At the same time, the possibility of accessing wage labour varied among members. Because of having both this commonality and difference, they reached the universal demand of  Basic Income, instead of aiming at employment like usual movements of the unemployed or trade union’s struggle on behalf of them, and instead of only aiming for particular benefits for specific people.[9] For them, class divide was not (only) between capitalists and workers, but (also) between capitalists/workers and claimants. In the same way the discourse that workers should become entrepreneurs is simply wrong (though this rhetoric became more prevailing under neoliberalist dominance), the discourse that claimants should become workers is wrong (though this is still prevailing belief among the left wing). However, generally speaking objective material conditions are not enough to form a collective class identity. This is my second point; in this case, through communal activities, like allotment or protest, they were able to respect varied situations among members and to share the common identity/subjectivity as claimants at the same time.

The common interest and subjectivity in this case wasn’t an eternal one, though. As relatively young members who were short term unemployed returned to employment, the Newton Abbot Claimants Union lost most of its active members. It ended around 1975. Almost of other claimants unions also diminished in the mid 1970’s. Although some of them restarted claimants movements later, and though there were several efforts to form a national network and a couple of claimants collectives are still struggling today, the demand for  Basic Income isn’t within their programmes anymore.

6. “Living itself is Labour”: Blue Grass and disability movements in Japan

Here I would like to turn from the same demand to the same justification. When I read their justification of  Basic Income in Empire, it echoed phrases in radical movements of the disabled people in Japan; “Rolling over is labour”, “Living itself is labour”, and so on. “Refusal of control” is also one of their underling reasons, so it also has similarity with Claimants’ Union movements. They also demand a kind of  Basic Income; “All of us are entitled to Guaranteed Income without any condition!”. Here “all of us” is basically about “the disabled people”, so it isn’t a  Basic Income in a strict sense. However I would like to pay attention to the similarity with the cases in Italy and the UK.

Around 1970, movements of (not “for” or “on behalf of”) the disabled became active significantly different from before. Tomoaki Kuramoto summarised this new wave as “not liberation from disability, but liberation from discrimination” (Kuramoto, 1997). Aoi shiba no kai (if literally translated to English, Blue Grass Collective, so hereafter Blue Grass), which was started as a peer self help group in the late 1950’s, turned to a radical action group around 1970. Their programme which first appeared 1970 eloquently explains their thought. That is:

1 . We identify ourselves as people with Cerebral Palsy (CP).

We recognize our position as "an existence which should not exist", in the modern society. We believe that this recognition should be the starting point of our whole movement, and we act on this belief.

2 . We assert ourselves aggressively.

When we identify ourselves as people with CP, we have a will to protect ourselves. We believe that a strong self-assertion is the only way to achieve self-protection, and we act on this belief.

3 . We deny love and justice.

We condemn egoism held by love and justice. We believe that mutual understanding, accompanying the human observation which arises from the denial of love and justice, means the true well-being, and we act on this belief.

4. We do not choose the way of problem solving.

We have learnt from our personal experiences that easy solutions to problems lead to dangerous compromises. We believe that an endless confrontation is the only course of action possible for us, and we act on this belief.

(Aoi Shiba no Kai Kanagawa Rengo Kai, 1970) [10]

They protest against the able-bodied majority and the system, both of which are understood to sympathise with parents who murdered their disabled children because of the underlying perception that the heavily disabled should not to be born. It was a material threat for them (“When will my parents kill me?”), caused by the perception of the majority of society. At the same time it also made their self-affirmation difficult, through internalizing this perception. The first and second points of the programme reflect the need for struggling against this situation.

The third part is a good summary of their demands. They saw that the disabled people were negated by the imperialist-capitalist mode of production, and this negation is “fixed and enforced by people’s perception” formed by this mode of production (Kansai Aoi Shiba no Kai, 1975). When they deny love and justice, “love” means this perception, for example, parents’ “love” to kill children as mentioned above, or voluntary people’s “good will” which negates autonomy of the disabled. The “justice” which should be denied is the current system, i.e., the welfare state, which segregates and controls disabled people. They refused to be put into institutions, and started their “independent living”. They demanded “inclusive” education. The welfare policies, law and medical practices based on Eugenics were criticized. In order to live outside of institutions, in other words, to survive everyday life like able-bodied people, they had to demand a lot of things; from accessible public transportation to income.

The fourth part explains their strategy well, but due to time constraints I have to omit further study of this aspect. Let me note only one thing in order to avoid possible misunderstanding. Apparent from this programme (especially part 1 and 4), we could say their politics can be called “politics of difference”, if we adopt the terminology in modern political philosophy. However, from this if someone conclude that they are mere separationalists, and were refusing communication with the able-bodied majority, it isn’t true. They tried to “make a platform for the common future through mutual criticism between us [them] and workers, through recognizing our [their] and worker’s history correctly. We transform the value of labour by bringing the issue of the disabled into any workplace (italics mine)”.

To “transform the value of labour” echoes Negri’s logic which justifies  Basic Income. The demand of income for living and payment to personal assistants are, however, mainly pursued by another organization, called National Claimants Union for Guaranteed Personal Assistance, which formed in 1980’s. It is said that there and elsewhere, demands similar to  Basic Income are discussed.[11]

The Blue Grass collectives still exist today, and they have fought for a wide range of matters. They are “usual” in the sense they are for “usual every day life” for them, and at the same time “radical” in the sense that they fundamentally differ from the perceptions of the majority. What I would like to pay attention to here are the following two things. In the first place, their logic expressed in the form such as “living itself is labour” is quite similar to Negri’s argument. Secondly, the difference with Negri and Autonomia is that the emphasis by Blue Grass is the difference between the disabled and the able bodied. This is also different from Claimants Unions in the UK, which tried to create a common identity across various claimants. However, the Claimants Unions also emphasized the difference between claimants and workers. The politics of difference adopted by Claimants Unions in the U.K, and Blue Grass in Japan, called for struggling against the dominant perceptions of workers (in the case of the former) and of the able bodied (in the case of the latter). In this sense, there is similarity between these two struggles.

7. Concluding Remarks

These three movements (each of which are also plural) differ from each other especially with regard to the identity of the main active subjects. Further they are remote from each other and there does not seem to be good contacts between them. Nonetheless, we have found similar demands in each and a same logic that justifies these demands. This fact reminds me the following analysis in Empire:

The tendency created necessarily a potential or virtual unity of the international proletariat. This virtual unity was never fully actualized as a global political unity, but it nonetheless had substantial effects. In other words, the few instances of the actual and conscious international organization of labor are not what seem most important here, but rather the objective coincidence of struggles that overlap precisely because, despite their radical diversity, they were all directed against the international disciplinary regime of capital. The growing coincidence determined what we call an accumulation of struggles. (H&N 2000, p.262-3)

What does this “objective coincidence of struggles” tell us?  What do we need in order to actualize this “virtual unity”? I would like to keep these questions open for discussion in this conference.

Instead, let me conclude (or repeat) with a few things. First of all, Negri’s (and later with Hardt) theorization on refusal of work is also the logic that came out from the movements we saw outside of Italy. So although some who argue against Negri (and Hardt) try to provintialise his (their) argument by labelling it “Italian Ideology” (e.g. Brennan 2003), this criticism can only be possible when other struggles such as those I described in this paper are ignored. [12]

Second,  Basic Income can be the cunning of Empire. In order to avoid a case that  Basic Income would function in this negative way, I suggest learning from historical experiences such as those outlined in this paper. It is important to bring these experiences into the discussions of the emerging academic network on  Basic Income. But this is only one of many things that should be done. Needless to say, communicating and joining the current and future movements on  Basic Income is crucial. [13]

Finally, political subject(s) who have fought for  Basic Income are “one” and at the same time “many” (Una Sola Moltitudine [14]). The meanings of this experience to our politics of the multitude are worth interrogating, and this is open to discussion in this conference and future.

Acknowledgements and a general note

The earlier version of this paper was published in Japanese (Yamamori [2003]). I omit here my acknowledgement that I wrote there, except to people from ex-Newton Abbot Claimants Union, ex-South Shields Claimants Union, Edinburgh Claimants, and some other claimants movements. Because I respect their tendency to prefer anonymity, I try to avoid mentioning any names. However, let me note my thanks to Bill Jordan and Jack Grassby, whose books (Jordan 1973 and Grassby 1999) are valuable records of claimants unions movements. Their help was really essential to this research. The part on the struggles in Japan (section 6) was almost newly written (ironically enough) after I moved to Cambridge. The homepage on disability movements and studies mainly written by Shinya Tateiwa was extremely helpful for accessing resources from remote Cambridge. Also this section was inspired by communication with him a long time ago. During the rewriting process, I re-read Empire with people of the Cambridge Autonomous Study Project. The critical discussion there gave me an opportunity to reflect what is/are vital in Negri’s thought in the context of contemporary autonomous activism. Also my thanks go to Rosie Vaughan, Mishko Hansen and Thomas Lalevée for their help and encouraging comments. Any mistakes are my responsibility alone.

NOTES

1. See the following homepage for the details. http://www.etes.ucl.ac.be/BIEN/Index.html

2. The membership mentioned here is “not only citizens, but to all permanent residents (van Parijs 2001, p.5)”. Almost of academic literature on  Basic Income do not problematise the exclusive aspect of citizenship, i.e. the problem of membership. H & N is one of the few exceptions to this tendency with Jordan and Duvell 2003.

3. While we can find a multitude of examples which connect  Basic Income with basic needs both in social movements and academic literature, van Parijs delinks these two.

4. Some countries such as Japan and the U.S.A. do not have this third type of provision.

5. As far as more detail of Italian experience is concerned, this conference has two papers related to  Basic Income by Italians (one of them is Negri himself), and has other participants who have been involved in this experience (Andrea Fumagalli and Maurizio Lazzarato, who wrote on Tute Bianche / White Overall which demanded  Basic Income in 1990’s), so I leave it to them.

6. The earlier recommendation of  Basic Income by Gorz came with some conditions of individual contribution. Similarly some communitarians and feminists are happy with less incentive to wage labour, but not happy with less incentive to contribute to society in the form of care labour or voluntary work.  Basic Income is favoured over the current system for them, but it should come with some requirements for individual contribution to society. Anthony B. Atkinson’s adovocacy of Participation Income is an example of this type of argument. It is different from the welfare state, but also different to  Basic Income which we are discussing here, so I omit this.

7. I frequently heard this from friends and activists in trade unions.

8. I interviewed ex-activists and ex-claimants from several claimants unions. The reason I described the case of Newton Abbot is not that this union is typical one, but that the interviewees remember well the moment that  Basic Income was adopted as their programme.

9. Of course, they struggled for particular benefits for each individual, and sometimes they won. My emphasis is on only.

10. The fifth programme added later. That is: “5. We deny able-bodied civilization. / We recognize that modern civilization has managed to sustain itself only by excluding us, people with CP. We believe that creation of our own culture through our movement and daily life leads to the condemnation of modern civilization, and we act on this belief.”

11. Taught by Shinya Tateiwa. For further details, the voice of the disable activists who were involved in should be heard.

12. Let me note in order to avoid possible misreading. This claim does not mean that the logic out of these movement should or can be reduced to the writing by H&N.

13. The struggles on  Basic Income are on the process. For example, we will see the clear demand for  Basic Income at the coming Mayday demonstration in Tokyo.

14. Maiko Enomoto taught me that this phrase is used for the title of the Italian version of Fernand Pessoa’s poetry collection edited by Antonio Tabucchi.

Basic Income BLIOGRAPHY

Aoi Shiba no Kai Kanagawa Rengo Kai, Ayumi, no. 11. p. 1., 1970 (translated by Osamu Nagase,http://www.arsvi.com/0d/ask-e.htm, 2002).

Atkinson, Anthony B, “The Case for a Participation Income”, Political Quarterly, 67, 1996.

Beveridge, William, Social Insurance and Allied Services, Cmd 6404, HMSO, London, 1942.

Bono, Paola and Sandra Kemp, Italian Feminist Thought: A  reader,  Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1991.

Boron, Atilio A., Empire & Imperialism: A critical reading of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,  Zed Books, London and New York 2005.

Brennan, Timothy “The Italian Ideology”, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.) Debating Empire, Verso, London, 2003.

Fraser, Nancy, Justice Interruptus: Critical reflection on the “postsocialist” condition, Routledge, New York and London, 1997.

Gorz, Andre, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the wage-based society, Polity, Cambridge, 1997.

Grassby, Jack, Unfinished Revolution: South Tyneside 1969-1976, TUPS books, 1999.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Labor of Dionysus: a critique ot the state-form, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1994.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, Massachesetts and London, 2000.

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