The issue of “free riding” – contra Gorz – should not determine the outlines of a program to liberate us from stupid and demeaning jobs. What is the worst social catastrophe after all – paying someone a minimal income to dream all day or enforcing an arbitrary definition of “socially useful” work?

The larger quandary for me is to agitate for a system that depends on State beneficence: What power decrees, it can rescind. One approach may be to use the notion of the Commons as the basis for providing all with at least a basic livelihood. Embedding this concept into the socio-political and cultural foundations of society may provide the means by which we remove the State (at least a bit) from our daily lives. Alaska already has an annual fund based on oil revenues that provides approximately $1,000 to all residents – adults and children. The Alaska Permanent Fund, established in 1976, is independently, and transparently, managed and endorsed to both Republicans and Democrats.

Red Pepper readers should know that Karl Marx’s multi-racial son-in-law Paul Lafargue argued for a three hour, three-day work week in 1883 in his essay “The Right to be Lazy.” For more see:

I think the answer is that he understood citizenship is a relationship in which members of a geographically bounded political community grant one-another rights and impose on one-another responsibilities. For the most part these rights and responsibilities are culturally encoded and tacitly understood – a kind of cultural substructure out of which the superstructure of legal, political and economic rights emerge and take specific forms.

This is essentially a kind of social contract. Arguably this is why the Beveridge post WW2 welfare model in the UK took the form of an insurance scheme – by working one “paid in”, and was therefore entitled to welfare payments or services in times of need. It is extremely important to point out here that such an arrangement puts a premium on trust and a broad sense of collective belonging. If the system is to be successful it should be a widely accepted assumption that most able-bodied people will not attempt to play the system (free ride), and will only claim on the system in times of genuine need. If this is broadly accepted it should also be the case that the community recognises a collective obligation to those who cannot easily find work (for example the disabled) to provide adequate financial and other support so that they can share in the life of the community in a manner which ensures self respect.

the relationship of this understanding of citizenship and welfare to the unconditional citizens income idea is that without the obligation to contribute, the right to receive payments to an adequate level which allows participation in the life of the community and self-respect (i.e. full citizenship) will be fragile and is in fact inevitably doomed to being whittled or smashed down – through tax revolts, election of right-wing parties with anti-welfare agendas, etc.

for this reason, I believe what is needed is legislation limiting working hours, economic policies promoting full employment (but which must be with less hours per week than at present and must be linked to a genuinely green economic agenda) and some kind of citizens income, but one which allows people to work much more flexibly, but does not promote large-scale free riding.