Reddito di base tra crisi del lavoro salariato ed emergenza del digital labor. Un’analisi critica a partire dal volume Real Freedom for All di Philippe Van Parijs

This article offers a critical analysis of the debate on Universal Basic Income (UBI) in light of the crisis of wage labour and the emergence of digital labour, starting from Philippe Van Parijs’s seminal work Real Freedom for All. Thirty years after its publication, Van Parijs’s theory remains highly relevant, particularly for its critique of full employment as a political horizon and for its conception of basic income as a tool to maximize “real freedom,” understood as effective access to the material conditions necessary to exercise freedom. The article situates the proposal of UBI within the structural transformations of contemporary capitalism, marked by financialization, platform economies, and the diffusion of forms of labour that are intermittent, precarious, and often unpaid. In this context, digital labour exemplifies a mode of value production increasingly detached from the traditional institutions of wage labour, thereby undermining the capacity of employment to guarantee social rights and economic security. While acknowledging the strengths of Van Parijs’s approach—particularly his understanding of basic income as a social dividend and as a form of redistribution of collectively produced wealth—the article argues that this framework remains predominantly reformist. It risks underestimating the political and conflictual potential of basic income as a lever to renegotiate power relations between capital and labour. The central claim advanced here is that UBI should not be conceived merely as a welfare measure or a corrective mechanism within capitalism, but as a strategic instrument capable of reducing workers’ blackmailability, fostering new forms of social cooperation, and opening spaces for political conflict. In this sense, basic income emerges as a key condition—though not a sufficient one—for imagining post-salarial forms of social justice and freedom in contemporary societies.