Rethinking basic income

For what is possibly the first time in history, we have been living for the last few years in a social system that could easily provide for its own needs by working considerably less than in the past, if it was equipped with fair modes of distribution and was reasonably planned. Why is it then that, despite the fact that labour today no longer ensures social integration and the diminishing of inequalities, we are increasingly pushed to transform the time of life into a productive time? It is in relation to this question that this proposal for basic income becomes meaningful and acquires its practicability. This is a possibility. In order to actualise it, however, a broad social conflict must necessarily be re-activated, a social conflict which works towards inverting the tendencies that inequalities have to spread. The word ‘conflict’, coupled with the idea of an unconditional basic income, serves the purpose of reiterating that this is not a ‘reasonable’ option for everyone, as the advocates of the digital-capitalist scenario would want us to believe.